Switching Roles

February 1, 2013

So I’m ready to publicly, officially let you all know that I’m pregnant.  Due August 2013.  Now I’m moving from the midwife role to the midwifery client role, which is so much fun, and provides a lot of insight for me clinically.

I started by asking my best friend to be my sperm donor.  We’d discussed it theoretically many times over the years, while I was single and while I had a girlfriend, so it wasn’t a huge surprise.  We cobbled together a donor agreement using pieces we liked from other agreements we’d found, and came up with something that works well for us both.  In the meanwhile, I spent a few months preparing my body for conception.  Because I had very irregular cycles, averaging 3 months long and generally anovulatory, I took a multi-pronged approach: thorough charting, acupuncture, herbs, pelvic floor work, fertility yoga, lots of supplements, Mayan abdominal massage…I can’t even remember all I did.  I also made sure I got a pap smear.  And I’m not sure what did it (maybe all of it?), but my cycles shortened down to 40-ish days, and the cycle before my first insemination, I ovulated for the first time in six months!

I was expecting that it might take a while to conceive, given my own crazy cycles and my mom’s struggles with infertility.  I myself am a Clomid baby, and she tried for years to have another baby, but it never happened, and I’m her only child.  So I had emotionally prepared myself for it to take 6 months, or a year, and that I might end up getting some fancy expensive doctors involved.

So my first cycle of insemination, I was telling myself it was the practice run, learning the logistics.  I was just proud of myself that I nailed the timing, and that I did in fact ovulate at all!  Once I got my temp spike, things shifted from thinking and doing to just waiting.  The two week wait is ridiculous.  Torturous and crazy-making.  My boobs are kinda sore–is it only because I’m squeezing them all the time to see if they’re sore?!  In the end, I couldn’t even wait the whole two weeks, and 12 days post ovulation, I peed on a stick without telling anyone because it was too early.

It was positive.  Faintly, but unmistakable.

I was shocked.  It’s not common to get pregnant the first try, and I was certainly expecting to be on the other end of the spectrum, taking a long time and possibly some interventions.  I spent the first few weeks thinking that even if I miscarry, this is still helpful information, because it means my ovaries work well enough, and that my donor isn’t shooting blanks, and that I have a decent grasp of charting and timing.  I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it hasn’t yet.

Tags: Personal, Queer Families

Author Bio: Jasper Moon, CPM LMT (they/ them)

Perinatal care specialist. Parent of two. Hosted three fetuses: my big kid, a surrogacy in the middle, and my little kid. Vegan; drinks a lot of tea. Board game (and general) geek. Goat hugger extraordinaire.

Read more about Jasper here.