the things I’ve learned along the way

Tips I have taught myself along the way: 

• Stop using terms/euphemisms like “infertility”, “failed IUI”, “unsuccessful” and  “trying”. They are total downers. 

• Start using terms/direct language like “pregnancy journey”, “fertility process”,  “cycle where I didn’t get pregnant”, and “insemination”. 

• Months ago, a close friend of mine, checking in on my process, sent me a text:  “When’s your next insem?” I loved the term “insem” so much that now I use it  whenever I can. Even though this process can be extremely emotionally taxing,  and words are practically meaningless when you find out you’re not pregnant for  the fifth time!, they actually do influence and shape the emotional tenor of your  experience, especially when describing it to others (family, friends, etc.), so find  language that makes you laugh or feel radical or brings you joy. 

Tips I wish I had known before I was along the way: 

• At least a few months before you plan to do your first insemination:

• Get an extended genetic test. If you can, get the same genetic test that the sperm bank you are working with uses. You can call them to ask which  company they use! If you use the same genetic testing company as the  sperm bank, then you avoid a lot of hassle when you choose a donor and  need to compare your test results with theirs (i.e. potential issues like  being a carrier for a genetic disease that the donor wasn’t tested for).

• Get basic hormone levels tested -- AMH, LH/FSH, progesterone, etc.

• Get an HSG test -- which visualizes your uterus and fallopian tubes and  makes sure nothing is physically blocked (and has the added benefit of  slightly raising your changes of pregnancy for the first two months after the  test!) 

• Start fertility acupuncture. A lot of cities and towns have affordable  community acupuncture. Try to go once a week if that’s financially feasible. 

• Research midwives in your area who do at-home inseminations. Search under key terms like “at-home IUI” and “homebirth midwife IUI”. 

Tips from my midwife (thank you Kate, queer powerful midwife who works at  Planned Parenthood and does at-home IUIs!) that I think could be helpful for  others: 

• A helpful planning framework: Do one method for three cycles (i.e. unmedicated  with donor A). If you’re not pregnant after three cycles, change up one or two  factors. If you can switch to a new donor, do that, or switch from unmedicated to  medicated, or both! You never know which factor might help you get pregnant, so  it’s good to change things up in a methodical manner.

• When choosing a donor, and feeling overwhelmed by the decision, it can be  helpful to consider this question: Imagine explaining to your future child why you  chose this specific donor. Would you be able to explain your choice with  confidence and with integrity? 

• These decisions -- choosing a donor, choosing medication, etc. -- feel  monumental when you’re in the midst of them. But once you’re pregnant, they  become much smaller, just part of the background to a much larger, exciting  experience. Holding this truth as you go through these decisions can offer helpful  perspective!

by Ellie Lobovits 

why we wanted to be parents and grow our family

J: We had talked about wanting a big family early on. So many conversations over 5 years about everything. How we were raised, what we wanted to pass on, what we wanted our lives to look like, and logistics of course – timing and donors and what kind of parents we wanted to be - and it finally came down to spontaneously buying sperm on a New Year’s Eve sale!

D: Having kids and a family with kids was something I always knew I wanted but being a parent feels like a different conversation. Being a parent is a role that I was so excited to have, a relationship that I was so confident I wanted and would like and would be good at.

I loved the idea of parenting. The act of parenting, and what that meant. What were the skills, experiences, tools, that I would bring to this parenting role and relationship? I had awesome support from my parents and continue to have an amazing supportive relationship with them, and I wanted to have that kind of relationship but as the parent. 

J: It wasn’t easy to get there. Turns out when you can’t accidentally get pregnant, it’s very hard to know when the right time is to have a baby. Some conversations left us feeling like we wanted different enough things that we might not work out. Some made us scared about how much work our relationship required in order to feel ready. And then we went to therapy. And we committed and recommitted to working on us because we both felt growth from it and in that time, we learned how to communicate. We both had life changing revelations about productive conflict and intimacy. I always knew I wanted a big family but there was work I needed to do to get there. To interrogate my anger, my boundaries, my fears and insecurities. Turns out, having ways to process these things opens up a lot of space in your heart for other people. I started reparenting myself in ways I needed and letting my partner help too. We learned about co-regulating, which feels like a very queer and ecological form of intimacy. 

D: When we got to the point of building our family, I felt ready. I had done so much work on myself and Joe and I had done so much work on our relationship it felt like we were ready to support and raise someone else and bring someone else into this world we were building. 

This seems a little silly, but also feels true—when I am training other folks on facilitation, I often reference the simplest definition of the term; “to facilitate: to make easy”. I trusted us and our relationship and our families and community to be able to support another person in all the ways--physical, emotional, social, intellectual. To provide safe, trusted loving space for another person to learn and grow and experiment and be. 

J: And then we kind of took a leap of faith. We were worried about timing if it took a while, us getting older, our parents getting older, not having enough money, not feeling settled enough. All the things. But we wanted to share a baby with our families. We wanted to share this experience together. We wanted to experience the world through the eyes of a child. 

D: We got to a point in our relationship where we liked imagining doing all the things we were doing—camping, hiking, going to the market, cooking breakfast, hanging out with other family members—with a kid around. We were building them into our lives in our imaginations and it felt good and exciting and possible. 

J: We wanted to build a family OUR way and raise a young person to be free and fierce and kind and love soil and birds and... Someone who would grow up thinking critically and expansively about gender and race and their place in the world. 

D: I always loved the idea of being surrounded by a big family and community—friends ten years older than me and ten years younger than me, mentees, housemates, siblings, cousins, parents, niblings, students. Having a kid was another person to add, another form of relationship to practice and experience, and something that we knew we both wanted. 

-Joe and Danny

Growing our family through fostering-to-adopt

Now, after having learned so much through this journey, feel uncomfortable with just about every part of it. When we started, I think our thinking was that neither of us had any real desire to be pregnant (and if we're really honest, mostly thought "ew" haha!), that we think there are way too many people on the earth already, and that it didn't make sense for us to add any more. We figured that math added up to it making more sense for us to provide a home and a family to the many kids who needed it in the foster care system (according to their stats anyway). And we thought we'd do it "right" -- we believe in open adoption and connection to first / birth family, we have a deeply queer understanding of family that isn't necessarily about blood or DNA, etc. So we started the process - classes, home study, social workers - and then waited. And waited. And waited. I think nearly three years?

What we learned along the way is that, yes, there are a lot of kids in the system who need a home -- but that's in large part because the system is broken and removes them from homes they know or supports foster parents instead of parents who are unhoused or struggling with addiction or mental health challenges. And that most kids in the system have a family, of course, but some (usually white middle class) power-that-be has decided that that family isn't equipped to raise them. And that broken systems and ridiculous bureaucracy abandon and demonize first families, leave kids to languish in foster care, and, yes, can result in three years of an open foster family with no placement, even when there are kids who need somewhere to go. 

We knew all this to some degree going in, but I don't think we fully understood the complexities or our complicity in this system until we were in it. It is a dizzying, confusing roller coaster of a thing to love your babies AND feel guilty for raising them, to hope and pray they stay with you AND agonize over their birth family's heartbreak, to know that your home might be the best and safest option for them right now AND know that that might look different if their mom had gotten the support she needed, to live constantly in the present because you have no idea how long they will stay AND try to create safety, stability, and a sense of family. It's one big "yes and" exercise and it's imperative to start from the position that foster care is trauma, adoption is trauma, AND that the families that are built out of them can also be an incredibly beautiful journey.

~Anonymous

Better than science fiction is the trans magic of my chest…

Better than science fiction, is the trans magic of my chest- made more mine by top surgery and tattoos, but still always handled with care and distance. We had to get real acquainted, at the first lactation appointment before our kiddo even arrived, gloved hands helped me understand the map of asymmetrical scar tissue pooling in my armpits.

 I went in wanting to know how to safely manage lactation postpartum post top (keyhole) surgery and left with the tools for a glimmer of possibility. We found two generous donors of human milk that would be the main source of our kiddos food, but I wanted our kid to be as protected as possible and had read about the genius of human milk

The plan was to give our baby colostrum and then be done–but our lactation consultant was a dream, fighting alongside us with so many types of tubing, tape and tongue exercises for the baby.

So we invented–nipples became magic buttons, and the at-chest supplementor earned the name “juice box” for the satisfying sound it makes as the last drops of donor milk get sucked out. And I found it kind of magical, though never comfortable. Our donor milk had to be poured into this tiny plastic sack that hung like a necklace from a nylon cord around our necks. Each had a stopper and straw with a teeny tiny delicate tube that came out the bottom of the back and could be taped to my chest and guided by hand into our baby’s mouth.

 So feeding went something like this- each day we pre-made about four to six juice boxes, as well as four to six regular bottles, focusing on juice box during the day and bottles at night when we couldn’t open our eyes enough to struggle with the many steps. Warm juice box in bottle warmer, clip to its nylon and string it around your neck, tape the tube just so pointing out from the nipple. Slip a tiny tube into their mouth before they latch. Because of my top surgery, I also had to squeeze a sandwich out of my chest tissue to give the baby something to latch to. This process required at least three to four hands—but it was worth it.

-Ty Marshall