Aaaaand adoption kicks off!

Holy crap, you guys, we have a social worker!!

For those not in the loop, here in Country B if a lesbian couple who is legally partnered go through fertility treatment at a clinic, both are automatically listed on the birth certificate. This was not always the case. In fact, the law changed to this more equality and reality driven model a scant four months after we conceived. This means we have had to do a lot of shit to protect our family – wills in case I died in childbirth, a brief court trip and some paperwork to get TMD parental responsibility, etc. we have also been on the waiting list for TMD to officially adopt Snort and Coconut since they were infants.

Once they are adopted, their birth certificates will be amended. We view this as rectifying an error and not as traditional adoption, seeing as we are the only family unit the children have ever known. It will also offer us more security and possibly affect immigration issues. So it’s a big deal.

I’ve been desperate for this to happen before they were school age for many reasons. The major thing I am concerned about is the confusion or distress the process may cause them. TMD clarified our situation with the manager today and hopefully the worker and her student will be sensitive to our unique family needs. The second reason is the slight chance we may slip through the net and be able to remain unknown as home educators. It doesn’t really matter too much if we become known, but there are potential pains in the asses I would like to avoid.

So last week I wrote a letter explaining all of my concerns as a parent and a professional (I’m a trained, qualified, and eligible for accreditation counselor, for those who don’t know). I sent it to two friends to have a read and elicit opinions. All I needed to do was hunt down the addresses for the main point of contact and some other influential bigwigs so we could post this thing next week.

Anyway, I got a text from TMD saying, ‘The universe read your letter. We have a social worker!’

And it gets better.

She needs to begin work with us immediately, as the whole thing needs to be wrapped up in SIX WEEKS. There may be a delay in our court date, but all the meetings and paperwork will be done. A-fucking-men, am I right?

Now that this whole thing is starting, I’m a bit angry we have to go through it in the first place. Also a bit anxious, despite knowing we will fly through. Despite my negative feelings, I am super excited this is finally happening for us. We were told before that there are no concerns for our children’s welfare, so we were unlikely to ever be allocated a social worker as we were not priority. I reckon this woman is going off on maternity leave or has handed in her notice or something, so she needs short pieces of work that are really a matter of ticking boxes.

So YAY.

I sometimes like to think my blog can help other families or individuals in similar situations to us, but I suspect in this case we are the last lesbian couple in Country B to need to undergo this process, due to the law change. Still, I guess if any of you get knocked up at home with donor sperm, or you marry a new partner who wants to adopt your children, the following weeks may be of help to you. Anyone who has undergone this process, we welcome info.

The manager today said we will be going through observations as a family. Uh, okay. Observe us, people, because WE ARE AWESOME.

Fin.

14 st 7. Three pounds down this week

I’ve now lost 39 pounds and over 16% of my body weight. This is a familiar number to me, this 39 pounds lost. When we get into the forties, we are in an emerging and new territory. I don’t particularly feel like I have lost weight or look like it (meaning recent weeks since I got started again), but five pounds isn’t that much when you have a lot to lose. I think I’m at about the halfway point….but only if I decide to be that thin again.

However, my head is different. I’ve never been a headache person, but have had whomping headaches from pregnancy till now. The last year I’ve probably had a headache every single day, sometimes bad enough to make me vomit. I’ve also been very low energy and enthusiasm.

TMD has started doing awesome cooking in the evenings, leaving me with filling and delicious vegan foods for the following day. Largely curries that are so good they make my saliva glands happy. This means a large part of cooking is cut out of my days, which dramatically changes the way I eat. There are lots of beans and pulses in the foods, and I have completely cut out bullshit foods. The only snacks I have had are seeds, fruit, or cereal.

And I feel GREAT. This is my fourth or fifth day in a row with NO trace of a headache. This beggars belief. I also have been staying up later, rising earlier, and having enough energy to make it through most days without wanting to collapse into a heap sometime soon are lunch.

So all of that is fantastic. And I am definitely in the weight loss mindset I was in last TMD when I lost loads of weight, which is even better.

I’ve also started reading the food and mood handbook. Interesting stuff, but possibly not for you if you don’t like science type stuff. I have been eating good mood food, courtesy of TMD, and I have to say I hope she keeps cooking, because things are so much better on many fronts.

14 st 11, would Mickey approve? Also, I need deadlines in all areas of life. No exaggeration

This is me, about six years ago on our very belated honeymoon in Disney World. It marks the second time in my life I wore a bikini. The first was when I was about ten. It was a tight hot pink and orange number, and I was on a boat with my family and our friends. I felt uncomfortable and like the thing was going to fall off the whole time. As a teen, I looked back at that picture and remembered viscerally how uncomfortable I felt. I don’t know whether I thought I looked good, or too chunky.

When I look at the above picture, taken on a waterproof crappy camera, I feel a lot. Freedom, sunshine, laughing, bliss. I also think I looked awesome. This trip to Disney happened to mark the end of my eighteen month journey at Weight Watchers. I’d lost fifty four pounds and felt terrific. I bought two different bikinis and felt so confident and happy. We have lots of pictures of us on waterslides and in wave pools and my face just glows in them all.

It is not a coincidence that the trip landed at a time when I had just hit my goal weight (11 st 10). No, I knew the trip was going to happen and I used it as a deadline.

A couple of days ago, my mom brought up the possibility of us all going to Disney next September, which happens to be seven years exactly after the above picture was taken. (How do such large chunks of time pass by?) So once again, I have a trip to Mickey’s Florida home as a deadline, though I am realistic. Last time I lost weight slowly, steadily, and very consistently. I may not have lost every week, but I never gave myself a week off. Never.

A small part of me hates myself for saying I will lose weight by Disney, when I never lost it for having a new baby. A bigger part shrugs, accepting, and says what is done is done and cannot be undone. No point in beating myself up, not when weight loss will require much courage and self love. Hard work.

Last time TMD did all our meals at home, and she often packed me healthy lunches as well. I was working so was not around food all the time. My job also required me to spend a good portion of my day walking through inner city __________, which involved dodging the crowds, speed walking, and a few particularly funky hills. This time I do all the food. I hate cooking, and often feel panic. What will I eat? When will I eat? This is why I reach for convenience foods, because they are so much easier when you are tired and cannot cook.

But it would be nice to have a new swimsuit. Red, I think. It would be nice to have more energy and less aches so I could keep up with the kids as they run around Disney in that hot, hot sun.

This last week I got some very scary news from back home. The sort of news that makes me wonder about trying, again, to figure out how we could possibly navigate the rough waters of immigration and relocation. When I got off the phone, I started eating and did not stop. I could not stop, even when I ended up unpleasantly ass sick as a result. Nothing stopped the eating until the casual mention of Disney, so I latch onto that. Seven or eight months to focus myself on something positive, while quiet worries and the realisation of time passing by try so hard to drag me under.

I have no printer, but really want to find a way to print out the original picture from this post. A few copies. So I can keep looking at it, knowing that no matter how hard it is, I KNOW I can lose this weight because I did it before. The circumstances have changed, but at the core I hope my inner strength and self belief is still there waiting for me and the possibility of a new swimsuit.

12 st 9 AND how to terrify a tot

I don’t know how I managed to lose weight this week. I gorged myself, and largely in response to this IVF stuff. Due to an injury on Monday, I also tried to move as little as possible. So we had McDonald’s, chips, pizza, chocolate, crisps, etc. I think I’ll try harder this week.

I don’t have much more to say. I mean, I could fill a novel with how I can eat to punish myself, but really, the cinema is more uppermost in my mind. We took the kids to their first movie this morning – Brave. I had been thinking for awhile that it might be fun to see a film, and discovered kid special prices on weekend mornings. I knew Brave was Disney/Pixar so assumed it would be okay. It was only are booking that I read all these reviews saying not to bring kids under seven.

Well, yeah. That shit was REAL. Intense, scary, totally jacked up but also quite charming. Snort made it about halfway through, to the point where the mum is changed into a bear and all the noisy men are chasing her through the castle. Tears were running down his face, and he and TMD left the movie.

About ten minutes later I texted her to say the movie was funny again, but he refused to reenter. Good. Because the next thing you know, bears are fighting and people are getting shot and giant rocks are crushing bears.

Coconut was chill. Princess Merida crashed through the floor into a deserted creepy castle with a killer bear. Her response? ‘That lady needs a ladder.’

Princess Merida is sobbing because her beloved mother almost just killed her, and is in fact going to be transformed into a bear forever, and her dad might have to kill her? ‘That poor, poor lady. She is so sad and crying because her mum is a bear. She just wants her mum and dad to be happy again like a family.’

I’m there cringing and worried about inflicting psychological danger, and her only complaint is that the movie is too loud. She likes it and wants to see it again.

Snort, on the other hand – ‘That movie scared me. I not see that movie again. Come to the cinema and see red car movie!’ Yes, so. We will keep ours eyes out for cut price Cars, but at the very least I may do a more careful selection of film title next time. Brave was good, but I didn’t realise the name may have been an indication of the way a viewer would need to be in order to survive the darker elements.

It was fun, though. But that being said, I was sat by the kid who didn’t care about her popcorn and stayed the whole movie through. TMD, however, has a headache and didn’t get much popcorn. BOOyah.

14st12. BMI 31.6

I blame myself for a lot of things, particularly in regard to my weight.

A brief history, probably all too tedious and familiar to those of you who are long term readers.

Years ago I weighed 15 st 8. I joined Weight Watchers and around 18 months later reached my goal weight of 11 st 10. ( One stone equals fourteen pounds.) I dropped down to 11 st 6, but that seemed really light. I maintained my weight loss for a couple of years, then got a new therapy job that involved sitting on my ass all day and eating pastries. My weight went up a few pounds to 12 st 5 or so, and I maintained that until we started IVF. I gained weight during IVF and the date of the egg collection I weighed 12 st 8, I think.

I then stopped paying attention to weight, though I gained 59 pounds during my twin pregnancy. Sixty pounds was the medical goal, so it was a total fluke. The day before my section I weighed 17 st 4. I did lose nineteen pounds in birth, but gained some back as, I’m sure we all recall, I was in a wheelchair for about nine months and totally unable to walk.

Since that time, I have very slowly lost weight. I went down to 15 st 8 and stayed there a long time. And now had dropped to a stone lighter, and have been around that weight for even longer. I’ve been complacent, even when I knew weight loss might help my SPD, help me be more fertile, etc.

I am not in a good head space to lose weight. Last time, my 55 pound loss was framed within a me that was totally assured and focused. There was no doubt in my mind I would lose the weight. So no surprise that I did, though I was certainly surprised I maintained that level of weight loss until my twin pregnancy.

I’m not focused and assured now. My life is very different, my eating is very different, my daily exercise levels are very different. But I’m going to try anyway. So every Sunday you can feel free to skip my posts if weight loss is not your thing. I know this is like the fifteenth time since having the babies that I’ve tried to lose weight. It probably won’t be the last. But I think it is precisely because of my negative head space that I need to try.

In the interest of accuracy, today I weighed in just before lunch. I’d already eaten breakfast, etc etc. Future weigh ins will be first thing. I anticipate dropping to 14 st 6 very quickly, but then that is the weight where I stall. Every time. I don’t have a set goal weight in mind, also unlike last time, but for now let’s aim for a bmi under 30 – no, let’s aim for 196 pounds. 14 stone exactly. That’s how much I weighed when I finished university, and it was a good weight.

The one where I neglect that I’m going to start writing Herotica to supplement our income, if I ever bother to do so.

Okay. WordPress will not let me put a donate button up on the side. It’s like it KNOWS that I have been struggling with the whole anonymous blog thing lately. I yearn to start a public one, with real faces in pictures, and more information about us. But then I wouldn’t blog about IVF or things, so this blog is still my numero uno. And every other time I’ve started a second blog I’ve let it crash and burn, even when it was doing quite well.
So anyway. Hopefully the button in this entry will work.

If three of you only donate 1.00 Unit of My Money each, that shit pays for one bus journey to the IVF clinic. Or, you know, six of you can donate .50 each and accomplish the same thing. Go ahead. You know you want to.

(And thank you, whether you do or do not, because whether you realize it or not, this blog is my strongest link to sanity and community. So you just reading these words helps me.)

Oh HELL no. It won’t let my link go up in a post, either. The address to donate is my email address, if you know that. Assuming I know who you are in an internet sort of way, I’m happy to give you that info. Failing that, does anyone know how to get a paypal donate button in a wordpress blog?!

Update two: I have an ugly, but apparently working, link to paypal at the top of this entry. For your info, should you need it, WordPress requires the email link to put in posts, as it will not allow the website code. Once I figure out how to fix the above link, I may desperately try to make the donate button on the side work. I guess all my a href= mad skillz from 1996 no longer work in the real world.

IVF – round two.

We can say we have officially begun our IVF protocol, since myself, my wife, and the egg recipient are now all on the pill. For those who aren’t sure of what’s going on, I’ll be stimulating my ovaries to produce a nice crop of eggs, then giving half to my wife and half to an anonymous recipient. I’ve actually shared eggs with this same anonymous woman in the past, so it’s nice to try to help her expand her family again.

And, of course, our hopes are to expand our family again, too. While the emotional part of me would LOVE another set of twins, the rational part knows we should be aiming for a single baby this time. And TMD certainly is in the singleton camp.

So, I’ll be gearing up to share all the nitty gritty. I know last time I heard from quite a few people who were undergoing IVF. I hope to help people again this time.

This time the focus will be on what happens when a married lesbian couple wants eggs from one partner to turn into embryos for the other partner to carry. And, of course, egg sharing and the whole TTC process. Please do share with people who may benefit from the information. I haven’t seen many blogs explicitly cover how the whole lesbians carrying their partner’s egg thing works, and I know I’ve been curious in the past. The next couple of months is a chance for us all to learn!

…For now.

Today is a boon day.

Yesterday was spent in caves, largely, and a good time was had by all. Largely. But by the time we got home, I was ready for bed at like 6:30 pm. I decided to skip writing the manuscript for the night and catch up today. I woke up this morning and realised while showering (the birthplace of many good ideas) that we are actually going abroad for part of June. (But my FIL will be here in the house, lest any of you think theiving thoughts.)

So I need to write MORE than 1667 words per day to finish Camp NaNoWriMo. 3198 so far today, for a grand total of 4975 thus far! TMD took the kids out shopping to leave me alone – and what a perfect morning for it. Cloudy, slight breeze through my window, downloaded music floating in the air.

I was sad about not going as I wanted to pick up ‘summer trousers’ (I literally own one pair of trousers that fits and they definitely are winter ones.) – but TMD picked some up in a size lower (I’m back on vintage weight watcher points and doing well, so thought there was no point in buying the size I have been wearing) and THEY FIT PERFECTLY. I like to wear trousers low, but never in a million years would I think the next size down would comfortably fit worn round my hips. They even fit while I’m sitting. SITTING!

So, I guess I am a smaller woman writing a bigger quantity of words.

That is all…

Other stuff we did not know.

Here’s something I didn’t know that you probably didn’t know either. NaNoWriMo has a camp. Oh, yes, my child. In June they have a summer camp version of NaNoWriMo. We’re all ready to write a 50,000 word novel (or the first 50,000 words!), slathered in suncream and signed up for archery lessons.

I want the fucking poster they are selling. I want all the other stuff, too, but the poster is the cheapest and I imagine it to be a great souvenir once this session of camp is over. Have I told you I LOVE CAMP? And I LOVE WRITING?

It’s roughly a 1667 words a day commitment. I just did my first 1675. JOIN ME. Will you join me? Canoe rides with laptops balanced on our laps? Sleepovers and ghost stories? Or, you know, just a few people cursing themselves and trying to write a novel that is going nowhere. With no compasses.

See, it sounds fun. Leave a comment if you’re gonna do it! You can sign up on the site and we can be friends and kick each others asses. Or join my little circle on facebook – myself and a friend have committed to doing it and you are likely to see our daily wall exchanges on the topic if you and I are friends. If we aren’t friends, maybe we should be. Consider it and leave a comment for that shit too, but be warned I’ll probably only friend you if we have chatted online, or I know you from my blog or your blog, and you promise you aren’t an axe murderer.

Because, kids, it’s camping season and everyone knows summer camp is when all the creepy killers come out of the woods and stab you to death in your camp bed.

Um. Okay. So. Writing. Camp NaNoWriMo! This is my first attempt at the camp version of nano, and I *think* I’m looking forward to it.

But now I need to go read The Hunger Games for the fifth time (thank you, wonderful Lynn!) and maybe go pee beforehand just so I can use my new awesome homemade reuseable wipes/family cloth (thank you, wonderful Jinxy! I ADORE them. So soft! I may have even let my butt touch them, and it’s like wiping with a cloud!). I am going to try to stick with nightly writing, though, so that even if I have a heap of crap at the end of the month, I’ll have a heap of crap. You know? Because I can sit on top of my heap of crap reading e-books and wiping myself with nice family cloth.

It all works out in the end.

Uh.

My AMH is 21.95. That’s pretty fucking good. Better than good.

Nurse says I’ll respond better to IVF than TMD, but it is only in terms of quantity, not quality. Though obviously my eggs are great, or were three years ago, considering I had twins and the woman I shared my eggs with also had a baby.

Cancer risk apparently under 5% and doesn’t increase with multiple cycles. Still scary. But they know of no clients of theirs who have developed it.

So. Lots to think about.