Countdown to Baby T. Rex: The Seven Stages of Waiting (41 Weeks)

The Seven Stages of Waiting for Baby T. Rex

1. Terror (“What did we do?!”)
2. Excitement (So soon! OMG!)
3. Nervousness (SO soon OMG!!!)
4. Hope (Any day now!)
5. Disappointment (Any day now…?)
6. Frustration (ANY DAY NOW, YOU LITTLE POOP MONSTER!!!)
7. Resignation (Cool. Just going to be pregnant FOREVER, I guess…)

Well then. Here we are. According to Waffle’s pregnancy app, Baby T. Rex is now nine days old, which is weird because Remi is still very comfy and chillin’ in my uterus.

Waffle had to go back to work yesterday, having maxed out his two-week vacation allotment. I’ve officially used up three weeks of parental leave. Well-meaning and concerned friends and relatives keep asking if the baby is here yet and letting us know we’re overdue. We know. We swear we’re not hiding it from ya’ll. The baby is not here yet. We frankly can’t wait until Remi’s here, either. We’ll shout it to the world, we promise.

The reality is that a lot of first time preggers people give birth after their due date. Full-term is between 37-42 weeks. My midwife says 40 weeks, 3 days-5 days is average for first time pregnancies. Other sources I’ve read or heard say going past 41 weeks or even to 41.5 weeks is average for first-time pregnancies. Much like when we were trying to conceive, knowing the stats and averages didn’t bring us all that much comfort as we counted down to our due date.

By the time we got to August 20th, I just felt done, cooked, ready to pop. We didn’t think I’d go far past my due date because of my early gestational diabetes diagnosis, which we’d been warned might mean a bigger baby. I’d been having pre-labor signs since about 36 weeks. I was having irregular, but frequent Braxton Hicks contractions and some random contractions that were mildly painful. A week before my due date, the baby dropped deep down into my pelvis (also known as “lightening”). I was riding a clean burst of energy for a few days leading up to the due date. I just felt like I was ready.

Then August 20th came…and went.

This past Saturday, we hit 41 weeks and there was still no sign of Remi. Everyone has been like: “Get some sleep now.” “Enjoy your time together.” “Baby will be here soon.” “They’ll come when they’re ready.” All well-meaning advice, but quite frankly we just want this baby here. ASAP. We can’t sleep anyway because I can barely roll over and I have to propel myself out of bed to pee four times a night, which wakes Waffle up because he’s anxious that I’m going to go into labor. We’ve had over 11 years of enjoying our time together. I like Waffle’s face and vice versa, but…we’re good with staring at each other. And yes, of course we know the baby will come eventually, but it’s still frustrating!

Waiting is just frustrating. That’s just how waiting is, in general. Sometimes when you’re waiting or anxious about something, you just want people to empathize with your feelings, not try to fix you. Because there’s no way to fix it! I tell myself every day, “This is normal. This is fine. This is normal.” I still get frustrated when another day passes with no Baby T. Rex. That’s just how I’m feeling right now regardless of how logical it is. I know once Remi is here, we’ll forget about the stress and this will be a funny story to tell Remi when they’re older about how we were actually losing our ability to function and doing ridiculous things like vacuuming the ceiling and organizing the tupperware cabinet while waiting for them. Right now, though, I would like my body back and my baby in my arms.

My midwives generally don’t do a lot of medical intervention or recommend it, so they weren’t too worried about me going past 40 weeks. However, because we were overdue, we had a non-stress test and ultrasound on Friday, just to be sure everything was cool in my ute. Remi was super active for the non-stress test and all seems well in there. There were no contractions during the test, which I expected. All week, I’ve had contractions that come and go, as well as pelvic pain and cramps that feel like menstrual cramps, but they’ve never escalated in frequency or fallen into a discernable pattern.

We also found out Baby T is measuring at approximately 7 pounds, 6 ounces, which is very much in the normal range for birth weight, especially at 41 weeks! (I guess I managed my gestational diabetes too well.) Baby T. Rex looked quite content to just hang out head-down on the ultrasound, just wiggling their toes and flappin’ their baby lips and having a real chill time in there.

We’re both glad Baby T. Rex is healthy and my insides are in good shape, but we wish Remi would stop dragging their fetus feet and come meet us already. Is this because I’m perpetually late? Are they already taking after me?

Over the past week, I’ve tried some of the things that supposedly help trigger labor, but none of them have been particularly effective (and a lot are just myths). People keep recommending we get busy in the bedroom, but don’t realize that part of the trick to the sex-to-induce-labor advice is for your partner to have semen, which supposedly helps soften the cervix. (Also, between feeling like a beached whale whenever I’m horizontal and dealing with almost constant pelvic pain, my interest in getting frisky is about a negative two.)

Orgasm helps in that it releases oxytocin and can trigger stronger contractions, which I can confirm is true, but if you’re not ready to go into labor or already in labor, it’s just going to give you another false contraction. I also tried nipple stimulation, which works the same way that orgasm does, trying to simulate breastfeeding and trick my body into throwing out some more oxytocin to strengthen my contractions. Same result. More false contractions, no labor progression. I’m just not ready yet.

Every day, I’m drinking four steeped bags of uterus-toning red raspberry leaf tea and bouncing on my birthing ball. I’m taking walks and doing light exercise at home and taking naps and trying to stay healthy and rested. I’ve even tried acupuncture. I’ve lost hope that any of this is making a difference. My midwife reassured me there isn’t a super secret special trick to trigger labor. Remi is going to be born when they feel ready…hopefully some day before they’re off to college.

At this point, we have a plan to go to the birthing center to be induced if I don’t go into labor naturally by 41 weeks, 5 days (this Wednesday evening, with labor probably kicking in on Thursday). At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to consider being induced until after 42 weeks, which my midwifes were open to. I can still change my mind, but I’m thinking more and more that it’s the right choice.

I don’t want to rush Remi before they’re ready, but I also don’t want to be pregnant for all eternity. Waffle and I both work and we don’t have unlimited time off or unlimited funds. We’re blessed to have a small savings to take some unpaid time off and I’m extremely lucky to have some paid time from my employer, but there’s a limit on how long we can sustain that. Remi seems healthy and fully-developed, so ultimately we’re ok with evicting them if they continue to be shy, especially when we’re coming close to 42 weeks. Of course, going to the hospital to be induced changes our whole birth plan, including where and when we meet our doula and our ability to work through early labor from the comfort of our home, but if that’s what it takes, I’m going to be flexible. Waffle and I are both still holding out a little sliver of hope that Remi will come on their own before then, but we’re not too optimistic.

I never thought I’d write a 41-week Countdown to Baby T. Rex. Our Leo/Virgo cusp baby is definitely moving into Virgo territory, whatever that means. (Mey? Cecelia?) Fingers crossed for us, folx. One way or another, Remi will be with us soon (if we don’t expire of despair and boredom before then). On the plus side, our house has never been so well-organized and writing this update is giving me something to pass the time and take my mind off the nagging cramping-that-is-not-contractions I’m enjoying today.

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Kae & Waffle’s Super Exciting and Romantic Two Weeks of Waiting

Monday, Aug 15th

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Excited, Nervous, Productive
• Waffle’s Mood: Excited, Nervous, Overwhelmed
• Distractions: Caught up on DVR’d shows, went to movies and saw Pete’s Dragon (so good!), take-out for lunch and dinner
• Chores: Took cat for a nail trim, Waffle washed baby clothes and picked up house, made his and hers to-do lists (to help us focus on what we actually can do right now), KaeLyn caught up on non-work work stuff
• Baby T. Stuff: Braxton Hicks contractions, pelvic pain, lots of movement

Tuesday, August 16th

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Excited, Nervous, Motivated
• Waffle’s Mood: Excited, Nervous, Motivated
• Distractions: Ice cream run, watched 2015 Macbeth on Amazon Prime, KaeLyn worked on an adult coloring book
• Chores: Organized and deep-cleaned bedroom for the first time in four years, Waffle put together bouncers, KaeLyn worked on to-do list, KaeLyn cleaned bathrooms, ran errands
• Baby T. Stuff: Dropped lower in pelvis, irregular contractions, back pain

Wednesday, August 17th

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Excited, Hopeful, Tired
• Waffle’s Mood: Excited, Hopeful, Restless
• Distractions: Ice cream run, Waffle printed pictures for baby book, used up old play credits at Dave and Buster’s, cheap lunch out, watched Zootopia at home
• Chores: Turned off chime and replaced batteries in dining room clock, dropped off Goodwill donations, Waffle did laundry and put away stuff in baby nursery, ran more errands
• Baby T. Stuff: Cramps, midwifery appointment (all is well, made an appointment for the following week, hoping not to have to keep it)

Thursday, August 18th

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Ready, Anxious, Hopeful
• Waffle’s Mood: Ready, Anxious, Restless
• Distractions: Picked up fancy salad for lunch, mid-day napped, watched Inside Out at home (“Bing Bong! Bing Bong!”)
• Chores: Stocked up on pet supplies and food, vacuumed upstairs, ran errands, mailed some packages, picked up house
• Baby T. Stuff: Lots of wiggling around, Braxton Hicks contractions, irregular back-to-front contractions, back pain

Friday, August 19th

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Ready, Hopeful
• Waffle’s Mood: Ready, Discouraged
• Distractions: Ice cream run, Waffle taught the cat a new trick, started Stranger Things even though KaeLyn was afraid it would be too scary (It wasn’t)
• Chores: Waffle did laundry, boxed up more Goodwill donations, picked up around the house
• Baby T. Stuff: Lower back pain, irregular contractions, pelvic pain

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Saturday, August 20th – DUE DATE!!!

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Cautiously hopeful
• Waffle’s Mood: Cautiously hopeful
• Distractions: Rochester Straddler #AutostraddleBrunch!, ice cream at the beach, clearance rack shopping for 9-12 month baby clothes, finished Stranger Things
• Chores: Picked up more pet supplies, random chores around the house, knocked some things off to-do lists, ran errands
• Baby T. Stuff: literally nothing happening except normal baby movements and pelvic pain

Sunday, August 21

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Disappointed, Hopeful
• Waffle’s Mood: Disappointed, Frustrated
• Distractions: Went to the movies and saw Bad Moms, ice cream and walk at the beach, watched like three hours of YouTube videos
• Chores: Chores, chores, and more chores (This house is clean.)
• Baby T. Stuff: Random-ass contractions, no other signs of labor

Monday, August 22

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Disappointed, Hopeful
• Waffle’s Mood: Disappointed, Frustrated, A lil’ angry
• Distractions: Made a pot roast together, got ingredients for some freezer meals
• Chores: Cleaned car interior, went grocery shopping, sorted tupperware and recycled anything that was really gross and old or didn’t have a lid, sorted through a random old bag of like 2,000 pieces of magnetic word poetry and removed all the weird stuff and “fuck” magnets and dirty words, reorganized the kitchen pantry top-to-bottom, vacuumed everything, lost all sense of chill
• Baby T. Stuff: Some mild contractions and cramping, baby moving around a lot

Tuesday, August 23

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Frustrated, Unmotivated, Unfocused
• Waffle’s Mood: Frustrated, A lil’ depressed
• Distractions: Ice cream run, started watching Worst Cooks in America: Season Three on Netflix, made a white lasagna and froze it
• Chores: KaeLyn picked and dried herbs from the front porch kitchen garden, packed and froze a bunch of chicken breasts, cleaned the bunny & wiggle bedroom/habitat, put away things in baby room, random chores and errands
• Baby T. Stuff: Same old contractions and cramping and pelvic pain, another day

Wednesday, August 24

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Disappointed, Cautiously hopeful
• Waffle’s Mood: Disappointed, Increasingly depressed
• Distractions: Finished Worst Cooks in America: Season Three on Netflix, took a nap, took a walk at Ontario Park and found a million Pokemon Go players there, Waffle made nightshade-free curry chicken, watched episodes of Face Off in bed, ordered a white garlic pizza
• Chores: Bare minimum household chores, totally done with to-do lists
• Baby T. Stuff: Midwifery appointment: had a cervical exam and found out I’m 50% effaced and baby is in +1 position which means…kind of nothing. Labor could happen any time or not for days. Agreed to plan to induce if labor doesn’t begin by mid-42nd week.

Thursday, August 25

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Tired, Bored, Very Ready
• Waffle’s Mood: Depressed, Frustrated, Bored
• Distractions: Greasy diner breakfast to get out of the house; played the Wizard of Oz game at Dave and Buster’s for, like, two hours; Waffle went clearance rack shopping for baby clothes at Kohl’s; randomly decided we needed to find a good deal on a new Crock Pot; started Hannibal: Season Three on Amazon Prime
• Chores: Went to the grocery store literally three times in one day, took a nap, household chores, dropped off seven+ year old mystery rolls of film at Walgreens to see what develops
• Baby T. Stuff: Started counting contractions that seemed to be coming every twenty minutes, horrible mid-back pain that made it impossible to lay down or sleep outside of a hot bath

Friday, August 26

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Bored, Defeated, Resigned to being pregnant forever
• Waffle’s Mood: Upset, Anxious about going back to work, Super frustrated
• Distractions: Watched more Hannibal, took a nap
• Chores: not much left to do
• Baby T. Stuff: Woke up feeling totally fine with minimal pain and lots of energy like it was four weeks ago almost, no contractions all day, went for ultrasound and non-stress test

Saturday, August 27th – 41 WEEKS OFFICIALLY

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Resigned to being pregnant forever, Feeling blank
• Waffle’s Mood: Anxious about going back to work, Defeated, Overwhelmed
• Distractions: Finished Hannibal: Season Three, took a nap, took a walk on the beach, had a ridiculous fight about nothing (dinner and who would decide what to eat and where, specifically)
• Chores: Not much left to do
• Baby T. Stuff: Cramps, irregular contractions, pelvic pain, endless nothingness

Sunday, August 28th

• KaeLyn’s Mood: Resigned to being pregnant forever, Emotionally preparing to be induced
• Waffle’s Mood: A little better after paying bills and figuring out a budget for unpaid leave time, Anxious about going back to work that night
• Distractions: KaeLyn worked on writing, Waffle read fanfic, Waffle’s sister and neice visited for a bit, went to the all-you-can-eat buffet for dinner (regrets)
• Chores: Not much left to do
• Baby T. Stuff: Bloated and crampy all day, lots of baby movements, few contractions

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4 Random Baby-Making Feelings I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Goodbye, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen GD

My blood glucose numbers have been coming down into normal-ish range consistently since 36 weeks. That’s been really awesome. Because I was prediabetic before getting knocked up, I’m interested to see how my numbers will be after birth, when I’m completely done being preggers. I’m holding out some small hope that white rice can return to my life. You gotta’ understand that I literally ate white rice for the first year of my life for, like, every meal in Korea. Maybe I won’t eat a whole pint as a stand-alone entree in one sitting anymore, but I’d love to be able to have, like, a scoop with my entree. Is that asking too much?!

2. Things I’ve Googled This Week:

• labor signs cramps
• common early labor signs
• how to tell if you’re in early labor
• prelabor or labor contractions
• what do real contractions feel like
• best app for timing contractions
• first time mom average delivery date
• first time mom past due date
• past due should I induce or wait
• labor signs back pain
• how to induce labor naturally

3. Jeter’s Best Week Ever

Unlike his human parents, our cat has had the best two weeks ever. He’s just ecstatic that we’ve finally come to our senses and quit our jobs in order to be with him 24/7. We finally understand our role is to attend to his every need, give him cuddles and endless treats, and be available to him at all times. He’s just thrilled that we’ve been getting up earlier (out of circumstance and restless nights, not choice) and has taken to yelling in our faces every morning around 7:30/8:00 AM.

Jeter has a world of disappointment and confusion coming his way as soon as we come home with a new small human family member, so we’re trying to be extra kind to him. Even though he’s acting like a spoiled brat cat lately.

4. Virgo, Baby

We were anticipating a Leo/Virgo cusp baby, but we’re venturing clearly into Virgo territory now. In fact, it’s highly likely Remi will come into the world in September instead of August. A friend who was pregnant at the same time as me and whose due date was just five days before mine has an adorable baby who is now a little over three weeks old. Another friend whose due date is two weeks after mine is now looking like we might have babies closer in age. Due dates mean nothing, ya’ll. I mean, seriously, they don’t. They’re somewhat arbitrary and based on a 28-day menstrual cycle and only 5-10% of people give birth on their due date. We knew this and still put too much stock in our due date and ended up feeling disappointed.

But I digress. Anyway, baby Remi is going to be a Virgo and according to what I’ve read online, Virgo’s perfectionist tendencies play out in babies who are finicky eaters and know just what they like and don’t like. They like hands-on learning and playing with toys more than watching TV. They like routines and rules. I don’t know any other Virgo kids. Does that sound right to ya’ll who are Virgos? Time will tell! I wonder how a Virgo baby feels about being kicked out of the womb before they want to come out.

Countdown to Baby T. Rex: Saying Goodbye to Our Childfree Days and Queer-Friendly Baby Books (39 Weeks)

My parental leave at my day job started last week. Waffle’s two weeks time off officially started this past weekend. Now we’re just waiting for Baby T. Rex and finishing up some household projects and doing chores and running errands and relaxing. The relaxing is the hard part.

My due date is this Saturday, August 20th. We’d love for Remi to come any time now. They’re pretty much fully cooked and we’re ready (or as close to ready as you can be). First time babies are more likely to come late than early, so we may have quite a while to wait, but then again, one-to-two weeks is…not that far in the future.

I’m feeling a bit wistful and nostalgic as I realize this is our last childfree time together as a couple. In the future, we may take grown-up only dates and vacations, but we’ll always be parents from here on out. Our family of two will be a family of three.

Every time we do something, it feels meaningful. Our last childfree grocery shopping trip. Our last childfree walk down by Ontario beach. Our last childfree 1:00 AM Taco Bell run. Our last childfree fill-up at the gas station. Our last childfree movie night. Our last childfree change of our bedsheets. The cat’s last nail trim. I’m snacking on hummus right now and it could be my last childfree hummus snack.

Every time I’ve spent time with my friends and family over the past month, it’s probably been the last time I’ll see them before we have Remi. I feel like I have to hug everyone and tell them I’ll see them on the other side.

It feels like that, like we’re standing behind a maroon velvet curtain on opening night and everything is about to begin as soon as the rope is pulled. Everything is building to this moment. The lights will go up and this new scene that we’ve practiced for but never performed live will begin.

We’ll walk on-stage, step into the light, and become different people. Just like that.

However, it doesn’t feel like our life before Remi was lacking or less-than or “backstage.” There’s also a feeling of sadness, of saying goodbye to our lovely life before parenthood. I’d always imagined myself being childfree forever. Waffle hadn’t thought about kids for quite a while, since he committed to being with me.

We’ve had a really rich 11 years, some excruciatingly awful times and some extraordinarily beautiful times. We’re only in our thirties, but it feels like we’ve grown through several life stages with each other already. We have. From messy (emotionally and physically) college undergraduates to gainfully employed grown-ups, from protesting George W. Bush’s second inauguration to rooting for Hillary Clinton, from my college dorm room to owning a four-bedroom house. We’ve had two cats, five rats, three guinea pigs, and two bunnies as housemates and companions.

We had the years of reckless and insatiable lust, the years of emotionally abusive fighting and breaking up and immaturity, the years of regrounding and redefining ourselves as individuals, the long stretch between then and now of deep friendship and affection and healthy communication and loving support. A decade isn’t that long, but between your 20’s and 30’s, it can feel like forever.

We’ve worked hard and we’ve been lucky and we’ve benefited from middle-class privilege that allowed us to get to where we are today. These last few years, especially, we’ve finally been able to rise slightly above living paycheck-to-paycheck. We’ve been able to have grown-up experiences together, like our shared obsession with immersive theater and the money and time spent on travel and tickets to see as much of it as we can afford. We aren’t rich and we’re still frugal, but we’re definitely not struggling.

We’ve been able to do a lot as a couple, had a lot of time to figure out who we are as individuals and as a two-person family, and the privilege of relative economic security to nurture all of that. I think because of that, we’re ready to nurture this new (and also expensive) thing called Baby T. Rex.

The biggest difference between being in a relationship and being a parent is that your first priority becomes someone else. In a relationship, ideally, you’re still prioritizing yourself. You may choose to care for and put the needs of your partner(s) or relationship over your own needs sometimes, but in a healthy relationship, you’re still your own #1, your own ride-or-die. When it comes down to it, you have to love yourself first so you can love your partner(s). And you can always leave. You can always walk out the door if your needs aren’t being met in your relationship anymore.

As a parent, you are committing to care for another person in a way that is, honestly, much more intense than a romantic partner. If things get tough (and they probably will), you’re still a part of your child’s life and family. You don’t get to leave. To me, that’s an unbreakable bond. I know that’s not always how it is. I know parents don’t always support their children or put their children’s needs first. I know a lot of children have to walk away from toxic parents. But I don’t want to be like that. I see this as a lifelong commitment, no matter what. I’ve never made a commitment like this to anyone before. As a commitment-phobe, it’s a little terrifying to think about.

Still, I think there’s a difference between putting your child’s needs first and putting yourself last. I don’t plan to put my whole life outside of parenthood on hold. I want to include and prioritize Remi in my life, not make them my whole life. I think that is part of being a parent, too, modeling a healthy sense of self-worth and making time for myself and for Waffle and me as a couple so that we’re the best parents we can be to Baby T.

Of course, the first few weeks and months are going to be fiercely overwhelming and Remi will be, to a large extent, the alpha and omega of my life. Between caring for them and trying to adjust to a post-baby life and squeezing in sleep, it’s going to be Baby T. Rex time all the time.

As they get older, I’m sure we’ll want to do more things that are family friendly and allocate our time and funds towards things that benefit Baby T. Squeezing in a date night or couple-only time will be less frequent. However, Waffle and I both want to still do things and have things in common as a couple so that our whole relationship doesn’t become solely about Remi. That would be a big burden to put on a kid and a great way to lose touch with each other as friends and partners.

For now, right now, everything kind of is about Baby T. Rex. Every day when we wake up, we think, “This could be our last childfree day.” We’re trying to enjoy it, but we can’t help but be anxious for Remi to get born already. We’re here. We’re waiting. We’re ready to welcome Remi into our arms and get this show started.

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8 Random Baby-Making Things I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Consensual Poking

One of my midwives suggested acupuncture as a way to get my body prepped and open for labor. I’d never received acupuncture before. I’m not particularly opposed to it, I just hadn’t had the need or made the time.

There’s a lovely little community acupuncture place near me that’s part of a national movement of acupuncture groups dedicated to providing affordable care in a group setting. There’s a sliding scale that allows almost anyone to enjoy care regardless of financial means.

It’s not as weird as it may sound. You receive treatment in a large, open, comfortable room where other people are also receiving treatment. Cell phones and talking is banned. Dim lights and peaceful music and soundscapes and large, comfy chairs make it a very peaceful and intimate environment, even though a stranger with needles in their arms and forehead is snoozing right next to you. The practitioner was very gentle and thoughtful about explaining everything she was doing since it was my first time.

Did it help open my oxytocin receptors? I don’t know. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being a total skeptic and 10 being a total believer, I’m about a 6 on natural medicine and health care. I can say it was enjoyable and I might go back again this week. It put me into a nice, deep sleep and I woke gently after about an hour, feeling refreshed. I don’t know that it helped augment my transition into labor, but it was a spectacular nap.

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2. Hatching a Birth Plan

Our birth plan is finally on paper! It’s pretty straightforward stuff and only one page.

The largest section is dedicated to ensuring our birth team knows Waffle isn’t going to be called “mom” and trying to let them know that she/her and he/him pronouns are both appropriate without making a big deal out of it. Or inviting awkward questions we don’t want to deal with while I’m in labor.

Our doula read it over and assured us it wasn’t written in a rude way. The first draft was admittedly kind of bitchy. We just really don’t want people bugging Waffle with inappropriate questions while we’re focusing on delivering a human baby through my cervix and into the world!

We kept in the part that was like, “Please ask questions about how to refer to Waffle if you have them, but don’t ask questions about Waffle’s gender identity, transition status, health history, or anything not pertinent to our birth process.” KTHX.

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3. Waffle’s Latest Obsessions: Board Books and Football Jerseys

Waffle has moved on to amassing cool board books and New York Giants baby gear. I’m totally on board with the board books. I’m a word nerd and all about a huge library for Remi and reading to them every damn day.

I honestly could care less about the American football stuff, in general. Technically, I grew up in a Buffalo Bills family, but I transitioned to the Giants for Waffle because…because I just don’t care all that much.

The Giants preseason just started and Waffle can’t wait to watch fall games with Remi. He’s hoping to indoctrinate them to be a Giants fan from Day One.

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4. Searching for a Friendly Pediatrician

On the list of things to do since the last column was finding a pediatrician. We couldn’t find anyone who specifically advertised LGBTQ-inclusive pediatrics in our city, nor did any of our friends have recommendations specific to LGBTQ-inclusivity, so we just picked a place near us that was accepting new patients and crossed our fingers.

Waffle actually got called in to work the evening of our prenatal appointment, so I went by myself. After we went over the basics like hours, staffing, afterhours care, etc., I took a deep breath and asked the question. “Do you have experience with LGBTQ families?”

The doctor quickly replied that they do and that they have many LGBT patients and parents, as well as staff. I was relieved, but still unsure if “LGBT” really meant “lesbian and gay” or if they really did understand bi and trans health and families, too. Before I could ask, she brought up that their staff had all recently attended a training on transgender identity and healthcare issues. OK, good sign!

I brought up that Remi will call Waffle “dad” and Remi will know him by a different name than his legal name (though he’s also fine with using his legal name). I was trying to get through it as quickly as possible, as this part of the conversation is often confusing for people and I just want to get to the part where it’s like, “Here are the names and pronouns Waffle uses. Everything is cool.” It’s also awkward to have this convo when Waffle isn’t around to speak for himself, but this was something he wanted me to cover at the prenatal appointment and he couldn’t be there.

About two minutes into my cautious ramble, the doctor chimed in, “So he’s genderfluid?” and I was like, “Yes! Similar to that!” and it was a huge relief that she even knew the word genderfluid and was comfortable with the concept of non-binary people. She wrote in both of Waffle’s first names and pronouns at the top of our intake form. Then I asked if they treat trans youth and she said they do and are supportive of things like puberty blockers. It was set!

Hopefully, we like the practice once we start going there regularly, but I’m feeling optimistic. I left feeling like 2016 is a pretty great time to be a queer parent.

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5. A Baby Book for Your Lil’ Queer Family

This baby book from BabyStepsBook that Waffle bought for Remi is pretty great at being inclusive. The cool thing about the designer who created and makes these books is that you can customize them for your family. You can get two mom pages or two dad pages or one page for a single parent. You can get pages for additional parents if you have more than two parents in your family. You can have the parent page customized to say “baba” or something gender neutral or whatever your kid will call you.

You can add pages for a donor or for adoption or IVF or a surrogate. You can order extra pages for pets and for human siblings. You can custom order pages for pretty much anything.

It’s not cheap because each book is handmade by the designer, but it’s great to find something that works for lots of different families and parents. Waffle is unofficially in charge of filling it out. We started putting pictures of us and the pets in this past weekend.

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6. Things I’ve Googled in the Past Week:

• too much amniotic fluid complications
• what is normal amniotic fluid level
• oxytocin acupuncture labor
• natural breastfeeding
• too much amniotic fluid natural birth
• tea tree oil safe third trimester
• nightshade free pasta sauce
• nightshade free salsa

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7. No (Night)Shade

So I, uh, have actually never written about this or even talked about it publicly before, but here goes! I have a skin/autoimmune (maybe? science is unclear) disease called hidradenitis suppurativa. I’ve had it since I was 12.

Basically, I’m very prone to boil-like abscesses and infections around apocrine sweat gland-bearing areas like my underarms and groin. Sometimes it’s extremely painful and it’s definitely embarrassing. I have a lot of scars from it and almost always have an active infection. Luckily, my partners over the years have been really understanding. It’s not contagious and it’s not a sexually transmitted infection. It’s just something that’s always made me feel really unsexy in my otherwise fairly positive relationship with my body. And it can be excruciatingly painful. At times, I have abscesses as large as a golf ball that make it difficult to walk or sit.

It’s not something I like to talk about and I mainly just deal with it on my own. Dermatologists don’t know a lot about it and there’s very little research on it. It’s chronic and uncurable. Doctors will typically just help you deal with the symptoms by prescribing antibiotics or surgery in serious cases. Neither of those things interest me. I’ve learned to manage it on my own, using natural remedies like tea tree oil, witch hazel, and drawing salve, as well as heat therapy, etc. Most people with HS deal with it on their own and share info with each other online.

Since I got knocked up, my inflammations have been out of control. It got so bad that I made a radical decision. I’d known for a few years that a good number of other people with HS have had success with elimination diets. One of the common triggers seemed to be nightshade vegetables: tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and peppers. If you know anything about me, you know I LOVE HOT SAUCE and hot things, in general. I’m Korean, it’s in my blood! But I didn’t want to be in labor with a golf ball size lesion on my down-theres.

So I cut our nightshades and, well, I’ve never had a remission be so fast or last this long. I’m happy it worked, but SUPER SAD about peppers. I seem to be more sensitive to tomatoes than peppers, so once I’m fully healed post-partum, I’m going to experiment with adding peppers back in, but I think I’m off tomatoes forever. Sorry to the whole Italian side of my family!

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8. Super Bonus Third Tri Ultrasound

We had a bit of a scare late last week when our midwife was concerned I had too much amniotic fluid around Baby T. I was sent for an ultrasound the next day. She assured us we shouldn’t worry until we knew more. Of course, we worried. I mean, we tried not to, but it’s hard to resist the temptation of Google and that was a very bad idea.

What if I have to be induced? What if I can’t labor at home? What if we have to have a c-section? None of those things are off the table, if necessary, but I started feeling anxious that this delivery might be more stressful than I’d hoped.

Luckily, everything was fine and we got a bonus sneak peek at Remi. I admittedly still think ultrasound pictures all look the same (Am I a horrible person?), but Waffle just about died from love and joy looking at little Remi and their little hands.

I apparently don’t have extra fluid and Remi is weighing in under seven pounds. Maybe I was just bloated that day? Sometimes I think maybe the midwives don’t realize I have a nice amount of belly fluff just from being me. I’ve always carried my belly out front, so my tummy was rounded before we even put a baby in me. Either way, we’re relieved everything is cool and proceeding as planned.

One week to go! Any time now, Baby T. Rex. Seriously, now would be good, even. ANY. TIME. We’re all waiting for you!

Countdown to Baby T. Rex: The Non-Gestational Parent Perspective and My Enduring Love for Pickles (37 Weeks)

Since Waffle and I started this journey towards gestating a T. Rex, I feel like a lot of the attention has been on me. Medical providers look me in the eye at our appointments. Friends who are moms talk more to me than Waffle about baby stuff. Family on both sides inquire about how I’m doing, want to hear about my experiences. It makes sense. I’m the one going through a million weird physical changes and who has the most pressing health care needs and who spends 50% of my day emptying my bladder and who is writing about my experiences for Autostraddle. Quite frankly, I think Waffle is mostly happy to fly under the radar, but I think he also feels left out sometimes.

In our queer household, the addition of a child and the raising of children isn’t a “mom thing.” Baby-making isn’t even necessarily a “mom thing.” It’s just that I’m the one who’s able to carry. The decision was practical, not about gender roles. Waffle is just as much a part of the baby decisions we have made at every step of our process and he’s actually the one who’s most prepared to gush about baby clothes and toys and stuff. He’s the one who actually read the baby books.

Just as Waffle can’t understand all I’m going through as the gestational carrier, I can’t understand all he’s going through as the non-gestational and non-biological parent. To get a better perspective on Waffle’s experiences as a parent-to-be, I interviewed him about our pregnancy, from his perspective. I hope you enjoy this exclusive peek into my shy-boi-queer-dad’s brain space as we round the corner into IS THIS LABOR?! LAND.

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KaeLyn: OK, so I want to talk to you about your experience as the non-gestational, non-biological, non-genetic parent to Remi, which is obviously specific to us in some ways, but also a common experience for queer families that make babies through IUI. So I guess I’d just start with: what does it mean for you to be a non-gestational parent? How do you feel like your relationship to Remi is different than mine, if it is?

Waffle: Well, we both have the same arms. So I’m probably going to have a better relationship with Remi.

KaeLyn: Because you have T. Rex arms?

Waffle: Yes. We’re both the same species.

KaeLyn: What species am I?

Waffle: I’m not sure. Not a T. Rex.

KaeLyn: I could be a T. Rex.

Waffle: No, you’re a triceratops.

KaeLyn: No, triceratops are lesbians. What’re the bisexual dinosaurs?

Waffle: I don’t know, but your big-ass head is a triceratops.

KaeLyn: I do have a triceratops head.

Waffle: Also, you’re stubborn.

KaeLyn: Yeah…

Waffle: And you eat a lot of plants. You’re a triceratops.

KaeLyn: I guess I am… OK, moving on, do you ever feel like you get left out of the conversation around babies because I’m the carrier?

Waffle: I guess sometimes, but I’m anti-social so I don’t care.

KaeLyn: It doesn’t bother you that people focus so much on my right now?

Waffle: It is kind of about you right now. You’re pregnant. Remi isn’t here yet. I don’t know. I don’t need other people’s affirmations of my parenting potential.

KaeLyn: Do you feel like people treat you more like a “dad,” in a cisnormative way?

Waffle: Yeah. I don’t know how much that has to do with being [trans] so much as being the non-gestational parent. I think most non-gestational parents are treated like that, even if they are a mom or whatever.

KaeLyn: I know some of my lesbian friends who have kids [through pregnancy] feel like after they had the kids, their partner who was the gestational carrier gets treated like the “mom.” Like everyone wants to talk to their partner about parenting stuff and they feel like, I don’t know, like everything shifted and they get left out of the “mom club” and they become like the “other mom” vs. the “real mom.”

Waffle: Yeah, that’s a thing that happens.

KaeLyn: I just feel like there’s already a very a distinct difference in how people talk to me vs. how people talk to you. Like what kind of advice do you get from people?

Waffle: I don’t really.

KaeLyn: Next topic: I was super surprised that it mattered to me that Remi was Korean and that it mattered that they are biologically related to me. Just as an adoptee, I didn’t think that would be important, but once we decided to do IUI, it really was. And you were cool about that from the beginning.

Waffle: Yeah, it doesn’t matter to me.

KaeLyn: Why not?

Waffle: I’ll love Remi regardless and they’ll hopefully think I’m OK.

KaeLyn: Does it bother you that people will probably assume Remi’s adopted when you are out in public together without me? Or not your child?

Waffle: No, I don’t care what some stranger says.

KaeLyn: What are some of the challenging parts about being a non-gestational parent-to-be?

Waffle: I feel like you’re closer to Remi than I am right now.

KaeLyn: Because I’m physically carrying them?

Waffle: Yeah. Like for whatever reason, I haven’t been able to feel them kick externally as much. I don’t know if that’s just because they’re not as big as some other babies or because of how they’re positioned or what.

KaeLyn: I can feel them all the time, but it does seem like it’s harder for you to feel it.

Waffle: It is. I couldn’t feel them kick from the outside for a longer time than a lot of other people compared to friends or online or when most people seem to say they can feel them kick. It took a lot longer for me to feel it. I’ve only felt it a couple times.

KaeLyn: That’s not true. At least like a dozen.

Waffle: No. Definitely not.

KaeLyn: No?

Waffle: There’s been a lot of times where you’ve been like, “Can you feel it?” and me being like, “No.” It hasn’t been a ton. Definitely not a dozen.

KaeLyn: Really? That’s weird to me. I feel like you’ve felt it kick a lot.

Waffle: No, you’ve felt it kick a lot and I’ve said, “I don’t feel it. Nothing’s happening.”

KaeLyn: Does it make you feel jealous, like left out?

Waffle: Yeah, I guess it does.

KaeLyn: I know you used to say that Remi hated you…

Waffle: The jury’s still out on that one. [laughs]

KaeLyn: …because you couldn’t feel them kick for a long time. It’s funny because when they started kicking, I thought it felt so weird at first. I didn’t really like it so I was kind of negative about it until I got used to it. And meanwhile you wish you could feel it more.

Waffle: That’s been a little bit… I don’t know… sad.

KaeLyn: Yeah. I know you feel similarly about our decision that we both made to try to exclusively do breastfeeding at first.

Waffle: I’m sure I’ll appreciate it when I can sleep. [laughs]

KaeLyn: Ha. I’m open to mixed feeding or bottle feeding, but we both agreed it was best to try breastfeeding first. As you know I’m also super nervous about breastfeeding and that I’m going to be horrible at it and it’s going to be awful and painful.

Waffle: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with kids who aren’t breastfed. I think it’s perfectly fine to not breastfeed even if the reason is you just don’t have time or want to. But I do think… I have heard… it makes it harder if they get attached to a bottle very early to get them to go back to the breast. So I don’t want that to happen either. I’m looking forward to being able to feed them, too. And I can still get up and bring them to you for night feedings.

KaeLyn: It’s funny to feel like I have a closer physical relationship with them, which I agree I do, because I feel like you are more like emotionally bonded with Remi at this point than I am.

Waffle: That’s because we’re the same species.

KaeLyn: You fell in love from the moment we conceived, from the moment we saw that first ultrasound at seven weeks.

Waffle: Of course. You didn’t?

KaeLyn: Uh, I think you know I tried to keep more of an emotional distance for a while. Especially until we knew that it was going to stick. I don’t know if I’ll feel as strongly as you do until I actually meet them in-person. Even then, I don’t know if it will come right away.

Waffle: Yeah, I definitely love them already.

KaeLyn: What do you think is different for queer families or LGBTQ families where only one person is a gestational carrier? As compared to other situations where straight people might be in a similar position, like fertility issues or using a surrogate out of necessity or…?

Waffle: I think it’s more visible is a main difference.

KaeLyn: That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought about that. Like people will often assume that there was fertility treatment or adoption or something when they look at visibly queer couples like us?

Waffle: Yeah, a lot of straight people don’t tell other people if they’re having fertility issues.

KaeLyn: There’s more shame or stigma around it for straight people who can’t conceive.

Waffle: For us, though, people will just assume. The same way they’re maybe going to assume that Remi’s adopted because they won’t look like me. I think that’s the biggest difference, honestly.

KaeLyn: Is that why it doesn’t bother you that people are going to assume Remi is adopted?

Waffle: No, it doesn’t bother me because it doesn’t bother me. I’m never going to have biological children because I’m not willing to carry a child.

KaeLyn: Right, so you never imagined you’d have biological children. Like I didn’t either, but that’s for different reasons, because I’m adopted.

Waffle: Yeah.

KaeLyn: I mean, there are ways. There’s “two-mom” IVF.

Waffle: Yeah, no, I’m terrified of needles.

KaeLyn: [laughs]

Waffle: Like, a lot.

KaeLyn: I know, needles and snakes.

Waffle: Yeah, a snake holding a needle is my worst nightmare.

KaeLyn: I’m going to get a tattoo of a snake holding a needle.

Waffle: Don’t do it. We’ll get a divorce. I’m not kidding.

KaeLyn: What are your biggest fears about the pregnancy?

Waffle: BIRTH.

KaeLyn: Just “birth”? Can you be more specific? [laughs]

Waffle: It’s terrifying!

KaeLyn: Do you think you’re more scared about it than I am?

Waffle: Probably. Yeah. I get more scared than you about things in general. I have way more anxiety.

KaeLyn: I know. I like telling people we got the doula as much for you as for me, but it’s also totally true.

Waffle: Oh totally, yeah. We did. I will admit that. I don’t know what I’m doing. Babies are unpredictable and terrifying. I think I should probably be more scared of an actual baby and having to take care of it, but I don’t know… maybe that’s just like beyond the immediate fear realm. We haven’t gotten there yet.

KaeLyn: What’s one of your favorite things so far about being a parent to be?

Waffle: Shopping!

KaeLyn: You’ve been doing a lot of shopping.

Waffle: I stopped shopping for myself, though! Remi’s going to be the best-dressed kid, ever.

KaeLyn: If by best dressed, you mean, “dressed like a dinosaur,” then yes.

Waffle: No, not just that. They’re going to be very fashionable! Have you seen their little knit sneakers?

KaeLyn: Yes, I have. Many pairs.

Waffle: They need lots of colors and lots of choices for their three-month-old feet.

KaeLyn: I feel like you’re a very not cisnormative dad in that way, like you’ve been really engaged in the whole process with doctors appointments and everything and you are definitely more into the buying clothes and decorating the nursery than I’ve been.

Waffle: Oh, the nursery was so fun to decorate.

KaeLyn: Yeah, I thought you were going to say that was your favorite part.

Waffle: That was pretty great, too. I’m going to change my answer.

KaeLyn: It goes along with the shopping.

Waffle: My Etsy history has blown up with dino stuff. I have a whole checkbook category now that’s “baby” because I feel like I should start keeping track.

KaeLyn: Oh my gosh.

Waffle: Though I don’t think I want to know… to actually look at it.

KaeLyn: As a non-gestational parent-to-be, what do you see as your role in our pregnancy?

Waffle: To support you. You’re doing all the work. The least I can do is not be a douchebag.

KaeLyn: Do you feel like you’ve been good at not being a douchbag?

Waffle: Do you feel like I’ve been good at not being a douchebag?

KaeLyn: Most of the time! I think the only time I felt unsupported was when you got upset about me having breastfeeding anxiety. I think my feelings were valid. I think your feelings were valid, too, but…

Waffle: Well, that’s because I was sad.

KaeLyn: Yeah, after you explained it, it made sense to me. Because it’s like a bonding thing you wish you could have in some way, without actually breastfeeding because you don’t want to breastfeed at all. Are you still upset about the breastfeeding thing?

Waffle: No. I get where you’re coming from, too. I always have. It just makes me sad sometimes that I’m not going to be able to have that time with Remi in the beginning. I look forward to being able to feed them, too.

KaeLyn: How has it been supporting me?

Waffle: Not that hard. You’re pretty easy.

KaeLyn: I am pretty easy. You’ve always said that. [laughs] I feel like sometimes there’s like…and I’m sure it’s like this for straight parents, too or even when both parents are biologically related..like one person is still the carrier. I feel like there’s a huge disconnect between my experience and your experience.

Waffle: It’s different. It’s just going to be different regardless.

KaeLyn: There’s thing I can’t understand about your experience and things you definitely can’t understand about mine.

Waffle: Yeah, I agree with that.

KaeLyn: Especially in the beginning, I felt like I was spending more time thinking about the pregnancy. I probably wasn’t, but I just felt that way because I felt, like, the physical burden of being pregnant, if that makes sense?

Waffle: I think you underestimate the amount of time I spend thinking about Remi.

KaeLyn: I think I do, too. Are you looking forward to getting your bed back [because of my huge pregnancy pillow]?

Waffle: It hasn’t been that bad. If we didn’t have a king-sized bed, I imagine it’d be a lot worse.

KaeLyn: I know sometimes you get sad that you can’t get to me because of the pillow.

Waffle: Well, yeah, because you can’t spoon me.

KaeLyn: Yes, it’s hard for a little spoon with a Snoogle between us.

Waffle: Now I just have to little spoon the cat on my own.

KaeLyn: Big spoon the cat. He’s your little spoon.

Waffle: Oh yeah, now I have to big spoon the cat on my own. I used to be the middle of the sandwich. Now my back’s lonely.

KaeLyn: You’re an open face sandwich now.

Waffle: I know and I hate it.

KaeLyn: So here’s another question, I never imagined being pregnant, so a lot of this is really new and weird to me, but you always imagined having kids. Has it been what you thought it would be?

Waffle: I totally stopped imagining [having kids] when we got together. You put the squash on that real quick.

KaeLyn: Yeah. I appreciate that you respected that about me and didn’t try to change my mind. What was it like when I brought up being open to having a kid?

Waffle: I believe I refused to talk to you for a day and then I cried.

KaeLyn: You didn’t refuse to talk to me. You just acted really weird.

Waffle: I think I walked away from you. I didn’t know how serious you were being. I thought you’d change your mind or that you hadn’t really thought it through. I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

KaeLyn: Why do you think it took us so long to get from the “open to” conversation to actually trying to get pregnant?

Waffle: I don’t know. Maybe we weren’t ready.

KaeLyn: I don’t know if I was.

Waffle: I imagine you needed some time to get your head around it once we figured out what we were doing.

KaeLyn: I feel like you needed to process it less than me. Is that fair?

Waffle: I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t need to process it as much, but I… this is going to sound shitty… but I think I needed time to trust you. That you were really ready to do this.

KaeLyn: No, that’s not shitty. It’s honest.

Waffle: I had to trust you weren’t going to change your mind.

KaeLyn: What’s your advice for other non-gestational queer parents-to-be? What would you tell someone else if they wanted to know what to prepare for?

Waffle: Don’t prepare too much because it’s nothing like what you think. There’s a lot of things that’re surprising. I think luckily we didn’t, but I think a lot of people go in with a lot of expectations around babymaking.

KaeLyn: True.

Waffle: They’re all lies.

KaeLyn: Like that it’s going to be intimate or something?

Waffle: Yeah, especially that. It’s very clinical. Just prepare yourself for lots of and lots of letdown. [IUI] worked on the third time for us and that’s pretty good.

KaeLyn: Yeah, that’s average [for IUI].

Waffle: Average is good. I strive for average.

KaeLyn: I could tell you felt left out during fertility treatment, even though you were always physically right there with me and holding my hand and stuff.

Waffle: I was trying to be there as much as possible, but I felt like I wasn’t doing anything helpful. I still feel like that. I’m trying to support you, but you’re doing all the work. I still feel like I’m not doing anything a lot of the time.

KaeLyn: Do you think that’s why you focus on the nursery and stuff?

Waffle: Maybe. Maybe I just have a shopping problem, too.

KaeLyn: [laughs] What are you most excited about?

Waffle: Holding little Remi and looking at their face for hours. I want to look at their sleepy, little, dumb baby face for hours. I already love them so effin’ much.

KaeLyn: I know. You love their fetus pictures.

Waffle: Well yeah, they’re the cutest fetus ever. Did you see the one of their brain? They’re smarter than the average fetus.

KaeLyn: You’re putting a lot of expectations on Remi.

Waffle: They’re not expectations, just facts.

KaeLyn: What do you think about when you think about having a baby?

Waffle: Not. Sleeping.

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8 Random Baby-Making Feelings I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Hard Femme and Boi-on-the-Go Diaper Bags

We made a packing list for our respective diaper bags this past weekend. We were going to share one diaper bag originally (the messenger style one). Then we realized that working opposite work schedules and having opposite baby-watching duties, it probably made sense for us to each have our own. Plus, I plan to also use mine as my purse so I don’t have to carry a million bags. One of our friends got me this very trendy and roomy diaper bag as a shower gift. I love the gold accents. It’s perfect!

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2. Fun New Game: Are These Contractions or Is This Labor?

The Braxton Hicks contractions started in full force this past week. I think I may have been having painless ones before, when my stomach got really hard for a few seconds every once in a while. Now they feel more like menstrual cramps and last a little longer and happen more often. It’s a reminder that labor is just around the corner. Eek!

They’re definitely just practice contractions because they’re irregular and don’t increase in intensity or come significantly closer together. It’s really unbelievable that by the time the next installment of this column comes around (39 weeks), I could have a baby. Or I could still be pregnant until week 41 or later. Baby T. Rex is coming soon! I just wish we knew when!

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3. Four Adorable Gifts for Remi That Made Us Absolutely Giddy

This is just a teeny-tiny sample of the amazing, funny, cute, ridiculous, awesome, and thoughtful gifts friends and family have given us. There’s no way we could give props to every single amazing and generous gift for Remi. This kid is already so spoiled and loved!

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4. Things I’ve Googled in the Past Week:

• korean newborn [image search]
• how long can false labor last
• gestational diabetes early or late birth
• what do contractions feel like
• questions for doula
• best newborn toys
• first time pregnancy carrying low
• braxton hicks or baby moving

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5. Function Over Fashion: Building My (Hard Femme) Nursing Wardrobe

I’ve tried not to buy a ton of maternity clothes because they’re fairly expensive and also because I already have plenty of non-maternity clothes that work well enough over my baby belly. I’ve been living in stretchy dresses all summer.

I’m planning to breastfeed, though, and I felt I needed some nursing basics for when I have to leave my house, at least until I get more comfortable breastfeeding in public and/or because other people are awkward about people with boobs in public. I picked up some really basic tanks and tops on sale from Motherhood Maternity.

I also wanted some functional and comfortable nursing bras, particularly one to pack in my hospital bag. My nursing bras aren’t even a little cute, but they’re damn comfy. I’ve been wearing them every day already just because they’re so soft and wide and generous. They don’t really support me the same way my regular underwire bras do (big boob problems). They also don’t completely smush me the way a sports bra does. It’s more like a slightly saggy uniboob situation and I’m feeling just fine about it. Comfort is my number one goal at this point.

If you’re wondering how nursing bras are different than regular bras, they either pull to the side or have clip-down cups that flip down for nursing. (I know that sounds like it could be sexy, but it’s very not.)

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6. The Library is Open: Waffle’s Latest Obsession, Inspired By My Mom

My mom is a retired first grade teacher and she started buying us children’s books with corresponding stuffed animals. Waffle became enamored with the concept and went on a spree of finding books and stuffed animals for Remi’s library. Here’s where we’re at so far between my mom and Waffle’s finds:

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7. The Privilege of Parenting

I’m seeing more and more of my queer community opting in to having kids and it’s great. I’m still hyper-aware that it’s a privilege to be able to make parenting decisions. There is no affirmative right to parent, though there should be. When I was working as a community organizer in the reproductive justice field, I became really passionate about the right to parent. We talk so often about the right not to parent, the rights of people to make their own decisions about abortion, birth control, etc. As we should. Those rights are being constantly threatened and they are vitally important.

We are much less comfortable, even in reproductive rights activism, with the idea of people having an affirmative right to parent. We get squirmish about the right of teen moms and parents to choose to parent, about incarcerated women and people’s rights to parent, about the rights of pregnant people who are recovering from addiction to parent, about poor people as parents. As we think about and talk about the rights of LGBTQ people to parent, we can’t forget that so-called “traditional family values” impact not just our rights, but those of many people who are considered “unfit” or “undesirable” as parents simply for being who they are or because of their life circumstances. It’s all related.

Adoption costs and fertility treatments are still not covered for many queer and/or trans people who want to parent. Surrogacy is still unprotected by law in many states. DIY insemination is still not protected by law in many states. It’s still just something that’s outside of many people’s financial means. Class, race, and economic discrimination still play a huge part in who is allowed to pursue parenting decisions in addition to sexual orientation and gender discrimination.

This column is often glib and cutesy and I don’t mean to be a downer, but as more and more of our LGBTQ communities move towards growing our families with children, I really believe we have to stay vigilant. We can’t let this become another way that queers get drawn into the mainstream heteronormative narrative. Being queer married and queer family-making still feels like a semi-radical act to me and I want it to stay that way, in large part by holding up the intersectional values that come with making and sustaining a queer family.

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8. Tiny Stomach, Tiny Appetite

Baby T. Rex is literally crushing my organs, including my stomach. I imagine this is what gastric bypass feels like (though, like, probably not). For the last couple weeks, I’ve rarely been interested in food, which is super unusual. I’m lucky I’m still on the diabetes diet or I’d probably forget to eat at all. I get full so quickly. Whenever Waffle asks me what I want to eat, I groan. Nothing sounds very good. Except pickles. I can still eat pickles any time of day.

Countdown to Baby T. Rex: Embracing Queer Family and Adorable Dino Couture (35 Weeks)

Our city has pride in July instead of June. This past Saturday was our Pride parade and festival and also the day I hit 35 weeks, exactly. I’ve been going to Rochester Pride since I moved here in 2006 and I’m usually participating in the Pride parade in some way, by walking with a group or organizing a walking unit or even volunteering on the judge’s panel.

This year, I wasn’t asked to judge and I didn’t plan on doing any walking. Knowing I’d be well into my third trimester during Pride week, I just didn’t know if my body would be up for it. I missed the parade for the first time ever since I’ve lived in Rochester. As it turns out, I’m surprisingly still very active and I probably would have been fine. Then again, I’m almost full-term and I didn’t want to risk going into early labor in the middle of the street. I do feel I missed the opportunity to paint my bump with rainbow paint and glitter and go full exhibitionist in a crop top and miniskirt. That woulda’ been a great picture for T. Rex’s baby book.

I spent all day at the Pride festival, instead. I staffed a table for my day job organization, the New York Civil Liberties Union (the New York affiliate of the ACLU) with my coworker, our intern, and Waffle (my patient and constant spousal volunteer). And I did get to wear a crop top. My bump was making my work t-shirt fit weird, so I took a page from the Team Autostraddle fashion playbook and cut it up into a tiny crop tank that worked perfectly with my high-waisted rainbow-splashed stretchy skirt and comfy-practical-but-not-cute-enough-to-show-off nursing bra.

Most folks in my real-life queer circle know I’m pregnant now because of the fact that I’m writing about it for the whole internet and also because I announced it on social media during my second trimester. Also, I finally look pregnant to the naked eye. I had about a million conversations about being knocked up, about queer child-raising, about queer baby-making, and about how cute I looked at Pride this year. And I loved it.

Most of the time, I don’t draw too much attention to my pregnancy. I don’t particularly enjoy questions from straight folks about how we got knocked up, unsolicited advice from straight cis women about birthing and parenting, or even compliments on my pregnant body/glow/belly and affirmations of what great parents Waffle and I will be. Most of these types of interactions come from a place of caring, some from naive curiosity, most all with good intentions. Still, it makes me uncomfortable (unless it’s coming from someone who is truly a good friend or close family member, which is a very different and welcome thing).

I feel like I have to put on an act or constantly make space for other people in these situations. My good friend who really gets me recently sent me this For Harriet article about Nigerian feminist author, Chimamanda Adichie, about how Adichie “went into hiding” during her pregnancy.

Adichie said:

I have some friends who probably don’t know I was pregnant or that I had a baby. I just feel like we live in an age when women are supposed to perform pregnancy.

It resonated deep. That’s the language I was looking for: performing pregnancy.

This is a real thing, people. I think all pregnant women feel this pressure, to be the right kind of pregnant woman, to make other people feel comfortable by answering invasive personal questions, to allow others to focus on our pregnant bodies instead of our brains/capabilities/whole selves, and finding the right balance of humble and maternal to satisfy what other people expect a mom-to-be…to be.

This becomes even more performative for anyone who is additionally othered by being a person of color, disabled, queer, transgender, gender non-binary, gender non-conforming, and so on. Now you’re not only a pregnant person who gets to answer lots of questions and receive lots of advice. You’re also a novelty, a curiosity, or even worse, inspiration porn for liberal straight cis heterosexual folks.

At Pride, for once, I didn’t feel like I was performing. I was talking to and with my own people. I was sharing knowledge with queer and trans folks who wanted to start planning a family. I was getting advice from queer and trans parents who had been there, with whom we share a common experience.

A young-ish couple stopped by the table with their beautiful four-month-old son and shared their advice with Waffle and me about coping in the first weeks after birth, which their kid punctuated by spitting up on his mom’s shirt. They also talked about their plans to switch up gestational carriers with their next child, something particular to families where more than one parent has a uterus.

We ran into several acquaintances who have slightly older kids, through fertility treatment, previous relationships, adoption, or blended families. We answered their questions about our pregnancy plans and asked questions about their families. We gushed over their adorable kids and laughed at stories of parenting fails and got lots of advice about being first-time parents.

We talked to folks who are our age or older who want to have kids in the future and traded info about friendly fertility centers, sperm banks, costs and insurance.

We talked to other queer trans parents and prospective parents about Waffle becoming a “daddy” and non-gestational perspectives on pregnancy.

A labor and delivery nurse came up to me and recognized me from this very column. She just so happens to work at the maternity center we’re planning to deliver at. She came out to us and we jokingly lamented over how heteronormative the entire birthing industry can be. She assured us the maternity center is LGBTQ-friendly. “I’m there all the time,” she said, “Ask for me!”

It felt like we were building community. I imagine this is what a mom’s group is for some other women—a place to talk frankly about pregnancy stuff, with people with similar life experiences. I just don’t see myself reflected in the “mom spaces” typically available. I often feel like an outsider.

The day after Pride, we did a tour of the maternity center with a bunch of other couples and we were, as far as we could tell, once again the only visibly queer couple in the group. There were a couple other people of color, but the people who spoke up the most and took up the most space were the white moms. Queer family spaces just don’t exist outside of the internet, at least not in my medium-size, upstate New York city. That’s why this column has been so cathartic for me to share with ya’ll. And so surprising to people who know me in real life and know how much I avoid centering my pregnancy in my day-to-day interactions.

This was our last Pride as a free-wheeling, child-free couple. As more and more LGBTQ people are able to and choose to have children, it seems Pride in our city is becoming more and more family-friendly. As we saw and talked to all these queer and trans parents, we couldn’t help but imagine how different it will be when we’ll have a Baby T. Rex to bring to our next Pride.

One year from now we’ll be in a very different place as a couple and a family. We probably won’t be able to sit outside for 12 hours in the sun with a little T. Rex in tow. We’ll be carrying diaper bags instead of singles to tip drag queens. We can’t wait to share Pride with Remi, to share rainbow flags and glitter body paint and drag shows, to teach them our intersectional LGBTQI history, to introduce them to their big bold queer family.

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9 Random Baby-Making Feelings I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Go, Go Gadget Hospital Bag

As a shower gift, my friend packed a whole bunch of awesome feminist and queer and social justice-y kids books into this super-cute bag from the Rebel Wilson line at Torrid. It’s the perfect size to be my hard femme hospital “go bag.”

I think I have just about all that I need for the hospital: toiletries, snacks, huge underwear (for huge postpartum maxi pads), a nursing dress, comfy nursing bra, flip flops, hair clips, a mini-makeup kit, maternity yoga pants and a long black top for going home, breast pads and nipple cream, a newborn and a 1-3 month outfit for Baby T. Rex, baby socks and cap and mittens, and some newborn diaper stuff. We need to finish our birth plan to throw in there and also pack a bag for Waffle, who plans to room with me at the hospital postpartum.

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2. Finding QPOC Solidarity in a Sea of White Lesbian Moms

There was a big kerfuffle this past week in one corner of the Facebook universe. Members of a closed queer mom group I’m in got into a huge #AllLivesMatter v. #BlackLivesMatter debate, starting with a white mom asking that the group be “less political.” Despite the (white) moderators’ clear statement that the group supported BLM, individual members of the group started spouting off stupidity, like that the group should be for discussions of diapers and playgroups, not politics and race. As if parenting can be separated from race and politics for QPOC… It resulted in a separate group forming specifically for and closed to queer parents of color, which I joined immediately.

This is just one example of the ways in which white supremacy dominates the conversation even in small queer circles. Before this went down in the Facebook group, I had noticed the disconnect between the queer moms group and the rest of my queer family. While many of us were mourning the lives of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, white folks in the queer moms group were posting happy selfies with their kids and, while I understand not everyone posts political stuff on Facebook, it just felt wrong and not at all like the community I expect under the word “queer.”

It happened a few weeks earlier, too, when the Pulse shooting happened and many white folks in the queer moms group were posting #WeAreOrlando pics with their families, full of good intentions, but not acknowledging or centering the ways in which Pulse disproportionately impacted Latinx members of our community. At least they were posting something, though. The lack of posting around BLM and the audacity to call for “less politics” showed that for some white queer moms, “politics” and trauma only matter when it affects them personally.

The group moderators took it upon themselves to make very clear what the position of the group is. They’re now approving each individual post and blocking #AllLivesMatter posts. QWOC members of the group have used this time to educate white allies by posting links to articles and some white allies are stepping up and posting messages of solidarity. It’s a start.

This weekend, at Pride, I saw and talked to several parents of color and moms of color. I saw how QPOC families uplift and hold each other, even in mostly-white spaces. I also saw an otherwise very innocuous lesbian t-shirt company proudly selling cringe-worthy rainbow-emblazoned #AllLivesMatter t-shirts. I wanted to rip it down from their tent. I decided to walk away.

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3. Deep Dino Etsy Strikes Again

Waffle continues to procure dino things to cover every square inch of the nursery. This past week, this dino coat rack arrived for the closet door, along with a wooden dino growth chart by the same Etsy seller/artist. He can’t stop, won’t stop buying every dino thing he can find. But look at this happy face. How can I deny him?

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4. Things I’ve Googled in the Past Week:

• probiotics safe pregnancy
• aversion to cruciferous vegetables pregnancy
• blood sugar bedtime snack
• how to relieve pregnancy pelvic pain naturally
• peppermint itch relief safe pregnant
• orgasm third trimester
• breast pump insurance
• will walking make baby drop
• kneeling mat for bath time

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5. (Anxiety About) My Humps, My Humps, My Lovely Lady Lumps

I have to ‘fess up about something. I am totally and probably irrationally nervous about breastfeeding.

I’m not going to be super upset if I, for some reason, can’t breastfeed, like if Baby T. Rex is severely tongue-tied or it just doesn’t work for me. I do want to try. I’m more anxious about just, like, the act of breastfeeding. It’s something I think is going to be so absolutely weird and unnatural to me.

I have done as much reading and preparing as I think I can to educate myself. I’ll have a doula at the hospital and there are also on-site lactation experts. I feel like I’ll be supported. I just feel like it’s going to be a super weird thing and I’m going to have no idea if I’m doing it right even as I’m doing it and I just have to be OK with that.

I also just have anxiety about my boobs, in general, not being breastfeeding friendly. I have a fairly large chest (42 D before pregnancy) and my nipples are not petite. They also aren’t perky like they were 10 years ago and I’ve been researching breastfeeding advice for people with large breasts. I had nipple piercings on both sides, pierced on two separate occasions (my first set rejected), with significant scar tissue in multiple directions. I took out my piercings a little over a year ago, to allow my nipples to heal before getting pregnant. From what I have read, nipple piercings usually result in more milk flow, which is theoretically good, but can also be too much for your kiddo when they’re newborns.

IT’LL BE FINE. I’M FINE.

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6. Rub-A-Dub-Dub We’re Set For the Tub

We haven’t purchased any baby washcloths and we somehow have 37 of them thanks to lots of generous gifts from friends and family. We’ve also been gifted a plethora of bath toys, hooded towels for every day of the week plus some, and a variety of bath accessories.

Remi will be very clean and very loved.

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7. Gestational Diabetes Breakfasts That Don’t Suck

Eating breakfast every day is the biggest life change I’ve had to make diet-wise. I’ve never been a big breakfast-eater. My mom used to make me a toaster pastry or something portable and quick when I was in school and I’d scarf it unceremoniously while doing my hair or makeup. I’ve skipped breakfast for most of my adult life.

With gestational diabetes, breakfast is a must and I shouldn’t go more than 8-10 hours without eating. And, I only get two carb choices for breakfast, what amounts to roughly 30 carbohydrates. Fruit is completely off-limits. So typical fast breakfast choices like cereal and milk, fruit and yogurt, or a granola bar are not gonna work for me.

I’ve found a couple staple meals that keep my blood sugar stable, satisfy my personal need to eat quickly and get out the door, and that are generally not offensive to my taste buds. Here’s what I’ve been putting in my mouth, in order of quickest-to-longest to make and munch:

• Plain Greek Yogurt with Stevia, Cinnamon, and 1/4 Cup Granola
• Whole Wheat English Muffin with Loads of Peanut Butter (my least favorite)
• Whole Wheat Toast with Peanut Butter (also not my favorite)
• Frozen Whole Wheat Waffles with Peanut Butter and Sugar-Free Syrup
• Eggs and Toast with Butter and Avocado Slices
• Whole Wheat English Muffin Sandwich with Turkey Bacon, Fried Egg, and Muenster Cheese

For the record, I really don’t like peanut butter. Never have.

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8. Dino Couture Fashion Show

I asked Daddy Dino (a.k.a. Waffle) to curate his favorites from our very expansive collection of dino-themed baby clothes. I didn’t have to ask twice. Who knew dinos were so en vogue.

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9. Baby T. Rex, I’m Ready to Go

As we head into our last month of gestation, I’m pretty much ready to be done. At the same time, the idea that a baby is going to like…exist outside of me…is so wild that I’m also hoping it doesn’t happen too early. I vacillate between hoping to go into labor at 38 weeks and hoping it doesn’t come until the due date or later.

For pragmatic reasons, it would be ideal if Remi decided to come out at 39 weeks when Waffle’s scheduled paid time off (vacation time) begins. If Remi comes more than a week late, Waffle won’t get any paid time off to stay home with us, which will suck, but we’ll manage.

By the end of this week, Remi will be full-term and most practitioners won’t stop labor if it begins naturally, so it really could be any time! I guess we need to get on finalizing our birth plan and wrapping up the many half-finished cleaning projects we have going on around the house. #nesting

Countdown to Baby T. Rex: Loving My Fat Mama Self and Itchy All Over (33 Weeks)

As soon as I became visibly pregnant, people started paying attention to my body differently.

I didn’t show much at first, because I carry my weight in the front and I typically have a nice, rounded tummy. Also, I unintentionally lost fifteen pounds in the first trimester due to the restricted-carb gestational diabetes diet, so I didn’t gain any significant pregnancy weight until almost the third trimester. When people in my second trimester looked for and complimented my “bump,” they were mostly complimenting the natural tummy shape that I always have, albeit a little bit hardened up and perkier. The difference was, all of a sudden, my belly was culturally acceptable and beautiful and a symbol of fertility and womanhood.

A lot of people couldn’t tell I was pregnant by looking at me up until a month ago. Even now that I’m clearly showing and my belly looks pregnant even to most strangers, folks tell me I don’t look eight months, that I look small for how far along I am. I don’t remember the last time someone told me I looked small. “Thank you?” is my typical reply. “Well, fuck the patriarchy for making women’s bodies fair game for cultural critique and for deciding what I should look like at all times and for giving you permission to openly express your feelings about my body,” is what I want to say.

I much prefer the folks who just say, “You look great!” and very much prefer the folks who don’t stare at or comment on my body at all. I’m sure I’ve said similar things to other pregnant women before, though. I’m going to remember, in the future, to keep my opinions about pregnant people’s bodies to myself.

On the plus side (no pun intended), I don’t remember the last time I’ve felt so safe showing my stomach, unafraid that people are going to give me dirty looks for wearing a fitted tank top to run errands. It’s affirming in a way that’s very uncomfortable because being pregnant is the most cishet-acceptable way to be a woman in the patriarchy and I’m reaping the rewards of that in a way that feels yucky. It’s freeing and enraging.

I’m super glad, though, that I came into this pregnancy loving my pre-pregnancy body. It’s going to help me a lot in embracing my yet-unknown post-pregnancy body. My body is doing its own thing right now, to care for Baby T. Rex, and I often feel like I’m not in control of it at all. I’m going to come out on the other side changed, physically and in many other ways. I can’t imagine how much much harder it would be if I still hated the way I look, if I still resented my body and cursed every stretch mark.

This constant focus on my body has led me to think about body image issues as a future parent and how to break or at least disrupt the cycle of shitty self-esteem. But when do we start internalizing body shame?

Like many little kids, I started out experiencing my body as a source of fun and sensory pleasure and I never felt self-conscious. It was a challenge to keep me in clothes as a toddler, especially in the warm summer months. I loved running around nude-y rude-y, feeling free in my skin. When I was just a little bit older, I liked to lay naked in front of the living room fireplace after my bath. I’d spread out my bath towel, lie down on my stomach, and watch TV or read a book, letting the slow, constant heat lap at the exposed skin on my bare back.

Even in elementary school, I wasn’t very concerned about my appearance. I wasn’t particularly feminine and I didn’t like wearing dresses. I loved putting on my mom’s blush with the big fluffy brush she kept in the bathroom drawer, but I wasn’t otherwise into makeup or hair or clothes.

Somewhere in the two years between fifth and seventh grade, I changed. A lot. I ran face-first into puberty at age twelve. I started reading teen magazines and wearing more make-up and more skirts and fitted tops and “doing” my hair. By the time I was thirteen, I was very aware of my appearance, particularly my size because I was, by my own estimation, fat. My thighs were fat and my arms were fat and most of all my stomach was fat. Fat fat fat. FAT.

My weight fluctuated a lot in my teen years. I usually hovered somewhere around a size 12. My closest friends were around a size six. We all hated our bodies. I would work myself into tears shopping for jeans or a bathing suit. I would be thrilled when I could squeeze into a smaller size skirt or top. I flirted with Slim Fast and skipping meals when I felt like I was gaining weight. I hated looking at myself naked. I’d pick out all the things that were wrong with me — my arm flab, the line where my bra dug into my back fat, the place where my thighs rubbed together, my belly that was never flat enough.

In addition to all that body self-loathing, I was the only Korean girl in my high school. I could never be as pretty as my white best friends or the girls in the dELiA*s and Alloy catalogs I shopped from. Even if I managed to lose weight, no one would be attracted to me. I was forever doomed to be the fat and funny best friend, the ugly Korean sidekick to my hot besties.

It was a long road back to loving my body, to reveling in the feeling of the sun on my back and arms, to embracing the pleasure of spreading out naked on my bed after a hot shower, to taking solace in stripping off my clothes after a long day and just being in my skin. But I did get here.

I still have broad shoulders. I still have a soft, round belly; thighs that kiss in the middle; and sturdy, thick arms. I’m bigger than I was when I was a teen. I’m thicker and rounder and I have a double chin and I have more stretch marks. My body aches more and has more challenges with every passing year, but I’m grateful for all it provides me and I’m sorry for all the years I spent hating it and treating it like the enemy. When my body was strongest and in its very prime, I was too busy punishing it and loathing it to realize. Yet, my body is still strong. Pregnancy has proved to me how strong my body is.

I think now about my future kid, about Remi, and how important it is to spread body-positive messages in our home. They’re going to be exposed to all that negative stuff everywhere else — on TV, on the school bus, from well-meaning friends and family.

I came to a place of loving my body, but the rest of the world didn’t necessarily follow. I recently had a man yell, “You’re fat!” at me from a moving vehicle, to which I laughed and thought, “Yup, I am!” I’m proud to be fat and happy with how I look 99% of the time, but society as a whole doesn’t think I should be. I have to seek out fat-affirming and body-positive spaces and friends. When I choose to wear a body-con dress, I also have to put on my fat femme emotional armor before I leave the house.

I know Waffle still struggles with negative body image. I have shitty days, too. That’s just how it is, no matter how much I work on loving myself. However, I don’t want to expose Remi to it. As much as possible, I don’t want Remi to hear Waffle or me talking about how disgusting we are or how we need to lose weight or diet or any of that negative self-talk. I don’t want to normalize that kind of thinking in our home.

A recent study found that more than half of girls and one-third of boys as young as six-to-eight-years old think they should be thinner and that one in four kids engage in dieting behavior by the age of seven. Yikes.

I want Remi to see Waffle and me being confident, attractive, smart people who are also people of size. I want to be able to talk about body positivity at home, about the things they’ll see on TV and learn from peers. I want to try to provide the emotional armor they’ll need to combat sizeism, particularly when they hit those difficult years between puberty and adulthood. I doubt I’ll be able to keep Remi from having a complicated relationship with their body, but I do think body positivity starts at home, with us.

I’m going to start with myself. I’m going to keep on loving my body even when it feels foreign and strange to me, as it does this thing called baby-gestating. When it’s frustrating, I’m going to remember that I can’t control it. I can hate the pregnancy symptoms (Hello, carpal tunnel and itchy skin!), but I can’t blame my body for doing what it needs to do. I’m going to do my best to appreciate how strong my body is right now and to embrace what my body will be after I bring Remi into the world.

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8 Random Baby-Making Feelings I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Feathering the Nest

I’ve been doing a lot of internet research on whether “nesting” is a provable instinctual and/or biological phenomenon. The available data is inconclusive. Lots of folks have told me that I will nest now that I’m in the third trimester. There is even a myth that nesting behavior is a precursor to labor. All of that seems to be scientifically unfounded.

It’s true that many pregnant women start getting into tidying their homes and getting the nursery situated as they near the end of pregnancy, but it’s unclear whether that is instinctual or just, like, practical. It’s also true that the brain chemistry of pregnant women changes to prepare for the nurturing role. However, this is also true of non-gestational dads. (I couldn’t find any studies that weren’t about heteronormative families.) I tend to personally feel like there aren’t hard and fast rules about human behavior, particularly when those behaviors are tied to gender. In our house, if nesting is indeed an instinctual thing, both Waffle and I are doing it.

Traditional nesting activities like prepping the baby room and washing and folding baby clothes and cleaning out closets are definitely stuff Waffle has been more motivated to do. Household management crap like getting house repairs done, getting finances in order, making lists of things we need to purchase and when is more what I’ve been focusing on. Only one of us is pregnant, so…

Either way, we have been getting as prepared as possible over the past few weeks. We have more to do around the house, but if Baby T. Rex came today, it’d be OK. We have the bare minimum in place. I mean, you really just need a spot for the baby to sleep, some diapers, and boob food. The rest you can figure out in time.

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2. Constant Craaaaaaaavings

People keep asking what my cravings are and I’m not having too many. Or, rather, because of being on a gestational diabetes diet since February, I don’t get to indulge in cravings very often, so I don’t think about them too much. Actually, I’m kinda resentful of pregnant people who get to indulge in cravings on a whim. I BET THAT’S NICE.

The other day Waffle was eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger that smelled awesome/disgusting and I totally took a small bite. It was awesome/disgusting. That’s about the extent of my ability to indulge without throwing my glucose numbers off.

That said, there are some gestational-diabetes-approved snacks that keep finding their way to my mouth when I’m wanting a not-planned snack. In no particular order, my “indulgent” foods have been:

• String Cheese
• Dill Pickles
• String Cheese
• Dill Pickles
• String Cheese
• Dill Pickles
• Dill Pickles
• Dill Pickles

That’s it. Living on the edge! (Did you know you can buy dill pickles in a club pack?)

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3. Got Schooled

We had our birth class two weekends ago at Beautiful Birth Choices. It was an all-day Saturday class because Waffle works nights and it was easier for us to get it done in one long day. We liked the class and the teacher and place enough that we’re planning to hire a doula through them.

As I expected, we were the only queer couple and I was the only non-white person. The instructor, however, was inclusive in the language she used during the class. We tend to let people assume we’re lesbians in such situations, which I’m sure everyone did. It was fine, though, and everyone was cool with us being there.

Some of the info was very basic, but Waffle pointed out that probably the rest of the partners and husbands in the room had never experienced a menstrual cramp and had no exposure to anatomy diagrams of the uterus and boobs and whatnot since their high school health class. So it was probably good foundational information for them.

I learned that the Lamaze techniques you see people in movies doing are no longer typically taught. The “hee hee ho ho” breathing stuff is apparently out of vogue. I was kind of glad because that sounded awkward to practice in front of other people.

We did learn some labor positions and techniques to deal with contraction pain, including ways for our partners to provide physical and emotional support. We went around and tried out the various positions. We did a simulation of negative pain, basically holding ice (a frozen wet sponge) on the underside of our arms for the duration of a contraction while working with our partners, using various techniques to manage the pain like massage, music, scented oils, etc. We talked in more depth about our birth plan.

Overall, it was mainly a review for us of info we’d read in books or online, but it was a good experience to do the class together and have set time to practice labor techniques and talk about our birth plan. If you can swing the cost of a birth class, I’d recommend it.

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4. Things I’ve Googled in the Past Week:

• best lotion pregnancy itch
• packing list hospital go bag
• can my cat tell I’m pregnant?
• gestational diabetes breastfeeding
• questions to ask a birth doula
• lgbtq doula rochester ny
• feliway cat baby stress
• refusing episiotomy risks
• introducing baby to cat
• ligiment pain when standing up quickly

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5. I’ve Got an Itch to Scratch. I Need Assistance.

Remember how I had an itchy armpit a month ago? That itchy pit spread into two itchy pits which expanded into itchy arms and an itchy back and sides and hips and upper thighs and belly and boobs. I thought I was going to rip my skin off, so I finally alerted my midwives.

I made the mistake of googling my symptoms, which of course led me to a bunch of articles that said itchy skin in the third trimester could by the symptom of a liver issue called obstetric cholestasis. Then I found stories of women who had lost their pregnancies because of obstetric cholestasis. And then I panicked Waffle a bit by relaying all this info to him.

I wasn’t too worried, but I wanted to be cautious. After I let the midwives know I was having EXTREME ITCHINESS, they told me to come in the next day. The tests ultimately came back normal, so that was a relief. Also, while they were getting some blood from me, they re-tested my A1C (hemoglobin) and my blood sugar is steadily in the non-diabetic range, so that’s good news, too!

The itching continues to suck. I was self-treating it with unscented lotion mixed with tea tree oil and lots and lots of witch hazel wipe-downs to soothe my skin throughout the day, but it was like, out of control. I had to reapply lotion and/or witch hazel every two hours. I was ducking into the bathroom or taking my top off at work all the time and at night it was unbearable. I had trouble falling and staying asleep… more than usual.

The midwives prescribed an antihistamine, which I was hesitant to take, but it seems to be helping. I still itch, but it’s manageable itchiness now and I can go a lot longer without reapplying lotion. I also bought this stupid expensive lotion with tea tree oil and vitamin E, which is AMAZING, but I think I’m going to go back to adding tea tree oil to regular unscented lotion because it’s, like, $10/bottle.

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6. The Best Laid Plans…

Waffle and I are in the process of writing down our birth plan. We’ve talked about it a lot and there are things we both want. He is putting the labor decisions mainly in my hands. There are only a couple non-negotiables. I feel like it will be less stressful if I’m open to whatever happens in the moment. There are so many variables with labor and I feel more at peace with it all if I don’t make judgments or assumptions about anything.

Like, in an ideal world, I would like to have a natural birth, but if that doesn’t work out for some reason, that’s what it is. I definitely don’t want an elective c-section or to be talked into one if I don’t need one, but if it becomes medically necessary, then that’s what we’ll do.

Some things we are set on in regards to our labor and birth plan:

• no circumcision if our baby is male assigned
• skin-to-skin contact as soon as possible after birth
• non-instrumental delivery (no forceps)
• early labor at home (with doula)
• delayed clamping of the umbilical coard
• no episiotomy (unless there is a very pressing medical reason — which is rare)
• alone time with Remi after birth and tests, etc are over and before accepting visitors

Some things we’d prefer, but are fairly open to changing our mind on:

• no pain medications or epidural
• let bag of waters break on their own
• let labor start on its own (no induction)
• vaginal birth
• spontaneous pushing (not forced)

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7. Sipping My Way Into Labor

I’ve been drinking red raspberry leaf tea since the second trimester. According to some midwives and herbalists, it helps strengthen your uterus for an easy labor. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Couldn’t hurt, right?

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6. Culturing the Korean-American Kid

I know, I know. I have several years to even be thinking about sending my kid to cultural camp, but I wanted to know what’s available locally. One of the perks of living in a medium-size city is that there are enough families with Korean kids locally that there is a Korean Cultural Camp in my city for one weekend every summer. I wanted to go to Korea Camp when I was a kid, when I found out that another family’s KAD (Korean adoptee) kids went to one. There just weren’t any near where I grew up.

Remi is probably going to hate Korean Cultural Camp when they’re old enough to go and also to roll their eyes at me, but I think it’s important to try it out. I’m still learning a lot of new things about my culture and the foods and history of my ancestry. I know absolutely none of the language. I really wish I’d had more exposure to Korean culture as a kid. I feel like I want to be able to share that with Remi.

Most of the Korean cultural camps are religiously affiliated and the one near me is part of the “Christian Service Program” at a Jesuit high school, so hopefully it won’t be too awkward for a queer family to attend. I’ll let you know in, like, six years when Baby T. Rex is old enough to go and also after Remi is, like, you know, born.

Countdown to Baby T. Rex: Crying Over My Multigrain Waffles and Whimsical Onesies (31 Weeks)

I was going to write about our baby shower last Saturday, but I can’t get the words together. It was a beautiful day. People traveled from all over to celebrate with us. I’ve posted some pics below. But I can’t focus on it right now.

Not today. Not this week. Not when I woke up the morning after our shower to the news from Orlando. Not when I started the 31st week of my pregnancy crying over the kitchen sink as I crammed my gestational diabetes breakfast (two multigrain waffles slathered in peanut butter) into my mouth. It wasn’t the pregnancy hormones this time. It was the overwhelming grief and the sudden realization of what it means to be a parent.

I came out on December 3, 2000. I was 17. It was my senior year of high school and I was taking a couple non-matriculated courses at a nearby state college. I wasn’t out to anyone. I knew I was attracted to girls. I’d known since I was in seventh grade, but I hadn’t put words to it yet. For my 100-level American politics course at the local college, I chose the topic of “gay rights” for my term paper. I used this as an excuse to check out every single nonfiction and research book from the campus library that came up under the search term “gay.”

I hoarded the books in my bedroom in a tall stack. My nervous excitement reflected off the glossy covers and radiated back at me. This was something I’d never allowed myself before, to read about gay people, about gay youth, about a community I didn’t yet feel sure I could be a part of.

This was 2000. The internet was not yet what it is today. There was no GSA at my high school. Our pseudo-GSA, a club three of my friends and I started called Respect Club, was barred from having a LGBT history month by the school board because it “might incite riots.” My best guy friend (and ex-boyfriend) got sent home for wearing a dress to school. There were queer teachers at my school (as I found out later), but none of them were out to students.

I laid on the 70’s-brown carpeted floor of my room with my legs kicked up and devoured each book, one by one, cover to cover. I read Am I Blue?: Coming Out from the Silence, a very mid-nineties book featuring original stories by popular young adult authors about growing up gay. I read a thin political science reader simply titled Gay Rights. I can’t tell you who the author was or even what it looked like. What I remember is reading a chapter on hate crimes. I learned about Matthew Sheppard and James Byrd for the first time.

It was while reading this chapter that something in me broke. The tears came fast, landing on the pages of the open book. I couldn’t finish the chapter. I sat up and put my head in my hands and wept.

I wasn’t sure why I was even upset. I wasn’t out. No one knew I had feelings for girls, so I’d never felt discriminated against or in danger for being queer. I didn’t know Matthew Sheppard or James Byrd. I’d been shielded from that kind of violence, growing up in a small, rural, mostly-white town with white parents and light skin. I didn’t know about hate crimes as a contemporary thing — wasn’t this something that happened in the past? A long time ago? It was just a few paragraphs in a book about a political topic for my research paper about something that happened to other people. Not me. Not me. But I couldn’t stop sobbing.

My parents noticed and sat me down in the family room. Their concern was genuine. I’ve always been overly empathetic, but I’ve never been overly emotional. Even as a toddler, I rarely cried. I curled up in a big recliner with my legs tucked under me. Gulping for air between heaving sobs, I told them about my term paper and about hate crimes and about how I couldn’t believe people were so cruel and I blurted out abruptly, “…and it matters to me because I’m bisexual.”

Silence hung in the air for what felt like hours, but was probably minutes. My dad eventually hugged me and said he’d love me no matter what (but he didn’t approve of me bringing girls home). My mom looked down and got up and left the room. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything to me for two days.

My coming out story isn’t the worst coming out story on a scale of “We love you and it’s awesome that you’re bi!” to “I’ll kill you.” My parents never stopped loving me or threatened to stop loving me. I wasn’t disowned or kicked out. My parents are generally socially progressive. They vote on the Democratic line. They’d always been welcoming to my gay friends, before and after I came out. It was still hard for them, especially for my mom. Part of it was shame and stigma and internalized homophobia, but it was their own shame. There was never a point where my mom or dad felt there was something wrong with me.

My mom would say, “I know it’s my problem. You just have to give me time to accept it.” This, of course, did not make me feel better, but it was honest. Even when we were fighting, when we were screaming at each other, my parents never had an open hatred of LGBT people. They just didn’t want me to be one or date one.

It never made sense to me. I never understood how they could feel that way, how they could love and hug my gay friends, how they could be supportive of gay rights, but not their bisexual daughter, until this week.

When you are trying to conceive, from the moment you are successful, you start building a wall of protection around your future child. You start making different choices in your own life. I radically changed my diet when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes in the first trimester. I started exercising daily, after 33 years of saying I didn’t have the time. I cut down on caffeine and omitted alcohol completely. I didn’t go to A-Camp this year because I was concerned about how the altitude would affect my third trimester body. I worried through every test and ultrasound that something was going to go wrong. I changed the way I sleep and re-prioritized my after-work commitments to give my body time to fuel and rest. I want to give Baby T. Rex the best possible shot.

I stood over the kitchen sink crying on Monday, still struck with grief over the tragedy that unfolded in Orlando on Saturday night. All of a sudden, I understood my mother. I understood her struggle with accepting me after I came out for the first time. When my mom finally broke the silent treatment two days after my dramatic coming out tears, she said, “I didn’t want this for you. It isn’t what I imagined your life would be like.” She asked how I would get a job, how I would find a boy to love me.

I felt so offended by that, that she thought I couldn’t be loveable or loved or happy just because I’m bisexual. That she thought I could just choose to love straight cis men only and didn’t respect my whole sexuality. I felt betrayed. My parents never pushed my sister and me to get married or find a boyfriend. They raised us to be strong and smart and independent. I was angry she’d already imagined some heteronormative future for me, one in which I’d be married to a man with grandchildren on the way. I wanted so much more than that; I thought they wanted more than that for me. I realize now that it wasn’t about that.

I grew up in the queer 90’s and came out in 2000. My mom lived through the 70’s and 80’s. She saw LGBT people terrorized and bullied, denied dignity and basic legal protections. She saw a whole generation of our community die or become traumatized by HIV/AIDS. She saw how people treated LGBT people in the 70’s and 80’s. She saw Matthew Sheppard’s murder and trial play out on the nightly news. She didn’t want that for me. She wanted to protect me. She didn’t want to imagine a future where I was struggling, where I was sick, where my life was in danger, where I wouldn’t be able to live to my potential because of who I am.

She was a white woman in America with a light-skinned daughter. She didn’t have to worry about me being killed growing up and she didn’t have to worry about it herself growing up. She had fears like every parent does. I know she worried about raising a Korean kid in a white neighborhood and school district. She worried about me walking home from the bus on our busy street without sidewalks. She worried about me every day. But she never had to fear for my life like she did when I came out.

It was December 3, 2000, and my mom and I saw the world differently. I saw homophobia, yes, but I also saw hope. I saw queer people radicalizing and marching in the streets. I saw getting out of my small, conservative hometown and going far away for college where I could come out in a blaze of rainbows. I saw a future of falling in love and kissing girls and being 100% myself. I was privileged and I felt safe. I was sure I’d be OK.

My mom saw danger everywhere. She saw people who’d want to hurt me. She saw homophobia, hate crimes, disease, secrecy, and shame. Yes, these ideas came out of systematic homophobia and negative media portrayals of bisexual and gay people and were obviously wrong. It’s the context she had, though, as a white, straight, cis woman at a time when there was no Glee or It Gets Better Project. She was worried, like only a parent can be. She wanted to give me my best possible shot.

I understand now, how that feels, to want to protect your child no matter what. Above all that is rational, to want to cloak them in your love and shield them from an unforgiving and cruel world. I see now that my mother’s negative reaction to my coming out was about love, above all else.

It took us years and years to become close again. It’s still hard sometimes when old wounds are opened, but it’s mostly good, great even. We’ll probably never come all the way back to where we were before I was her “queer bisexual daughter.” We’ll always tiptoe around that hard part of our relationship in an otherwise supportive and loving family history.

I opened a new chamber of forgiveness in my heart when I realized that my mother has only ever loved me and wanted the best for me. It’s why she could accept other gay people, but struggled so much with my coming out. She never feared or hated gay people. She was fearful for me.

Watching the news roll in on the shooting at Pulse nightclub, I couldn’t help but think of our future child, of Remi. Reading texts between Eddie Justice and his mom moments before he was killed broke me. How can I bring a child into this awful world? How can I guarantee they will make it through?

As I saw white queer friends and allies post about the shooting, incidentally white-washing the whole thing with #WeAreOrlando hashtags, I wondered, how will I make sure I raise a child who is safe in this world? I want my child to be safe. But also, how will I raise them to understand the privilege that comes with being safe in this world? How will I teach them intersectionality, to stand up for their brothers and sisters and fellow humans who don’t have the luxury of safety? How, how, how?

I was talking with some queer and trans college friends from out of town after our baby shower last weekend, before news of the shooting hit. We were reminiscing about college nights of drunken debauchery and bad decision-making in our early twenties. One of my friends is also pregnant and has a kid at home, as well. I wondered aloud, “How do we keep our kids from making the same mistakes we made?” We agreed: we can’t. Even with the best, most supportive upbringing, once our kids are adults, we can’t keep them safe. We can’t stop them from binge drinking or experimenting with drugs or going home with an attractive stranger. We can’t prevent them getting raped at a party or being murdered in a mass shooting. There is nothing we can do but try to give them their best possible shot and hope they make it out OK.

I cried over my morning multigrain waffles because I could finally understand why my mom said and did those things that hurt me so much, that made me feel unwanted and small when she pushed me away after I came out.

I cried because it turns out I am able to have all those things my mom thought I never would: a house, a loving spouse, a legal marriage, a career, and yes, even a child.

I cried because I was also able to do the things I envisioned for my life: be an activist, major in creative writing and women’s studies, get paid to do work that affirms my intersectional core beliefs, find a partner who loves me for exactly who I am. I was right. Things got better. I went to college three hours away from home and came out in a blaze of rainbows. I went to the gay bars and marched in the streets. Laws changed and public opinion shifted. I have the joy and luxury of living openly and proudly in every area of my life.

I cried because not everyone has had the happy experience with coming out that I have. Not everyone has been OK. Not everyone has lived. I cried because Latinx and Black people and trans people don’t necessarily get to walk with the confidence I do in the world, that 17-year-old me did as I approached adulthood, sure that I would survive.

I cried for the Latinx and Black victims of the Orlando shooting, who were dancing and loving on a night they could be together and free and safe. They should have been safe. I cried for the grieving parents and partners and families of the victims, who had to wait hours to find out if they were alive.

I am pregnant with my own child now and I want everything that is good in the world for them. I want them to live boldly and be who they are. I also want, more than anything, for them to be safe. We live in a time where Black and brown parents worry about their kids being safe every day. We live in a time when Muslim parents worry about their kids being safe. We live in a time when parents of trans youth worry about their kids being safe. We still live in a time when we have to worry about our queer and trans friends and loved ones being safe, in general. We live in a time when Latinx and Black queer and trans people are fearful for their lives in ways the rest of us can’t begin to know or understand.

I see now, now that I’m carrying this little future human around with me every day, that my mom only ever loved me, even if she didn’t know how to show me that love when I first came out. It doesn’t make the way she reacted less hurtful. I doesn’t erase the times when I felt isolated from my family, when Waffle had to hold me as I raged or cried because I didn’t feel comfortable going home for the holidays. I forgave my parents a long time ago. Today, I am finally able to understand them, too.

Parenting is a lifetime of worrying about someone else and coming to terms with the fact that you can’t control everything while trying really hard to control everything. You can’t guarantee their safety. You can only support them and hug them and give them the best foundation for happiness and success.

Little Baby T. Rex, whatever and whoever you become, Waffle and I are always going to be here for you. We’ll always support you and believe in you. We’ll try to teach you to love and to approach others with empathy and to stand up for what’s right. We’ll probably mess up sometimes. We’ll say or do the wrong thing. We’ll hurt you without meaning to. But we’ll do our best and we’ll try to give you our best. We can’t promise to shield you from harm, but we’ll damn well try.

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8 Random Baby-Making Feelings I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Showered with Love

Our friend and my mom threw us a baby shower last weekend and it was grand. Admittedly, I’ve always felt a little weird about showers. We didn’t have one for our wedding. We didn’t even have a gift registry for our wedding. Waffle and I like to do things on our own. We feel hella awkward about being the center of attention in gift-giving or party situations. We like buying gifts for others and going to their parties and showers. We’ve just always felt weird about letting people throw one for us. However, my friend asked if she could do this for us and, quite frankly, babies are something new for us. We did want to celebrate with family and friends and let’s face it, we need to get a lot of stuff together to prepare for a Baby T. Rex.

It was a really lovely day and our friends and family turned out and there were dinos everywhere and I was overwhelmed with gratitude. It stands in stark contrast to 24 hours later, when I read the headline about Orlando from my bed. This weekend was a strange one. So much joy and hugging and acceptance of our queer love with friends who traveled thousands of miles, family friends I hadn’t seen in years, our whole family showing up and celebrating with us. My mom made a million adorable crafty things and worked with my friend to organize games and dino decorations and a ton of food.

There were gifts of feminist onesies, queer and feminist children’s books, colorful toys, and gender-neutral clothes (lots of dinos!). The next morning, I woke up to a reminder of what can still happen in this world, that hate and racism and violence are still out there.

I am choosing to hold all things up simultaneously. I am immensely sad about Orlando. There’s been a heaviness weighing down on me this whole week, a deep sadness I can’t shake. I am also feeling deeply embraced by my loved ones and that is pulling me through. I’m grateful for my friends and my family. I feel so blessed that Remi is going to be born into a community of deep, unconditional love.

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2. Things I’ve Googled This Week:

• “when should we install car seat”
• “baby sign language dinosaur”
• “baby sign language guinea pig”
• “baby sign language R”
• “what to pack for hospital labor”
• “rent vs. buy breast pump”
• “peanut butter chocolate shake low carb”
• “is pregnancy brain real?”

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3. Let Your Fingers Do The Talking

Ever since I saw a friend’s not-yet-speaking baby use sign language to tell me a story about seeing a truck, I have been totally into the idea of learning and using baby sign with any future kid. The baby’s story went like this. The baby looked out window, pointed towards the road with her finger, made the sign for “truck” and said, “Wooo!” “Yes,” her mom said, “We saw a truck yesterday!” It was adorable. I was hooked.

Baby sign is a version of American Sign Language (ASL) designed specifically for hearing babies. Many of the signs are the same or similar to ASL. Children of deaf parents typically pick up sign language from an early age and start communicating from an earlier age than hearing children of hearing parents. Hearing babies typically start signing sometime after six months.

The goal isn’t to teach the babies ASL as a language. In fact, hearing babies often forget the signs once they start speaking, most likely because the parents also start defaulting to speaking. The signs are also slightly modified for small hands, so it isn’t true ASL. It’s just a way to give babies the tools to communicate at an earlier age.

Waffle and I are, unfortunately, not fluent in ASL. We both know a couple signs like “thank you” and “sorry,” but not enough to carry on a conversation. We’re learning some baby signs that we can use with Baby T. Rex. We’re starting with “mommy,” “daddy,” “milk,” and “cat.” We’ll add other signs based on what Remi shows interest in. I’ve heard from other parents that the sign for “all done” is very helpful to ward off diaper-changing fussiness.

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4. I Thinx I Can?

According to the sponsored ads on Facebook with weird pictures of vaginal-looking food and skinny women strewn haphazardly on modern furniture, Thinx period panties are something I should be into. I am currently not menstruating, possibly the best pregnancy perk, so I haven’t made the switch from Diva Cup to Thinx yet. I’m hearing rave reviews of these magical million-dollar undies from friends who have invested.

I’m wondering if they would be a good alternative to postpartum maxi pads. I hate pads for a variety of reasons, sweat and feeling like I’m wearing a diaper being the most prominent ones. I tried to find a review or story of someone using them for this purpose, but the mommy blogs have failed me. Anyone heard of this? If you’ve tried Thinx, do you “thinx” it’d work? I don’t have any experience with how much they hold or how dry they keep you or how well they stay up on fat bodies with big bellies, but I’m really curious. Also, I hear there are discount codes? Can anyone hook a mama up?

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5. Gestational Diabetes Fast Food Test Kitchen Scorecard:

• Meal: Chipotle Salad with Rice, Beans, & Chicken: A-
• Snack: Dairy Queen Small Dish of Vanilla: A-
• Meal: Papa John’s Thin Crust Pizza with Extra Cheese: B+
• Snack: McDonald’s Four-Piece McNugget with Hot Mustard Sauce: A+
• Meal: Moe’s Southwest Burrito Bowl with Beans, Chicken, & a Side of Queso & Chips: A+
• Snack: Sonic Small Mozzarella Sticks with Marinara Sauce: D
• Meal: Subway Whole Wheat 6″ BLT Sub with Side of Apple Slices: B+

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6. The Dino Nest is Ready for a Hatchling

All credit goes to Waffle for the décor choices and curation of the very, very, very adorable nursery. I didn’t really do anything, other than give directions about where to stick the decals (during which we very narrowly managed to not start an epic fight). Some friends and family stopped by after the shower for the Jurassic Park tour. My mom gifted us with a beautiful hand sewn dinosaur quilt that looks perfect with the bright room colors.

The nest is almost ready for a dino!

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7. KaeLyn & Waffle’s List of Shit to Get Done Before Baby Arrives:

• Hire someone to fix the ceiling in the mud room that the squirrels epically destroyed;
• Submit preadmission paperwork to the maternity center;
• Find a pediatrician who loves vaccines and is also LGBT-competent;
• Set up the car seats in the cars sometime around Week 35-ish;
• Clean out the crap room a.k.a. sleeping porch off the baby’s room;
• Move as much baby furniture and stuff into place as possible so as to not totally freak out that cat;
• Find and hire a labor doula;
• Inventory and figure out what baby gear we still need to buy;
• Reorganize the bathroom and linen closet to prepare for the influx of baby crap; and
• Spend one last weekend sleeping in and doing nothing.

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8. Twos and Threes and Fours of Onesies

Waffle has moved away from the baby booties and on to whimsical onesies. I feel like we should buy stock in Etsy. Here’s the first batch he ordered:

I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg…

Countdown to Baby T. Rex: Pregnant Adoptee Feelings and Dino Decal Decisions (29 Weeks)

I started “writing books” when I was four, dictating to my mom from the bathtub, my thick, dark brown hair smooshed up on top of my head with frothy shampoo. Mom would listen carefully, hand-print my words on blank construction paper pages I’d illustrate later with crayons. I adored stories. I relished in make-believe. Mom said, lovingly, that I had an overactive imagination.

My parents read with me a lot, pretty much every day as far back as I can remember. When I was a little older, my dad would read young adult literature to me and “do” different voices for all the characters. I was reading children’s books on my own by the time I entered kindergarten and short chapter books by first grade. I’d get completely immersed in the narratives, lose track of time and let my mind traverse across Madeleine L’engle‘s strange and transitory landscapes, find solace with Roald Dahl‘s lonely beasts and heroines.

Stories are about journeying; about discovery; about a sense of place; about a beginning, middle, and end. My story begins with blank pages, an empty journal that starts, jarringly and robustly, from the middle. There is no exposition, no framing, just a vague temporal beginning documented in my adoption papers in English translation.

I was abandoned or as my adoption papers describe it, a “foundling.” My earliest months are recorded roughly by the orphanage and adoption agency and seem partially fabricated. According to my paperwork, I liked to play with dolls, something that seems patently false. I liked dogs, which I believe is true—I’ve always felt close to animals and took to my family’s golden retrievers right away. I had two large purple burn marks on my right forearm that are to-this-day unexplained, what’s left of a lost narrative I’d love to know, however painful. They’ve faded to soft, rippled scars that look more like birthmarks than wounds.

My story began on an airplane, a transatlantic flight to Alaska and then to JFK airport in New York City where I met my parents. My younger sister is also adopted. For my family, kinship has never been about blood. “Blood is thicker than water” simply isn’t true for us. Chosen family has always made sense to me because my family chose me.

Being adopted means I’ve always been filling in those first pages of my story with my own ideas, my own illustrations, some suggested by my parents, some discovered on my own. It takes someone with an overactive imagination to create your own context from scratch, to imagine yourself into the world. If you aren’t adopted, it’s probably hard to understand not knowing where you came from.

There are probably stories you’ve been told about your birth, about your gestational parent’s experience with pregnancy, about how you were conceived. You were born in a hospital or a bed or on a kitchen floor or the backseat of a speeding car. You were a quiet baby or a fussy baby or a happy baby. There are shared experiences between the parents and siblings in your family across generations. Births are compared to one another. Stories are passed down. Histories are created. You are tethered to your origin, whether you want to be or not. Kinship is in your blood. You know the exact time and place you went from an idea of a person to a squirmy human being with air filling your lungs.

I can’t imagine my birth story or even my infancy. I was a toddler when I began to exist in any documented way. Anything before that is intangible. When I imagine where I came from, I envision a train track split in two or three or four directions, a redacted manuscript with page-after-page of immutable ink blots. Or just a sidewalk that ends unexpectedly, surrounded on all sides by grass and weeds, like the scattered bits of concrete paving in my rural hometown. Imagine if your beginning was as unwritten as your future. How do you navigate a journey without a starting point?

Being an adoptee has made being pregnant all that much more strange and interesting. I’m building a story with my body, one I’ve never known before. It’s unfamiliar. It’s completely new. I can read about it in forums and books, but it doesn’t feel like something that’s real to me. It doesn’t feel natural. Maybe this is why I don’t feel a strong kinship with other pregnant people, with mama culture. Maybe this is one reason that “having a baby” was never part of my identity as a woman.

When I played make-believe house with my friends in first grade, I always volunteered to be the family dog. I was neither the baby nor the mom. Those weren’t roles I knew how to play or wanted to. My parents shared parenting roles and they never pushed us to have kids or get married. My mom was never pregnant with my little sister. She wasn’t pregnant with me. She was an amazing parent and educator, as was my dad. Baby-making just wasn’t part of my family’s narrative.

There is no birthing wisdom passed down between generations for me. My grandparents have passed and my parents have their own experience with family-making that is theirs and is challenging and wonderful in different ways than mine. My mother-in-law talks to me about pregnancy like it’s this normal thing that people do. It is. For most people. To her. I don’t feel “normal” in this pregnant body, though. I don’t feel like I’m carrying forth some family tradition of womanhood or embodying my mother or carrying forth the wisdom of The Mothers. Most days, I feel slightly out of place.

I’m not sad about this feeling. I recognize it. I sit with it. I hold it, see the hardness and the fragility in the words I used to say: “I don’t want to have kids.” “I don’t think I have a maternal clock.” “Writing is how I create and birth into the world.”

In many ways, being pregnant has forced me to contend with the loss I never fully grieved as an adoptee. It’s not a loss of family. My family is whole and complete. It’s not loss about being adopted or unwanted. I’ve never felt anything but loved, that I can remember. It’s the loss of my own beginning, of my story, my starting point, my origin.

It’s the realization that I don’t know what I looked like as a baby and there aren’t any pictures, something I never thought about until recently. It’s my unexpected need to find a South Korean donor, something I didn’t know I wanted until I wanted it, urgently, deeply, unapologetically. Because I long for someone who looks like me. Because I want to share my ethnicity with my child. Because I want my child to love being Korean. It’s my insistence that we use an open donor for the benefit of our future kid, who may one day wonder about their origins, too. It’s the daily reminder played out in the feeling of feet and hands poking me from the inside that I’m writing an origin story for Remi and that my story remains unwritten.

I am a mother. I am becoming a mother. Before I was a mother, I became a writer, a storyteller, fabricating fiction from wisps of truth, shadowing and lining the angles of my memories into essays, connecting letters into words into images with smokey lines of verse. I started writing my stories in the bathtub with my mom. I created fictions to fill in the gaps. I illustrated the pages of my books. I am writing a new story now, with my body, for Remi, who will never know or understand what it means to be birthed by airplanes and adoption papers and mythology.

10 Random Baby-Making Feelings I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Drumroll, Please: The Dino Decal Winner!

You’re probably wondering what we decided about the dino decals. Well, there were a lot of votes for all the decals. A mixed bag, if you will. Ultimately, the most votes were for the top left and top right decals.

With your input, we decided to go with a set by the same Etsy seller as the top left option because the colors are really bright and fun and go well with our bright and fun nursery. However, we went with a set that is kind of a hybrid of the top left and top right, dinos with cute and happy facial expressions and bright colors and eggs and trees and volcanoes. The pink pterodactyl in this set really sold Waffle.

Thank you all for your feedback! I hope you like the decals we picked with your input. (I mean, ultimately we have to like them first-and-foremost, but I hope you like them, too!)

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2. Doula Want to Hire a Doula?

We have a childbirth class scheduled for later this month so we can learn about breathing techniques and I don’t know…whatever you learn in a birth class.

The place we booked our birth class through also provides doulas. I’m still deciding if I want a doula attending our birth. We are working with a midwifery group and a midwife will deliver T. Rex. But it’s not like a traditional midwife. We don’t have one individual midwife, so depending on how many women are in labor, our midwife may not be able to stay with us at every moment.

Also, we’ve never done this before and I’ve heard a doula can be as beneficial for the non-gestational partner or support person as they can be for the person in labor. I think it might be helpful to have one, for Waffle and for me. I’d also love to labor as long as possible at home before heading to the hospital and my plan (very open to amelioration) is to attempt natural birth.

Mostly we have to see if the cost is worth it to us and I’m not quite sure yet. Have any of you hired a doula to attend your birth? Did it make the experience better?

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3. Perks of Being Preggers

I parked here the other day and I felt great about it.

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4. The Best and Worst Pregnancy Symptoms

I keep saying I’ve had a mostly easy pregnancy and it’s true. I have a good amount of energy, enough to get through the work day and evening commitments. The gestational diabetes diagnosis in the first trimester was a momentary setback, but it’s forced me to make lifestyle changes that make me feel better like eating breakfast and exercising every day. My diabetes is still well-controlled without medication. I haven’t gained much weight at all, so I don’t have a sore back…yet…and my boobs are pretty much the same (large) size as they were before I was knocked up.

I have a lot to be thankful for. There’s still a lot of weird stuff happening, of course. Here’s the best and worst of the pregnancy symptoms I’ve had or been spared.

The Best

• Regular as F*ck: Pooping regularly is a big part of my daily routine and I was super worried I was going to be constipated for nine months. But so far, so good! Fiber is my friend.
• Not Hungry: The gestational diabetes eating plan means having three meals and three snacks every day, so I’m eating from morning until bedtime. It’s a lot to remember to pack snacks all the time, but I rarely feel hungry.
• Strong Nails: After 28 years of biting my nails, I finally quit last year, but they were in sad condition. Prenatals, hormones, and time have made my once-brittle nails super strong and thicker than they’ve ever been. It’s great! They’re starting to look half-way decent even without polish.

The Worst

• Itchy Pits: About two weeks ago I started getting really itchy in my left armpit and left side boob due to pregnancy hormones. I gave myself a rash, in fact, which was very visually appealing and a whole heck of a lot of fun. I treated it with witch hazel and tea tree oil and lotion and now I just have an itchy pit that’s prone to rashes if I let myself scratch. I’m controlling it with lotion and witch hazel applied three times a day.
• Mood Swings: The crying stage of my hormonal journey seems to be over, but the bitchy stage has kicked in in full force. I find myself snapping at Waffle for no reason. I know in my head I’m being unnecessarily mean or reactionary, but I literally can’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth.
• Daily Leg Cramps: I wake up with what feels like a horrible charlie horse in my leg almost every day. This morning, I had one that was so bad that I started doing pseudo-Lamaze breathing into my pillow because I wanted to scream, but didn’t want to wake Waffle up.
• Popping Joints: My joints are loosening all over and especially in my hips. I sometimes wake myself up by popping my hip or knee joint when I roll over in my sleep.
• Carpal Tunnel: Apparently you can get carpal tunnel symptoms during and after pregnancy, which I definitely have because my wrists are achey every day after work. Wee!
• Diabetes: It’s definitely not fun. I feel lucky that I can control it with food and exercise choices, but it is a huge part of my daily life in a way that’s kind of obnoxious. I’m grateful I’m in control of it, but I’d be really sugar-coating it to say it isn’t kind of a huge bummer. I miss white rice, a lot.

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5. Squirting and Not the Fun Kind

Bladder control is something I usually feel pretty good about, but lately my confidence is waning. I sometimes spring a leak if I sneeze or cough.

I hear this gets even better after giving birth, so I’m really looking forward to that. In the meantime, I’m trying to kegel my way back into control, but I can’t stop my uterus from expanding into my bladder area, so I’m not particularly hopeful.

6. Building a Badass Library for Baby T. Rex

Books are a big deal to me. Books were my very favorite thing when I was growing up and I plan to read to Remi all the time.

My mom was a first grade teacher and she’s been gifting me a lot of amazing children’s books with accompanying stuffed animals because that’s the kind of lesson planner she is.

I’ve been looking up as many Korean children’s books (in English) that I can find, as well as feminist and LGBTQ children’s books.

Some wonderful friends gifted us this dark and hilarious book and I’m totally into Jon Klassen now.

Of course, we’re also acquiring board books and soft books in some of childhood favorites. Mine is Moo Baa La La La by Sanda Boynton. Waffle’s is Sleepy Bunny (but not this reprint, the 1982 Johnson & Johnson version).

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7. Things I’ve Googled in the Past Week:

• gestational diabetes cookie recipe
• what do labor pains feel like
• breastfeeding large breasts
• preparing for maternity leave
• labor how much poop
• cooked paneer safe pregnancy
• wrists hurt pregnancy
• baby won’t kick for partner
• sunburn pregnant

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8. Can’t Stop Keeping My Hands to Myself

I keep touching my stomach with my left hand and I don’t know why. It’s just a thing that’s happening, like I’m being compelled by some invisible belly-hand magnetic force. I’ve always wondered why pregnant women are constantly touching their bellies and I still wonder it, as I’m constantly touching my belly. Touching my belly while I’m driving. Touching my belly while I’m standing in the grocery store. Touching my belly while I watch Game of Thrones. Touching my belly while I check my email. Touching my belly while I proofread this post.

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9. A Wiggle, a Bun, a Kitty, and a Dino

We’ve always had a lot of pets in our home. At one point, we had two guinea pigs, a rabbit, four rats, and a cat in our fur family all at the same time. We’re down to just three furbabies. I’m glad Baby T. Rex will be exposed to animals from an early age. Loving and caring for animals is something Waffle and I share and I think it builds empathy for kids to interact with animals.

However, I never meant to still have two high maintenance pets like the bunny and wiggle pig (guinea pig) at the same time as a newborn. It kind of stresses me out to think about. It’s a lot of poop to deal with on the daily, is what I’m saying.

Additionally, both of those furbabes are getting older and probably won’t be around for more than a couple years. The wiggle may not even make it through this year—she has a chronic bacterial infection that’s untreatable and inoperable. We got extra pages for Remi’s baby book for the three pets we currently have, but I wonder if Remi will remember them at all.

The cat should have many more years with us and will also be around the baby more than the smaller furkids, so I’m hopeful Remi will remember and love the cat, at least. I don’t know if the cat will love Remi, but I’m optomistic. Luckily, our scaredy cat is also very gentle, so I’m not worried about the cat ripping off Remi’s diaper like my parents’ cat did to me.

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10. How to Maternity Leave

I’m so, so, so blessed to be able to take some time off via my day job employer’s parental leave policy plus accrued vacation time. The U.S. is one of the only countries that doesn’t have federally mandated paid parental leave. My employer chooses to offer up to six weeks of paid leave for birth or adoption. On top of that, I’m using some of my vacation time and sick time.

Waffle’s employer doesn’t provide any paid leave, so he’s decided to use his vacation time for two weeks, but he had to schedule it way in advance, so we’re just hoping the baby comes in the two-week period he requested off.

I can’t believe I’m already in the third trimester. I have just about two months until my paid leave begins (unless I deliver very early) and I’m working on getting things situated at work for my co-workers while I’m out. I’m the director of a small office of a statewide nonprofit, with three staff (myself included) on-site and most of my co-workers six hours away in NYC, so it’s a lot to prepare for.

Like, who’s going to sign off on timesheets, but also who’s going to fix the printer when it disconnects from the wifi?

I have never taken this much time off of work before. The last time I had three months off was during summer break when I was a college student. For the last five years, I used a lot of my paid vacation time to travel for my second job as a professional speaker and sexuality educator. I just haven’t prioritized time off since I entered the work force. I’m grateful for the weeks to spend with Baby T. Rex and to heal and mend after delivery.

I imagine I’ll be exhausted most of the time, but I wonder what I’ll be doing in-between caring for Remi and sleeping. Reading books? Watching Netflix? Taking up radical cross-stitching? What do you do when you don’t go to a 9-5 job every day? Suggestions?

Countdown to Baby T. Rex: Sipping My Way Into the Third Trimester (27 Weeks)

feature image via Shutterstock

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This past mother’s day, Waffle had a conversation with his mom where she asked if he would be celebrating mother’s day or father’s day next year. It’s something we’d been thinking about for a while. There’s a clear and direct answer, but we were stuck on how to present it to family members in the most casual way possible.

Before we got hitched in 2011, Waffle and I had “the chat” with his parents about his gender identity. People know Waffle by different first names (Waffle is his nickname and his actual last name) and call him different pronouns. I sometimes use different pronouns. Waffle is fine with she/her or he/his and doesn’t care too much either way, as long as people are being respectful. Like Leslie Feinberg once expressed, “For me, pronouns are always placed within context.” Waffle’s family mostly uses she/her. My family mostly uses he/him. Coworkers use she and friends use whatever they know Waffle as.

We just didn’t want our family feeling weird or making it weird at our wedding when they heard people using different names and pronouns than they were used to. We wanted people focused on the celebration and the fun and the silly children’s book readings we had picked out for the ceremony, not on Waffle’s gender and/or if they were being bad allies or whatever.

This is one of the readings we used. (We didn’t make this video or use this song, though) Do you see a theme?

I worked with our Unitarian minister to write a pronoun-free ceremony script. The wedding went off perfectly. People were cool. Waffle’s parents didn’t have an issue with it at all, though I think they were and are still kind of confused about how to address Waffle because he identifies as queer and isn’t binary trans.

I was just talking with a friend about how it seems LGBTQIA generations are about ten years apart. Like, because progress and culture has shifted so rapidly for our communities, the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s were really distinct eras of “being LGBT” and the 00’s and 10’s are a whole other world. Waffle and I came of age as activists and queer people on the back-end of the Queer 90’s. There weren’t words like “demiboy” and “demigender” yet and words like “genderqueer” were relatively new and still had a specific political connotation. Singular they/their wasn’t popular yet. Zie/sie/hir/hier were the most widely used gender neutral pronouns (though they never caught on in the mainstream). I think this is why genderqueer or gender non-binary or gender variant have never worked as identities for Waffle. It doesn’t feel authentic to his experience of coming out and finding an identity that fits.

(I can somewhat understand. “Pansexual” was still a pretty new term when I was coming out, which is why I still stick with “bisexual” and “queer.” Pansexual doesn’t mean anything to me in the context of my coming out experience, even if it’s an accurate description of my sexual and romantic attractions.)

Waffle cut his teeth on Leslie Feinberg‘s Stone Butch Blues. If you can be a lesbian or dyke politically, but not be a woman, he’d identify as that, but he feels it’s a little odd to claim “lesbian” if he isn’t comfortable claiming “woman.” So he identifies as a boi in the butch lesbian context of the word, but also as trans and queer. Sometimes when we’re out in the world, strangers perceive us as two lesbian women and he’s mostly OK with that. Sometimes people perceive him as binary trans or binary male and he’s mostly OK with that, too, though neither is correct. To Baby T. Rex, Waffle will be “Dad” and we’ll celebrate father’s day.

Polly Pagenhart, author of Lesbian Dad, defines a lesbian dad as:

les•bi•an dad n, neologism 1. a. A lesbian or genderqueer parent who feels that traditionally female titles (i.e., “mother”) don’t quite fit, and who is willing to appropriate and redefine existing male ones (i.e., “father”): She was a tomboy when she was a kid, so it’s not surprising she’s a lesbian dad as a parent. b. Often a non-biological parent in a lesbian family, and/or one whose role relative to the child in many ways resembles that of fathers.

Some lesbian dads and genderqueer parents come up with another word for “parent” that’s gender-neutral or use a word in another language or from another culture like “baba.” Much like using they/their pronouns and identifying as genderqueer doesn’t feel right to Waffle, using a different word for “dad” doesn’t really work for him either.

Long story short, we always knew Waffle would be “daddy” to Baby T. Rex. The furkids already give him a card on Father’s Day, after all.

At the same time, being visibly queer is important to be us and being misinterpreted as a same-gender couple is only, like, 70% wrong. The difference is that “dad” to us doesn’t mean “will teach kid about power tools” any more than “mom” means “will teach kid how to bake cakes.” I mean, we might do those things, but not because of the gender roles attributed to our monikers. Actually, I hope Waffle teaches them how to bake, or maybe we should relegate that to their grandparents, because it’s neither of our strong suit.

Sometimes I worry about how our kid is going to explain us to adults they will encounter outside our home (like teachers). On paper we’ll appear to be a lesbian couple. However, our kid will know us as “mom” and “dad.” Explaining these concepts to a kid is something I look forward to. It won’t be too hard. Kids have a much easier time with gender fluidity than adults do. (In some ways, our 7-year-old niece understands Waffle’s gender the most out of everyone in either of our families. She calls Waffle “Aunt” and also uses he/his pronouns, which his family thinks is funny, but is actually fairly accurate.)

I think Remi will be on board without any problem. What I wonder about is how to prepare Remi for going to school and discussing our family with cis adults and authority figures who think Remi has “two mommies” and who are generally ignorant about trans identities. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Any advice, non-binary parents out there?

For now, I’ve just got to get this darn Baby T. Rex safely out into this beautiful, gross, dangerous, brilliant, terrible, incredible, wild world.

10 Random Baby-Making Feelings I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Water, Water Everywhere and I’m Gonna’ Sip Up Every Drop

I think I’ve mentioned before how ridiculously thirsty I am. (Yes, you can interpret that any way you want.) I was settling in to do some lengthy work last Sunday afternoon and had to take a picture of my hydration station. Yes, I drank, drunk, drink-ed all of that in one sitting (with bathroom breaks).

I wish I could say it’s having a positive impact on my skin, but honestly I have no idea what my skin is doing right now. All the dermal things I have that typically flare up are flaring up real extra and I have an unusual excess of skin tabs (sexy!) and I started getting a super fun rash under my arm last week. Also, the physical exhaustion is coming back as I get closer to the third tri. So when people tell me I’m glowing, I kind of feel like they’re full of shit. I am, however, very, very, very hydrated. By the end of the day, I feel like a filled-up water balloon and my belly looks like one, too.

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2. Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (Hello Heteronormativity)

I know I just got done telling you that Waffle is going to be a Daddy Dino to Baby T. Rex, but I have to say that it’s a little weird that the hospital we are using only has forms that have “mother” and “father” as options. Same-gender marriage has been legal in NYS since 2012 and is now legal everywhere. This is a fairly large metropolitan hospital, so I’m just surprised.

One of the biggest reasons we went with getting me knocked up is that Waffle can simply sign the birth certificate as the second parent. It’s one of the legal benefits of marriage. Waffle has zero interest in changing his legal gender markers or his legal name, so it’s going to be kind of awkward for a multitude of reasons when we turn in our paperwork with his stuff under “father.” Waffle doesn’t like to draw a lot of attention to himself and doesn’t feel particularly passionate about coming out to my medical providers, so we’ve been flying under the radar as assumed-lesbians at our medical provider appointments.

For all these reasons, we prefer gender neutral language on paperwork, when possible. I called the hospital to find out if there was another less-gendered version of the form, like one that just says “parent” and “parent” or something, but there isn’t. So it is what it is. Our midwives marked Waffle as my “spouse” and made a note to call him by his last name in their files, so that’s cool, at least. If all goes according to plan, the midwives will deliver the baby.

Side Note: I briefly considered having a homebirth to avoid dealing with this kind of awkwardness (and because it can be a really cool and empowering experience), but ultimately we both feel more comfortable at a medical facility. It’s a really personal choice and I respect people who choose homebirth as well as those who don’t. I’ve heard about good and difficult experiences with both. With it being our first pregnancy and having access to relatively LGBT-inclusive care providers nearby, we decided to go with our gut instinct, even if it means I don’t get to labor in one of those cool inflatable birth pools for the living room.

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3. Reader’s Choice: Dino Decals

We need your opinion on dino decals for the nursery. Which one of these sets do you like best? Tell me in the comments, please. Big decisions.

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4. What (Weird) Dreams May Come

Many people experience vivid dreams while pregnant. I typically remember my dreams once or twice a week. Lately, I’ve been remembering my dreams pretty much every night. I started writing down the really funny or strange ones:

• I was at work at McDonalds (which I actually worked at for, like, 5 years-ish in real life) and I was stationed in the grill. If you don’t know this already, McD now has an all-day breakfast menu. It’s real legit. Anyway, I was in the grill and I was making “round eggs,” which are the ones that go on Egg McMuffins. I just kept making eggs and making eggs and filling up trays with eggs until I’d made far too many eggs and my manager was like, “OMG KAELYN! Stop making eggs!” I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but it seems somewhat related to getting knocked up, I think.
• I was drafted into wartime service (who we were at war with was unclear) under the Trump administration and I was scheming plans to go AWOL. This dream was terrifying for a multitude of reasons.

• Some exceptionally vivid sex dreams and that’s all you need to know, except that they frequently end with me being unable to climax and feeling hella frustated in my dream and also in real life when I wake up.
• I spontaneously gave birth to a fully-formed baby at 26 weeks. It was a medical miracle! Or, at least, no one thought it was that concerning other than that I didn’t know I was going into labor at first. Then, my milk came in all weird and gross and I was trying to play it cool like I knew what I was doing with breastfeeding, but I was really panicking because it was the wrong consistency and color and I kept pumping and it just kept getting worse. I think I may have breastfeeding anxiety. I mean, I definitely do.

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5. Rounding Third

Can you believe I’m just about in my third trimester? Maybe you can, because you only just learned I’m carrying a smol human in my body. But it feels like a big thing to me, like, we’ve been doing this for so long and we’re almost to the finish line! Also, oh holy mother of pearl, we’re almost to the finish line!

People keep asking me if I’m nervous about giving birth and it’s hard to answer. I’m not particularly nervous right now. I mean, human beings have been giving birth since we came to exist on the planet. It’s definitely doable. I feel like it’ll be fine, whatever happens. I’ll be ok. I’ll recover. I’ll figure it out. But I’m sure I’m going to be a little freaked once I actually start going into labor. That seems like a normal reaction to going into labor for the first time in your life and also to the possibility of having a very painful experience like, you know, your privates exploding. I doubt I’ll be feeling all casual about it, like, no worries, just making life with my body real chill like.

However, I wouldn’t say I’m stressing about it right now at this very moment in time.

I’m fairly close to that day, though. There’s about 20 million things I want to get done before my due date, before I’m in it with Baby T. Rex for life, ride or die. It’s weird how when you’re waiting for something, it feels like the waiting is forever, until it gets close and then it feels like you’re recklessly hurtling towards it.

Like when you’re going on a big trip and you can’t wait. You’re counting down the days. But then it’s hours before you leave and you still haven’t packed anything and you’re cramming all your shit in a bag, hoping you didn’t forget anything important as you rush out the door (to catch your flight to A-Camp). Or maybe that’s just me…

Either way, it’s going to be T. Rex time before we know it! Most days I’m not overthinking it, just doing my day-to-day and going down my to-do list and looking towards the next couple weeks ahead. Normal life. Then I have these brief moments of semi-panic and I remember that we did this thing for real and, like, what goes in must come out, if ya’ know what I mean. There’s no turning back now! This brand spankin’ new human being is going to come into the world real soon and it’s going to change everything.

Sometimes when I’m in that headspace, I turn to Waffle and randomly exclaim, “This is happening!” I should probably stop doing that as we get closer to, like, the possibility of me going into actual labor.

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6. Things I’ve Googled In the Past Week:

• “armpit rash pregnant”
• “fetus kicked the cat”
• “gestational diabetes injera”
• “tea tree oil safe pregnancy”
• “first time breastfeeding tips”
• “best breast pump”
• “nipple piercings breastfeeding”
• “Korean children’s books”
• “nursing bra best for big boobs”

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7. Cats in the Snoogle and the Silver Spoon

Jeter has taken up residence in my Snoogle. What, you ask, is the Snoogle? It’s an outrageously expensive (for a glorified body pillow) and also life-changing pregnancy pillow that is the sole reason I can sleep soundly at night. I’ve been a stomach sleeper my whole life and fairly early in my mid-first trimester, I needed to start sleeping on my side. It was extremely hard for me to retrain my brain to fall asleep on my side and stay that way all night. Also, I was waking up with a sore back and hips. I tried adding more pillows. I tried hugging a pillow all night. I tried gently lifting my stomach onto an extra pillow. I tried creating a fortress of pillows all around me. Nothing worked. Enter the Snoogle.

It’s basically a body pillow, but in a weird elongated C-shape kind of like an open paper clip. You curl up in the thing or straddle it or hug it or use it to support your back or marry it. All I know is it works. It’s very bad for my romantic life, because it creates a literal impenetrable barrier down the middle of the bed. If Waffle wants to cuddle, he has to spoon the Snoogle to get to me. If I want to cuddle, I have to launch myself over the thing to get to him. But the Snoogle is fabulous for getting a good night of rest. For me and for my cat, who thinks we got the Snoogle especially for him to curl up and snooze in. He’s such an entitled little asshole. Like he doesn’t already own every other sleeping surface in the house…

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8. Baby Wearing, Not Something a Wealthy White Pediatrician Invented

I want to wear my baby. My mom used to wear my sister in a metal-framed back carrier. My sister’s adoption paperwork said (in rough English translation from Korean) that she “likes to be a backpack.” One of my earliest memories is playing in the backyard with my family on a sunny day, my mom doing yardwork with my little sister strapped onto her back.

Baby carriers have come a long way since then and have really picked up popularity in America since the introduction of “attachment parenting” by pediatrician and bestselling author, Dr. William Sears. Babywearing is a key component of attachment parenting theory and is said to be beneficial for forming a parent-child bond, promoting infant health, facilitating breastfeeding, reducing infant distress, etc. etc. etc. There are now babywearing mom groups and play dates and a plethora of carriers at different (mostly expensive) price points. Babywearing has practical benefits for parents, too, freeing up both hands to do chores and allowing more mobility without having to cart a carrier or stroller around all the time. These are all valid benefits of babywearing and part of the reason I’m interested, but I get really frustrated seeing image after image of babywearing as a modern white mommy thing.

One thing that Dr. Sears’ followers don’t often acknowledge is that babywearing isn’t a new idea or even a Western idea. Carrying a baby using a sling or wrap or carrier has been practiced all over the world long before it became popular in industrialized countries. It isn’t a cool new thing for hipster parents and eco moms and feminist dads. Women of color have been doing it for centuries.

In Korea, babies are traditionally been worn by the mother on the back in a podaegi (포대기). The baby is worn on the mother’s back so the mother and child’s hearts are in alignment and the baby can hear the mother’s heartbeat. I absolutely love that! I plan to wear my baby in the front (which is also common in modern-day Korea), but I love the idea that babywearing is part of my cultural tradition and not just something a white pediatrician invented to sell books in the 90’s. I plan to use a baby wrap, which seems like a good choice for my round belly and big chest and is similar in style to a podaegi.

The idea of wrapping your baby goes back to women of color and particularly indigenous cultures. Japanese women used to carry their babies wrapped in their obi sashes. Brown and black women across cultures and continents have been wearing their babies in cloth wraps for a long time. While it’s ultimately good that there is respect for a traditional and natural way of carrying and bonding with a baby, especially one often used by poor women, the “industry” of parenting has white-washed the concept of babywearing. Wraps and carriers are super expensive and marketed primarily to middle-class moms. If any acknowledgement is given to the cultures that babywearing comes from, it’s in the “ethnic” naming of techniques like “African-style babywearing.” Google it. Count how many pictures are of white moms v. brown moms.

I’m admittedly planning on getting one of those expensive baby carriers and fancy wraps. I believe babywearing really is beneficial for parents and for babies (though I’m not a devotee of attachment parenting). I just wish it wasn’t yet another thing that’s been whitewashed and commercialized in the “mommy industrial complex.” (Is that a real thing? I just made it up tongue-in-cheek, but I feel like it’s a real thing.)

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9. A Moment of Appreciation for Pregnant Peoples with Kids and Single Parents

A good number of people I know are pregnant right now, too, and most of them are on their second or third kiddo. I just want to say that it’s incredible watching them do their thing. Just being pregnant is a lot to deal with on top of, you know, life. Doing it while also raising an additional small person is awe-inspiring. I have the luxury of taking a nap after work if I feel like it. They probably do not, particularly if they don’t have another parent or caregiver around to share the work of child-rearing. Maybe it seems easier the second or third time because you know what’s up, but having all this stuff happening to your body and being tired and stressed and being responsible for a little kid on top of it just seems like a lot. Big kudos, second-time parents and single parents!

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10. Queer Mom and Dad Dino’s Last Babymoon

As you read this, we are on our way back from our last road trip to NYC for several months. We’ll be pretty firmly rooted closer to home for the rest of this pregnancy and, I imagine, several months after Baby T. Rex arrives. As I’ve mentioned before, Waffle and I went kind of out of control over the past two years indulging in grown-up experiences and (cheapskate, but fun) travel and lots and lots of things that will be less-accessible after we have a little one in tow.

Of course, we plan to keep doing things as a couple even after we have a wee T. Rex and there are lots of babysitting offers from family members, but I imagine things may shift for us once we have a kid. Once they’re old enough to travel with us, we may want to bring them on our little mini-vacations. We may be more inclined to save up to take them to cool kid-friendly places. I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling our priorities will be different. Also, we’ll have a lot less discretionary income for these kinds of things.

So we’re living it up for one last weekend: seeing friends and shows (American Psycho on Broadway is one of them!); taking in a long, scenic drive from our home in Upstate NY to NYC; and partying it up (sober-style) one last time before it’s Dino Time!

It feels a little sad, like we’re saying goodbye to one era of our life as a couple and as individuals, but also like we are coming out on the other side a little more ready for the next chapter to begin. I think it’s going to be the best chapter yet!

Countdown to Baby T. Rex: “Mommy” Feelings and Dinosaur Mobiles (25 Weeks)

The biggest hurdle in deciding to become a parent, for me, was acknowledging and accepting that there is no way to extrapolate myself and my identity from “motherhood.” As a woman—and particularly as a woman who presents somewhere between hard femme and power femme—there is no chance I’m going to evade the Cult of Mommy-ness. My undercut can’t save me.

I love moms. I love my mom. Moms created the whole damn world and they run the thing, too. Motherhood is powerful as fuck. Yet, every time I think about being looked at as a mom, I can feel myself shrinking away from the idea. I can feel my other identities as a queer femme, a writer, an activist, a nonprofit director, a leader, a teacher, a badass bitch being forcibly subdued and overshadowed by the looming identity of “mommy.” I can visualize all those parts of me, of who I am and how I see myself, disintegrating into glitter dust, scattered to the wind like ashes.

It’s not being a mother that I’m afraid of. I know I’ll be a great parent. It’s how our culture sees moms, how it undervalues them, pushes moms into boxes, takes away their sexual agency, under-compensates their work while expecting perfect performance, stomps on moms with heteropatriarchal bullshit, and holds up the mom version of the virgin/whore dichotomy: “good moms” and “bad moms.” It’s too much.

Before we even got this thing started, I had to come to terms with the idea that the world was going to see me as a “mommy,” whether I liked it or not. The good news is, I know my partner wants an equal role in parenting. I mean, if anything, he’d like a slightly more prominent role. Like 60/40. The reality is that I get a good amount of paid time off from work and he doesn’t, so initially, at least, I’ll have slightly more time with Baby T. Rex. Plus we’re planning to breastfeed so that will be something I will have responsibility for until (or unless) we shift to bottle feeding.

Relationship roles are rarely 50/50. You play to each other’s strengths. I clean the bathroom. Waffle scoops the litter box. I deal with spiders and bugs. He lifts heavy shit. We alternate doing the dishes and the laundry. I’m okay with knowing I’ll be doing slightly more parenting in the beginning because I know I’m not expected to do all of it. When I go back to work, Waffle will be on daytime duty (I work days. He works nights.) and he’ll end up getting more meaningful time with the kiddo than I will.

As the non-gestational carrier, Waffle may even resent me for having more early bonding time with T. Rex. I know that’s been the experience of some of our queer parent friends. Already, I know he wishes he could feel T. Rex kick, which I feel all the damn time, but it isn’t strong enough yet for him to feel it from the outside. I don’t really love the sensation, personally, but I can’t wait to be able to share it with him. Being the non-gestational carrier can sometimes feel like being invisible. At our fertility appointments, the providers often talked directly to me and mostly ignored Waffle. He was okay with the situation because we went in with a pragmatism about the whole thing, but I imagine he wishes he could have had a more active role.

Unlike the heteronormative norm, in our relationship, the “baby crazy” person (Waffle) is the non-gestational carrier and the “baby ambivalent” person (me) is carrying. This is due to who has the capacity, due to body dysphoria and whatnot, more than anything else. A lesbian couple we know had a similar situation. The person who wanted to get pregnant first just couldn’t get it to work, so after some time, her partner ended up trying instead and got pregnant on the first try.

Queer baby-making just isn’t as cut-and-dry as it is for straight people, whether you have the parts or not—and some queer and lesbian couples have the parts naturally! Everything just feels very intentional in how our community tends to make these decisions. Being in a same-gender and/or queer feminist relationship means we’re already bucking the norm. Much like a lot of the marriage equality rhetoric never really worked for me, even as Waffle and I were getting legally married, a lot of the baby stuff makes me want to barf in my mouth. At the end of the day, though, we aren’t conforming to the institution of baby-making heteronormativity. We’re queering it, by the nature of how we’re making our family and how we are going to raise this future human person. That’s actually pretty badass.

It’s the rest of the world that frustrates me.

Since I’ve announced being pregnant, literally every person I run into wants to talk baby stuff with me. It’s fine. I guess. I mean, it’s fine except I know it doesn’t happen in the same way to men whose wives or girlfriends are expecting. It doesn’t even happen the same way to Waffle because he isn’t the pregnant one, so he doesn’t have to talk about it with strangers and acquaintances as much. Literally when I went to a new eye doctor recently, she started talking kids with me and proceeded to try to convince me that making your own baby food was the way and the light. Which, fine, that’s fine advice, but we’re doing an eye exam right now?

At this point, I’ve mostly come to terms with the fact that being a Pregnant Woman and eventually a Mommy is going to define who I am to other people. Having a supportive queer partner at home and a supportive community around me makes all the difference.

Also, I’m an activist and an opportunist and, well, I know the day will come when I’m at a press conference or in front of a camera talking about some bill or cause and making a statement that starts with, “Well, as a mother, I believe…” That’s okay, too.

Being a parent, being a mom or dad, is a huge deal and it’s going to become a huge part of my identity. I just don’t want to lose myself in the process. Being a part of the Autostraddle family and meeting other amazing lesbian and queer moms has been so affirming to me, that we can queer “mommy-ness,” that we can be all of the things we are and also embrace being moms. So here I am, embracing it!

That was a lot of feelings. Ready for some more?

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10 Random Baby-Making Feelings I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Cool for the Summer

I’ve been back-and-forth about whether we should get air conditioning for our house. We had a window unit, once upon a time, but then we put it in the pet room (we have a pet room) so our little furkids wouldn’t die in the summer. I wanted to get another AC at first, but then I looked into it more and realized that the growing demand for air conditioning is a huge contributor to global warming. It’s one of the biggest threats to the environment and it seemed wasteful to have two window units just so I could sleep comfortably.

So I sweat it out in the summer. I’m so cranky during the hot months. I’m miserable. I stuff my bra with ice packs, draw the blinds, and scowl in the dark on the worst days. When I realized I’d be due August 20th, which means I’ll be in my third trimester right during the hottest weeks of the summer, I quickly changed my tune about that AC thing. Long story short, we’re using our tax return to get central AC installed so that Baby T. Rex, Waffle, and I all make it through this summer pregnancy. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that my body is ready.

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2. Mommy Things I’ve Googled This Week:

• “charlie horse pregnancy”
• “babywearing best carrier”
• “vulva fell asleep pregnant”
• “plus size when did you show 24 weeks”
• “weird dreams pregnant”
• “when did partner husband feel baby kick”
• “can baby hear my cat”

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3. Both Hands

Glucose finger stick testing is taking its toll on my tough little fingers. I’ve got little bitty dots on the sides of all my fingertips where my tiny needle prick holes are healing and a couple fingers are developing light callouses. So that’s a fun thing that’s happening. I have to crank up the needle depth by half a turn to pierce through the tough parts now. It doesn’t help that I favor my left hand. For some reason, it bleeds better and hurts less than my right hand. Why? I don’t know! Tell me how human biology works!

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4. Give Green a Chance!

We got the room painted the green color and we both like it a lot. It’s bright, but not shockingly bright and it definitely isn’t pastel. It’s exactly what we wanted. With the white trim and darker brown furniture, I think it’ll be the right kind of primary-colored jungle feel.

Which is good because Waffle has a serious case of…

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5. Dino Fever

It’s getting intense. Here’s just a small sampling of dino stuff Waffle has bought in the past couple weeks, mainly from Etsy sellers.

These should be coming soon, too!

Say hello to the pièce de résistance to the dino nursery, this adorable mobile.

I pushed back on the little white felt person, because our kid is Korean and I don’t want them staring for hours at a person who doesn’t look like them. They’re going to have their whole life to internalize racism and be inundated with images that don’t look like them. Believe me. I know.

Long story short, Waffle messaged the seller and we’re getting a custom version of this mobile with an Asian-looking kid at the center, which is going to be hella cute!

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6. Things Remi Either Really Likes or Really Doesn’t Like Based on Intensity of Squirminess:

• my cellphone ringtone
• chicken tikki
• warm water directly hitting my belly
• when I lie on my side
• when I lie on my back
• French vanilla ice cream
• when I drink ice cold water
• conference calls on speakerphone

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7. Surprise! (Gender)

One of the midwives at our midwifery group put “surprise gender” as a note on our file so practitioners would stop asking. Bless her.

The number one question we get, by far, is, “What are you having?” Of course, the snarky answer is, “A baby!” or, “A human!” What people actually want to know is the assigned sex of our dino. The answer is, we don’t know, chose not to find out, and we don’t want to know. It’s not so much that we want to be surprised. We don’t plan on having pink and blue cigars at the ready in the waiting room. I don’t care if the doctor yells, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” and I also don’t care who looks between the legs of our newborn to assign a sex based on visible genitalia. We genuinely don’t feel the need to know. We aren’t taking bets on what it will be, though we also get asked a lot what we think it is going to be. Honestly, I have no idea and that’s fine.

It’s also not that we don’t believe in gender. Quite the opposite. (If you believe in gender, clap your hands!) It’s that gender is, in fact, very real and we don’t want to start putting gender feelings on Baby T. Rex before it even emerges. Even if we try our very best, we will start to imagine what T. Rex is like if we start thinking of them as a “boy” or “girl.” We want to meet them when they get here. It’s why we have one gender neutral name picked out, regardless of assigned sex. So we can imagine them in our life and our family without getting bogged down by imagining two different gendered futures.

Of course, we believe in gender, but not in holding hard and fast to gender norms. Whatever gender T. Rex ends up being, whenever T. Rex determines their gender, we’re going to be just fine with that. We’ll probably use pronouns congruent with the assigned sex after birth, for simplicity’s sake, but if T. Rex comes out as something else later in life, that’s fine with us.

Unfortunately, I don’t always feel like having this whole conversation with my acquaintances, much less perfect strangers who ask this question. So to save time and emotional energy, I just say that we want to be surprised if they push for details. It’s not honest, but it ends the awkward conversation faster.

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8. Furbaby, Meet Baby

I’m pretty sure our xenophobic and emotionally-fragile cat will freak when we bring home a new human. He’s afraid of everything: loud noises, knocking on the door, things that sound similar to knocking on the door, human voices, new furniture, new smells, people food, dogs barking, children’s laughter, the vacuum cleaner, the broom, shoes.

I’ve considered getting one of those baby sounds for pets albums. A lot of people seem to get these for their dogs before they bring home a baby. Anyone tried it? Does it work for cats?

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9. Heel-Toe-Heel-No

In college, I would traipse across campus in the dead of winter in 5″ heeled shoes like it was nothing, schlepping two tons of books in my shoulder bag to boot. Quite a femme bragging right, considering I went to one of the coldest and snowiest colleges in the U.S. But that was then and this is over a decade later. I’ve started to trade out my high heels for flats and platforms over the last few years, saving the stilettos for special occasions only. I gave away my last pair of 5″ heeled boots last year, after putting them on for a party and realizing I was physically incapable of walking in them. Your center of gravity changes as you get older and it changes a lot when you’re preggers.

This past week, I tried to wear a pair of sensible platform heels to work, 3″ Aerosole brand shoes with a whole lot of cushion. Aerosoles is an American brand that is literally designed for comfort. By the end of the day, I could barely walk. I almost fell to my death trying to descend three flights of stairs.

So flats it is, from here until the end of pregnancy and then, well, probably in general. I am a masochist at heart, but comfort is winning over fashion right now.

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10. Baby’s First Party Photobooth

As much as some people have been asking for bump pictures, it’s just not something I do. Depending on the time of day and what I’m wearing, I don’t always even look that bump-y. Just yesterday some person told me I didn’t look pregnant at all, which I’m never sure what to say back to. Is it a compliment? Is it a commentary on my weight? Should I be flattered? Should I be offended? Either way, I just don’t take bump pics. I do spend a lot of time staring at myself in the bathroom mirror and frequently grill Waffle on whether my belly is changing. I just don’t think to take pics. Maybe I’ll feel inspired in the coming months.

We were in NYC for a party last weekend, though, and we took a photobooth picture. So here’s your bump picture, world! Remi’s First Photobooth! (Actually, not true, we took another photobooth picture when Remi was a mere embryo on New Year’s Eve.) Eat it up!

Countdown to Baby T. Rex: Crying Over MasterChef Junior and Halfway There (23 Weeks)

If you didn’t pop into the Friday Open Thread last month, you may not know that my queer house spouse and I are expecting. Yes, I’m knocked up and it’s every bit as weird and fascinating as I thought it would be.

We found out on December 14, 2015, shortly after rolling out of bed in a cozy hotel room at the Wyndham Garden Chelsea in NYC. Our flight was departing in a few hours, so we were hazily pulling on clothes and cramming dirty laundry and travel detritus back into our luggage.

It was our third month of trying to conceive using anonymous donor sperm and IUI (intrauterine insemination). We’d only bought three vials to start, knowing we’d have to take a break and try again later in 2016 if we didn’t get pregnant before the end of 2015. There were about a million blood tests and transvaginal ultrasounds and appointments and then we were ready to do the thing.

We tried to remain pragmatic about it, knowing that it rarely “sticks” on the first try. Still, the first time around, it was hard not to imagine that we might be one of the lucky few, that it might work right away. This was compounded by the fact that I’ve never been pregnant before and didn’t know what to expect. Also, I chose to use Clomid to stimulate ovulation, which had side effects that imitated pregnancy symptoms. So I was Googling: “early pregnancy signs cramping,” “early pregnancy signs neon yellow pee,” “first-week pregnancy symptoms,” “hot flashes pregnancy,” etc. etc. and I was cautiously optimistic that it had happened. It hadn’t.

The first and second rounds, my ovaries only released one mature egg each time, which is normal if you are conceiving without medical intervention, but we were paying cash money each time and we decided we needed to double down. (I never planned to use fertility drugs at all, but once we started actually doing this thing—and paying the bills—I changed my mind.)

By the time we got to round three, I was using a higher dose of Clomid to work my ovaries into hyper-drive and a HCG trigger shot to send as many eggs flying into the hopefully-fertile abyss as possible. I had three mature eggs by the time we went in for our third IUI appointment. Of course, I had a million weird body things happening this cycle: the weird pee, the uterine cramps, the dull aches, the hot flashes, the mood swings. Still, I was pretty sure it was all the drugs and hormones I’d been taking and convinced myself that it probably didn’t work again. I don’t like setting myself up for disappointment.

Waffle packed a pregnancy test for our NYC trip, knowing the last day of our trip would be the first day we could get an early positive. We didn’t think or talk about it too much over the few days we were there. We were seeing friends and religiously attending a theatre show we’re a little obsessed with. I rolled my eyes when he pulled the pregnancy test out of his luggage as we were trying to get ourselves packed and out the door. “Do you really want me to do this now?” I asked. I took the individually wrapped pee stick and hovered over the pristine hotel toilet. Waffle lurked outside the open door as though he was afraid to cross the threshold into my pee-area (which is unusual for us—we’re usually all up in each other’s bathroom space). “Don’t look at it without me!” he said from the doorway. It was kind of too late, though. As soon as I looked down between my legs, I saw two lines. Two bright, clear, crisp, assertive, happy-horrifying pink lines.

“You have to wait three minutes,” Waffle read off the back of the pregnancy test box.

“Uh, is two lines pregnant?” I asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I wasn’t trying to look, but…I definitely see two lines.”

Waffle came into the bathroom and confirmed that I wasn’t having double vision or a brain hemorrhage or something. Then we tried to act normal while we were both clearly freaking out. It was thrilling in a terrifying way, like the moment just past the very top of the roller coaster when your stomach drops out and you lose touch with gravity. As much as we wanted it and paid hard-earned cash to make it happen, there was no way to emotionally prepare for this moment. Three rounds of IUI is the average for conception using IUI, but I’d had some timing issues with my cycle. After the first two duds, I’d convinced myself the third would be a miss, too.

Yet there were two undeniable pink lines on the used pregnancy test I wrapped in tissue and left in the hotel bathroom. (Sorry, hotel cleaning staff.) We’d need a blood test to confirm, but it was pretty clear. We kissed, stared at each other with ridiculous grin-grimaces on our faces, finished packing, and headed to JFK airport.

So we’re a little over half-way through now, just past the 23-week mark. It feels like August 20th is a million years away, but it also feels like it’s going to be here before we know it. From now until the day Baby T. Rex decides to meet the outside world, I’m gonna write down some of the weird and wonderful and less-wonderful stuff I’m thinking, feeling, and over-processing, as queers do.

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16 Random Baby-Making Feelings I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Literally everything makes me cry

I’m not a crier. I’m a deeply empathetic person, but I also keep very distinct personal boundaries and I definitely don’t like to show emotions, like, on my face. I really resist the idea that hormones affect me because it sounds like patriarchal bullshit, but pregnancy hormones affect me. OMG. I teared up over a scoop of ice cream the other night because it was so good. I knew I could no longer deny it when I started crying, no, bawling when my favorite MasterChef Junior contestant was sent home. I felt the tears coming, which is usually where crying at TV or movies begins and ends for me, then I was sobbing. Like, gross snotting and sobbing and having to wipe off my glasses. Because this little girl was so sweet and just a perfect little cupcake too good for this world.

I wanted her to be in the finale so badly. She was the youngest contestant and the last-standing Asian-American contestant and I just like, imprinted on her deeply. I blame my overreaction completely on Baby T. Rex. I mean, though, look how perfect and adorable she is!

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2. Puke free, baby!

I was one of the lucky ones. I never got morning sickness, ever. Thank fucking goodness, because I hate throwing up. I hate it so much. In college, I was one of those people who would hold it in when I was drunk or hungover, even though it would probably feel better to just let it all out. In fact, I think the last time I threw up was on my birthday 10 years ago and it was actual hell. Cranberry-pink-vomit-bathmat-destroyed-drunk-ugly-crying-in-the-bathtub-hell. I’m so glad my constitution has been strong.

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3. Booties, booties, booties, booties, rockin’ everywhere

Waffle has gone into full nesting mode and is buying everything dino-related and/or adorable on Etsy. He bought four pairs of sneaker booties this week, which I believe strongly is four pairs of booties that Baby T. Rex is going to kick or pull off immediately. If they are anything like me when I was a kid (or adult), they are going to want to be as nude as possible as much as possible. The booties are pretty cute, though. Baby shoes are annoyingly adorable, in general.

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4. Goodbye, sugar high.

I was diagnosed with prediabetes about a year ago and, like, honestly I just didn’t give a fuck. Like, I was supposed to meet with a nutritionist and I didn’t because I’m a proud fat girl and that stuff is triggering and weird for me and I just didn’t want to. Because of my prediabetes diagnosis, I was screened really early for gestational diabetes. Guess what? I have it!

At first, my midwives were concerned that I actually had undiagnosed Type II diabetes because early gestational diabetes usually means you are Type II. I was kind of scared, not that Type II is the worst thing, but just that it would make my pregnancy higher risk and it would mean a pretty significant long-term lifestyle change. However, after some testing and meeting with a diabetes nurse, it was clear that I just had plain ol’ prediabetes prior to being knocked up. It was a relief and a wake-up call, too. I’ve been able to keep my blood sugar normal, with no impact on T. Rex, through a carb-controlled diet and light exercise.

Being pregnant and having to carb-count is kind of the cruelest joke. It definitely takes the fun out of “eating for two.” If I’m honest, though, I’ve never felt better. I don’t feel hungry and I can sense a change in my energy levels.

Also, the emphasis of the diet isn’t on losing weight, as it would be if I wasn’t pregnant, so I’m not struggling too much with fat girl triggers. Any time I’ve dieted intentionally before, it’s made me spiral into negative self-talk and emotional breakdown. Surprisingly, this has been OK, though I struggle sometimes with having to plan my whole day around my six-meal schedule. I have to think about food, literally, from the time I wake up until I go to bed. I’ve gotten pretty good at the finger stick testing, though. I did it totally by feel in a dark movie theater the other day like a boss.

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5. Baby T. Rex is already making me a better person and I hate it

Speaking of making lifestyle changes, it’s so me that I’m suddenly doing things that I haven’t ever been able to do before, like find time for 30 minutes of exercise each day. I am kind of horrible at taking care of myself physically, emotionally, etc. I’ve always had a habit of putting other people before me. I work in social justice and helping fields. I’m always overcommitted and falling behind. Self-care is a constant challenge for me. Even though T. Rex is still a part of me, not a separate person, somehow being responsible for their health and development has flipped a switch for me. Suddenly, I can find time for exercise and say no to yet another evening meeting after work and plan ahead to cook meals at home. I hate that it takes being about this little fetus dinosaur for me to actually do these things. I’m hoping I can continue to do them for myself after T. Rex is born because it feels really good.

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6. Choppin’ broccoli

For some reason, Baby T. Rex loathes broccoli. I love broccoli and I keep forgetting I can’t eat it. I’ll have a couple bites of broccoli and everything will be cool, then I’ll take another bite and like, ABORT ABORT NO SWALLOW AHHHHH!!! It’s very sad because broccoli is delicious.

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7. Clear Eyes, Full Bladder

The last time I was both this over-hydrated and dehydrated all the time, I was at A-Camp. I’ve never liked drinking water and now it’s all I do all day long. Also, peeing in every public restroom I come across in my daily travels, out of necessity. Also, almost peeing my pants or actually kind of peeing my pants on the regular.

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8. Fetus storytime with the boi

Waffle and I have this thing now where every Sunday he reads me my weekly update from a pregnancy website. It usually happens late at night before we go to bed. The site is kind of heteronormative, of course, so some of the stuff about “my husband” isn’t applicable, but straight women don’t refer to their partners as “non-gestational carriers,” either, so… Anyway, it’s neat-o to review together what T. Rex is doing this week and what my body is doing in relation to that. Like T. Rex can hear now and it can taste what I eat and it can sense light. WEIRD SCIENCE! I hope T. Rex likes all this hot sauce I’m scarfing. As you can probably tell, I’m a low-key pregnant woman, so I’m not really into the fancy pregnancy apps or taking stylized bump pics, but this is one baby-making tradition I enjoy with Waffle that’s just between us.

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9. Gestational Diabetes Test Kitchen Score Sheet:

wheat bread plus fruit: A+
wheat bread plus tortilla chips: B+
wheat bread plus wheat pasta: B-
wheat bread plus potatoes: B-
lentils plus basmati rice: A+
lentils plus potatoes: C+
lentils plus pasta: D-
brown rice plus beans: A+
brown rice plus lentils: B-
brown rice plus fruit: A-
injera plus lentils: C+
injera plus collards: B+
pizza: surprisingly B+
white bread: surprisingly B+
white rice plus literally anything – FAIL FAIL EPIC FAIL GAME OVER MAN

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10. Arm stumps and alien face

Waffle thinks our baby is already the cutest baby ever, based solely on ultrasound pics. Honestly, I feel like all ultrasound pics of babies kind of look the same. Like, it looks like a sea monkey, then an alien, then a larger alien. It’s pretty cool to see it move around and listen to the heartbeat and all that, but it doesn’t look “cute” to me yet. Waffle strongly disagrees. That said, the name “Baby T. Rex” comes from our first ultrasound, at just seven weeks, when the fetus looked like a little swimmy fish with arm stumps and a tail.

“It has my T. Rex arms!” Waffle (who is part dino-boi) whispered to me as we were checking out at the front desk, sending me into a giggle fit. From then on, it was Baby T. Rex. Its arm stumps have grown to a longer length and it lost its tail by the next ultrasound, but the nursery will be dino-themed.

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11. I need Isabel to Google some stuff for me

Google is your best friend and worst enemy when you’re preggers. Every time I feel something weird or think I do, I’m on Google looking it up. How did pregnant people do pregnancy before internet forums? I lurk, but reading the experiences of other pregnant people (OK, typically very heteronormative moms) is mostly reassuring. I can lose hours scrolling through forums, though, just making sure that this weird cramp I’m having is OK and Baby T. Rex is not in danger.

I’ve found a couple forums for lesbian moms (which I’m not, but close enough) and once in a while I come across a pregnant dad in a thread, but there isn’t a lot out there that is for queer parents. Even the lesbian moms can be kind of…gendernormative and like, not my people. I guess it’s why we started our own queer family blog way back when, though I’ve really got to get back to updating it. I did join a feminist parenting group on Facebook and that’s been kind of a nice safe place to find other parents who want to smash patriarchy.

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12. Moving and kicking, but not screaming yet

Feeling a baby kick you from the inside is kind of like having your first confirmed orgasm. Like, you’re not sure if you had an orgasm until you really have a good one and then it’s like, “OH YEAH THAT WAS DEFINITELY AN ORGASM!” I’d felt little tiny maybe-movements-maybe-gas since about 20 weeks, but this week Baby T. Rex went into full active mode. And won’t stop moving. It’s similar to that flippy feeling your tummy gets when you go over a hill on a roller coaster. Before, when it was just once in a while and very light, it felt like popcorn popping or light tapping. Now it’s, like, most of the day, every day, tummy flips and pronounced poking. It’s pretty wild. It’s definitely weird. Like, what is even happening with my body right now? I don’t hate it because it’s somewhat reassuring, but oh boi, this kid is going to be as hyper-active as I was when I was a tot. We’re in for it!

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13. Does this make me a hippy?

I’m drinking apple cider vinegar like a crunchy mom and I’m really into it. Supposedly it brings down your blood glucose numbers if you have diabetes. I don’t know if it’s actually helping metabolize my glucose or whatever, but I do know it’s delicious with fresh lemon juice and stevia. I found a pasteurized version with the mother intact at Trader Joes, breaking the family moratorium on shopping at Trader Joe’s. (Waffle works for a competing grocery chain.)

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14. Going to Lowe’s is the best way to start a fight with your partner

So far, we agree on the major baby-planning questions and decisions. We did manage to get into an almost-shouting match in a suburban Lowe’s over paint color, though. I actually didn’t care too much about what color the baby room was as long as it was bright and generally gender neutral. I thought we both agreed on a jungle green color, then Waffle brought orange into the mix. I was like, “OK, fine, I guess, if that’s what you want.” Waffle wanted me to have a strong opinion one way or another. I just didn’t have a strong opinion. I was like, “This is your thing. I don’t care,” which was definitely the wrong thing to say. This resulted in us passive-aggressive poking at each other until we were on the verge of an epic blow-out, over paint.

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15. Belly worship

Being a self-proclaimed fat girl, I feel like people can’t tell I’m showing unless they know or see me every day. Like, I already have kind of a nice, round, protruding belly. I love my belly. The shape has changed in the last few weeks. It’s hardened and is more “up” than “out” now, but I don’t necessarily look pregnant to the untrained eye. Well, I guess I kind of always look pregnant to the untrained eye. When I was trying on maternity clothes a couple months ago, I didn’t need the bump padding they have in the dressing room to imitate a second-trimester bump. My body is naturally bump-shaped.

I both love and hate that showing off my stomach is now socially acceptable because I’m knocked up, because being pregnant is the ultimate heteronormative act and suddenly my body is desirable and fertile instead of gross and offensive. It’s liberating and infuriating.

That said, a lot of my regular clothes work well as maternity clothes because my body mass hasn’t changed too much yet. Speaking of, maternity pants with the belly panel are my new best friend. Why was I not wearing maternity pants before? Why are they not marketing these for non-pregnant people who want to be comfortable and have pants that stay up over their belly? I’m a lifetime convert. I’ll be damned if I go back to regular jeans.

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16. Pickleback, hold the whiskey

My cravings are salty, more than sweet. Since I’m on a gestational diabetes diet, this is actually ideal. I could drink a whole jar of dill pickle brine every damn day. Oh, geez, now I’m craving pickle juice. Ugh. BRB.