Category Archives: Blog Update

23 Weeks to Birth: The Countdown to Baby T. Rex Saga (and a final update from K&W)

Hi

old friends and new!

Since we stopped actively updating QFM, a lot has happened. We continue to get hundreds of hits per month from all over the U.S. and world, so we’ll keep the site up until it stops being relevant or helpful. Since we started on this path, we’ve met more and more queer families making parenting decisions and the procedures themselves are becoming more accessible to folks with limited income. We’ve still got a lot to fight for to make the decision to parent or not to parent accessible to all!

Another thing that happened since we’ve last updated the blog is that KaeLyn blogged through her pregnancy for Autostraddle, where she’s a staff writer. We’ve included the links to that whole series here! Enjoy! We are so grateful for the people we connected with through this blog and the path it sent us on as parents. ❤ K&W

(Countdown to Baby T. Rex Links below the jump)

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Baby T. Rex is Due August 20th!

Hey folks,

We know we’ve been on hiatus for a while now. But we did need to tell you, if you haven’t caught the news on Autostraddle or Instagram yet, that we’re pregnant! More specifically, Kae is pregnant and we’re both excited!

KaeLyn is going to blogging about it for Autostraddle in a miniseries called “Countdown to Baby T. Rex.” Follow her thoughts, feelings, and snark there! If you want to find our why the name is “Baby T. Rex,” head over to Autostraddle for the first installment: “Crying Over Masterchef Junior and Halfway There (23 Weeks.”

Some other queer baby stuff you may have missed:

Gayby Maybe? The Epic Queer Parenting Roundtable! – foster adoption, adoption adoption, IUI, feelings, heartbreaks, and more from queer parents and parents-to-be

Caitlin’s Pregnancy Stories for Autostraddle – Caitlin’s thoughts on loss, miscarriage, birth, joy, and pregnancy

Queer Mama Video Blog for Autostraddle and the birth of Juniper Jude – Haley and Simone’s journey from pre-conception to parents!

Thanks for reading and following our blog, as always, and wish us luck!

❤ KaeLyn & Waffle

Getting Real, Real Fast

Oh, my. It’s been some time since we’ve published anything new. We actually have had some potential submissions and some ideas for content, but what really happened is that life got in the way. KaeLyn started writing for Autostraddle, where she gets to write about queer family stuff and also music and fashion and politics and art and life. KaeLyn also went back to grad school because her credits from earlier graduate work were about to expire and she didn’t want to start all over again. Plus she is still working her full-time job and another side job. Waffle is still working nights six days a week.

We both (but especially Waffle) got fixated on a fan blog for Sleep No More that we created about a year ago. And we went on a child-free bender, of sorts, becoming absolutely obsessed with an immersive theatre production in NYC and the international community of fans surrounding it. We have seen the show 35 times now over two years, mostly in the last year (which is actually not that much compared to some fans).

Just some adult kids in love with a building and giving no-fuks.

Just some adult kids in love with a building and giving no-fuks.

It cost an amount of fun-money that we are kind of embarrassed to fess up to. We like to think we were practicing for having kids a.k.a. throwing all our disposable income into a vast pit and burning it. (Current average cost of raising a child in the U.S. is $245,000!) But really we’ve just been having a great time being childfree adults who can jump into the car and drive to NYC on a whim. It’s been grand!

But we’ve finally decided to buckle down. We knew it would take us about two years to get it all together and it has. Financially, we have some money set aside and we’re realistic about what it might cost altogether and we’re prepared to deal with it. Emotionally, it took us a while to feel “ready” after we made the decision. We didn’t want to jump into it. We (especially KaeLyn) wanted to do the very queer work of over-processing, thinking about all the angles, discussing and debating what was important to us. This blog was an important part of that process. We met people online and IRL who had gone through these processes and many people who wanted to someday. We found the resources we were looking for. We wrote the words we felt we needed to write just to get them out. And we’re damn ready.

In fact, we had our first appointment at the fertility clinic exactly a week ago from today. Since then, KaeLyn has been back two times and will be going again tomorrow for tests. We’re getting ready for our first round of IUI in September. If we get knocked up, we plan to keep it hush-hush until we know for sure that it’s going to stick, but we are officially trying!

Our first appointments were efficient and helpful. The staff is phenomenal. They are trying to preauthorize her for coverage because KaeLyn actually has great infertility coverage through her health insurance. However, she has Cigna and we are fairly certain they won’t accept the preauthorization unless she is “medically infertile.” But we were prepared for that and we feel lucky to be able to afford this, even if it may involves racking up some more credit card debt once we run through our stash of savings.

We have (over)thought a lot about what we want, so we were fairly sure of ourselves going into the clinic. The info was helpful and thorough, but most of it wasn’t new to us. We had a very warm mandatory session with a fertility counselor and came out feeling reassured. We’d considered a lot of the questions already and we felt even more ready to do this damn thing. That said, the only thing we know for sure is that we know nothing. We won’t know how anything will be or feel until we get there and we both reserve the option to change our minds about the things we think we know, at any time.

All the paper we have accrued over the past week. It's getting real!

All the paper we have accrued over the past week. It’s getting real!

We plan to post a bit more now that we are coming back to earth from our year of irresponsible-but-really-really-fun-immersive-theatre-fandom life decisions. We have a couple more trips to the show planned, but it is slowing down. KaeLyn is about to go off of one of the boards she is on and will wrap up grad school after this semester (December 2015). She is quitting one of her three jobs this fall, too—one of her side gigs (but will still be writing for Autostraddle and keeping her full-time employment). Waffle is working his butt off, going in for overtime twice a week, when possible. We are holding off on any major purchases or home renovation projects. The time has come! We’ll make sure we keep ya’ll posted.

In the meantime, check out this post on baby-making questions KaeLyn wrote for Autostraddle. The post is similar to what you’ve already read here, but the comment section is really interesting and full of great stories and questions! She is hosting an AMA on queer parenting (with queer parents and parents-to-be) on Autostraddle very soon. We’ll let you know when that is happening, too!

A Little Thank You from K&W

This post is by K.

It feels really weird to write about parenting when you are not a parent because really, we won’t know what we know until we know it. And we know that parenting will be a wild ride, take us to unexpected places, and generally challenge everything we think we know now. We don’t feel like we know everything…or anything…about parenting kids. Ask me about parenting our furkids and I can tell you exactly how I feel about the care, feeding, and loving of small critters. I have many opinions about everything from the best quality foods to alternative pet medicine to behavior modification techniques.

And I guess that is why this blog happened. W is pretty clear about why he wants a kid and, quite frankly, his feelings about having kids are pretty normative…meaning, he wants a kid for the reasons many people want children. He loves kids. He loves babies. When he imagines his future, he  imagines a family that includes children. He has a strong desire to be a parent. When we decided to go down this path, he ran out and got as many books on kid-making from a LGBT perspective he could find. In that process, we found there are pretty much only books for lesbian and gay parents. That was disappointing and it meant switching things up a bit in his head while reading those books (which he devoured faster than I’ve ever seen him read…anything…W is not much of a reader), but W could still read those books and find himself and his feelings reflected in them.

(The books he consulted were The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians: How to Stay Sane and Care for Yourself from Pre-Conception through Birth by Rachel Pepperand Confessions of the Other Mother: Non-Biological Lesbian Moms Tell All by Harlyn Aizley, in case you’re wondering.)

W also bought me a book after we had this discussion. It was Jessica Valenti’s Why Have Kids: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness. The fact that W got this book was for me was pretty insightful. It made me even more sure that we could do this together, because he gets it, where my hesitance comes from, and validates that my concerns are real. It was the perfect book for me at that moment, especially considering that Valenti’s argument was essentially that “mommy myths” are bullshit. She took on classism in breastfeeding politics, forced or coerced c-sections, the “having it all” debate, and feminist parenting. There were many parts that resonated for me. If you are a person who is interested in kids, but tired of the gender crap that comes with being a “mom,” this book is great. However, while I enjoyed the feminist take on parenting, the book was pretty heteronormative. Discussions about gender norms are often heteronormative and really only spoke to cis women as mothers.

As we continued on this path of learning and discussing and coming up with a plan to add a boobaloo to our family, I, especially, felt a big lack of community. A good number of my friends have kids. I know I could call on them for kid talk and kid advice. I’m sure I will. Many of my friends are queer and those that aren’t are obviously allies, but I didn’t know how to introduce the conversations I really needed to have, about negotiating the place between radical queer politics and culturally normative families–like us, this middle-class, queer married, monogamous, house-owning couple planning for a baby. I didn’t know how to talk about this stuff with our real-life friends without making it weird.

We also have radically queer friends who are probably kind-of a little weirded out by us having a kid. Or, rather, that is something they just totally can not identify with. I get that. I was there. I’m not going to barf my privilege all over them by making them work through my baby stuff with me.

Finally, we have childfree friends, who I strongly identify with. I know they would talk about it with me, but I also totally get why they are childfree and I enjoy talking about other things with them, like life, work, politics, music, etc. I felt weird approaching them with my baby-having issues.

So this blog happened. It’s been amazing. Friends who are we don’t really talk much about queer stuff with have reached out about their identities and experiences as queer parents. Acquaintances from our local queer and trans* communities have told us that they have also been trying and/or have been navigating some of these same issues as hopeful parents-to-be. Strangers from all over the place have commented or messaged us with their own stories. We’ve gotten a lot of support from friends all around and found other bloggers to follow and learn from. It’s all been really, really great.

So thank you for reading and for all the messages of support. We didn’t really know what this blog would look like when we started. We toyed with the idea of pitching a book, instead. But I’m so glad we created this blog. Looking back, what I really needed, more than anything, was affirmation that I could be queer and be a mother, be a feminist and be a mother, be an activist and a busy professional and still a parent. Thank you all for helping me process my feels, for making me feel even more confident about this decision. I’m ready and I’m excited and I know we’ve got this and it’s all because of ya’ll.

Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going

Here’s the reality. It’s been slightly over a year since W and K sat down and started talking about this baby plan. Since then, we have done a lot:

  • W read a poop-load of lesbian parenting books, pretty much immediately (leading us to realize that there are no queer parenting books yet);
  • K has, like, 85% come to terms with the fact that people are going to be weird and gender normative about all this;
  • K started fertility tracking, discovering that she is incredibly regular (yay?);
  • W & K decided on at least 1 possible gender-neutral name that we both do not hate;
  • We wrote lots of fun posts about stuff like debunking the “traditional family,” body love and parenting, and defining a queer fam;
  • We told our friends and family that we are heading down this path;
  • We started the blog because we felt isolated from other queer parents-to-be and because we felt there was very little out there for queer and/or trans* parenting issues.; and
  • We found amazing people IRL and in the blogosphere who get it, which made us feel embraced in a real way.

But it’s time.

We aren’t the type that typically sit back and take things slow. When we make a big decision, we usually find a way to bring it to fruition immediately. But here are the other things that have come up over the past year:

  • Money, money, money, money. We have lots of student loan and credit card debt that we want to reduce first, as we have a not-so-irrational fear that this might cost a lot;
  • K is going back to school in the fall to finish her Master’s degree, mainly because she found out that this is the last year she can transfer some of her credits from an earlier half-finished graduate program. So back to school, it is, because it is cheaper this way (see student loan and credit card debt, above);
  • We are really lazy about making doctor appointments and have been thinking about changing providers, anyway; and
  • We have been going on a lot of little vacations and trips and doodads, which is really counter-intuitive to saving money (see student loan and credit card debt, above), but we are kind of having an extended pre-baby fling. It’s just the truth.

It’s time, though. It’s time to take action. (Doo doo doo-doo! <–That’s a superhero theme diddy.) If we had the kind of parts that mash together in a reproductive way, we’d be doing this already. A little over a year in, we are fully realizing there isn’t ever really a good time. For some, there is never a time at all, because having kids in the way we want to do it is a privilege of us being comfortably middle class. The debt-laden, student loan-saddled, underemployed middle class, but still. So…by the end of 2014, we hope to be actually trying–like with the sperm and the egg salad. We’ll keep you updated.

In the meantime, we hope to keep this blog more actively updated with posts about LGBTQI+ parenting issues and intersectional parenting issues, reach out to more guest bloggers (We keep finding awesome guest bloggers who are also super busy people.), and keep it fresh.

In the meantime, here is a very important video of a giant panda putting their baby panda back to bed: