It's ALIVE: Another Fetus in My Uterus
We tried to get pregnant for a year.
Again, we used cryogenically frozen sperm from California Cryobank. We weren’t attached to biological siblings years ago, plus we don’t have a lot of disposable income, so we didn’t stock up on vials after Iris was born. Four years later, though, her donor was still available. We like her a whole lot, enough to buy another one, so we did.
You can read up on IUIs in my post, “The Basics of Lesbian Baby-Making.” This is the most cost-effective way to grow a human, plus a midwife can do it so you might not need to step foot in a hospital at all depending on where you live. I masturbated in our midwife’s house eleven times over the course of a year before getting pregnant with the potential person growing in my bod.
The upside to this was that it only ran us a thousand dollars a month on a credit card. Woo. The downside was that for a year I doubted my body’s evolutionary success. The doubt roots deeply, and this doubt was one I experienced when we were trying to get pregnant in 2012, too. Of course, this downside would have happened in a hospital, too, with a higher price tag. Sooooo upside is that we’re pregnant. I need to change how I am running this business so I can expand it and incorporate our local manufacturers so this shop can support not just a family, but a community. I want us to donate to LGBT organizations in an impactful way. I want this shop to be helpful, it’s the only way I can make money for my art without guilt. Maybe somewhere out there is a me who gets pregnant easily and keeps pregnancies and takes pictures of myself with a marquee board spelling out how big my kid is. Maybe nowhere out there is that me because my baseline emotion is. . .contained curiosity. Not revelry. I’m pregnant and thinking about this business.
Another thought: the juxtaposition of the house I live in set next to the culture I live in. It’s a fucked-up, unfair image I carry with me all day every day. It feels unethical to raise a kid, but it feels more unethical knowing we need more people in our world who feel connected to other humans and who grow up wanting to make a difference. My partner is a biomedical engineer whose favorite work is outreach work compelling females to become doctors. I’m a designer who makes clothing that doesn’t involve the ends of the binary. Most days, my partner and I think we are making terrible parenting decisions, but our 4-year-old engages with her world admirably, and looking at her makes me think we are probably good parents. She wants siblings. We want her to have siblings. We want to be helpful and we want our kids to be helpful.
It’s highly likely she will get a sibling out of this pregnancy.
We are eighteen weeks pregnant.
The doppler ultrasound picked up a boingy heartbeat. Like a dribbling basketball.
Their current name is D’art. Iris’ in-utero name was ET.
I can feel them moving around in their house inside of my body as I write this.
They are about five inches long. They don’t have a tail, or webbed phalanges. They look mostly like a really small baby. We are less than two months from viability. Sweet parasite.
My body’s original parasite:
Pictured (left to right): sleeping acorn, mommy squirrel