Happy Mother’s Day

For Mother’s Day I got a migraine and ‘the finger’. Oh, yes, my daughter gave me the INDEX finger. 

 

I said, “Punky, don’t touch the flowers, they are not yours.” She proceeded to bend down and attempt to touch the pretties. I said, “No Ma’am. We don’t touch the flowers.” She whipped around and gave me this face. Accompanied by the finger.

We always say she’s a carbon copy of me, in fact, it’s been said on numerous occasions that I may or may not have impregnated myself. (As a side note: We really lucked out in the donor department and I am immensely grateful to him for making yesterday possible for us.) 

In the end, Mother’s Day was full of screaming, crying, a black eye, the discovery of all FOUR molars coming in and an early bedtime. Mommy is officially over Mother’s Day. At least for this year. 

Hope everyone else had a much better time than I did!!

The Story of My Life – Part 3

Continued from Part 1 and Part 2

K and I spent the entire night chatting about nothing and everything. It was never sexual, it was never overly personal, but I remember feeling those butterflies in my stomach. I felt the warmth in my chest that fills you up when you are crushing on someone. That night we exchanged phone numbers.

The next night we talked into the wee hours of the night. I was late to my class the next morning because I had been up too late. We never had any kind of sexual talk, it was never dirty, it was never scary. It just felt right.

I had met a few men online before, but never a woman. We decided to meet the next afternoon. I was scared to death. I had never been on a date with a woman. I had never met a woman with the sole purpose of ‘dating’. This was all very new territory to me. However, when we met for the first time, we clicked. It was perfect.

I still remember her pulling up in her dad’s huge green truck. Coming out of the truck in her black boots, jeans, and red hoodie. I just stood there like a lump – not really sure what to do or say. The first thing she said to me was “Can I have a hug?” She wrapped me up in her arms and it was literally the moment when I knew what true love felt like.

We went out to eat at Applebee’s and had awkward first date conversation. We went back to my dorm room and well, the rest is a fade to black moment. We spent the entire weekend indoors, watching movies, cuddling, hanging out. We ordered in and for once in my life I didn’t have to pay! This was a completely new experience and it was something I was slowly starting to love.

Over the course of two weeks, we spent our time online and on the phone, never too much time apart. We didn’t make anything official until I came home from a party, quite drunk and called her up. I had already puked my guts out in the hallway and she knew I was not quite right. It had been a really long time since I had drank that much alcohol. I asked her to be my girlfriend officially that night.

I’m sure she was skeptical, she was dealing with a drunk, bi-curious girl who didn’t know what she really wanted. Anyway, on May 1, 2013; 10 years ago, we made it official. If you asked me when I was 17 where I would be in 10 years, I would never have said I would be here.

If I hadn’t met K, I may have gone home and lived my life out in the small town I grew up in. With the reputation of slut and whore and been walked all over. I would have consented to having babies and drinking and drugging. Reliving my parents mistakes. If I hadn’t met K, I she hadn’t sent me that simple IM, I could have gone back home and lived my life as a sub-par person with no concept of what love truly is.

But, she did send me that message and she did take a chance on the bi-curious girl with no picture posted. We have been inseparable ever since. We have weathered the good and the bad in the last 10 years. She helped me through the death of Katy, who was in a car accident shortly after K and I started dating. She held me as I cried and cried that my best friend died before I could make up with her. She helped me learn who I truly am. She was patient with me as I tried to figure out where God played a role in this new identity that I had. She was kind when I was not sure I wanted to come out to my family.

She held my hand when my dad condemned me to Hell. She held me as I cried when he told me I made a deal with Satan. I stood outside the locked door as she confined herself during her Great Depression. I watched her deteriorate into mental illness and did what I could to help her. We have gotten through the failed jobs and the ‘woman we don’t name’ and we have come out on the other side.

We have had quite a few trials and tears. We have had a lot of bumps in the road of 10 years, in the end, I have learned that I know what real love is. It’s not sex. It’s not some superficial affection for someone else. It’s a willingness to stick by the person you love. It’s a need to grow with the person you love and not give up on the person you love. It’s accepting the good and the bad, the flaws and the faults.

I’ve learned, in the last 10 years, that love is not rainbows and bunnies. Love is hard work. Love is not kind, it is not patient, it is not easy, but it is unconditional. You can dislike the person you are with, but you will always love them. When you know there is something left fighting for, love is real. When you scrape to the bottom of the barrel of your sanity and your hope and you still find a reason to hold on, that’s love.

Here we are 10 years from now. Happier than we have ever been. We have a daughter whom we love more than anything. People say that children of gay couples are at a disadvantage. Well, I am here to tell them that I have seen what my life could have been in a straight marriage. I know how my kids would have been affected.

Our daughter is better for having two PARENTS who love each other. Who have weathered every storm and come out better for it. I hope to show her that love is real and it is worth waiting for. I hope to build up her confidence and her self-esteem so she doesn’t have to depend on someone else to make her feel some sense of worth. I hope to show her that it’s love that makes a family, not gender, not society’s ideals of normal.

No matter the gender of the parents, if love is the constant, the child will be forever at an advantage. I know she’s going to be more prepared than I was for what life throws at her, because she can see how her mama and I came out – she will know how we thrived in a time when we should have been knocked down, beaten, and torn.

The real purpose of this entry was to show the evolution of how I learned what real love was. K has shown me what it is to love and to be loved. I know now, it’s not easy, but if it’s real, it never is. In the end, happiness finds you, so when I stopped looking, love found me and my happy ending was 10 years in the making.

The Story of My Life – Part 2

Continued from Part 1 -

I also learned that one of my very good friends was gay. This is really the first time I had ever met someone who was gay. It’s a funny story, how she came out to me and how I was introduced to the idea of being gay. We were both in a Diversity class. We had the class at different times, but we had the same assignment. We had to write an autobiography about our life. Oh, boy did I have things to write about. We had include our feelings about race, religion, sexual orientation and other such diverse things and how we came to feel that way. It was supposed to be a way of evaluating our beliefs and how our past has shaped our future.

My good friend, Katy, asked me if we could swap our autobiographies so that we could proofread them. I was fine with that, I didn’t have any reason to hide any of my past junk with her, she knew most of it anyway. When I sat down to read hers, she talked about being in Catholic school and being raised in a very large family. As I turned the pages, I learned more and more about her. Then she told the story of when she came out to her parents.

I was in shock. This was Katy. I didn’t know anyone who was gay before. And frankly, in my own autobiography, I talked about how homosexuality was wrong and God said it was a sin. I said that I didn’t agree with it and made some pretty upsetting comments about it. Needless to say, Katy and I had a nice long chat after our exchange of autobiographies and I decided that I loved her no matter what. I didn’t care that she was gay and that God couldn’t possible send someone like her to hell.

Anyway, college was kind of a blur and really it was pretty much the normal. I met a boy, I fell in love with him, we were together a good portion of my first year in college. However, right before the end of the school year, right after Valentine’s Day, he came out to me as well!

So, needless to say, we broke up! However, we stayed good friends and I enjoyed hanging out with him on different level. We had a nice, tight knit group of friends while we were in college and we all pretty much hung out together.

At one point, there was  a snag, a bump in the road. I accidentally outed my two best friends. It was innocent and at the time, I didn’t feel like I outed them, but looking back I know that I did. A few of our friends had come out and asked me if I knew whether or not Katy and Rob were gay. In my heart, I knew I couldn’t come out and tell someone that, it was a very personal thing. So, instead, I simply said, “You need to ask them that for yourself.” Of course, they automatically took that as a confirmation from me.

Look, I’m not proud of how I handled that situation, but I also didn’t know how to answer the question. I didn’t identify as gay at the time and I likely didn’t really grasp how important it was for either of them to stay hidden until they were ready to reveal themselves.

By the end of a very long gossip filled, rumor filled couple of weeks, Katy blamed me for our group of friends finding out she was gay. I don’t blame her for that now, I did, in a way, out her. I still feel terrible about that. She stopped speaking to me and in fact, was pretty vocal in her hate for me. I lost my best friend that day and it has haunted me ever since. Of course, now, I know how hard it was for her to be forced out in the open like that. I didn’t do it intentionally and I certainly didn’t mean to hurt her, but I did.

So, I lost my best friend and I started reaching out for new ones. My entire group of friends stayed friends with Katy and I was left with pretty much no one but Rob. He and I were pretty much inseparable for quite some time. This is when I started to wonder what it might be like to be gay. Yea, I know, it sounds like I just woke up one day and decided to be gay and the simple explanation could be just that. I had a realization that I wasn’t really as straight as I thought.

Once the door was opened, I wasn’t sure how to step through it, but I started to think that maybe I should. The door was never visible to me before. It was also not an option for me. I didn’t even know the possibility existed. I won’t lie, it WAS as if the door appeared one day and I was just … gay.

I started by being bi-curious. I’m sure I’m not the only one who had that label for some time. I wasn’t quite ready to sit down and decide that I was gay forever. I didn’t even know what that would mean. I hadn’t figure out the ins and outs of it all.

At any rate, I set up a profile on one of the dating websites for gays and lesbians. I didn’t put up a picture and I didn’t really fill most of it out. I didn’t initiate the conversations, I’m not really sure what the goal of this action was. Probably just to stick my toe in the water, look around, observe, I never had the plan to actually meet anyone or go on a date with anyone.

I had plenty of women IM me. They really did freak me out a little bit. They sent me pictures of body parts and wrote me some pretty explicit things. I was almost turned off by the whole idea of being gay. Not because I wasn’t gay, but because these women on this dating site were aggressive and they were quite … scandalous for me.

Then K sent me a message. Just when I was about to close the chat and shut down my profile on the site, her IM stopped me. I’m not exactly sure what she sent me, but it was normal. It wasn’t some naked picture or dirty text. It was a simple hello.

To be Continued ……

The Story of My Life – Part 1

This is likely going to be a very long post, but one that is necessary to capture an entire lifetime of lessons. The story starts more than 10 years ago. This is about to get pretty personal. If you know me personally, you may or may not know some of the details I am about to share.

I originally started to write this to get to the part where I met K 10 years ago and we fell in love, but to get there, the road is a lot more complicated that I expected! So, I will break it up into parts and hopefully we can all get through this together in one piece.

My story is a long one, but it has a good lesson and a nice ending, so hold on tight and ride with me through memory lane. The bumps are rough and the twists and turns are brutal, but we will come out on the other side with smooth sailing.

Meet 17 year old me.

At the time, I was very, very straight. I actually didn’t even know that being anything but straight was an option. I didn’t know any gay people (they later came out) and I had no idea what being gay really meant.

I am from a very small town, where everyone knows everyone else. This picture was taken shortly after my heart was broken by my very first long term boyfriend. We had been together for a year and a half. My first … well, my first everything. When we broke up, my life spiraled out of control and I started my wild, dangerous path of bad choices and even worse consequences.

I started drinking and by the looks of this picture, you can tell I started smoking. This picture was taken the summer after my junior year of high school. By the time I started school, my senior year (summer is only 3 months, let’s just be reminded) I had racked up sexual partners in the near double digits. Male partners. I didn’t care who they were, I didn’t care how old they were.

Looking back, I was on a mission to find someone to love me. At the time, I thought that sex meant love. I thought that if someone wanted to have sex with me, well, they loved me. I was burned a  lot, taken advantage of, I had a lot of trips to the free health clinic and frankly, I had quite a few pregnancy scares. In the end, I was drunk a lot, I was high a lot and I had a lot of sex.

I wore clothes that were too small and too revealing. I partied hard enough to black out sometimes and there are parts of my crazy ride that I don’t fully remember. I was almost raped by three guys in a bathroom, I was out until the full morning light was coming up, I was gone from my house for weeks on end and no one really noticed.

At the end of my very wild three months of summer, I decided that I just needed to quit school and do my own thing. I was 17 and I didn’t need to be told what to do anymore. I almost dropped out of high school, my senior year no less. I had a very good friend to talked me out of it. He told me that it would be the worst mistake I would ever make in my life. So, I started my senior year.

My self-esteem was shot. My reputation was shot. My place in the town I grew up in was at the bottom. The slut, the town whore. I was less than the dirt on the bottom of someone’s shoes. Of course, I only heard the rumors about me. The elaborations. Believe me, the real story was enough – the rumors were worse. I had made enemies, I was the mean girl in high school. I regret that. I regret being the mean girl. I regret being the whore.

Needless to say, I couldn’t stay where I was. I moved out of town in the middle of my senior year of high school. I moved to a town where I knew no one. I said no goodbyes to my friends and I had no one to hold me there. In fact, most of them didn’t even know I moved away until I had been gone for quite some time.

I moved to a place where no one knew me. Where the entire senior class had grown up together. I had no social life to speak of. I had 1 friend. She forced herself on me and we became great friends. Otherwise, I spent my days at the library reading, studying, doing my homework and acing my classes. I didn’t concern myself with boys, I didn’t concern myself with drugs or alcohol or sex.

Meet nearly 18, fully changed, almost graduated me.

Moving in the middle of my senior year, changed my life. It also helped me to remember my worth. It put lifted my self esteem and I decided to make something of myself. I made the most of this new life that was handed to me and I did something different. I turned myself around. I went from an almost high school drop out to a high school graduate, bound for university life in the fall.

After I graduated, I moved back home. I worked and kept to myself. I saved the money I needed to buy my textbooks and then when the three months were up, I headed off to college. My first year of college was full of making new friends, re-inventing myself and becoming a better person.

To Be Continued ….. (This story is a lot longer than I expected!!)

The Beginning: A 10 Year Love Story

10 years ago today, I met the woman I would spend the rest of my life with. We didn’t make it official for a few weeks, but it was a day that I will never forget. K and I have weathered more bumps and bruises than most couples could withstand. I had no idea that from the moment she sent that first IM, we would be inseparable. Unbreakable. Forever.

The Utterly Uneventful Weekend – Thankfully

So, with the last week full off a sea of poop, we are looking at a simple and quiet weekend at home.

This house is full of Nick Jr. and a dancing toddler.’

With Punky being so content and playing independently, I have been able to design and set up my new Etsy Shop. I am a little obsessed right now. I just realized that there really aren’t many birth announcements and baby shower invitations for same sex couples out there. At least, not any that I would want to use. So, I decided that I would sit down and make my own.

I’m having a ton of fun with it. It’s been a while since my mind has been this creative and I can sit in front of my computer and just let my mind create. I do so love the awesomeness of Photoshop.

While doing this, I have been using Punky’s newborn and baby pictures as stand ins for some of the announcements. It really reminds me of how much she has grown and changed over the last year. She’s so big and her hair is longer and her limbs are longer and she’s more mobile.

It’s astonishing to me.

There are so many people out there in my blogging friend community who are getting BIG POSITIVES  it’s almost as if spring is definitely in the air and the lesbian baby making boom has arrived! Congratulations to all of you and I can’t wait to follow your journey until you make it to the place we are with Punky!

I never realized how awesome it is to be in a circle of like-minded people in this community. I find myself talking about each of you in some sense and it makes my day to see new posts and updates in the your adventures.

I’d really love it if you would check out the new shop I am working so hard on and maybe share it around with your friends! Don’t forget, blog readers get 10% off all personalized pregnancy or birth announcements right now! Custom orders, no problem! (Coupon Code: MAMAS)

I promise, I will have something else to talk about eventually, right now, this is where I am focusing my attention and creativity and it makes me have a new sense of excitement.

That’s how I spent my weekend, how about you?

New Etsy Shop Up And Running

So, this is just a little update. I have a new Etsy shop up and running. Printable invitations of all types. Mostly, right now, baby showers and birth announcements are listed. I will have more designs up and running sooner or later!

I will send you a digital file and you can print it as many times as you want!

So, if you guys have any desires for announcements or invitations of some kind, I am giving you guys a discount for being such an awesome community. So, if you are wanting to order something, or contact me for a custom listing, use this coupon code MAMAS for 10% off any order!

Go check it out, Mamas! I am putting the link to the shop on the navigation as well, so when you need announcements of any kind, hit me up!

Events You Can Print

Motherhood Is Full of S**t

From the title, you can tell, I am really trying to curb my mouth a bit. When I was pregnant I cussed like a sailor so much that K swore that our daughter was going to come out the spawn of Satan. Heh.

Anyway, we are dealing with a teething, sickly, puny kiddo right now. While I do so love when she wants to cuddle with me, I hate to see her so yucky feeling. I’m about to give a lot of gory, baby grossness, please be warned! I have learned that since I have become a mother, I am obsessed with bodily functions and they don’t phase me like they once did!

When she turned one last month we moved her from formula to 2% milk. When we went to her one year check up the doctor said to use 2% or whole milk. Our WIC office gave us checks for Whole milk, so I didn’t think anything about it, just switched her to whole milk.

Shortly after we switched it, she started getting really bad diarrhea. I thought maybe it was just her body working out the kinks to the change, so we continued the milk for about a week. We did stop the milk last week and she hasn’t had any milk. We thought she might be intolerant to dairy, but she has no problems with cheese and the 2% was fine.

Now, we are 2 weeks past the change in milk and she’s still got watery poops! We are wading in smellier than normal blow outs. She goes through 3-5 pairs of pants a day and my poor K is on diaper duty all day long. I feel terrible for her. Yesterday, she called me at work and said she had changed 3 watery poop diapers in 15 minutes. We decided it was time to see the doctor.

I called the office, we have such an awesome pediatrician’s office, they got her right in on my lunch break. When I took her in, she looked fine. She’s still eating and drinking. She still plays and climbs and doesn’t look or feel sick. She’s just exploding her weight in poops.

The doctor says it could be a million different reasons why she has had this diarrhea for so long, so we would not have any real diagnosis. However, she probably did have an intolerance to the Whole milk, some babies just can’t stomach the Whole milk, and we needed to go back to 2% milk and water only. She told us to cut off the juice.

(And it might be a good idea for her to stop eating mud and flowers. I totally don’t think that’s the problem, but I just had to show these pictures, to bring some brightness to the poop discussion!)

Doctor mentioned that she has been voiding so much that her gut is probably void of the good bacteria, so she told me to go get Probiotics over the counter at the pharmacy and put the powder in her sippy cup. If that didn’t clear things up, which the doctor seems to think it will, we would have to start collecting ….. poop samples?! Oh good grief.

The doctor said she would call and check up on us on Friday morning. That’s one thing I love about her doctor’s office. I swear, they are always checking on us and making sure that K and I are doing alright, as well as Punky. Their waiting room is so inviting and their exam rooms are awesome. I just love this office. A pair of new mommies couldn’t ask for a better office.

If Punky is still exploding out the pooper on Friday, we will have to use this kit she gave me to collect samples. Lucky me, I’m off on Friday. Guess which Mommy gets this job, LOL. I can’t complain. I’m not the one currently at home changing the million soupy diapers every five minutes. If we have to get collections, they will be testing for E-coli and Rotovirus. Doctor mentioned that it is possible that she has Rotovirus. Poor kid!

So, I am sure this post was full of a lot of TMI, but that’s what is going on in our world. We are wading in diapers full of soupy poop. Punky’s back molars are coming in and I know she’s teething too, so that can’t be helping with the other issues, but on the bright side, she’s not running a fever and she’s still pretty active for a sickly one. Her little booty is raw and sore to the touch though!

Also, for anyone who was wondering about the amber teething necklaces, we got Punky one about a month ago and she’s been wearing it non-stop except for bath time. Her back molar is almost completely out and until recently, we didn’t even know there was a tooth coming in. I like to say this is a successful tool for teething then! I got our necklace for pretty good price on a shop at Etsy, One Alaskan Mama, the woman was pretty awesome with turnaround time and I am happy to recommend her shop for these necklaces!

Only Children Are Just Fine

We talked about a second baby and we went back and forth for a week or so. I know that’s not really a lot of time to make a decision and we may change our minds in the future. For now, we decided that a second child isn’t really a good idea for us. I know, in our hearts, like most women, we want to have more children. We want to nurture a new generation of children in our family, in our blood. To satisfy that urge to bond with a child of our own. It’s just too much right now for our heads to say yes to.

The positives are obvious; K could have a child of her own blood and carry a child. I could actually name the child! We could give Punky a sibling. We would be growing our family. We could maybe have a son.

The negatives are more complicated; the insurance issue, the mental illness, the genetics. We would have to likely get a bigger home. We would care for a toddler and a newborn. It’s just a lot of more heavy weighing things.

Right now.

I’m not going to say that we won’t revisit this situation at some point. However, the reason we were thinking about it, was because our donor is considering his own options as far as child-making abilities. In the next few years, he may not have the goods.

We are women, so who knows what tomorrow will bring, but right now, I think we are making the right decision for the two of us. We got it confirmed by K’s psychologist that it may not be the best idea, right now, for K to carry a child. She did say that it can be done if we want to do it, but at this point in time, it may not be the best option.

When we thought about having children and beginning a family, we always talked about having multiple children. But, when Punky was born, we have had talks about it before and really, it’s not really something we were concrete about. I think K and I both really thought our donor was over the whole conception thing and we really didn’t want to talk about asking him again. Until he brought it up, I feel like we were content with the lives we have and the one child we have.

So, we may revisit it. We may not. I never like to think I know how something will happen in the future. I don’t like to think in absolutes. I’m kind of funny that way.

It’s similar to my religious views. I don’t believe, now, that there is a God, persay. At least not the same God that people ‘worship’, because that God is just … eh … fickle. I don’t agree with the doctrine that is taught by the church. I also have to believe that I don’t know what’s actually true and what’s reality. Who knows, we may have been created by some all powerful being. We don’t really know. No one knows. Part of me wonders if I am just not a believer in the church.

Never think in absolutes. I never have. I just went off on a tangent. In the end, we have the child we both wanted. We love her more than anything and at the moment, she may be all we really have time or energy for. We could change our minds, but I really think this is the right decision for us, as hard as it is on my heart, my head knows we have made the right choice.

Baby Number Two?

I am always the first to say that we would not be having a second child. That one kid was enough. However, the real reason for those words was because I didn’t believe we would have another shot. I had, in my mind, made it pretty clear that we were lucky enough to have the one child. I didn’t want to press our luck and our donor has been so very awesome about this in the last year, that who wants to push his boundaries either!

In the back of my mind, I always wait for the day he shows up at the doorstep and wants a relationship with Punky. The way we conceived, it’s his right to ask for these things. K and I have already discussed that we wouldn’t fight it either, but it would be a strain on how we wanted to raise our daughter.  We hear from him from time to time, he’s a blessing. He just likes to catch up and see how we are doing, tell us how he is doing, and it’s a pretty awesome relationship we have with him. I just never dreamed of asking him to help us again, because it’s emotionally something that most people wouldn’t be able to handle twice. Our donor is truly an amazing individual in that way.

Then, yesterday, something happened. Our donor messaged me on Facebook and brought up the very real possibility that we are able to try again. I just assumed he was done with that whole thing. This did two things in my mind. It sealed the fact that he really is just content helping us create a family (I knew this, but there’s always that what-if in the back of my mind) AND we really do have the option to try for another baby.

If we had another baby, K would carry this time. I think that is a beautiful thing. She has her own clock that is just ticking away and I felt terrible that she hasn’t been able to experience being pregnant and having a child. We have a lot of things to work out though. I think we both do want a second child, our hearts are definitely in the path of wanting a sibling for Punky and a second baby to round out our family. Maybe it would be a boy this time!

K is BiPolar and she has some things she needs to work out. She is on a lot of medications that she would have to give up in order to be healthy for the baby. We need to talk to her psychologist and psychiatrist to see if they have options that they can give us for how they feel it might work for her to get pregnant. I also am afraid that all these medications may make it hard for her to get pregnant. She’s also Punky’s stay-at-home mom. I am thinking she is going to be off her medication, pregnant and trying to care for a very mobile, willful toddler.

She is also on my insurance right now, but in the times we have the baby, she would not be, because of the way my insurance is changing. We are going to a high deductible employee plan with an HSA that is overseen by the federal government. The government doesn’t recognize her as  my ‘tax dependent  which means, I can cover her through my employer’s insurance, but I have to pay full cost for all medical and prescription costs because of the deductible and not be reimbursed by the government sponsored HSA.

All in all, we would be going about this pregnancy, should she carry this child, pretty much full cost. I am going to talk to some other people about options on that before we go ruling it out based on that alone though. I know I can cover the child on my insurance and claim the baby as a ‘tax dependent’ after it’s born, so that’s not an issue. However, pregnancy is expensive. More expensive than we could afford, I’m still dealing with the bills I racked up from my own pregnancy and I was on insurance that covered a great deal of the cost.

Then, there is the way we conceived. The way we would conceive again, because it is the most full proof and frankly, the least expensive method. If you want to know the details of that, check out Path to Punky. Our donor lives several states away. We would have to get him here and then host him here and hope to conceive as fast as we did with my pregnancy. One shot. One week. One roller coaster of emotions. Can our relationship withstand that twice? I like to think it can. However, the situations is different now. We have a baby in the house. We have more responsibilities than we had last time we did this.

There are a lot of obstacles standing in the way and frankly, I don’t know if it’s the best idea to get pregnant again. However, at the same time, I want to give K a chance to be pregnant.

Also, while I know that she loves Punky as her own, there is something, it’s just different, when you have a child that you carried for 10 months and delivered from your body. It’s a different kind of bond. I know it is. I don’t want to take that away from her. I certainly didn’t like being pregnant, it was my least favorite time of this process of getting Punky, at the same time, I’m glad I had the experience. I also have a bond with Punky that I feel like is stronger because I carried her.

In my mind, I want to make this work! I don’t understand why it has to be so damn difficult for us to have the family we want, and straight couples all around the world are having ‘OOPs babies’ and some are being abandoned or not very well taken care of. There are people out there who say babies of gay parents are at a disservice, I will never understand that. We have to plan. We have to spend a great deal of time and money and effort to have our children. We have to REALLY REALLY want our children.

How can a baby be at a disadvantage because we love them so much we would do anything to have them?