It has been a long time since I have given this blog any real attention. Our Birdie is three years old now and I am beginning to find my voice again. Because there is no best place to start again, I am starting somewhere, anywhere, here, now. I hope to be better about sharing my writing more often, even when it is imperfect. Thank you for reading along. 

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I have stopped paddling and our kayak is floating and rocking on the water. Your arm just barely reaches over the side, nevertheless you dip your fingertips into the water, then you pull them out and suck the cold salty water off and smile. We see a horseshoe crab, long since dead and smelling of decay. I pick it up and show you. You touch its shell, you ask, Will it pinch me, Papa?  No, honey, it’s dead. It’s not alive anymore? No, it’s gone back to the earth, that’s just it’s shell. We touch the crab and talk about it’s texture and when we have had enough you throw it back and say, go back to nature.

I paddle us on and you lean back into me, now your palms are rubbing and patting my legs, reassuring yourself with the contact of your skin against mine. You ask, What dead mean, Papa? This is not the first time we have talked about death, but today your questions feel different, there is something more under the surface that you want to say. How old were you when Grandpa Bill died? A teenager. Why he have to die papa? He was very very bad sick. How old were you when great grandpa buddy died? A grown up, a few years before you were born. Why he die? He lived a very long life, almost 100 years, it was just time for his body to be done living. What it mean to die, Papa? It means your body no longer works. You can’t talk or feel or think. You go back to the earth, sweet pea. I answer your questions as I best imagine you can understand them. I try to be gentle and honest. I am sure my answers are imperfect but they are enough for you, for now.

The question is forming in your mind, I see it behind your eyes but I can’t bear for you to ask it yet. What will I say to you? You don’t ask it tonight, but I can feel it coming.

Weeks later we are in the comfy chair in your bedroom, you are snuggled on my lap. It is getting late and I am trying to get you to sleep but you are unsettled and restless. It is dark in the room and I can’t see you, but I feel your weight against me. I know that one of your hands is rubbing the well worn paw of your bear-bear, the other hand is fingering the collar of my shirt. When you fall asleep you will lay your palm against the skin of my chest.

 Papa…will I die? I am caught off guard by this, I take a breath and I say, yes, sweetheart, some day everything that lives dies. But not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not for a very long time, you have a lot of life to live first. I feel sad about dying someday Papa. Oh buddy, it can feel sad to think about dying. It’s ok to feel sad about it, I feel sad when I think about it too.

Papa? Yes Birdie? Will you die someday? Now my heart is nothing but a lump in my throat and if I open my mouth I think no words will come out at all, just a rushing river of tears. I don’t know how to tell you this. I don’t want to have to tell you this.

What I want to tell you, my sweet one, is that I never ever want to leave you. That I would do just about anything to never have to leave you. But this is not how life works. This is the balance of exactly what makes life so precious and beautiful- that is it not forever, that it is out of our control.

I swallow as hard as I can and I make my voice sound calm and collected and I tell you the truth. Yes, someday I will die too. You don’t answer with words, you just reach up and hug me, you bury your face in my chest and maybe you can hear me or maybe you can’t but my tears are rolling down my cheeks now onto the top of your head- which smells like lavender shampoo and that only makes me want to cry harder. I tell you I love you, I tell you again and again that I love you. I want to fill you entirely with love so that whenever the day comes that I have to go, you will never wonder or want or search for my love. You will only have to look within you, there it will be in your blood, in your bones, in each and every beat of your heart.

You are mostly quiet after that and you fall asleep heavy against me while I sing you the same lullaby I have sung every night since you were born. I sit there still holding you, long after you fall asleep. Everything is fleeting and impermanent, but here in the dark you can still be my baby, and I can be your Papa forever, and I will never, ever leave you.

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Welcome, welcome.

Born May 20, 2014 at 10:24 p.m.

Our baby bear arrived eight weeks ago and nothing has been, or will ever be, the same since. In the past two months I have tried to write so many times, but after a few sentences I am stopped short by overwhelming emotions. I feel like I don’t have a context now- what is there to compare this to? Nothing. I feel very limited by language Love seems like such a very small word now. It is not nearly big enough to contain the way I feel about her. What I feel for her is greater than any other love I have ever known and comes from somewhere so deep inside I was unaware it even existed before her. Many people have asked me what it is like to finally be a parent and I have yet to come up with an accurate answer. Even in the hardest moments it is still the very the best gift I have ever received. It is amazing, terrifying and humbling. It is everything I ever dreamed of and far beyond anything I could have ever imagined or hoped for.

When I think that she has been here now for almost two months it seems impossible. I am quite sure just yesterday she came into the world, slippery, screaming, and looking up at us with dark, wondering eyes. But then again, how has it only been a couple of months? Already I can’t remember what it was like before her, I feel like I have loved her forever. And I suppose in a way I have. Before we made her, before we planned for her, even before I met Josh, I thought of her- my baby. I dreamed of her and hoped for her and so desperately wanted her. She was woven into the fabric of my heart so long ago that I have been practicing loving her forever.

I want to always remember clearly the day we met her. While we had a trusted team of a midwife, a doula, and nurses, the only person I can really remember clearly that day is Josh. I remember his gentle support and encouragement, how he said just what I needed to hear to keep me going. I remember him holding me as I leaned hard into him to get through the toughest contractions. I remember looking at him and seeing his trust in me and my ability to bring our daughter into the world safely. I remember him smiling at me with so much love in his eyes and feeling so deeply connected and close to him during our very last hours as “just us two.” Through my labor I focused a lot on Rowen, during each contraction I took big deep breaths for her, when I started to lose myself I remembered that she needed me to be strong for her. I didn’t worry about what I looked or sounded like, I just trusted that my body was capable of knowing what it needed to do and I listened as it guided me through labor. Towards the final hours I remember asking when it would end, and Josh would just say, “When we get to meet Rowen.” Anytime I felt like I maybe I had reached my limit, that thought reminded me that there would eventually be an end and it would all be worth it. Then, after ten hours of very hard work, I felt her body moving down through me getting ready to enter the world. There was a split second just before she arrived when I was scared and excited and on the edge of so much possibility…and then suddenly there she was. Like a little fish she slid out of me and was born into Josh’s arms. He placed her on my chest and I looked at her and thought, Oh there you are, it’s you. Finally, there was my baby that I had waited so long for. I looked from her to Josh and nothing else mattered or existed in those first moments together as a family.

These first months of parenthood are such an intimate and personal time, Josh and I are navigating completely new territory in our relationship and trying to figure it all out together. We have had to trust each other on an entirely new level. We have had to learn how to balance caring for our baby, ourselves, and each other. On nights with little sleep and a lot of crying we have had to practice forgiveness and patience with each other. The transition from being individuals within a couple, to being individuals within a couple within a family has not been flawless but I would like to think we have handled it with grace, love, respect and a sense of humor. I know that there is no one else I would rather be on this journey with than Josh. What is so incredible to me now is when I look at Rowen’s face I can see Josh. I see his eyes and his chin and his expressions looking back at me through her and it is amazing to see. I am looking at this person that we made together and I am falling in love with him all over again.

My relationship with myself has changed completely since giving birth to Rowen. I have had to adjust to postpartum hormones and anxiety in a way I wasn’t entirely prepared for. I knew that the months following her birth would be challenging, but it hasn’t been difficult in the way I imagined. We are lucky in that so far Rowen has been a pretty mellow person. I don’t feel insanely deprived of sleep and we haven’t [often] had to spend hours pacing, bouncing and rocking an inconsolable baby. Instead I have struggled with a love for Rowen that sometimes takes on a certain fierce, protectiveness and comes from a deep instinctual place within my body that feels out of my control. I have a hard time being away from her at all, even when being apart from her just means that she is on a walk with Josh- who I trust completely as an equal and capable parent. I sometimes have a hard time letting other people hold her, even when they are people who I love and trust. I know that this separation anxiety won’t last forever and doesn’t come from a rational place in my brain. I know that when my body begins to react to our being separate I can take deep breaths and talk myself down and remember that she is safe, that she is ok, and that I am too. After nine months of her growing inside of me I am still learning how to separate my body from hers- slowly and carefully without feeling like my heart is going to break apart completely. I know that in quiet moments where I am holding my baby, her hand a little fist clutching my shirt collar, her hot breath against my skin, her small body curled against mine- my heart feels as peaceful as it will ever be. I have waited my whole life for these moments, for this person to arrive, and sometimes it is all I can do to never let her go.

Now, so many weeks later from that very first day, I am still in absolute awe of her. When I look at her sleeping I feel like I have happened upon a deer in the woods. In those moments my love for her is quiet, calm and full of wonder. I watch her with held breath and a hand pressed against my chest, over my heart. I look at her and think, how is it possible that we made you? That once you were a wish that I had and now you are an absolutely perfect person. When she has periods of wakefulness she will lay on her back and lock eyes with us, her body will wiggle, and she smiles at us with her tiny toothless mouth. My heart skips a beat when I see our happy baby looking back at us with starry eyes. I watch her strong kicking legs running a phantom race to nowhere, her hands like little starfish swimming around in the air, and her mouth opening and closing trying to tell us all her big important stories. I feel like in those moments we get a little glimpse at who she will be as she grows, what she will look like and how she will move through the world. I try not to think too much about how quickly time is passing and instead savor all of these perfect first new moments we have with her. I try to remember that as she grows there are so many things to look forward to along the way. Someday she will laugh and giggle at us when we make silly faces at her, someday we will get to hear her voice and she will use it to say  Dada, Papa and so many other things, someday she will reach her arms up at us and will ask to be picked up and snuggled, someday she will stand up on her own two feet and take steps forward. Some day she will do so many big and small amazing new things and just maybe if we can focus on all those individual moments as they come, it won’t feel like it is all going by in the blink of an eye.

What I know for sure is that we are incredibly lucky that this baby picked us to be her Daddy and her Papa. I feel blessed to have carried her though my pregnancy and to have brought her into this world the way we did. I know that Rowen wouldn’t be here or be exactly who she is if we didn’t take this giant leap of faith in ourselves, in each other and trust that this was the right path for our family regardless of what anyone else had to say about it. I feel honored to have been entrusted as her caregivers as she grows and I feel hopeful that we will do our very best for her. Every single day I am amazed by her. Every single day I am grateful for her. Every single day we tell her how much we love her. I know being a dad is not always going to be easy, I know that every age comes with its bliss and its struggle, but I think that is all part of this journey we are on so I welcome it. I welcome Rowen to this world in all her perfection and flaw, in all her sweetness and rebellion, in all the magnificent little bits that make up her own unique individual character. Welcome, welcome, our little Rowen, we are so happy you have arrived.

 

The Waiting Game

Tomorrow is our due date. Which feels pretty significant in some ways, like- I grew a full term baby, like- Josh and I have survived the emotional/hormonal roller coaster that has been this pregnancy and we are still very much in love at the end of the ride, like- we have waited nine long months to meet this little person and whether it happens today or tomorrow or sometime next week, we are finally going to get to meet our baby. We are also trying to be patient and realistic around here and not pin all our hopes that Rowen will make their grand entrance tomorrow, we know that they will come when they are good and ready and there is no amount of want or worry that will make them come any sooner.

I have felt pretty patient and present through this pregnancy, until a couple of days ago. I think it is because we made it to the 39th week, I wrapped up work on Wednesday, and now we are literally just waiting. Yesterday I took Rigby for a long walk around the neighborhood and had a little talk with Rowen. I told them how much we were looking forward to meeting them, how we are so excited to see their little face for the first time, to touch their tiny fingers and toes, how I can’t wait to feel them against my chest and how I cry every time I imagine watching Josh hold our baby for the very first time. And much like my last birthday, just a few weeks before Rowen became a little cluster of cells growing inside of me, when I whispered a prayer to the universe and said, I am ready for you. I am also not ready for you, but mostly I am ready for you to be here whenever you are ready to be here. There is a place for you here and it will be here waiting for you and only you, yesterday I held my belly and whispered aloud to Rowen, We are ready to meet you, we are terrified and excited and probably wholly unprepared for the ways in which our lives will change in the coming months, but we are ready to be your dads as soon as you are ready to be born and be our baby.

This is a strange place to be right now, to be constantly ready for labor to start and to also try and not be overly focused on, when is labor going to start? But we are as ready, the car seat is installed, the nursery is set up, the hospital bags are packed, and Rowen and I are both healthy. Today we are enjoying a slow quiet rainy morning knowing it may be our last one for a long time. I wrapped up things at work last week and I have spent the few days sewing and cleaning, walking and resting, everything is as is in place as it can be and now we are just waiting…

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A few weeks ago, my dear and talented friend, Erin Clark, took these lovely photos for us. And though I am not personally feeling at my most photogenic these days, I am glad we have these photos to someday share with Rowen and to remember this precious time by.
[please do not post/print/use these photos in any way without written consent from me. thank you!]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April showers brings May…

Spring has not entirely arrived yet in Maine, it keeps dipping a toe in the water- hesitant, cautious, not ready to take the plunge quite yet. But April is upon us now, and despite the light snow shower last week, I feel hopeful that the warmer weather is ready to stick around for a while. All of this changing of seasons and quick passing of time caused me to stop the other day and realize that we have recently reached our 9th month of pregnancy. It seems like just yesterday with trembling hands and teary eyes I passed the stick with two little lines to Josh and we looked at each other and said, “holy shit.” Now my belly is a visible hill under my tee shirt, a little mountain for the kids I watch to climb on or drive cars across, where I can see the little movements when I look down and can feel a little bum sticking out. Now when we go to bed at night and Josh sings or talks our baby moves at the sound of his voice. Now there is a crib and a sweet nursery all set up waiting for this little one’s arrival. Now this growing person has a name, Rowen, and we are counting weeks not not months until we get to finally meet them. And now I still can not believe this is happening.

9 months!

When I was younger holidays were a mix of excitement, anticipation and anxiety- so much so that I threw up every Christmas morning due to my over abundance of holiday joy. I remember though, much of love of holidays stemmed from the mystery and possibility that they held. At birthdays I wanted to wait to open my presents last because I wanted to savor the feeling of what could and might be under the brightly colored paper and bows. It wasn’t a lack of gratitude for what I had or got, but there was always a little let down when it was over and the magic and wonder had passed. I feel just a little bit like that about this pregnancy right now. I am so excited and a little impatient to meet this baby, but I am also so happy to be right here we were are now. Right here where I haven’t made any big parenting mistakes yet, where Rowen is safely cocooned inside of me, where we don’t yet know the sound of their little voice, or their array of facial expressions, or if they have long skinny legs or chubby cheeks, if they will be easy to soothe or if we will spend hours pacing the floors of the apartment rocking, swaying and bouncing, if I will look down at their face and say- oh, there you are, or if there will be days and weeks of getting accustomed and familiar to this little strange being. There is so much possibility, so much that will happen and grow in the next  year, and the year after that, and the years beyond, this time right now is precious and as it draws to an end I am holding it a little closer. I know when the time comes I will be ready to open my heart and let go so I can let in all the new and beautiful changes that will come with our baby’s arrival, but until then I am holding sacred and staying present in what a miracle this in-between place is.

Recently we had a party to celebrate our growing family and warm our new home. It was a whirlwind of family, friends and community all gathered together in person and in spirit to share well wishes and welcome this new life. I keep saying it, but I still can’t say it enough- we are so lucky and so grateful for the people in our life who support and love us. The day after the shower Josh and I read the welcome notes that everyone who attended the shower wrote to Rowen [which we will save and read every year on their birthday], I cried at least three times, then later we sat in the nursery and opened the thoughtful and beautiful gifts people brought us, we found out that the paternity leave fund that our friends created for us surpassed the goal they had set [thank you, thank you], and I cried some more. I remember in the early days of the pregnancy, when the enormity of what we were undertaking started to sink in on a new and heavy level, both Josh and I took turns having panic attacks and melt downs saturated with; how are we going to do this, are we really ready for this, and who is letting this happen? But under all that self-doubt and worry I kept saying, it’s going to be alright, we are going to be alright, and Josh kept saying, we are ok, we are going to be ok. And here we are now, and we are more than ok or alright- we are beyond blessed, we are full of joy, we are as ready as we will ever be to jump head first with eyes wide open into everything wonderful and terrifying that is parenthood.

Lately, despite the aches and pains of 9 months of pregnancy, and the challenges of navigating the world as a man who is pregnant, I have been feeling so glad that I have had this opportunity to experience this pregnancy. There was a time in my life when I assumed I would never want to, or be able to carry a child. There were times during the planning stages, when Rowen was still an idea and not yet a person, when I wondered what we were getting into, and could I handle it, and was I strong enough. But now I have no worries or wonders, this was absolutely the right decision. I know not everyone who wants to have a baby this way is able to, I know that there are so many beautiful ways to create a family that don’t involve growing one yourself, I know that if this didn’t work out we would have found another way to become parents. But right now, I just feel so lucky, I feel so connected to this person who woke me up at 3:30 this morning kicking and moving and has kept me up to watch the sunrise out our apartment window on Easter morning. I feel perfectly content to be right where we are right now, and also perfectly ready for the moment that Rowen is ready to enter this world and everything changes.

blessed: [adj.] 1.supremely favored, fortunate; 2. blissfully happy, contented.

*Big sigh of relief*

We moved. To be more specific, we moved with the help of more than a dozen of our friends who showed up, packed their vehicles, carried our things up a tricky flight of stairs, and helped me clean our old apartment. They maintained good senses of humor and positive attitudes and were paid only in gourmet doughnuts and our endless thanks. I also can’t imagine how this move would have happened without Josh. Seriously, he was a packing, cleaning, organizing machine. At one point [with the help of an energy drink] he sawed the legs off our broken, too-big couch and hauled it out of our old apartment, single handed. He did the work of both of us and then some, without complaint. I don’t mean to gush, but that guy is the best.

And now we are in our new home which, despite the boxes piled up in every room still, feels very much like home. It is clean, and spacious and freshly painted. Our super sweet landlords put so much work and effort into making the space beautiful for us, and it shows. [Have I mentioned yet how blessed we are?] While we still have so much to do to really settle in, I am so glad we made this transition pre-baby arrival. Moving was a lot of work and both physically and emotionally. We left a house with a lot of collective history, full of people that we really love, and it wasn’t easy to let go of that. But our new space feels like the very best place for us to be right now, and I absolutely feel like we made the right choice in moving. I am looking forward to the months of nesting ahead and making a home with my sweetie, and our dear friend and housemate, and eventually welcoming our baby into our space. Already in the last few weeks I have felt a great sense of relief having the hard work of the move behind us, it feels like a giant box has been checked off the to do list, and now, even though there are still a hundred more little boxes to check off in the next couple of months, I feel like there is more room to breathe now and appreciate this journey a little bit more fully than before.

In the last few weeks I have found myself in a random moment in my day, caught up and stopped by the thought of just how very lucky we are, and how blessed I feel by all the love and support in our lives. As I mentioned in my last post, too much time during this pregnancy was spent caught up in negativity, worry and stress, both outwardly and inwardly, and going forward I made a commitment to myself to immerse myself in all the goodness that this pregnancy has been, continues to be, has brought us, and especially very soon what it will bring us- our baby. Because really, what else matters? What I have found is that the more I open my heart to see the blessings, large and small, the more they reveal themselves.

Months before we were even discussing actively trying to get pregnant I had become frustrated with the waiting for this process to start. So I took a coffee can out of the recycling bin and started putting money aside for our eventual “paternity leave fund,” we may not have been ready to make a baby yet, but at least I was doing something to support that goal. As time went on and the baby became something that was actually happening and not an abstract idea both Josh and I got serious about saving money, the coffee can grew into a savings account and we began discussing how much unpaid time we could afford to take off of work. The truth is, probably not enough [how much time to spend with your newborn is “enough” really?], because as soon as we had money put aside in savings we began thinking more realistically about the need to keep more money in savings now that we would have a child. Emergencies and unexpected expenses come up and both he and I know we will feel more comfortable knowing we have savings to fall back on when/if that need arises. A big part of our discussion in choosing to bring a child into this world was around the responsibility we would be taking on, and part of that responsibility is being able to financially support our family. Let me be clear- we can support our family, but we had been stuck feeling like we had to choose between using all our savings to stay at home with our baby as long as we could, or go back to work too soon after baby’s arrival and sacrifice important bonding time as a new family and recuperating time for me post-birth.

And then a few of our close friends approached us with an idea they had to fund raise money for Josh and I as a gift of time off with our new baby. Our first response was hesitation- we worried what people might think, we worried that it was asking too much of people, we worried that it was our responsibility to come up with this money ourselves…and then my wise friend Sage said, “Just say yes.” So humbly, we did. Our friends punched the numbers of how much we make, what our cost of living is, and came up with a goal of money to raise. In the end whether or not that goal is met is not important to Josh or I, we are enormously thankful for every single dollar that has been and continues to  be gifted to us which will help us both take off a much more significant amount of time post-baby than we would be otherwise able. When it was shared how much was raised in the first day both Josh and I were taken back by the generosity, kindness, and support of our circle of friends/family, our greater community and even complete strangers. I think of those first few months and the time we will be able to spend together with our baby, no matter how sleep deprived and exhausted we are, and I am overcome with gratitude for everyone who is making that possible.

Probably at least once a day now I go and stand in our baby’s room, which is set up with nothing but boxes, yellow walls, and a crib- and cry. Happy tears, overwhelmed tears, I still can’t believe this is happening tears. The nursery is something really tangible, more so than the clothes and gear we have collected that was piling up in our spare room pre-move. It is a space that we are putting intention and love into to create for our child and there is something special and sacred about the space. It is the same way I think about the local and greater community we are welcoming this baby into. We have been blessed with so much kindness, in the form of  emotional support, hand me down baby items, thoughtful homemade gifts, much needed baby supplies, offers for donated breast milk, and most recently- financial support for time off after birth. When I look at step back and look at the people in our lives who are our support network, who will be our baby’s support network, I am caught with a lump in my throat and a hand on my heart and I think- what a beautiful, special, sacred circle we are welcoming our baby into.

People keep saying this baby is going to be so lucky to have us for parents. But to be honest, we are the lucky ones here, we have so much goodness already, and this baby is going to bring more joy, love and wonder than I can imagine our hearts even know how to hold. Thank you all, for reading, for supporting us, for loving us, for donating…for everything you have given us and continue to give us on this journey, it is my honor to share it with you in whatever small way I can. Thank you, thank you, thank you…

The beginning of the end.

This past Tuesday marked 3 months until our due date and all I can think is, Woah there! Let’s slow this all down a little. I realized the other day how much I have begun to enjoy this pregnancy, and then I immediately thought, how can it almost be over? It is not that I wasn’t enjoying it before, but because of a lot of complicated and layered factors, I felt like I wasn’t able to even make room for the joy, the bliss, and the amazement at what was happening with this little person growing inside of me.

The first couple months I was wrecked with anxiety about something happening and losing the baby, I was battling nausea all day every day, insomnia,and pregnancy hormones were in full swing leading to hours of unexplained crying. We also weren’t telling many people about the pregnancy so there wasn’t much support for why I was feeling so terrible and worried and anxious. In short, I was a disaster.

Then the second trimester came and everything settled down for a little bit, the wanting to throw up and also eat only bagels every day all day subsided, as did the long bouts of crying. But then we started sharing our news with people outside of our immediate and protected circle of family and friends. And, for the most part, we were met with so much excitement, joy, love and support, but not always, and that was [and continues to be], really hard and disappointing. I also struggled with how it felt unjust to have to worry about what people would think about our family, about this very private and personal choice, and especially to already feel like we are having to defend this kid we created and rally against a world where not everyone is ready to accept them with open arms and no questions asked about how they got here. The pregnancy began to feel less like it was our special secret, and more like another coming out that everyone we told got to weigh in and have an opinion [good or bad] on. As the months went on there were big changes happening in our personal lives, which were not entirely baby related- but let’s be honest, everything is baby related these days, like it or not. Due to increasing aggressions and fights between our two dogs, we had to re-home one of our dogs- which was heartbreaking and one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. We decided to move before the baby came, which meant finding a new space for our growing family and finding people to take over our lease so we don’t loose our security deposit. And while the decision to move was overall a positive and necessary one- it added a layer or two of stress into an already stressful time. Then out of the blue my car died, on the side of the road on the way to work and I began to think maybe the universe was against me. Then I thought better of it and realized that the universe was just getting all of this out of the way before May, so that when the baby arrives perfect and healthy and never crying, we can just enjoy it all with absolutely no undue stress. Ok, that might be an exaggerated pipe dream, but it got me through some of my darker days.

And now here we are at the finish line of the second trimester and the start of the third trimester, or the beginning of the end. I feel huge, sore, and it is getting harder to find ways to mask this growing belly and find any comfortable position to sleep in. But I also get to feel this little baby moving, kicking and punching all time time now. And though it may feel inconvenient- the belly is tangible evidence that this baby is growing and getting bigger and getting more ready every day to join the world. The other night I couldn’t sleep and I lay in bed counting kicks and pokes and I suddenly felt very sad that this part would end. There is something so precious and intimate about pregnancy, something magical about a person growing inside of me who will someday be independent of – and yet, still a part of us, something amazing about what my body is capable of, and something so beautiful about what has been happening for these past six months.

I have also started caring less and less about what other people think about this pregnancy and about our choices. The more real this baby becomes the less space I have for people who aren’t able to be overjoyed, excited and as in love with this little person as we are. There just isn’t room for anything else these days, and I refuse to make space for negativity about our child or their journey into this world. At some point I realized that we aren’t becoming parents, we already are parents- we are already worrying about and protecting this baby, making big and small decisions that will effect the quality of our lives together, loving and taking care of this baby since the moment we found out we were pregnant. Part of me feels cheated that I wasn’t able to relish this kind of particular joy sooner in the pregnancy, but I also take responsibility for what I allowed in and what I allowed out during the harder months.

The good news is that at some point I realized this kid was coming and that I could spend the rest of my pregnancy with them worried about everything else, or focused on them, and that either way at some point the pregnancy would end and there would be a baby and all the time spent in anxiety and frustration would be time lost when I could have been filling up on feelings that were nourishing to my spirit and energy. I am grateful that I have a network of support around me and within me to know how to take care of myself, where to draw hard lines, and how to get myself to a better place.

So here we are, three months to go. I plan to relish every last bit of this pregnancy and this magical time we have to share with our baby before they come into this world. Then they will be here and I will have practiced letting go, I will have practiced welcoming this beautiful change, I will have practiced protecting this child, I will have practiced learning how my heart can possibly grow big enough to support the love that I will have as we welcome this tiny, new, incredible person into our world.

And so it begins…

Two and a half years ago, on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, I had a meltdown of epic proportions. There was a lot of crying, self pity, and a general feeling of being tethered to nothing and feeling ready for things that I neither had nor knew how I was going to get them [namely- a dog, a boyfriend and a baby]. That night I made a pact with myself that in two years time, whether I was partnered or single, I would actively be on the path to fatherhood. The next day I adopted a dog, and a few weeks later a cute boy asked me on a dog walk date. Eventually that cute boy [Josh] and I fell in love and slowly and steadily we began to build a life together. I don’t remember the first time I brought up having children, but it was very early on in our courtship and still I didn’t scare him off. As time went on and our relationship grew so did our conversations about parenting, about family, about values, about how and when and why we wanted to have children. In some ways we were on the very same page, in other ways- not so much, but in the most important ways, we absolutely saw eye to eye. In Josh I had finally found a person who I completely trusted to co-parent with me, to learn and grow with me as a partner and as a parent, to have faith that wherever life should take us- we would always be connected by this shared honor and responsibility of parenting.

Through the course of many conversations, after much soul searching and exploring of our options we decided that what felt like the best and most right decision for us would be that I would carry a child for us. I am transgender [i.e. I was born and raised female, grew up to identify as male, and as a young adult medically and socially transitioned to male] and Josh is not transgender. For us that meant that when it came to how we would create a family there would [hopefully] be no fertility treatments, sperm banks, or adoption paper work, I would stop taking my hormones [under the care of and with the support of my doctor], and we would try to make a baby. There were many factors that brought us to this place, and while I support all of the beautiful and diverse ways in which other people choose to create a family, having a baby this way was not only something I hoped we would be able to do, but it was something we really wanted to do. So, in November of 2012 I stopped taking my hormones and started putting my faith in that if we were meant to have a child this way, we would.

On my 32nd birthday [August, 2013] Josh and I went on a weekend paddling and camping trip with some friends. Even though I had been off my hormones for nine months we hadn’t begun actively trying to make a baby and were stuck in a sort of cycle of “when is the right time/is it ever the right time?” I recalled the pact I had made with myself two years prior, and in so many ways knew it had already come to fruition- I was indeed on the path to becoming a father, if not actively in some ways, at least we had a plan and an end goal. But still, I went alone to stand on the rocks and face the water, I took a big deep breath and rooted myself in the spot where I stood and opened up my heart to ask for the wish that was laying in the deepest, most sacred place inside of me. I said, I am ready for you. I am also not ready for you, but mostly I am ready for you to be here whenever you are ready to be here. There is a place for you here and it will be here waiting for you and only you. Then I closed my eyes and stood still and quiet with that truth, I really let go of how and when my baby was going to come, and I started to trust that however and whenever it happened, my baby would find me.

Two weeks later we made a baby.

Now it is nearing the end of January 2014 and I am 24 weeks pregnant. Some days I can still hardly believe it, but it is happening. The weeks are going by so quickly now, my belly is getting bigger, we saw all the tiny perfect parts on the sonogram screen, and recently the little person growing inside of there began kicking and poking at me, reminding me gently that they are very real and that this really is happening. As much as I could know before that I wanted to have a baby, I was wholly unprepared for how it would feel to actually have one growing inside of me- which is nothing short of amazing. This baby shares bits of Josh and bits of me to create an entirely new, unique and incredible person and I can’t help but feel lucky, blessed, and honored to be carrying this life. I can only hope, and try not to worry, that the rest of this pregnancy will continue to go smoothly and come May 18, 2014 we will be welcoming this new person into the world and into our family with so much joy, love, and utter amazement.

Every day now I wake up early and I feel like there is a little fish swimming around in my belly, I say good morning baby and Joshua reaches over in his sleep and wraps his arm around me, so we are all three snuggling in the bed quiet, content and perfect. Right then I feel like the absolute luckiest person in the whole wide world…and it is only going to get better and better.