So the ultimate answer is... yes, it worked!
I really wanted to share more details of this journey and I've missed a big chunk of it but here we are.
We're now 9 weeks pregnant and 2 days ago we saw our baby's heartbeat on ultrasound.
I've been so terrified of losing this one too but we now have a 97% chance of having a healthy pregnancy and actually having a baby in August! It seems so surreal.
All the different facets of my life are colliding with an array of challenges around this time, but we're just making it work.
On the vegan side: first up, lets get the nutrition side out of the way. I had a bunch of blood and urine tests done and just got the results today. I'm in the normal range for everything (except thyroid hormone but that was a bit weird and the dr called the lab to see if they can get confirmation that it was a correct result, as I have no history of thyroid issues and no symptoms of anything now).
My iron levels are actually in the normal range! Low-normal, but still normal. I don't have bloods often, but usually my iron is low.
Previously I've never taken any supplements but I'm now on a naturopath-recommended, vegan pregnancy multi plus I'm also using a B12 spray and also taking iron tablets every other day. I've always felt healthy on a raw vegan diet without supplements, but I'm super-conscious of the fact that I want to do everything I can. Plus at the moment my nausea (all day sickness, not just morning!!) means I'm not eating that much.
So all in all, I'm very excited that at this stage, I'm pretty healthy!
Exercise-wise, I'm still walking the dogs for around an hour each day, though maybe going a tad slower than normal sometimes! I usually go to 1 hour gym classes 3 or 4 days per week - my gym has been closed over the festive season and is currently only doing limited classes so I've scaled that back by necessity. I went to a step class today and it was great! Intensified the nausea a little bit but sitting down does that too, so I might as well be moving my body!
My class instructor is an incredible inspiration - she just birthed her beautiful daughter in November and was still teaching multiple classes each week until she was 36 weeks pregnant!! So she's great inspiration and also is keeping an eye on me and will help make sure I don't over-do anything.
In terms of where things are at with rescue - well, it is still kitten season! We've got 64 cats and kittens at home at the moment (on top of 3 dogs, 2 rabbits, 2 guinea pigs, 2 sheep, 2 geese and 2 roosters - we like to do things in pairs). Probably my greatest fear about everything is still the question of how will I give my baby my everything, while continuing to save innocent lives? Who will save the ones I don't?
I'm having an adoption event on the weekend and hoping for a big one with lots of adoptions, so fingers crossed there! We have SO many kittens who are all just coming up to adoption age all at once and they're doing my head in with how messy they all are. Still have new ones coming in almost every day. We also had some puppies in (with a carer, not at home with me!) so I've spent this week liaising with adopters and the carers but all 3 of them have really lovely homes now so that was a good outcome.
What else? Oh, so yesterday Logan (my wifey) was spat on and called a faggot at work. Logan works at a detention centre and it was a detainee who did it, there's really very little recourse available to take in this instance so it's just a "grin and bear it" scenario. I think I was more hurt than Logan to be honest. No one should have to deal with this. It was an unpleasant reminder of the fact that an awful lot of people aren't going to like the fact that our baby has two parents of the same sex. The fact that Logan is gender-diverse probably just makes that worse. It would be so nice to just get through a day without something going wrong for Logan, sometimes that seems impossible!
We went op-shopping this afternoon to try and buy sealed jars (we have a weevil issue in our pantry!)
We may have become slightly distracted and purchased this adorable painting for the nursery. :)
Oops apparently I can't link the picture here. I'll try again at a later stage!
Thursday, 10 January 2019
Wednesday, 26 December 2018
A new beginning
I started this blog last year, some 16 months ago, when Logan and I conceived our first baby.
Tragically, the very day after I wrote that post, we lost the baby. I guess you never really look into the future and imagine yourself as someone who could have a miscarriage. Even now, it's a strange thing for me to reflect on the fact that I now share this experience with so very many other women around the world.
So Logan and I have been continuing to try and conceive since not long after losing the last baby. We've had many, many attempts and no success. Our sperm donor went on extended working holiday for 4 months earlier this year and while he was away, we discovered that my progesterone was very low; lower than that of a post-menopausal women and so low, in fact, that they insisted on retesting the sample. There aren't a lot of reasons for having such low progesterone. Some people are just genetically pre-disposed to having a lower concentration than average. A recent miscarriage can cause low progesterone, but my miscarriage was almost a year before the blood test. Another causative factor is high cortisol in the blood - aha! This makes sense. Cortisol is the stress hormone and boy can I tell you all about stress!!!
Running a small shelter that has rescued over 700 animals this year is just the start. I'm a volunteer and have limited human resources available and in my home-shelter there have been somewhere between 30 and 80 cats this whole year. They come and go on a daily basis and have this year been accompanied by a number of rabbits and guinea pigs too.
I also work part time at a vet clinic, study my Cert IV in dog training/behaviour and support a wonderful partner who happens to have a number of mental health diagnoses including complex-PTSD, generalised anxiety, sensory processing disorder and more. This year, my mum has been really sick. My mum lives with chronic pain and has done for the majority of my life but the first 9 months of this year were so bad that most days I spoke to her she was on the verge of tears and her pain was so bad that at a number of points she considered suicide. My mother is a life-loving, vivacious woman who enjoys gardening, travel and writing - she didn't want to leave the world, but was simply in such unbearable pain that she was struggling to see a future she could enjoy.
So all in all, I know stress! Everyone faces their own trials and challenges and despite all this Logan and I have remained steadfast in our desire to conceive a baby .
We took a few months off from trying, to get my progesterone back on track with the help of a vegan naturopath with a special interest in fertility. The GP recommended I go on the pill but I wasn't keen.
We planned to try again in November. We had spoken at length to our donor about our desire to make it work and our hope that he would be available. A sidenote - our donor is a truly beautiful human being. He is open and honest and so totally himself, who happens to be like no one else. He is committed to animal welfare (I first met him working at the same cat shelter where Logan and I met) and he cares deeply about humans too. He is an anti-dote to my highly-strung and stressy nature though and spends most of his free time travelling and going to festivals to get in touch with nature and humanity. He has been incredibly generous and willing in his role as our sperm donor, though he hasn't always been as available as we would have liked. That's life.
Anyway, we were planning for November. I was due to ovulate on the 20th and we hoped to inseminate once a day for the 3 days leading up to that date. It's always tricky, as we live over an hour from our donor, but we make it work. We were pretty much crushed when we asked him nearly a month in advance about those dates and he let us know that that was his birthday weekend and he was going away. The only day he could do was Tuesday, the 20th.
We discussed cancelling altogether and waiting for the next cycle but then decided we didn't have anything to lose.
I had to work that Tuesday afternoon so we had to get ourselves organised. We got there, we hung out, he showed my partner his new Red Dead Redemption game (too much brutality for me thanks!) and then we did it. We inseminated and we played Tchaikovsky through my phone to the swimming sperm, like we do every time. We hung out a bit more, then left and I went to work for 7 hours.
We knew the timing was good, I had all the signs of ovulating that day. But would it work??
Tragically, the very day after I wrote that post, we lost the baby. I guess you never really look into the future and imagine yourself as someone who could have a miscarriage. Even now, it's a strange thing for me to reflect on the fact that I now share this experience with so very many other women around the world.
So Logan and I have been continuing to try and conceive since not long after losing the last baby. We've had many, many attempts and no success. Our sperm donor went on extended working holiday for 4 months earlier this year and while he was away, we discovered that my progesterone was very low; lower than that of a post-menopausal women and so low, in fact, that they insisted on retesting the sample. There aren't a lot of reasons for having such low progesterone. Some people are just genetically pre-disposed to having a lower concentration than average. A recent miscarriage can cause low progesterone, but my miscarriage was almost a year before the blood test. Another causative factor is high cortisol in the blood - aha! This makes sense. Cortisol is the stress hormone and boy can I tell you all about stress!!!
Running a small shelter that has rescued over 700 animals this year is just the start. I'm a volunteer and have limited human resources available and in my home-shelter there have been somewhere between 30 and 80 cats this whole year. They come and go on a daily basis and have this year been accompanied by a number of rabbits and guinea pigs too.
I also work part time at a vet clinic, study my Cert IV in dog training/behaviour and support a wonderful partner who happens to have a number of mental health diagnoses including complex-PTSD, generalised anxiety, sensory processing disorder and more. This year, my mum has been really sick. My mum lives with chronic pain and has done for the majority of my life but the first 9 months of this year were so bad that most days I spoke to her she was on the verge of tears and her pain was so bad that at a number of points she considered suicide. My mother is a life-loving, vivacious woman who enjoys gardening, travel and writing - she didn't want to leave the world, but was simply in such unbearable pain that she was struggling to see a future she could enjoy.
So all in all, I know stress! Everyone faces their own trials and challenges and despite all this Logan and I have remained steadfast in our desire to conceive a baby .
We took a few months off from trying, to get my progesterone back on track with the help of a vegan naturopath with a special interest in fertility. The GP recommended I go on the pill but I wasn't keen.
We planned to try again in November. We had spoken at length to our donor about our desire to make it work and our hope that he would be available. A sidenote - our donor is a truly beautiful human being. He is open and honest and so totally himself, who happens to be like no one else. He is committed to animal welfare (I first met him working at the same cat shelter where Logan and I met) and he cares deeply about humans too. He is an anti-dote to my highly-strung and stressy nature though and spends most of his free time travelling and going to festivals to get in touch with nature and humanity. He has been incredibly generous and willing in his role as our sperm donor, though he hasn't always been as available as we would have liked. That's life.
Anyway, we were planning for November. I was due to ovulate on the 20th and we hoped to inseminate once a day for the 3 days leading up to that date. It's always tricky, as we live over an hour from our donor, but we make it work. We were pretty much crushed when we asked him nearly a month in advance about those dates and he let us know that that was his birthday weekend and he was going away. The only day he could do was Tuesday, the 20th.
We discussed cancelling altogether and waiting for the next cycle but then decided we didn't have anything to lose.
I had to work that Tuesday afternoon so we had to get ourselves organised. We got there, we hung out, he showed my partner his new Red Dead Redemption game (too much brutality for me thanks!) and then we did it. We inseminated and we played Tchaikovsky through my phone to the swimming sperm, like we do every time. We hung out a bit more, then left and I went to work for 7 hours.
We knew the timing was good, I had all the signs of ovulating that day. But would it work??
Monday, 21 August 2017
The Beginning (sort of)
So my partner Logan and I have known for a week that we are expecting a child. I peed on a stick last Monday and we watched it together - Logan (completely innocently) saw the first line come up strong and bright and said "okay that's the control line" and I, with a slight tremble in my voice, said "no, it's not."
I peed on two more sticks just to be sure, you know. They all seemed to agree with each other.
We have been attempting to conceive via sperm donation for about 10 months, although we have had pretty limited opportunities during that time so you can't really say it took us that long. In reality, we've conceived very quickly with our at-home, jar and syringe method. Quicker than many heterosexual couples having "normal" intercourse!
We are understandably excited about this. I feel like I have a journey to share, not so much because of our method of conceiving and our same-sex status (though this is obviously pretty relevant!) but because I'm raw vegan and have been for some 11 years now. Once you've been living your life in any particular way for such a long time it stops being a big deal at all, even though it isn't any less bizarre to other people. My family and friends are used to the fact that I don't consume any animal products and don't cook my food. But new people I meet are still confused by this ( nearly 2 years at my current job and I often hear "wait... you don't eat PASTA!?")
I plan to maintain my raw vegan lifestyle throughout my pregnancy and child-rearing and feel that it could be useful to share this. I'm not an overly shy or private person when it comes to most things and especially my body so be prepared ahead of time for me to be open and possibly graphic.
At present I'm around 6.5 weeks along. I have extremely swollen and tender breasts and have been experiencing a little bit of indigestion but no nausea or vomiting. Today I have had some spotting of dark coloured blood, which is a little startling. The internet assures me that many pregnant people experience this and go on to have normal, healthy pregnancies so I'm not super concerned. Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with the gp for some blood tests and things so in the mean time I'm hoping it doesn't increase and staying chill about things.
It is still incredibly surreal to think there is a tiny human (currently the size of a lentil!) growing inside me. I just hope it keeps growing and doing it's thing!!
I peed on two more sticks just to be sure, you know. They all seemed to agree with each other.
We have been attempting to conceive via sperm donation for about 10 months, although we have had pretty limited opportunities during that time so you can't really say it took us that long. In reality, we've conceived very quickly with our at-home, jar and syringe method. Quicker than many heterosexual couples having "normal" intercourse!
We are understandably excited about this. I feel like I have a journey to share, not so much because of our method of conceiving and our same-sex status (though this is obviously pretty relevant!) but because I'm raw vegan and have been for some 11 years now. Once you've been living your life in any particular way for such a long time it stops being a big deal at all, even though it isn't any less bizarre to other people. My family and friends are used to the fact that I don't consume any animal products and don't cook my food. But new people I meet are still confused by this ( nearly 2 years at my current job and I often hear "wait... you don't eat PASTA!?")
I plan to maintain my raw vegan lifestyle throughout my pregnancy and child-rearing and feel that it could be useful to share this. I'm not an overly shy or private person when it comes to most things and especially my body so be prepared ahead of time for me to be open and possibly graphic.
At present I'm around 6.5 weeks along. I have extremely swollen and tender breasts and have been experiencing a little bit of indigestion but no nausea or vomiting. Today I have had some spotting of dark coloured blood, which is a little startling. The internet assures me that many pregnant people experience this and go on to have normal, healthy pregnancies so I'm not super concerned. Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with the gp for some blood tests and things so in the mean time I'm hoping it doesn't increase and staying chill about things.
It is still incredibly surreal to think there is a tiny human (currently the size of a lentil!) growing inside me. I just hope it keeps growing and doing it's thing!!
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