Stupidity Outlet

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Inky Chagrin

When I am out pushing my stroller in my bougie little neighborhood, and somebody whizzes past us on a skateboard I think, “What a chump. I bet that young punk doesn’t have the world’s cutest kid. Sucks to be them.” And then I think, “What if she falls off of her skateboard? She’s so young and tough, it probably wouldn’t even hurt. And she probably won’t fall, even though she is carrying a huge paper bag full of jangling liquor bottles. She is on their way to their friends’ house to drink all that. She can stay up as late as she wants, without getting a babysitter. And I bet her hang over won’t last longer than an hour. She can sleep in the next morning and won’t ache from crashing on her buddy’s dirty couch.”

 

Sometimes it looks pretty appealing to be young and stupid for a day or so. I really needed to get out there and be stupendously stupid for a night.

 

Our toddler is a pretty good sleeper at night by now, and when I am home with him (constantly), if he wakes up for a few min to chat with his friend, Blankie, I don’t go into his room to check on him. He is pretty much by himself all night – safe, dry, warm, well-fed and hydrated – from 7pm until 7am. So he would never even know that we were gone. So why can’t I just get him all set, lock the door and leave him to think that I am listening to his snoring from the living room? Because there are fires. If there were no fires or floods or randomly spiked fevers in the middle of the night, we could all go out and party once the babies went to bed. Alas, we must find a babysitter – someone whom we will instruct not to bother going into the nursery unless a tornado strikes.

 

I am not nervous about leaving my toddler with nearly qualified strangers, but they do double the cost of going out. An inexpensive babysitter in Portland, OR costs $10/hour, and on my quest to be really stupid for a night, just going out to dinner at the bistro down the street for a measly two hours wasn’t going to cut it. I needed longer to become truly idiotic. A queer dance party can last from the 9pm pre-game cocktail til the 3am hours it takes to hail a cab home. That’s five hours and fifty bucks on top of the cover, taxi and top-shelf booze that I have grown accustomed to. But it’s worth it when I can find a baby-lover who is available on a Saturday night and wants to hold my couch down and act as a human fire detector for a while.

 

When I was young and babysitting for my parents’ friends, they were just trying to get out of their house for a dinner party, or church function, or maybe a movie. Unless they were completely faking their wholesomeness – and based on my years of working with people who have kids, they were not faking – none of them were headed out to a sex club to prance about in their strap-on or go dancing to grind up on the hot little things with contemporary haircuts. They never came home drunk.

 

I have been lucky enough to find a unicorn! I have a queer and kink-friendly babysitter. She is rare, but I love her for her willingness to snuggle on my couch once in a while when I go participate in events she’d also like to be attending. She sees the hankies in my back pocket and is not phased by the color-coded suggestions of what I might get up to. She even helps Partner do his eye make-up when we are running behind, which is always. She is my unicorn. You cannot have her number. Go find your own magical, babysitting fairy.

 

But when we came home from our most recent adventure at a gay ol’ dance party – right on time – I doubt that she really appreciated me slurring apologies as I struggled to count the cash to pay her. I had been drinking – I planned on it and I followed through. It was a warm night, and the tequila tasted sooooo good. Despite the fact that I was sipping instead of doing shots, I bit two willing victims on the dance floor and pinched a hot stranger’s offered nipple out on the smoking porch, before settling on taking home our hot contractor friends.

 

The married two-some who fixed up our house when we bought it are smoking hot. Tattoos, potty mouths, good senses of humor and an open relationship. We’d been looking for an opportunity to jump them for two years, and had finally found a window.

 

I was way, way too drunk to play it cool. Nothing I said was making any sense. My jokes were way off, and pretty soon, so were our pants. It doesn’t take me long to go from kissing a pretty girl to getting her lacy panties off. And when Partner took over with the boyish queer wife of the duo, whom he had had his eyes on for eons, I was more than pleased to scootch over and ravenously make out with her buff, twinkly-eyed husband. I was so out of my league.

 

Unless a bio-guy wants to bend over in front of me, I don’t really know what to do, and Contractor Husband was the only non-queer in the room. But I was having a jolly good time, so we all just went right ahead and took our pants off. I was so enjoying myself, that I lost track of whatever Partner and Contractor Wife were up to. I didn’t notice much of anything but the delightful moustache in front of me, until the toddler piped up from his nearby room.

 

It’s not unusual for Toddler to wake up in the middle of the night, and, typically, I would just let him mutter to himself for a few minutes until he went back to sleep. But I am usually the only one awake at 3:30AM. Partner sleeps through Toddler’s midnight serenades and the contractors certainly didn’t know that our moaning is not what woke the little cherub. So, despite my standard policy of letting Toddler do his own thing until morning, I found myself noticing his vocals and paying attention to the reactions (or not) of the other three naked primates.

 

When one is wasted, distracted and a novice at the skills being employed, it is virtually impossible to remain effectively self-lubricating, and I was far, far too blotto-ed to have the good sense to walk tot he bedroom and get some synthetic lube. So Contractor Husband and I gave up on my dehydration factors at about the same time that Partner and Contractor Wife realized that the couch could desperately use some towels to soak up the puddles that were forming. We basked contentedly on the living room carpet until, true to my constant temperature, I realized how chilly I was. It was only a matter of time after the donning of my fleece suit, before the contractors let themselves out so I could gratefully pass into unconsciousness.

 

Oh, what a hangover. Oh, the stupidity. Oh, the exact dumbness I had been craving. When I woke up with my Munchkin at 8am, I was still tipsy … only, I hadn’t realized it yet. I thought I just barely had a hang over. “I still got it!” I ate a huge egg sandwich and giggled with my tot.

 

However, as soon as he went down for his first nap, I started to sober up. Ughn, gross. I worshiped the porcelain throne like an inexperienced teenager. It had been years since I curled up on my bathroom floor with a big mixing bowl in case I should barf away all of my precious tequila. This was exactly the level of stupid misery I had been seeking. Whyyyyyy? Why didn’t I stop after three stiff pours of tequila, neat? Why hadn’t I just sluttily attacked the contractors sober? Why hadn’t I walked to get lube so that I wouldn’t be so damned sore? Why hadn’t we kept the lights on so that I would at least know what hot Contractor Husband’s probably-awesome-but-I-didn’t-get-a-good-look cock was like?

 

Worse, there were some serious concerns. I was well too hammered to judge anyone else’s sobriety, so I had no idea if our driver had been ok to be behind the wheel. I wasn’t sure if I had amply paid our amazing, tolerant babysitter, who must certainly have been annoyed by our obnoxious slurring and tricking when she just wanted to take her money and go home. Most ridiculously, neither Partner nor I had followed though on our vows to The Church of Condoms. Very, very unlike us. I have an IUD, Contractor Wife had a hysterectomy for health and cool-scar reasons and Contractor Husband has been snip-snipped, leaving our only concern the stepping up of our regular STI screens, but geeeeez. What an idiot I was.

 

The tequila tasted delicious, the contractors were unbelievably hot, and I got exactly what I was looking for – the worst headache of my life and enough truly horrific, un-composed behavior to make me swear that I will never ever be so stupid ever again. I am too much of an old man for that. Until the next time a little punk goes past on her skateboard and I push her over, taker her beer and stow it beneath my sporty get-away jogging stroller.

Posted in Aging Queer, Forced Sobriety, Recovering After Birth | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Which Kind of Circus Is This?

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Inky Chagrin

If anyone assumes that I am straight, I correct them, but I revel in many other addresses that I don’t notice that I resemble until somebody else says them aloud. I love being”mam”-ed or “sir”-ed before a restaurant host hears my high-pitched voice or sees me head to the men’s room. I adore being shown to a bathroom door with nervous trepidation on the part of my guide. I dance on the inside whenever I get called – most correctly – “dyke,” “fag,” “trans,” “queer,” or “homo.” I can handle being called “bi.” I will accept any gay-ish title, because I have reflected and identified with many queer titles at one time or another, and they’re all awesome. Are you calling me gay? I’m down.

 

Even when it makes my past as a pregnant person invisible, I can’t help but be delighted when my queer-as-shit appearance overshadows my identity as a parent. Even when I am holding my baby, I suspect I often just look like a dirty, lesbionic manny, nanny, uncle or auntie, which I have loved being many times in the past and will never turn down. I look so frigging gay, that the surest way for me to code as any kind of parent is to hold hands with a femme – because two lesbian parents makes much more visual sense to everyone than some disheveled man child having birthed a tot with a bio-guy life partner. Me turkey-baster-ing a femme is clearer than me marrying a dude with a bio-penis.

 

One day, when the baby, Partner, another faggy friend and I were out looking for some sausage (heh heh) for lunch, I ducked around the corner of a different food cart in the mall area. As I was out of sight of the sausage server, he rightfully, wonderfully assumed that Partner and Faggy Friend were gay parenting together. It was awesome. Sausage Server beamed and beamed at them and the baby all throughout the meal. Not only was it really nice to have queerness assumed of a family unit, but who doesn’t want to be smiled at for thirty minutes in a row while stuffing one’s face with bratwurst and mustard?

 

As soon as I realized that our combo of three adults and one baby put me in the role of lesbian friend meeting the gay dads for lunch, I embraced it and better understood the happiness of every grinning liberal on our sunny walk home. I also do not look like a parent if I am together with a gay male friend and a gay female friend – then they get questioning, maybe-they’re-straight looks, and I am still the lesbian friend. If I am with a straight couple, they look like the parents and, again, I am the lesbian friend. If there is a femme anywhere in the area, I am definitely not the first choice of strangers who are looking to make eye contact with the parent of the baby stealing their french fries.

 

When I am by myself in the pizza store picking up dinner and I wave at somebody else’s kid, and I want to re-assure them that I’m just friendly and not totally creepy, I still announce my nanny status rather than my parental status, because a lesbian nanny is still more believable than a barely twelve-year-old boy who has given birth.

 

The closest I come to looking like a parent while walking with my partner (instead of holding hands with a femme) is when we are all decked our in rainbows and one could suspect that he, the flaming faggot, turkey-baster-ed me, the dorky dyke. Or maybe if we had hats on and nobody could see our hair, and if I was wearing men’s jeans that were so dirty that they hugged my hips, and if I was too warm to wear my butch winter vest, and if I had put on too much cherry Chapstick that made my lips pink, and if Partner wasn’t wearing his rainbow messenger bag …. then maybe, just maybe, we could look like a nerdy male programmer and crunchy female mom who belong together carnally, genetically.

 

On the other hand, nobody seems remotely confused by the gender of our toddler. Because his body is so ambiguous under a bulky diaper, fashion is the only clue that guides people’s decisions about his gender, and they decide very, very quickly. A stranger can decide which gender my baby is within the three seconds it takes them to sing, “Well, helloooooo!” Reactions to my toddler’s clothing are helping me clarify gendered fashion rules that I could have guessed, but wasn’t completely sure of in terms of ratios of certainty. Folks absolutely commit to the gender of the baby they are greeting.

 

If you want your child to look like a boy, you can’t just dress it up in any old blue and assume you are coding for a child with a penis. If you are dead set on signaling “boy,” only some shades of blue, in some cuts of shirts, with certain patterns code as “boy.” If the blue is too teal = girl. If the blue shirt has any ruffles, ruching, bows or is snug-fitting = girl. If the pattern has flowers, hearts, anything sweet, or even just stars, which I could have sworn were gender neutral = girl. If you dress your child in knit cotton jersey that reflects Valentines Day, Easter, spring, or any animal that is not incorrectly known for biting people = girl.

 

If you dress your child in a navy blue hat, a navy blue tee-shirt with a football on it, and navy blue pants with a dinosaur on the butt = boy. The same outfit with a pair of pink flip flops or pink mitten clips = girl. The tiniest sliver of pink may lead everyone to believe that your child is a girl, which is just fine by me. Not only do I enjoy when people speak sweetly to my son because he is dressed head to toe in pink (which is often), but I relish the chance to announce, “He’s not insulted by girls,” when they apologize for using “she.” Until he makes his own mind known on the topic of his favorite colors and verbalizes them to strangers, I am just going to go ahead and dress him in anything adorable that goes with the weather and was on clearance when I walked through the Goodwill.

 

I am so uncomfortable when my neighbors, relatives or acquaintances who know that I am married to a man assume that I am straight, that when somebody assumes that I am a queer non-parent of a girl-child who wears purple sneakers with green pants and a yellow sweater, I am so damned relieved that I could pee. I don’t mind opening my mouth to talk about how I exist and identify in the world, or to help people relax about which outfit my offspring is wearing, but it is also pretty great to observe the wild range of reactions to the visual appearance of my family. As long as you look at me and do not, under any circumstances operate under the assumption that, “Huh, this person is going to love it when I say something closed-minded and douche-baggy,” we’re cool. As long as you assume that I am friendly and crazy, we’re fine.

Posted in Baby Gender, Coming Out Queer, Parental Titles | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

SucSEXful Marriage

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Inky Chagrin

When it comes to sex after a new baby, adoptive parents have the upper hand. While they will later have slightly different identity issues to wrestle with than biological parents, at least when they are handed their child, they are not also bleeding and sore between the legs (probably, or for different reasons). Anyone who has been pregnant has to deal with multiplied body image or gender issues and the glamor of stagnant, soured blood dripping from their nether regions for a few weeks. Yeah, not just a couple of days. Not a light period. Not a little spotting. No, I mean the remains of a spare organ leftover from an alien invasion are oozing from a terribly distorted and uncomfortable area that has just wrenched a watermelon into the world.

 

There is a real and valid fear that sex will hurt after pregnancy. I didn’t even give vaginal, bonus hole birth, and I was still terrified of how it was going to feel to have anything tickling around the sensitive tissues that had been so recently pulped. And c-section scars aren’t exactly unrelated to boning. Try to have sex without using your abs. I dare you. Obsess for a few hours about whether or not it’s going to hurt, and then, in addition to all of your bodily fluids being re-directed to your tits, try not to be so nervous that you can’t self-lubricate.

 

But the fear of pain is better than the fear that sex won’t happen at all. I don’t know anyone whose sex life hasn’t changed during pregnancy. Even those who manage a more graceful shift to altered sex than Partner and I did have wildly different desires, concerns and body shapes for ten months. When those shapes are suddenly gone, there are just two adults who have completely new roles relative to each other. Will they still have desire for each other? Will they still fit together? Will we have any energy left for each other after the infant is cared for? YES.

 

Omg, take a deep breath. Yes, the answer is yes. Sex will happen again after pregnancy. Honestly, it did hurt a little, but not super a lot, considering how much unrelated pummeling had happened in the region. One afternoon, weeks after birth, the baby had passed out, Partner and I had both showered recently enough to be passable and we both mustered the courage to register – sheepishly, tentatively – interest in, ahem, adult activities. Woo! We were both interested. And nervous. But excited.

 

Dorkily, awkwardly, giddily – we undressed and gathered the bravery to stick it in. No fingers or mouths first, just a desperate dash to reclaim the assurance that peg A in slot B could still feel awesome for both of us. It hurt a little. Every single drop of water in a nursing body is sent directly to the mammaries. The sensitive tissues were relying solely on synthetic lube that we were too distracted and fitful to use as thoroughly a usual. But it went well. Getting off was had, and, I, for one, verbally over-emphasized how awesome it was, to make sure that it would happen again.

 

And it did happen again. Positive reinforcement works! Not every day. Not all the time. But occasionally, as a lucky treat, off and on we totally get laid – together! We parents have enough sex that we are not *constantly * despairing our loss of adult time. Every week, or every other week, orrrrr, occasionally, a little more or less frequently, we totally get it on. Not as often as we would like, because having a child and jobs and new levels of stress do interfere with going heels to Jesus. But, as often as we are capable of articulating longing and availability, we become a monster with two backs. Woo!

 

By far the best way to get laid for new parents, is to have a babysitter take the tot out of the house. When the tot is out of the house, you can use your own platforms, equiptment, toys and shower. Nap times are a nice runner up – less exhausting than bedtime or, heaven forbid attempting to wake up before a baby in the morning. And for the love of everything, turn the baby monitor off! Soooooo not sexy to hear plaintive squalling as you approach what could have been a happy ending.

 

We have not yet managed to become secure or un-occupied enough to go thirty or forty toes instead of just twenty, but we’re working on it, and I look forward to someday getting an adult-only hotel room, or attending a sex party where we can go at it without waking any kind of small creature or neighbor. In the meantime, it’s nice to know that we’ve still got it. “It” being interest in booty slapping and the will to carry it out every once in a while. Often enough to recycle the paperbacks about sexless marriages.

Posted in Pregnant Sex, Recovering After Birth | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Balding With Beer Belly

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Inky Chagrin

It’s time for me to become a middle-aged man. Queer culture is so relatively new, that most of the movement and community’s members are young. I have old lesbian and old gay male friends, but I don’t have more than a slim smattering of older Queer role models. My aging and development is very akin to the growing up and maturing process that humanity has seen during the eons of our existence, but my social life, if I can be said to have one, is now split into two, or more. I don’t have a solid core of daily people with whom to have coffee, phone calls and early dinner conversation about both my wild, homo self and my cozy, homebody parenting activities.

I have a streak of local parent friends and neighbors with kids of similar ages to mine. I appreciate their waves from across the street, social media posting about diapers and the fact that we can all discuss poop and boogers in a serious tone of voice. We can share birth and adoption stories. We can trade equipment tips and used baby gear. We have the same concerns over baby food ingredients, the fit of tiny socks that constantly fall off and sleep pattern disturbances.

But none of my local parent friends have the same Queer roots and identity that I have. If I want to casually make a U-haul, strap-on or fisting hanky code joke about trannies and queens, I would have to explain every minute detail of the punchline. If we had a dinner party and then put our babies to bed, there would be no following raucous wine discussion of recent drag, marriage laws and open relationships. I have no idea what it is that straight people talk about, which makes me a little bit of a xenophobic jerk in addition to making me pine to get back with my fellow Queers.

I’ve got eyes, fingers and the Internet, so I can look up the Queer dance parties that happen in my city and attend one on a rare night off from my little one. But even my co-parenting partner – who sees me after a tough night of nursing and tending – has a hard time recognizing how hard it would be for me to function at a late-night, physically demanding party zone. How I would be torn between home and the bar. If my daily witness doesn’t really get it, imagine how hard it would be for me and the other party-goers to relate.

I haven’t had a decent haircut in months. No matter how cool the cut of my pants, they still ride over my damaged abs and midriff like mom jeans. I try to hydrate and nap during the day with my infant, but I am exhausted, hungry and cranky even before the alcohol hits my system. I have no idea what the best dance songs are right now. Do you know how much longer it takes to Google popular music than to just walk into the familiar tunes in the bar that you are able to frequent?

So, I will undoubtedly get a babysitter some evening, stay up late, pump and dump my boozy breast milk and have the worst hangover of my life in order to shake my booty and sparkle my eyeballs at my Queer peers, but parenting has changed me. I’m awkward at young, energized events that don’t really get thumping until well after my normal, necessary bedtime.

The abundant joys of parenting mostly make my lack of perfectly suited conversation partners worth it, but I mourn the half friendships that I have with both average parents and my crazy, low-responsibility Queers. At some point I am going to have to have the balls to stop shielding my identity from the Normals and also admit that a draining night of dancing and debauchery with the Queers no longer holds the same appeal. I will occasionally muster for a fun night out, but leering at twenty-five year-olds just isn’t what it used to be. And it shouldn’t be.

How gross would it be to never recognize that I am becoming the gray-haired and pudgy, calm one in the middle of an otherwise sweating and altered dance floor? Everyone reaches many points in their lives where they must decide to be a rare human specimen of balance and growth or remain forever a child trapped in the dramatic throws of pop and self-obsessed youth culture. I am jealous of my friends who still have the time and stamina to party into the night, but how long are they themselves going to enjoy it? If the answer for the childless is “Forever!” I don’t even want to know.

I’m going to have to forge my own way into middle age and find spaces where I can both enjoy myself and be myself. What will provide me with enough enjoyment that, when Partner still wants to go out and party on his night off, I won’t feel left out and resentful of his joy? What can possibly fill the void left gaping by social, emotional, physical and economic exuberance?

I think I will begin with sleeping. I can’t enjoy a meal, outfit or TV show without sleep. In the midst of waking every few hours to nurse, what I need more than anything is some undisturbed rapid eye movement. Every once in a while, when the baby is napping or I have time off duty while Partner is on, I choose food or a shower over dozing, but the biggest luxury I have in life is to close my eyes and let the world go blissfully dark for a while.

When, eventually, I am well-rested enough to function for more than a few hours in a row, my next priority will be my own damned career. Some glorious day, I will feel like writing instead of dreaming about it. I will carve out time for myself for more than simple physical recovery from exhaustion. And, then, even further down the road, after I have spent long hours grinding and hacking on my professional hobby, I will muster the energy and courage to pull on some un-barfed-upon jeans, a tight-fitting tee from a box in the basement and head out into the night to once again observe the spectacle of a sticky, stale beer floor with flashing lights and a DJ who doesn’t have to wake up until afternoon of the next day.

I’m going to get myself a Groupon for cheapest massage that can be found, and a fancy jogging stroller for when I manage to tie my shoes onto the right feet. I’m going to spend just enough time on myself so that when Partner goes out to shake his booty, I can enjoy the quiet house full of delicious baby cheeks. I’m going to strive to balance myself with others well enough that I can have the peaceful family life that I long for and the spine of a feminist that I am supposed to be. I want my beer and my baby’s diapers too.

I want to be so damned happy with my scenario that I don’t give a shit that Partner hasn’t noticed that his gray hairs and out-dated shoes may make picking up 20-somethings a bit embarrassing. I am gonna nap, write and take enough long stroller hikes that everybody in my neighborhood notices that big lesbian dad with the little boy dressed in pink. I am going to beg beg beg and plead with all of my Queer friends to just have kids already, because it’s not much fun being middle-aged without them.

Posted in Aging Queer, Coming Out Queer | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Speak Up, Boy!

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Inky Chagrin

Secrets in an open relationship are supposed to be a no-no. I don’t mean the acceptable secrets, like that I used up the last of peanut butter directly off of a fork sprinkled with chocolate chips. No, I mean that specifically withholding pertinent information as a way of managing one’s partner is typically verboten. Despite my past staunch belief that I am a person who tells it as it is and the peanut butter and chocolate chips can fall where they may, I find myself hording resentful tidbits instead of clearing the air. Or rather, I find myself being persnickety and passive aggressive instead of uproariously, blatantly, outspokenly pissed. When I am so exhausted by the contiguous months of childcare that I simply can’t feel my face anymore, I just make sharp comments and complain to third parties instead of truly pleading for the help I would like to have.

As the boob-wielder in this family, I’m on duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, minus a few naps where I thrust the monitor at Partner and let him lord over the sleeping baby. Somebody has to be tired to the bone in the name of parenting. If there is a baby, somebody has got to sacrifice sleep, food and personal hygiene to make sure the kid doesn’t develop wildly inappropriately and rock itself forever in the corner. When zero parents step up to the plate, it’s called neglect. We can’t both ignore soggy diapers and plaintive cries for food. We can’t both avoid the baby’s loving eye contact and slimy little fingers without turning him into a miniature sociopath.

Sadly for me, Partner’s day-job skills are more lucrative than mine, so he has a nice little office set up in the basement away from the giggles, screams, head bonks and poop smells. Even now that the economy has hit us in our collective crotch, and he’s on unemployment, he still has no trouble simply disappearing, removing himself from the needy situation. He can ditch the highchair tray with encrusted banana that I begged him to wipe down last night, and my choice becomes to do it myself or call social services on my making-a-gender-statement, I-refuse-to-do-this-alone ass. I guess there is a third choice.

I can march into the basement, ignore the heavy sigh of someone who just had their marathon wanking and porn session interrupted, hand him the baby over his barely hidden erection and shout,

“It’s not enough to love your baby a couple times a day in the cute pictures I post to social media! You need to do his laundry, tend to his diaper rash, ensure that he is gaining weight, help him learn his natal tongue, deal with the consequences when you wake him up with your trance dance party and mop the floor while I work on my goddamned novel and teaching career!!!”

But try feeling like a considerate human being after staging an invasion like that, even if you used “I” statements and a really calm, accepting tone of voice. And then try repeating it, complete with feeling shitty about yourself for asking for help, because these kinds of pleas don’t produce change the first or seventeenth time.

If you really like a challenge, try getting laid after confronting a basic inequality in your relationship. No matter how righteous you are, you will not be attractive after stomping your foot and flipping the bird at your co-parent. Though, count yourself lucky if you still have enough sex to be worried about losing any. When the baby was new and the thrill of having my own body was fresh, there were a couple of stollen nap times full of lube and naked frolicking. When we had a babysitter who could take the baby out of the house once a week, we even strapped it on a few times and enjoyed ourselves enough to worry about disturbing the neighbors. But when our babysitter luck ended, and we were left with only our mismatched bedtimes and energy levels, the sex disappeared too.

I’m back where I was a year ago, as the only one physically involved with the baby and stuck with an ineffectual co-parent instead of my partner form the days of old. Tactful attempts at foreplay are rejected and the hint is well received. Sex for Partner is now done alone and furtively, lest he get interrupted and shamed for unequal parenting.

If the adult relationship is already gone, if there is no hot banging in even the distant future, why on earth am I holding my tongue about anything at all? If I no longer want to attempt to rekindle our sex life or cozy love nest all by myself, if I am willing to admit that no amount of effort on my part is going to transport us to our carefree, drunken days of debauchery, then why the shit don’t I allow myself to be as critical as I deem required to get some help up in here?

There is no reason to turn from a fire-lipped, smart ass boy into a keep-it-to-myself-because-it’s-unattractive house Frau. I’m going to return to telling it how it is! If it isn’t possible to maintain a slinky sweaty open relationship in the face of co-parenting, let’s just shout to the rafters about how uncool it is that the bonus-hole in this duo is the one up all night and busy all day to keep the baby form crawling in filth. No one partner should be stuck trying to repair and soothe the adult or infant relationship alone, and I want to be done trying.

It is very easy for the non-boob-toter to fritter away hours in the office basement without asking if he is needed elsewhere. Asking for time off is not longer the way here. I’m just going to take it, too. I’m going to flap my lips freely and take myself on the cheapest writing retreat I can find. I am going to sleep through a few whole nights and get more done than can be accomplished during one short nap. With my fingers crossed that Partner doesn’t go days without giving the baby solid food, story time or hugs when he screams at two in the morning.

What’s the worst that can happen? My child will grow up to write his own novel about how I abandoned him with an incompetent Partner? Join the club, buddy, join the club. Big wheel keep on turning.

 

Posted in Feminist Struggles, Pregnant and Unemployed, Queer Gender Inequality | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Nursing a Grudge

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Inky Chagrin

Nursing turns out to be pretty easy. Not “easy” as in “I’m completely comfortable admitting that I have functional breasts” without cringing at the word breasts, but “easy” as in “It’s a lot easier to whip out one of these bad boys at two AM when the baby is screaming.” In case you are asking yourself how hard it could possibly be to mix a bottle of formula in the middle of the night, allow me to describe it to you.

 

You are already exhausted from labor (either birthing or just attempting to do the first load of dishes in the days-old mountain) when the baby begins to stir. Recognizing the signs of immanent hunger, you race to the kitchen in the dark, only stubbing your toes a few times. If you turn the light on to measure the formula powder, to visualize how many ounces of liquid you have just poured or to find a translucent silicone nipple, you will not only ruin your night vision but also confuse the baby who can barely comprehend the difference between day and night by the volume of noise and the dimness of lights. Having successfully mixed or warmed a bottle of formula, you race back to the baby – either badly measured or with no night vision – and attempt to remain awake while the baby chugs milk or decides that she isn’t hungry after all. You try not to drop the bottle when the feasting offspring signals its fullness. You drag yourself and the minion upright for a burp, still trying not to knock over the bottle with a huge, horrible clatter and tripping implications with later ruined night vision. With the wee babe blissfuly asleep you curse the angelic snoozer as a bald-faced liar who will wake you to repeat this process two hours from the last time she woke up, if you’re lucky. Not two hours from when she falls asleep – oh no, two hours maximum from the last time you tried to focus hard enough to decide how long ago you were last awake and whether or not the bottle that you dropped nearby has gone bad.

 

So, in this way, nursing parents really luck out. It’s exceptionally easy, in these relative terms, to keep the baby safely in or near the bed, without smothering the small cherub during exhausted unconsciousness, to stir when it snarffles, find it’s gaping maw and plug it with a boob that topples out of a loose nightshirt. A monumental feat, to be sure, but infinitely easier that the midnight processes of bottle-feeding parents, who should be sainted for their extra efforts.

 

Breast-feeding a baby only hurt for a few days. There were less than two hundred hours during which I stifled a gut-wrenching scream as my nipples adjusted to the sweet, wholesome clamp of my beloved lamprey. And, in addition to saving our family nightly effort, it saved us a shit-ton of money. Boobs are free, or would be in a world where one doesn’t invest in a breast pump, bottles and freezing supplies. Alas, most nursing mothers find those tools priceless in the face of those other times when milky breasts hurt – when they get too full, or when mastitis enflames and itches at the whole mammary area. Or when some nursing parents are lucky enough to return to careers that waited for them.

 

Every time that I cursed breast-feeding for highlighting my girlishness, for the scoop-neck shirts that nursing parents are supposed to wear, for necessitating that I be the one to wake every two hours to have my titties twisted, or for the constant and utter dehydration, I stopped to consider how relatively easy, cheap and painless it is. It just kept winning out over bottle-feeding.

 

Until I realized that my own baby, in addition to gazillions of other thriving tots, do exceptionally well with formula. Not only does formula save the lives of babies who can’t nurse (for whatever reason), but formula frees biological parents from physically enslaving themselves to their children for another year right on the heals of the placental life-suctioning. My baby didn’t mind formula in the slightest. Not a bit; didn’t even poop differently. So, while I was pleased and relieved to roll over and drop a boob in his mouth while saving money, I also became brave enough to shout “Hey, Partner, I’m just going to mix up some formula for the baby,” at public events. The scornful glaring of more doting, hippy parents than us be damned. I gave him my immune system for as long as I could grin and bear it. Now it’s time for the Costco tin of powdered faux-milk to help me out.

 

I still have a bunch of thrifted little boys’ t-shirts that are cut from collar to nipple height to facilitate the occasional nursing, and I still grudgingly admit that my wee one enjoys the extra cuddles that I remember to dole out when he is latched on like a little eel, but I applaud formula parents in addition to nursing parents. Shit man, you slept how little? Heroes, one and all.

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Innie’s Day

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Inky Chagrin

For the longest time, I was in a lesbian relationship where both parties had boobs and vaginas and I thought that a fantastic way to queer the relationship when kids came along would be to have the femme called “Mom” and myself called “Dad.” I loved the idea of being Dad. “Come to daddy,” rolls off the tongue as easily as images of chubby cherubs in my arms roll off of my brain. It would make teachers’ jobs easier and gayer for Father’s Day craft projects and would instantly make every hetero-normative picture book queerer than the collection of three dollar bills that I refuse to spend, even when the cab driver gets a ten dollar tip instead.

 

I never felt like a “Mom.” Even when I was nannying at public parks, far from any partner who would have nudged me at least into “Mama vs Mommy” territory, I carried snot rags in my pockets, encouraged risky jungle gym behavior and carried tots on my shoulders – stereotypical “Dad” behaviors. (Not that we need to embrace those, either, mind you.) But now that I find myself in much healthier, awesomer relationship that includes one penis and one vagina on two otherwise boyish bodies, the parenting titles were less obvious to my queer-as-shit brain.

 

Partner was very flexible in this manner, and while he had always assumed that his title would be “Dad” he just sat back and let me make a series of pronouncements:

 

“Can I please be the one to be called ‘Dad?’”

“I’m certainly not a ‘Mom.’”

“Do YOU want to be called ‘Mom?’”

“It would really solve the holiday card issues if you would be ‘Mom.’”

“You don’t want to be ‘Mom?’ Well, maybe I could wrap my mind around calling myself ‘Papa.’”

“You could be ‘Dad’ and I could be ‘Papa.’”

“Let’s check other languages’ versions of ‘Father.’”

“My hormones are REALLY telling me that I need to be ‘Dad.’ _sob _ “

 

One day, after copious eyeball waterworks and a relatively silly theory breakdown on my part, Partner came to the rescue and spoke to the Alien in my belly, “Hello! It’s me again – your Outtie!”

 

And there it was. The baby was inside of me and outside of him. Partner had a “outtie” for genitals and I had an “innie.” It worked on a bazillions levels and didn’t invoke gender for either of us.

 

After the baby was born, everyone confirmed what I suspected would be true of our titles – they are difficult for anybody but us to latch onto. For nurses in the maternity ward, parental titles are obvious and would be insulting not to use. For almost everybody else, “Innie” and “Outtie” sound like overly cutesie in-the-house-only nicknames that we might just be using for each other. But even after prompting our loving and doting parents to call not call us “Mommy” and “Daddy,” they continue to do so, having no idea that they are calling us by titles that feel exclusive of our internal notions of who we are to each other.

 

I am not transitioning to be male, so everyone, sometimes including myself, take my boyishness far less than seriously. And I certainly don’t want to get into the territory of girlish and mommish things being insults to me or to anyone. So I am going to have to wear “Mom” the same way that I check the “female” box on doctor’s forms. It’s an umbrella that hangs over the other parts of my personality.

 

I would prefer if I didn’t have to fully transition to have my button-downs and every other aspect of my gender presentation swept under the rug with one utterance of “Mommy.” It would be nice if a single prompting to call me “Innie” worked on everybody who knows me well enough to assume that I don’t do much of anything standard issue. Or it would be great if everybody who knows how ridiculously queer asked me the same question relative to the baby as I ask them, “What do you want your title to be? Grandma? Grandpa? Auntie? Uncle? Captain?” It would be amazing if twenty-five direct requests would be enough to encourage anyone to indulge Partner and I in our ridiculous-but-preferred names for ourselves.

 

Alas, I will continue to consider myself a relaxed, boyish Innie while the world sees a trashy, obnoxious Mom. And I am happy to get the cards on Mothers’ Day. Moms’ work is never done. Ever. Never ever is there not a mess to be cleaned up, a hug to be given, a bill to be paid or a novel to be written on the side. Mothers are badass and deserve every single bouquet of flowers that Hallmark encourages us to give.

 

You better notice that I never sleep, never eat and never shower because I am too busy weeding the garden, folding the laundry and changing the diapers. If you happen to notice that I also call myself “Chill, boyish Innie,” bonus points and gold stars for you. If you accept the awkward prompting to call me “Innie” out loud, I will hug you every time you say it. And if you address all of my holiday cards with “Innie” or at least “I love my two dads” stickers, I will worship you as the best set of queer ears on the planet. I will take “Mom” as a compliment but “Innie” will get you a carved bust of yourself chiseled out of marble by my own hand. Free unicorn glitter to the first person to have it printed on a onesie.

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Delivery Section

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Inky Chagrin

My mom and grandmom had quick and slightly early deliveries with all of their offspring. I was really hoping that was one thing that I had inherited. Nope. Didn’t start contracting until we were two weeks overdue. I guess I really can’t emulate my female relatives in any way other than vague facial features and attempting to be as badass as they are.

 

Labor was work – pleasant and requiring tons of focus, will power and grit. I was enjoying myself, and rightly so – this was the biggest wrestling match I’d ever signed up for. But after a whole night of restless sleep and a whole day of regular contractions, I got the chills. Partner and I had already agreed that we liked our OB well enough to give birth in a hospital with her, so the hot tub at the birthing center sounded like an ideal solution to my uncomfortable shivers.

 

We loaded ourselves into the car with the bag that was packed so long ago that it had a light cover of dust on top of it. I couldn’t wait to get into that jetted jacuzzi. Per the very charming nurse’s request, I was ready to don a mooning hospital gown and sail on through their admission requirements with ease so that I could go on with my pacing, breathing and getting into that goddam heaven-on-earth hot tub.

 

“Very good breathing,” she said and monitored my Little Alien for fifteen minutes before I could get the go ahead to marinate myself in the soothing waters.

 

“Hmm. Every time you have a contraction, your baby’s heartbeat decelerates.”

 

Decells? But I had a stress test literally the day before and Alien had passed with flying colors. It must be common and the sweet nurse is probably just worrying too much about me. She doesn’t know what hearty mutant stock I come from way up north. We’ll all be fine. I’d be pissed off if somebody was squeezing me that hard, too.

 

“Please let me soak in the tub,” I batted my eyes at her.

 

Oh, the tub was heaven. I could have stayed in there for hours. But the decelerations meant I had to get monitored every so often. It was late into the second night of contractions by this point, and Partner could use some sleep. The nurse appealed to my reasonable side.

 

“Your contractions are regular, but you’re not going to give birth tonight. You should rest while you can. Do you think you can rest without morphine?”

 

I could not. The hazy narcotic naps that I treated myself to between contractions were lovely. I can’t imagine I would have slept without that wonderful drug that I now understand the terrible appeal of. I might buy it on the street now that I know how nice it is. But by morning, the drugs weren’t touching the contractions anymore. I wasn’t breathing through them, I was swearing. Which is a valid pain coping technique – those who bottle it all up rate themselves higher on pain scales. And I wasn’t cursing AT anyone. I was just whispering and trying to ride the wave like a sailor would. Partner was a saint and heaved to on exactly the right spot on my back. No partner should ever hesitate to press with all of their might on that spot. I swear to the gods it saved my sanity.

 

I enjoyed labor, and I couldn’t wait to push the baby out, but my personal goal was to make it twenty-four hours before saying yes to an epidural and I made it to the mother-fucking thirty-six hour mark. I couldn’t walk around anymore anyway, so I said took the shot to the back like a champion and almost immediately relaxed into the impending excitement of the baby. Shit, I even managed a solid nap.

 

I was dilating like a superhero and the anesthesiologist (a crunchy yet genius guy that I would like to be) assured me that I would feel plenty to push. I kept feeling the tiny trickles of lube that nurses used to check my cervix and getting all excited.

 

“Is that my water breaking?”

“Is that my water breaking?”

“Is that my water breaking?”

 

I didn’t even know that small amounts of lube could still thrill me anymore. Partner and I smirked at each other when my water did break, gushing crystal clear and reassuringly all over the bed. Finally, a sensation we’re used to.

 

But my Little Alien’s slow heartbeat still complained every time my uterus tried to urge him out into the world. I stopped dilating. No amount of visualization or pure joy or ohming would get me past eight centimeters, and my cervix started to get puffy and inflamed. Even a completely untrained ear could hear the drastic decells in my Alien’s pulse – babies’ hearts should beat a lot more than forty times per minute.

 

The amazing, wonderful, expert, caring, hippy nurses absolutely did not offer me any interventions that I did not want. They did not interfere with my birth plan. They did not guilt or force me into anything. They offered me information, support and assistance. When they realized that I was laid back and interested in the gory details, they conversed with me in exactly the style I enjoyed. They downright cheered at the size of my hips and pelvis and laughed with me when I joked that they were finally good for something other than making my man pants fit badly.

 

So when this lovely (and I believe typical) team of medical professionals very gently told me that I might be headed for a c-section, I tried very hard to take it in the spirit that they had offered it – as a helpful solution to an increasingly scary problem.

 

Pitocin is a dirty word in natural birthing circles, but a frank and almost obnoxious discussion with my team revealed that they “no longer” abuse this drug or give too much of it. They give it in very metered doses and with appropriate warning of how it will feel. I found myself begging for this ill-spoken-of labor inducer, because it was my last shot at pushing this baby into the world like the burly lumberjack that I am.

 

Again, the birthing team was amazing and let me have a dose of the Pitocin to try it out. And when it was obvious to everyone in the room that my baby hated it and was in true and real danger, they broke it to me very calmly, very matter of factly and made sure that I was completely on board with my imminent trip to the OR. I may be half hippy, but I could also hear that my baby’s heartbeat should be much stronger than it was. I became determined to be the rational, flexible queer that I should be and go with the flow. So did Partner.

 

Partner was sad that he wouldn’t be able to enter the caesarean section sterile field to cut the cord, but he was thrilled that he wouldn’t need the camera’s flash to take pictures under the bright lights on the bloody side of the curtain, where they encouraged him to snap shots. The icing on his cake and the fly in my frosting, was that he would get to hold Alien first, and walk him directly over to me.

 

Nobody said anything scary. The team dressed partner in goofy head-to-toe scrubs and ushered him into the operating room, where I was already prepped, fascinated by the operation process and excited out of my mind to meet the Alien whom I had carried for soooooo many long weeks. I asked if I could see the placenta before they tossed it, I listened to them counting and naming the utensils they would use to pry me open and I was transferred onto the cutting table in an effortless physical thrill ride that I hadn’t experienced since outgrowing the tossing and swinging abilities of my childhood older cousins. I was so busy chatting excitedly with the anesthesiologist that I didn’t notice when he pinched a hunk of my flesh to test if I was completely numb enough for slicing. I didn’t feel a thing.

 

Partner stood right by my head, holding my hand, and I can only assume, just as happily terrified to meet our progeny as I was. The rest was ear-based for me. Some mild suctioning and the voice of the obstetrician.

 

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Yes, fat is yellow and muscle is maroon.”

“It’s going to feel like I am kneeling on your chest now.”

 

That wasn’t so bad.

 

The beep of my heart monitor.

The first squall of my child.

 

Ecstasy.

 

The patient counting of the loops of cord that the surgeon removed from the neck of my now completely quiet child.

 

“One, two three. And one around the arm for a total of four!”

 

The OB gave him a tiny eyeball over, showed me no fear and returned to a casual tone of voice.

 

“Where did his red hair come from?”

 

There was a nervous pause while the team considered that we may not be the biological parents and I panted with joy, because my baby screamed like he was supposed to and my dedicated physician was already noticing non-life-threatening tidbits about him.

 

He has red hair! Where is he?

 

I was overflowing with anticipation and craning my neck to see the cleaning station where the nurses were working on my baby. They were rubbing him with towels and announcing his vital signs. They were not pleased, but not calling a doctor over to him. They stuck a deep suctioning tube down his throat and there are wet sucking noises. I heard the nurse counting to five – only once – but my ears noticed the chest compressions that Partner was seeing and he began to talk to the baby just as he had done when he was in my belly.

 

“Hey Little Dude,” and then, before I could panic, the baby’s Hep B vaccination helped him perfect his new breathing skills and he was wrapped in a hospital blanket and cap.

 

The anesthesiologist and I had become good friends by this point and he saved my straining neck by reminding the nurses and Partner that I was desperate to see my baby.

 

My baby’s fuzzy little head was held next to mine and I breathed him in deep. I sucked as much of his scent into my nose as was humanly possible. I sniffed him and sniffed him and sniffed him. The nurse taking our picture tells me to smile and I think, “I MUST be smiling, because this is bliss. Surely, I am already smiling. Is it possible to smile bigger than I already am?”

 

Before we know it, my baby, Charlie, is handed to me, swaddled askew in my arms in the way that only a nervous new parent can make it awkward to do something so natural. I loudly shouted my thank yous to the OR team as they wheeled me out, like I had just performed rowdy karaoke.

 

“Thank you! Thank you everybody! Thank you so much!”

 

But I meant every word. Their competent hands gave me my child. The life that I created, they delivered to me. In the midst of a process that would have claimed my life and the life of my Sweet Charlie a century ago, I never once felt like I was in the middle of an event so traumatic that weeks later it would give me a panic attack and I would insist that no one speak of the birth until my hormones could recover enough to keep me from bawling. The caesarean section team was so competent, so compassionate and so correct in every action that they made, that I was able to be completely unafraid and focus solely on the bundle of joy that they handed me.

 

Charlie latched like a ravenous dream – first onto his own and Partner’s fingers, and then onto my nipple as soon as it was offered. Partner gave him his first bath. He melted into a cozy puddle under a mild heat lamp and showed us all his perfect bilirubin numbers, showing no negative effects from the ridiculous trial we had just endured. Had he had any minor newborn issues, I am confident that the capable team looking out for us would have handled them as smoothly as they did our surgery.

 

I would have preferred to pop my Little Being out into warm water without any drugs, in under twenty-four hours, but the c-section wasn’t half bad. I took my pain meds without becoming addicted, I healed in a reasonable amount of time and I like to announce that scars are just tattoos with better stories.

 

Western Medicine came through with flying colors, proving to me and my newly enlarged family that a hospital staff is completely capable of facilitating a natural process and then saving our freaky, alternative lives when we were about to turn into a statistic. And I enjoyed the whole damned thing.

Posted in Birth and Delivery, Hospital Birth, Labor | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Labor Is Work

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Inky Chagrin

A contraction is not vaguely similar to a menstrual cramp. A contraction is exactly like an outrageous, wildy intense, above and beyond period cramp. Like period cramps weren’t passingly annoying to have in the first place. Same location. Hurts through the back the same way. Brings on the same sense of who-knows-how-long-this-fist-will-clench-my-lower-guts. Except you know what this is. This cramp is the beginning of labor, a potentially long and grueling process that will end with a sleep-ending, cone-headed, pink and purple, dependent and delicious human infant. That alien inside will be exiting your body in ways that are never really conceivable.

But it’s not Baby Time yet. The first contractions are irregular and birth is not yet imminent. Maybe these contractions are just weeks-ahead-of-time warning signals. It’s just your prone-to-exageration uterus getting in shape and amping up for some future day. Certainly these intermittent monster cramps will not lead to a baby before midnight. You can still wince through the laundry, the dishes and do your last-mintue nesting. Every so often you can pace to the hospital bag or un-inflated birthing pool and ponder how far away you are from enacting those plans.

You felt a tiny trickle. Is that your water breaking? A tiny drop of blood. Is that the mucous plug? Pressure on my tailbone. Is that the baby leaping forth form my loins?

You don’t want to end up at the hospital or birthing center too early. You’d have to pace halls that are not your own and get prodded by well-meaning nurses who check everybody’s pulse every fifteen min. You don’t want to tell your midwife to hurry over twenty times before active labor so that she is so tired by the time it’s real that she’s slapping herself awake instead of the fresh alien.

Before Baby Time, there will be more contractions. For the love of everything try to get one more night of sleep. Attempt to get one last full night, even if it is occasionally interupted by the mild cramps that hint at becoming stronger, regular and faster. When you are well-rested, distract or calm yourself anyway you can. Walks to the grocery store, hot showers, sips of water, favorite movies. Download several contraction timer apps for your phone. Unless you are one of the lucky few who progresses to active labor relatively quickly, these contractions are going to creep up on you. And it’s not all that bad.

Despite being a boy, contractions turned me into a want-to-be priestess of Avalon. Labor is badass. Really badass. It’s not all pain and discomfort. It is excitement, freakish strength and zen master mind focus. Because the endless generations of women who have endured this are so well beyond badass, I had no problem begging the universe to let me commune with them. Their magical, tough-as-shit ranks were really helpful to picture whenever a wave of cramping hit like a truck. It feels pretty cool to ride a racing, thundering truck over the edge of a bridge, into a raging river and over the top of a racing waterfall and to still come out on top. There is no shame in bracing yourself, relaxing into a huge cramp and making some manly, audible whooshing breaths through and o-shaped mouth that really does help disipate the pain.

There is also no shame in going for a walk around the neighborhood and stopping every few minutes to hunker over and moan a little. Everybody will understand that, hey, there is one tough mo-fo working it out. If they don’t understand and they get close enough, you can punch them.

There is no shame in wailing to let Partner know that now is the time to push on your lower back with every ounce of strength possible. No shame in finding strange positions. Only congratulations to be had when even a short conversation must stop as the next wave approaches.

It is unbelievably radical to insist that no interventions be given to you until you are ready for them, and then good for you if you say yes to pain meds to get through the craziness that only you are in charge of. You’re the boss and you’ll get through in the rough and tumble manner that you always have, with a bundle of joy waiting to greet you.

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Embracing the End

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Inky Chagrin

Even better than the justified hording of nesting, is the end of pregnancy. Despite all of the enthusiastic roundhouses, writhing and high kicks, nothing about the baby is quite real yet. Just like every other overdue person in the history of the planet, I am positive that I will be the first to be permanently pregnant. This will last forever. The baby is never coming out. I will always waddle and have to make a lucky lasso toss to get my socks over my toes.

I can’t wait to meet the little bugger; I just don’t think it is ever going to happen. It hasn’t given me any signs that ze is interested in coming out of his private dojo. Like the semi-celebrity in the popular video game commercials, I know Alien only by its dance moves. How could ze be real when I have no idea what ze looks like?

It is a fabulous game to imagine how eerily strange ze could look, with the guaranteed cone head and skin blotches and absurd proportions, and how we will pay no interest to the monstrous side of the baby. We will be amused by the funniest of the faces and be so in love that ze will be perfect. The world’s most gorgeous child. And even if we were capable of being objective, how could we possibly decide which of the two pale, large foreheads or bad eyesight ze had inherited? We will adore all of it’s hideous malfunctions – backed-up bowels, projectile excretions and inabilities to operate the simplest of limbs.

Despite the Alien’s lack of skills in real-life scenarios, it has struck a wonderful deal with me. If it can perpetually kick and punch me, it will at least ride lower in my pelvis. When the baby shifts down lower, it’s called “lightening.” Indeed! Now that ze has found a perfect niche to fall into without applying as much pressure to any of my vital organs, I care less about the discomforts and annoyances and can focus more on the Santa Clause of meeting the hidden creature. I know ze’s not real, couldn’t be real, nothing so absurd could be real or coming down my chimney. But buying diapers for the pretend unicorn sure is fun. Just imagine if someday there really was a tiny butt in those diapers! Impossible!

It’ll never happen. This golden age of lightened pregnancy will last forever, almost as good as the second trimester of energy and creative juices. No matter how disphoric this strange and bloated body is, the simplicity of it will not end. There will be no labor, and no sleep-deprived first three months. The name options that we have picked out will remain sparkly notions and the cozy idea of grandmothers and aunties presenting knitted outfits will not crumble under the stress of endless house guests on the back of perineal stitches.

As I grow more excited to meet the Alien, the more certain I am that it can stall longer than Partner touching up his eye make-up before leaving the house. I mean, really, if any of us had a warm, dark, quiet, free-of-charge place all to ourselves, who would give it up? Ze is never coming out. Ze and I will just stay in this state of ease and automation forever. The cramps will never begin.

Posted in Pregnancy is OK. | Tagged , , | Leave a comment