Why oh why?

Why oh why am I such a slack blogger at the moment? Probably due to the fact that I am now 38 weeks pregnant, still working full time and trying to get two university assignments done before Ragey arrives. And trying to make sense of it all. That, and that we’ve had some behind the scenes stuff going on here that’s been a bit consuming emotionally. I’ll probably blog about it soon, but suffice to say, we never do things by halves.
We’re all ready though for the new arrival. It’s a strange sensation, the perpertual preparedness for an arrival any time in the next four weeks or so. Like you know you’re going on a holiday (the biggest life changing trip of your life), have your bags all packed, but just don’t know when the flight is departing. Everything’s washed. Our antenatal classes finish tomorrow night (and not a moment too soon). I have finally turned a corner where even my maternity clothes no longer feel comfortable and my belly is starting to peek out below my shirts.
Like a holiday, there’s a few things I still need to do before we go. The usual girly stuff, waxing, a haircut, uploading some new toons to the ipod. Also, so much bureaucratic stuff. We are trying to get all the paperwork in order to organise Ragey’s citizenship (as we’re having the baby over here rather than home in Oz), so that we can get a passport so we can travel home for Hope’s sister’s wedding later in the year. These things take time, more so when they’re complicated by donors and crap antiquated laws and new laws that bureaucrats don’t yet understand. So, I am trying to get all the paperwork ready to go so that after the birth we can just fill in the name, attach a birth certificate and send it off. I am looking forward to the cutest passport photo taken when Rage is one week old (given they last five years, it will be kind of useless for identification purposes).
Acupuncture has been a hit. I am seeing a kooky mumsy lady who grills me on lesbo ttc questions each time I see her so that she can pass the info onto her other lesbo clients. An average session starts out something like.. “so, what they want to know is does she need to have an orgasm when she inseminates? They’re just not sure because by the time they’ve collected the sperm from their donor and driven across town, she’s just not quite in the mood and so worried about time.” I have given the acupuncturist my email address to pass onto to these inseminating lesbians, but I think they prefer the confessional booth style intermediary of messages being passed back and forth on the acupuncture table. The acupuncturist is a non-hippy, woman who career-changed into acupuncture after seeing an ad in the paper with no interest or knowledge in it but just a desire to escape her crappy office job and a desire for a job that fit in around the kids. But, she’s done wonders with turning Rage from posterior to perfect left anterior in a matter of days, and I am doing some pre-birth priming stuff. Plus I like my official status as lesbian conception adviser .
My energy levels are fine, but my main problem is going places were yoga pants are not appropriate attire (i.e. the workplace). Two weeks left at work, two weeks til our conception date based EDD and a bit over two weeks til our dating scan based EDD. Will definitely keep you lovely ladies posted.

Antenatal classes

We started our antenatal classes on Monday night and, despite much trepidation about whether they would be a horrible hetero-athon, we actually really enjoyed it and I am pleased that we booked in with a progressive not for profit organisation located in the queer part of town.

I had heard the horror stories about some of the ante natal classes, which sounded like a nightmare to us, for example making the men dress up in pregnant suits and wear a dress for the rest of the night when they made a mistake or said something dumb – since when is emulating a pregnant woman an appropriate dunce cap? And when is public humiliation ever a good thing?

So, I was so glad I had done the research and we had paid to go to a good class rather than the free ones on offer.  The group has a strong focus on natural physiological birth. There are a good proportion of homebirthers, with others having a hospital birth with a midwife. We are the only people with an obstetrician rather than a midwife. But I am very aligned with their philosophy and very keen to work towards an intervention free birth if possible (that’s a post for another time).

When I spoke to the coordinator early in the year, she said they normally have at least one same sex couple in their classes. So, in the days leading up, I had been on tenterhooks regarding the ‘at least one’ factor . . . was it possible there’d be another queer couple?

When we arrived and signed our names on the class sign in sheet at the registration desk, I subtly tried to scan the enrollments list to see if there were any other Hers & Hers names. There was James and Charlotte, Jack and Jill, Jen and Will, Sharon and Mark etc etc. No such luck We were on our own. So, we ventured into the room and took our seats in the circle, and then a few minutes later these two funky urban women entered the room together. You know the types, horn-rimmed glasses, thick fringes, glamorous boots, one a little more boyish than the other. One had the name tag ‘Jen,’ the other, more boyish one, ‘Will.’ I practically fell out of my seat hissing to Hope, ‘Will’s a girl! Will’s a girl! Trust a lesbian to be called Will! Must be short for Whilomena!’ So, then I started my rapport building across the room, making eye contact, smiling, trying to get some glimpse of gaydar recognition. I wasn’t getting much back, so I glanced around the rest of the room to see lots of different types of straight couples with pregnant women all rubbing their bellies. Then, further round the circle, I saw two blonde, very straight looking and acting women sitting together. One had the name tag ‘Sharon’ and the other ‘Mark’. Ever keen to suspend disbelief, I briefly flirted with the idea that there could be two other lesbian couples in the room, one with the name Will and one with the name Mark, until it soon dawned on me that Will and Mark were in fact female friends / support people standing in for their friends’ husbands/male partners and thus wearing their nametags. Oh, the disappointment!

So, we were the only queer couple in the room, but it was a very friendly bunch. The facilitators were wonderful. I loved the fact that instead of using terms like mum and dad, or mum and partner, or woman and partner, they used the terms ‘person who is giving birth’ or ‘birthing person’ and the ‘person who is not giving birth’ or ‘non birthing person’. you can’t get more inclusive than that, and such language would even make Thomas Beattie comfortable.

There was high drama midway through the evening when one pregnant woman (ahem, I mean, birthing person) who had flagged that she didn’t like gory details, collapsed dramatically during a very tame presentation about the stages of labour. Luckily there was a midwife on hand, but much drama ensued and we all thought we might be about to see birth in action.

So, I am really excited to go back next week, we both are. And I am already thinking about getting involved with them as a volunteer after the birth as they just seem like such a lovely outfit (and it’s the kind of volunteer work you can bring your baby along to).

Why Rage?

I was following this thread in an online discussion about nicknames in utero.  You know, peanut, jellybean, sprout and some of the more unusual ones, like the family who’s young son decided the baby in the tummy’s name was ‘Harry the Lion’ and it stuck.   We’ve kept pretty quiet that our lil one’s name is Rage, apart from telling a few people as a decoy for avoiding questions about the real names we intend to use.   But given the name of this blog, I figured I’d better do some explaining.  I admit, Rage is a peculiar name for a baby in utero, but for us it’s perfect. Rage, Ragey, Rageybaby, it’s the perfect gender neutral moniker.

We had picked out the name Rage well before Rage even arrived, inspired initially by the gay superhero in Queer as Folk, liking the sound of the word and wanting a strong little feisty embryo.  We also thought there might be an element of irony, you know, like how you call a really big person ‘mouse’ or a tall person ’shorty’.  We thought that our little Rage may turn out to be a placid, peaceful baby.

As an infant and small child, I was notoriously difficult.  When I was younger and asked my mother to tell me what I was like when I was little, she said ‘oh, please don’t remind me, I’d prefer not to think about it!’.  As an adult, particularly in my professional life, outwardly I’m cheerful, effortlessly polite, somewhat quiet and very composed.  (Of course, as you guys know, beneath that facade my inner 19 year old queer radical activist is dying to get out.)  But, as a little one, I was full of rage.   I was a screaming, tantrum throwing, difficult child.  I would bang my head against the wall, make myself throw up repeatedly, then scream some more.  I think it was particularly wearing for the people around me (and is probably why my much older siblings (who at the time were pretty much all teenagers), never really took to me.  But, even though I feel sorry for my mother enduring this, I kind of like hearing about this little girl so full of rage.  Who had a voice.  Who was determined to take up space.   Who knew what she wanted and damn, she was going to get it.  So, even though I am hoping our little Ragey will be far more settled and content than little me ever was, if our little one channels some of that fighting spirit, it won’t be such a bad thing.

I came to live out loud

“If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.” Emile Zola

Thanks for joining me over here at my new digs.  This was meant to be the optimistic blog,  looking down the barrell of the final ten weeks of what’s so far, been a pretty healthy and trouble free pregnancy.  But this past day or so, I’ve been struggling under the weight of all the homophobia that oppresses us.   Living overseas from our friends and family, we’ve kind of been buffered from it.  There’s been something very nice about growing this pregnancy in privacy, away from prying eyes and unwelcome comments, creating our own little reality in our progressive little corner of the world.

But lately we’ve reflected on how we have really chosen to life out loud.  We’ve taken up space.   We’ve taken up space that heteros want to quarantine for themselves.  Having a wedding, and a church wedding at that, and going on to have a baby, has really opened the door for us to find out what people really think about us.  Like the character Brian Kinney on Queer as Folk says, there’s two kinds of straight people “the ones that hate you to your face, and the ones that hate you behind your back.”   The more I progress down the path of living the life we want, rather than the less-than life others expect us to have, I think this is truer than most would like to believe.   We do have a decent number of supportive, straight, hetero-allies (erm, I mean, friends), but I have been surprised how by doing what we want really confronts heteros and invites them to voice their opinions.

A few things have invited me to revisit all this.  Firstly, Hope’s sister has just announced her engagement.  It’s causing a scandal because a) she’s not planning to wear white b) she’s not having a church wedding c) she’s not having her father give her away.  Basically, she’s flaunting the expectations the family have for their first hetero wedding.  What has been upsetting is how acceptable it has been for the family to have repeated conversations about how our wedding was a dissapointment and now this too!  I find it really offensive that people think it’s perfectly acceptable to criticise our wedding in front of us as though we’re all agreed that our wedding was a cause for shame and embarrassment.  To us, it was the most beautiful day, and we’re glad that we demanded that heteros acknowledge our union.  But two years on, they’re all still processing. And in doing so, also making clear that a non traditional straight wedding is still better any day than a gay wedding, no matter how churchy, white-dressed or family orientated it was.

The other thing that’s been going on is dealing with the ongoing ramifications of those people who choose to make it very clear that they thought what we’d done by conceiveing our little ragey was wrong.  My brother, who refused to reply to my email and still has not acknowledged the pregnancy, but who I have heard from my parents doesn’t agree with it, and my former oldest and dearest friend and her sisters (this family of four girls I grew up with closer than my own siblings) who wrote to me when I announced the pregnancy about her views on it (that it was wrong, the poor innocent baby, but that she wouldn’t go into why she disagreed as it was not like I could put the baby back, but that she and her entire family agreed that it was wrong and were very distressed about it).  At the time, I decided I didn’t want to have anything further to do with these people who held such strong opposition to our family. These are not the people I want our baby to be exposed to, despite the history I shared with them.   But it does make me mad.  Why is it that heteros feel they can tell you what they think about your life? Cutting off contact has not been hard with my brother as he still hasn’t responded and we weren’t really in regular contact anyway.  But I responded to my friend’s email at the time expressing my regret, wishing her well, but explaining that my priority was creating a safe and accepting space for our family and, based on the views she expressed, she wasn’t going to feature in that.

And then yesterday, we get this invitation from one of the four sisters in the post to her engagement party.   The party is in three weeks and would be a 8 hr flight away.  So, it’s one of those Clayton’s invites where she’s not actually expecting us to come, but for some reason has been compelled to send an invite.  There’s no personal note or explanation or ‘I know you’ll be 8 months pregnant but I wanted to let you know this was going on for me’  just the invite in the envelope.   It took us a while to work out what the invitation was about.  I came up with two possibilities, a) that she wanted to invite my parents (our families are still neighbours and close family friends) and thought it would be awkward to invite them and not us, or b ) it was a bulletin, a bit like a postal facebook status update, she couldn’t cope with me not knowing this was going on for her c) some kind of attempt at taking the gracious moral high ground, without the risk that the pregnant lesbians would actually turn up.  We’re going to send an engagement card with a polite decline, saying that obviously, with our baby on the way we won’t be able to be there but wishing them well.  That’s the decent thing and what we would have wanted for ourselves (these ‘friends’ didn’t make it to our wedding and sent a housewarming card along with their decline).   What’s interesting is this friend is marrying a guy ten years her junior. She’s a high school teacher and he was 16-17 when they started dating.  He’s now just about 19 and she’s 29.  Her parents aren’t too happy about it (the age difference and the fact he’s a carpenter not a lawyer or a doctor), but on the upside he’s a hard core fundamentalist Catholic from a homeschooling family of nine (who wants her to quit her day job and homeschool their future children, all six of them).  What I find incredible is how quick people, for example my parents, are to jump to their defence and shield them from any judgement “but Jesus was a carpenter.  I was 19 when I was married! Some of the brightest university graduates were homeschooled!”

What I find amazing, is that never in my wildest dreams would I feel like it was my place to sit down and write a letter to them saying ‘I think that what you’re doing is wrong, I can’t believe you have a ten year age gap.  Your poor innocent children destined to a life of Catholic indoctrination and homeschooling!’ It would be unthinkable.  I may personally not want to marry someone who wants me to quit my career and homeschool six kids for him, but I am not marrying him!  I just want them to be happy and believe they have the right to choose their own path.  Even if I do have views on a child’s right to a secular education away from the family home, I just wouldn’t be that audacious or insensitive to think it was my place to tell them that.  And yet people continue to feel like they have the liberty to tell us what they think about our family and we’re meant to accept it and be grateful for their honesty.

There’s more where this came from.  The people who emailed us asking to come visit and stay with us for a specific time. When we replied and said we were having a baby, and they’d be welcome, but there would be a small baby at the time, they just when silent and never contacted us again.

It’s exhausting and I’m sick of the homophobia.  But optimistically, Hope said to me last night “I would rather be treated like a second class citizen but enjoy a first class relationship like ours, than be a first class citizen with a second class relationship, which is what I believe 99.5 per cent of heteros have.”   I know, we sound like hetero bashers and some of these experiences are making me feel that way, but, don’t worry, some of our best friends are straight.