I'm a soon-to-be non-gestational, non-biological, non-adoptive mother. In short, I'm a lesbian and my wife is pregnant... this is my blog following documenting our journey.
Sunday is a pretty good day for people watching, and my favourite pastime has now got a new logistical spin. Basically, when it comes to the practicalities of bringing a small person into this world, my wife and I aren’t sweating the small stuff. Look, we took five years of IVF clinics and private consultations and plane rides and sperm donors and operations and general chaos to get to the point that we are at now. So things like the day-to-day practicalities haven’t quite caught up yet. We have a friend who is due a month before us, and all they need is the baby monitor. We, on the other hand, have a Barbapapa lamp we fished out of a skip and a book about a giraffe. We have loads of time… but still, we’ve started to think that we might need a pushchair. So in the sun, we sat on the shores of a rather big lake in Switzerland, watching the people promenade whilst paying close attention to the buggies that went by. This has taught us a few important facts – ...
Next week we are going to visit some nursery schools. I wasn't expecting this to happen at all, or at the very least quite so soon, but it seems that a shortage of spaces in the local area means that you've got to get your kid's name down on a list before they've even got a name... This has also flagged the issue of what we do post birth in regards to childcare and maternity leave. The plan was that one of us would stay at home full time, but recent promotions and retraining make that pretty unlikely to happen. To cap it off, my wife will have only 16-weeks off for maternity leave. And I'll have exactly nada, nothing, zip. In Switzerland, there is no legal requirement for paternity leave. My company offers a discretionary couple of days, but I am yet to find out whether that'll be extended to me. I honestly doubt it, and have no legal leg to stand on to get a day off even for the birth. It is completely possible that I'll be asked to make up the ti...
I get it, you want to know who the father is because we fall out of the parameters of what constitutes a family for you. Don't look so worried... I get it. But to be honest, here is my point of view. Each time you casually ask "who is the father?", or "how did you pick the father?", I feel a little dismissed. It is obvious this is a little more about my wife, her contention to rival the size of the Goodyear blimp by autumn is registered and well underway. She is clearly going to become a parent soon, but despite outward appearances, so am I. I understand your curiosity, I do. But firstly it is a little personal to be asking where we bought cum from and what made us pick that particular jar of man juice. But that is what you are asking every time you say "so who is the father?". Think about that for a moment. And the reason reading between the lines makes me think of spermage is because that is what this is to us. There is no father....
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