doing the work

Hi ya'll-
this is KK.

I have to tell you I've been a bit nervous to post anything. N (as we will now call the previous injector, for now I am the injector!!), as you all probably have noticed, has quite a way with words and I am a little nervous about following her act.

That said, I thought I should log (or would it be blog) in and tell you what has been going on with us even if I am no where near as entertaining!

N is sick. Very sick. Sick with a capital S sick.

I make her an english muffin with Jiffy on it and she eats two bites. Christmas Eve? An english muffin with peanut butter that she ate in entirety. Christmas day dinner? We had a feast at my best friend from childhood's families house and she ate.... (drum roll please)... half of one dinner roll.

Friends of ours passed over some ovaltine and that is going really well. Indeed- once this sickness has passed I am quite certain she will never want to see a jar of ovaltine again!!!



And last night at another gathering of good friends, she ate 4 small pieces of french bread with cheddar cheese.

I know, I know, you are saying to yourselves: why, KK, it sounds like she is eating a ton! And, it sounds like she is out and about doing all sort of festive activities!

You are completely correct- N has been a real trooper tagging along with me. We went to her families for Christmas Eve and morning, then to my families and other friends in Detroit on Christmas Day. On Boxing Day, I actually kidnapped her after going to the U of M Birthing Center to fill out paperwork and get all of her appointments set. We went to Riverside Arena in Livonia to a rollerskating party (yes, you read that right!), and then to see friends in from Florida in Ann Arbor.



But everywhere we go she either lays under a blanket or sits on the couch. With a blank look in her eye and with "fog in her head", or so she says. Which is all good and fine with me and with everyone she sees. I think that really, she is the only one having a problem with it. She doesn't like to feel sick (really, who does?) but she REALLY doesn't like it. She can't deal with it- and not being able to deal with it spirals her into further depression.

Before our 3 days of being out and about she was confined to the couch for a week. Her dad [FYI: her family is being totally and completely amazing about her being pregnant. Really supportive and loving. It is beautiful to watch], understanding depression, asked the real questions: are you taking showers? (answer: no); are you exercising? (answer: no). And he told her that she HAS to take a shower and she HAS to exercise. You can't go from riding your bike 20 miles a day to not doing a single thing but lying on the couch and expect that the lack of endorphins won't mess you up. So true, so true, Mr. G. So she took some showers and then used the treadmill at their house. It really did help. Yay! (and now that we have -what 70 degree weather, ha ha- above freezing weather I will go out on walks with her and Pookah the dog. Or kidnap her again to go to the gym (she is extremely afraid of being anywhere should she need to vomit. Which she is deathly afraid of, I am sure she has mentioned somewhere in this blog).

She has lost about 5-8 lbs at this point.

I am feeling o.k. with all of this- I know she will be okay. She will gain the weight back and much much more, she will feel better, she will be happy again, she will be active, she will learn to trust her body and love her body and except the innate wisdom of herself.

She has to do the work of pregnancy.

the work

Well I am 6 and half weeks along into this pregnancy, and it is the craziest place I have ever been in my life.

I have this overwhelming feeling of something like guilt but not quite guilt hanging over my head. All of the hopelessness that had built a warrior wall around my heart should be crumbling to pieces and taking on the cloak of thankfulness, but there is still this roar of why me so fast, so just like that, so on the very first try--when for so long we tried with k and we had so much disappointment?

And now here I am with implantation of a wee seed and with a thousand worries manifesting in my mind. See kk is such a vessel of peace and stability, and I am such a vessel of mind chatter. I know crawling through this mind chatter and leaving pieces of it behind is part of my life work, but I keep asking myself can I do it? Am I strong enough? And then I know I am, but how do we really stop telling ourselves stories that fill up the spaces between the known and unknown. Cause really that is what worry is, right? The trying to make sense out of the great unknown...and assigning meanings (whether the meanings are right or not) to the various ways we feel and the various physical responses we experience in our bodies and the various realities that surface all around us everyday.

I am trying to be as chill as I can be. I am trying to take every new crook and turn in my body with a nod and a mantra of all is well with my body and the new life within it. But I feel very weak and inept. I want to be a good partner, good friend, good daughter, good person and right now I feel a bit too self-obsessed to be good.

Not having much of an appetite and forcing food down my throat plus hormonal changes is contributing to this sort of emotional wave riding, but I wanted to get this overall state of being out through writing. It will flit and flight away too and then come back to rest on my rib cage and then leave for a taste of thistle seed and then land again transformed a bit different but with new stories on the tip of its beak and I will try to learn from the chatter by saying hello and petting its wings and then letting it go.

happy shock

Thank you all so much for your kind words and support and voices of surprise!

I am still in shock. It is happy shock. I am trying to wrap my head and heart around all of this. A kind of terror and excitement and simply being are the three things surfacing in my life right now. I really am digging just curling up on the couch at night with my kk and drawing and painting and watching silly christmas specials. We have been needing this nesting time and I think it may be a pattern for us for the next many, many months.

It is so early on and there seem to be so many things to find out and know, but I realize that we have time to get it all together. I just really never contemplated a vision of my birth experience or the reality of having a wee critter living inside of me.

There was a time in my early, early twenties when I did dream, for a brief moment, of having many kids (like six or something) and I did think my body would carry those little lives into being, so...I turn back to that.

Well, I have to go drag my tired, tired self out into a semi-blizzard and walk dear pookah.

I'm sure I'll be blathering like mad on this thing once my heart is a bit more settled.

Amazing + Absurd = the lives of kk and the injector

Um, ya.

So, remember how we slung some seed up me a few weeks back?
And do you remember how it was the first time I had ever done such a thing?
And do you remember how long we have been trying to get my kk pregnant?

I will synopsify the attempts to get kk pregnant here:
18 months of trying (may 07-nov 08)
20 months total since the start of the whole endeavor
80 inseminations
4 visits to reproduction clinic
3 months on clomid (devil, devil, devil drug)

And then the one time on a whim when kk thought me fertile and our donor and kk decided to play a game of brief back and forth, snarky emails throughout the day--planning in sinister and loving cahoots the injection of me.

Come that night, two days before thanksgiving 2008, my love shot me up with this potential life giving fluid. She did it so gracefully and passionately my heart sprung a leak of everlasting love.

Well nearly three weeks since that fateful night, I have peed on 3 pregnancy sticks—two on Monday the 8th of December (almost 6 hours apart) and one on Friday the 12th of December after missing my period by two and a half days and all of them have shouted the positive PREGNANT.

Now on Monday evening, you should have seen me in clear and intense shock; stunned to a sit down on my ass stupor. Well you can see it below in the action photo sequence that kk took of me.

Anyhow, I tested a day and half before my period was due and got the positives. I did not start my period, and this morning (six days later) no period and moving into what seems to be my fifth week of pregnancy.

And still I am in a state of disbelief, but I am so in tune with my body that I do notice the distinct changes; abdominal pulling, gassy belly, super sleepy, bits of nausea and then me wiggling and turning and staying wide awake for hours on end when I should be sleeping. Though the last two nights, I have slept deep and fully and had crazy vivid dreams.

So, there you have it. I am carrying a little seed critter. After all of this trying and hoping and being let down and trying again and hoping some more and hitting our heads against so many elusive and hard walls, we tried this one time with me, and bang it worked. Like my mama asked, “N, do you think this is a miracle?” In some way, it is; it really, really is. I mean one time—the one time that semen has ever entered my body and presto.

At this time, I am pregnant. And kk and I are hoping with all of the hope we can muster from the deep steamy, stinking parts of our guts and the bloody, pumping parts of our hearts that this wee critter sticks and stays with us and chooses to be part of our lives.

p.s. I was hesitant about putting this up here cause I know how very early along I am, but I am trying to live each moment of this newness in joy and deep inquisitiveness.

p.s. kk is very thrilled and happy about all of this and together we will work through the sadness connected to the months and months and nearly two years of the trying without implantation that she has been through. Also, she will become a frequent guest poster here at injection reflections since she seems to be the more capable injector of the two of us:)











We went Christmas tree shopping for the first time in our nearly 9 year relationship right after we got the first positive. We were in crazy moods; happy and stunned.

will i catch a pregnancy

We just arrived home from kk's dad's house. We watched jaws 2 with him and ate cupcakes for his 62nd birthday. our drive home was very, very slickery. Winter is here in good old Michigan. It is about 30 degrees and icy.


Icy drive home

On our way out to her pop's, I noticed that all the strip clubs on Michigan avenue were thumping--packed out parking lots--and this was at 5:30 on a Monday evening. It is strange that the economy is down real, real bad here in the previously motor ruled--now motor dying state and still horny men are spending cash on liquor and titty views. Oh, I guess it really is not all that strange. When you are down and out, what's better than some booze and boobs?

Anyhow, this post is not supposed to be about ladies' parts or a dying economy or automobiles. It really is supposed to be all about me and what's been up in our super busy, but then all quiet lives.

We had turkey day here at our queer pad again. I deep cleaned the house for many days. Then I cooked a hell of a lot. Then our family and friends arrived. Then we ate a lot of the food that was cooked. Then everybody left. Then K and I slept for hours and hours each night that we had left of our vacation/weekend. Then we did nothing at all. Then I chopped a huge chunk of skin out of my left index finger and it bled for 1.5 hours and hurt like hell for about 13 hours and is still swollen [in the last two months or so, I have wounded my hands by either slicing or burning multiple times; universe what message are you sending me?]. Then kk yelled at me to be more careful with knives. Then we relaxed.


me relaxing in the small dose of sun we have had in the last many, many weeks

Monday we went back to work.

Today, I am waiting patiently to see if the mother of all miracles is taking place inside my body. yes, my body. yes, many days back we shot some living fluid up into my body. It was done on a whim. I think nothing will come of it. Kk thought I was ripe so we injected me with some semen (but I pretended it was something else like special lubricant or something, because I have never had sperm in my body before--not ever).

See,I woke up and said, "I think I have fertile mucus." Then we went to work. Then kk called me at work and said, "baby, I think we should try on you tonight." Then potential bio-dad said cool. So, come nighttime, we did it.

I keep pretending I am a queer virgin mary (or a 17 year old girl who can get pregnant from leg crawling sperms) and this one time this special dose of jiz (god breathed into me through the saint like fingers of my loving kk and the plastic cavity of a syringe--yes like the kind you feed medicine to cats with--) will get me prego.

A shot in the dark for fucking real, and kind of fun all at once.

p.s. more to come soon about what's up with kk's repro office experience and our thoughts regarding the use of my womb for potentially carrying a wee critter into the world of the living.