Internets...you so crazy! (Just a quick post)

Crazy in a good way.

Just in the past few days, I've been able to uncover more and more resources for transdads, and DI dads.  I swear when I was looking months ago I found nothing.  But the Google Search Gods must have come together in the "Let's show Marc the way" meeting and opened up a world of info for me.

And I didn't have to go through 20 pages in the search either... Seriously, how many "O's" can the word Google have before it should really just say, "What the fuck are you looking for?!"

Well, thank you Google Search Gods.... Thank you.

Its times like this I'm glad we have things like the internet. 



I guess I should do an ACTUAL introduction

So I've only posted a few times and realized that I never did a REAL "introduction" post.  I guess this will be it.

My name is Marc and I was born female.  I'm 33 years old, and my wife and I have been married since September 2006.  We've talked about starting a family when we got married.  Maybe even a bit before. (I can't remember.) As we started the process of looking at donors and started to figure out how we will pay for everything things were put on hold.  I was depressed, not with our marriage or life really... but depressed with myself.  I started going to therapy and finally realized what was making me so miserable.  I finally came to terms with the fact that I was transgender.  I was male, stuck in a female body. And I dropped the bomb on my wife and told her that  I knew what I needed to do to be happy, was to start my transition.  So I did.  I started Testosterone, changed my name, started going by male pronouns, etc...

Starting our family was put on hold.  We needed to work on our relationship first.  Things were rocky and we need to build back up our lives before we went forward with having a child.  I'll fast forward a bit since this blog isn't about my marriage, but things ended up working out.

As things were finally coming together and we were a happy married couple again, the topic of kids came back up.  We started looking up donors again and started saving money.  We knew our insurance wasn't going to pay for any of this, so we just started saving as much money as we could.  We went to a local hospital and talked with their fertility specialists to start the process of having kids. We let the doctor know I was trans and that we needed to use a donor.  I was worried at first.  I never know how people will be when I bring up the fact that I'm trans.  Its not that I'm stealth about it by any means.  Its just not the first thing I bring up to people when I meet them.  He told us that it wasn't a problem and they could help!  We were happy!

We finally decided on a donor and bought the vial online to be sent to the hospital.  (I still think its a crazy process that you can just go online and order sperm from the cryobank!)  We could only afford one vial at a time after saving for months so we were hoping for the best.  When my wife got to go ahead from the ovulation predictor kit we did our first IUI, waited our 2 weeks and... shark week came for my wife and we were back to saving.

When we finally saved and saved month after month and did the whole process 2 more times... and nothing.  We were getting discouraged.  I felt inferior as a man that I couldn't produce sperm of my own. I had to keep telling myself that there are other couples who try and try for years and years... we couldn't lose hope after only trying 3 times.  The doctor said it takes on average of about 3-5 IUIs with a healthy woman before there was conception. We were still in that range.  And my wife didn't have any fertility issues.  So we didn't lose hope.

We saved up again and finally... on our fourth try... the eagle landed!  We got our BFP (Big Fat Positive) at the end of November 2013.

So here we are... my wife is 23 almost 24 weeks pregnant, we are prepping for little G to arrive and I'm gonna be a father... finally.

<3

Papa bird is nesting...

So the wife and I spent a good hunk of the weekend getting more things set up in G's room. We unpacked the huge duffle bag of baby clothes my mom sent us home with when we visited them in Florida the other week. I put up a cute wall decal in his room and it turned out wonderful! Things are really starting to come together. Things are really starting to sink in even more.

HE WILL BE HERE IN ABOUT 16 WEEKS!  

This is real. So real. 

But not in the, "Oh my god, what did we do?" way. But more in the, "There is SO much to do, can I get it all done in time?" way. And that's when it hit me. 

Time is gonna start flying from here on out. 

One of my biggest concerns about being a transdad/DI dad is telling him he was conceived via donor. It's something my wife and I have talked about. Even before we started this process. I don't want to keep it a secret from him. I don't want to wait until he is in his teens or older to tell him and have it blow up in my face. 

My wife and I talked about how we want to introduce the fact that each and every family is different. There are ALL TYPES of families. And the common denominator is LOVE. And that sometimes people need help to have a family and it doesn't make them any less of a family. 

But how/when do I slowly introduce these things to him? There are so many things that I have questions/concerns about and at times feel completely alone with them. 

I know a lot of parents, but only a couple of trans parents. But their situation is a bit different than mine. I just don't want my son to feel that I was lying to him, or was keeping this huge secret from him. 

And when we do tell him about being a DI kid, then I would have to tell him that I'm trans.  A man that can't produce his own biological kids, a man that was assigned female at birth. Will he see me as less of a man than other dads?

Let's Go Shopping

Clothes shopping.

Its something that I personally HATED with a passion as a kid. My mother would try to get me to dress more girly but soon realized that it wasn’t for me. She was great about just letting me be the “tomboy” I thought I was. It honestly wasn’t until I was about a year into my transition that I really ENJOYED shopping for clothes. I found my style and loved getting dressed up. And now I get to shop for my kid! This makes me very happy.

But slightly conflicted at the same time….

As I’m sifting through all the adorable dapper boys clothes for my son, I start to think. The only person that will be able to tell me the gender of my kid will be my kid. But am I wrong for picking out male clothes for him? I mean of course once he is able to pick out his own style of clothing he can wear whatever he wants to express his gender. I feel sometimes that people who know that I’m trans, might question on how I am making my son conform to gender norms early. But infants aren’t able to convey those things… right?

Its little things like this that make me wish I knew other transgender parents. I guess this is just another thing I can add to my “Worry List” I’ll have as a parent.

NEED!!

 

 

 

 

Found this awesome onesie on thinkgeek.com and I have to buy it. It says, “Made with LOVE (And Science!)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/e74b/

To Blog or Not To Blog...

To blog or not to blog about my life as a father. This has been something I’ve been thinking about for some time.

There are billions of blogs out in the interwebs. Lots of blogs about being a parent, mainly mothers. There are even quite a few blogs that are written by fathers. But as I kept searching and searching and I found very few blogs written by transgender parents. This is when I started to ask myself, should I try to do a blog about life as a trans-parent? Not that I feel there are any differences in cis-gender parents versus trans-parents. But do I really want to put myself out there? As of right now, I guess I do. But we shall see how far it goes.

My wife is due in August. She has been amazing and wonderful. It was a long process for us to get pregnant, but once “the eagle landed” it was of course all well worth it. So many thoughts trample my brain. And it honestly feels like it was only a few weeks ago that we both fell to our knees with tears of joy in our eyes when we saw “YES” on the pregnancy test.

My son isn’t even born yet and there are some things that I wonder about. Things I’m not even sure cis-gender parents even question . From silly things like, “How will I teach him how to pee standing up? I don’t even pee standing up!!” Or more complicated things like, “If/when should I tell him that I was born female?” Or “That he was conceived from a donor.”

I don’t plan on this blog being a “How to” type thing. I guess as of right now, it’s more about my thoughts on being a parent. Which might be slightly different from the “average” man. I guess this is my small introductory post.

Hi, I’m Marc and I’m a transdad to-be. Welcome to my blog. Enjoy!