Halloween, Thanksgiving and Gallstones... OH MY.

To quote one one of my favorite movies:  "Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well!" 

Hi... I'm Marc and I suck at keeping up to date.  I guess I have somewhat of an excuse.  Things have just been insanely busy.  I'll try and not make this post too long.  No one really wants to read my babbling anyway.

The last time I updated was over 2 months ago.  Our little man is now 3 months old!!  I'll get to pictures in a bit.  Time is just going by so fucking fast!  Its kind of scary to be honest.  I feel like there are times I'm neglecting life. But my wife and G are my life so I guess I'm not really neglecting it. 

I feel that I've hit a new point in my life.  Maybe the word "point" isn't the best word.  Its more like a milestone... maybe.  Its this new phase (Yes... phase is the word I wanted ha ha.) in life.  I have this need to be around other new parents, mainly new fathers.  Someone to talk to, rant to, bounce parenting ideas off of.  But I feel like I have ZERO time for that.  Zero time for socializing really.  And when we do, there are times I feel like we are "those" people.  If we were a title of an episode of Friends.. we'd be, "The Ones With The Baby".   I don't mean to make it sound negative.  I am VERY happy about it.  But its this phase much like the one after you get married and your the only married couple among your group of friends.  And sometimes you just feel awkward about trying to hang out with people.  I'm not really sure how to explain it.  But I know there are others that can understand what I mean.  Shit, maybe its just me.  Who knows.  Between craziness of work, being a new dad and my wife's health (which I'll get to in a minute), things are pretty much a whirlwind right now.

With life going by so fast and G growing up is starting to get me a bit worried.  The sooner he grows up the sooner I'll have to be more upfront about his origins.  I talk about to him now but its not like he knows what I'm really saying.  The more I talk to him about how much Jen and I wanted him in our lives, and that we had to use a donor in order to make this happen does help me talk about it more openly.  But I also don't have him talking back to me asking questions.  I don't know how he will feel about it.  I'm PROUD of being a transdad.  I'm PROUD of our unique family.  And I want him to be PROUD of where he came from too.  But how do I know he will?  I don't.  And that worries me sometimes.  


My parents finally were able to come up and meet G in person!  That was exciting!

G and his Baba.

G and his Grandpa.

Halloween... we did dress G up in a costume for his first Halloween.  He was an ADORABLE turtle!

Turtle time!

He is so cute!

We also had this little outfit a friend of mine made!

So not only did my parents come and G got to dress up for Halloween.  He also turned 2 months old!

He does NOT look amused.

November... We were able to get some really nice pictures done as a family.  LOVE these.  They turned out AMAZING.  (Also I was happy that I had a GOOD hair day! ha ha)

My brother, who lives in Wisconsin, sent G his first sports tee.  We are not sports fans but it looks good on him!

Game Face Ready! He looks so grown up in this picture.

And with November, G is now 3 months old!

He was probably pooping in this picture.

And then...comes Thanksgiving.  And this year I have SO much to be thankful for.  And the majority of the reason is why I do this blog.  For my son.  I'll definitely do an "End of the Year" blog post and get into more detail but this kid right here, has changed my life for the better.  My son, where the phrase, "Love at first sight" rings the most true.   And also with Thanksgiving brings the third element of my blog title... Gallstones.

My wife has been having a lot of health issues since after G was born.  What the docs first thought was just major acid reflux, it was really gallstone.  At least we know the real reason for all the pain and discomfort she has been dealing with.  She already had an appointment set up to talk with the surgeon to have her gallbladder removed, but on Thanksgiving she had this massive attack that ended up with her being put in the hospital with pancreatitis.  And that is how we spent our Thanksgiving this year.  Ideally not how we wanted to spend our first Thanksgiving with G but we just gotta roll with the punches.  Hopefully, she can get this gallbladder out and be pain free by the new year.

That about wraps it up for now I guess. Right now Jen is sleeping after an exhausting day at work and with G (She is able to take him to work with her which is great.) and she is still not feeling 100%.  G is sleeping in his little rocker in the living room while I sit here typing.  The TV is on but I'm not really paying attention, and I all of a sudden started thinking.  Thinking about my life.  Thinking about how far I've gone in my own journey of self-discovery.  

I remember in high school, just wanting to know WHO I was.  And when I thought I knew... I was only just beginning to discover my true self. 

When we're young, we all have this vision of what we think life is going to be for us.  Or at least, what we hope for it to be.  We take our map and try to draw the route on how we are going to get from point A to point B.  Deep down, we all know its never going to go as we planned.  There will be detours, closed roads, accidents, construction and major traffic jams.  And in certain moments, we all have road rage. However, every now and then, I think we all need to just take a second and look in the rear view mirror.  And be proud of how far we've gone.

1 Month Quick Update!

Well ladies and Gents....
On September 19th... which happens to be my parent's anniversary and also.... International Talk Like A Pirate day....Our little guy turned 1 month old!!

Happy 1 Month Birthday!!!

WHAT?!?!

People talked about how time flies with kids and how fast they seem to grow... but this is crazy.  Granted, the first week and a half he was in a hospital so that could be a bit of why it seems to be going fast but I know its not the ONLY reason. 

Its funny when I think back to when I was in middle school.  I didn't want any part of marriage or babies.  None of that.  But here I am married to an amazing woman and now a proud dad to this amazing kid.

As far as how I feel as a transdad... Well, that's hard to say really.  Which I guess is a good thing.  While things have been busy with G in our household, I haven't really thought about it too much.  At least not in a negative way.  Yes I know we are not biologically related but I don't feel that makes me any less his dad than if we were biologically related.  I have found things he does (which are limited of course.. he IS only a month old. :)) that make me feel more connected with him.  Simple things like him finally settling down after belting out the theme song to Arthur and Pokemon several times.  His farting and burping.  These are things I love haha.

I don't feel any less of a father because I'm trans.  And I know that there will be times where I will have some issues but right now in this moment... I'm a happy, proud father of an amazing boy.  And I can't wait to see how our relationship grows and develops.

Well this will be a short post.  As little G is starting to wake up.   Enjoy some pictures since I didn't get to post some on the last post.

Later Gator!!

I love this kid!!

Wife took this picture during our relax time. Ha!

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?