Preggo with a capital EGO

I've been spending more time than usual with one of my best friends. I don't know if it's just pure circumstance, or because she's pregnant and her husband is sick of hearing about it and/or she just wants to talk and talk and talk about it, and I happen to be around.

We've been friends since we were fourteen, and she's stayed with me through my crazy days, visiting me in psych wards religiously and just generally keeping an eye out for me when my eyes were full of pain. She's a great woman, wonderful at her job (social work with families) and I am genuinely happy for her. She and her husband are fabulous, and they're going to be amazing parents.

But here's the thing: since she made the announcement, nothing else in the world matters. And I completely understand that being pregnant - especially for the first time - is one of the most exciting things in the world, but there's a line, and I think she's crossed it.

She was barely three months pregnant when we had a particular dinner, which was interrupted every ten minutes because "the baby is pushing on my bladder". After said meal, she took my hand and put it on the top of her stomach, just underneath her breasts, saying that her baby makes this area feel harder after she eats. Now, if I'm not mistaken, a fetus at 12 weeks is about 2 inches, or the size of a small plum:

  

If you want to see it inside of you, in relation to all the girlie parts around it, according to BabyCenter, this is what a 12 week fetus looks like:

Is that really anywhere near her breasts? Not so much...

Now, I'm not saying that this size is not significant. This is the kind of thing Pro Life activists use to keep people from having abortions. This is a living creature growing inside of you, and it's an amazing thing.

Because she won't stop talking about it, and because I'm curious and can't wait to feel it myself, I ask her, "Can you feel it?" And she replies, "well, no; not yet... but I hear I'm going to feel butterflies soon."

I love her to pieces, I really do. But out of all of my friends, she is the one that knows how badly I want to get pregnant, and by no means am I asking her to hold back her excitement because I'm not where she is... but I wake up every morning to a text from her about a dream she had about a baby, or log into Facebook where she has already posted a "belly pic" profile shot (none of her friends have the guts to tell her that HER gut might just be a "generous" gut, without the baby's help) and is endlessly posting status updates about how her baby is doing today.

It took her and her husband two months of trying before she got pregnant, and they were "so worried" that they'd never be able to conceive, considering "it took that long". I have no idea what it's going to be like when my partner and I are trying to conceive with frozen sperm and a bunch of towels under my ass, getting injected by near-strangers in a clinic, staring at the ceiling and hoping one of the anonymous sperms is a good swimmer. Will it take 2 months? 2 years? Will it happen at all? Will I turn to her then? I don't know...

So while I'm ecstatic for her and her little plum, it's tough to listen to her go on and on about it. She gets to do this, and so far, she gets to do this so easily. I get that I'm jealous of her and I understand that it's okay to be, especially when I *am* happy for her deep down, but I don't know how many more coffee dates or walks we can take where I take a backseat and listen to how her life is evolving right in front of her - literally - while I feel as though I'm as frozen in the process as the frozen sperm that's potentially going to be involved in the conception of my (hopefully) future child.

I'm at the age where a lot of my friends are getting pregnant and having babies. It's tough and it's beautiful and it's inspiring and fucking frustrating. I can't make my breeding friends stop (and why would I try?) and at this point, I can't get my partner to move forward with our plan - because we lost our plan - so I feel as though I'm in limbo, surfing around in some sticky muck that may look a little like amniotic fluid, but with none of the nourishment or protection.

Empty.

Babies and Boys

I've become an aunt for the fifth time this week. I'm incredibly blessed, and love my nieces and nephews more than I ever thought possible.

Everyone is healthy and happy, and just thrilled with the new life - in all of my siblings' households... and though I feel lucky to have what I have, I don't have a baby for myself. Yet. And I don't even know when the last time D and I had a real conversation about it. We have a doctor's appointment this month, which is "the one" that makes or breaks our (my?) fate, which I've already rescheduled once and am looking forward to it in the most hesitant way possible.

The year is almost half up, and I feel as though it's just rushed by. And we haven't done much at all in our journey to parenthood. And we're only getting older. And it's scary. I've watched a niece and nephew born this year, and my siblings couldn't be happier, and I am jealous, a little guarded, and feeling like this is going far too slowly for my liking.

My best gay boy friends just moved away out of the city, and D and I (and the 4 of us) have joked about them being a donor - and we mean them... like have them jack-off into the same cup, swirl it around and pump it up inside, and then figure out who the father is when the kid ends up looking like whichever one of him.

It's become a running joke, but just before they left, I reminded one of them about it (we'd talked about it years ago), and he actually got a little sad that I freaked out and said "just kidding;" he said that he would be honoured. Seriously. And I almost took him in the back room to do it "old school". Am I that desperate? Perhaps...

But I wait - we wait - and find out what will be the best option for us. Do we get on an adoption registry before we figure it out? Before I deal with my issues around adoption? Before I give up my hope of carrying my own child?

As for donors, it would be nice and cheap to have best friends to do it, though there are so many layers to that. That said, there are layers to all pieces of this puzzle... and it's beginning to feel as though these pieces aren't fitting together right.

Perhaps it's a bit of unhappiness in other areas that is seeping through (work, money). Perhaps it's jealousy that I see all of my siblings with nice robust families. Perhaps it's because I'm losing my favourite fags to their more interesting life. Perhaps it's just the time of year. Spring... everything is growing new life. Even the orchid that I almost threw out over the winter because it hadn't blossomed in months. And now it's got two sprigs; twin growths.

I love looking through the extended families albums at all the smiles and facial expressions of older brothers and sisters seeing their new sibling for the first time - that pure, unobstructed love and... probably a little bit of fear...

Probably very similar to what I'm feeling now.