Tag: Pregnancy

My Body, My Identity, My Experiences

Lately, I have struggled to feel excited and comfortable with the idea and experience of being pregnant. I have felt like the more visibly pregnant I get, the more invisible my nonbinary identity becomes, both to myself and others.

Recently, someone in one of the online groups I am a part of stated something similar to what I have written below and it resonated a lot with me. I wanted to put these thoughts into words so I can remind myself of them as often as I need to in the upcoming months. Hopefully they will resonate with others as well.

I identify as nonbinary. Regardless of how society views me, I am the only one who gets to decide how I identify.

My body is my own. It is the body of a nonbinary person. Regardless of how society views my body, this means my body is a nonbinary body.

For me, the experience of being pregnant and gestating a child, something that my nonbinary body is able to do, is a nonbinary experience. I cannot separate these experiences from my own identity, nor should I have to.

For most people, being pregnant is a female experience because they are female. But for me, it is a nonbinary experience. For a trans man, it would be a male experience. Not all people who get pregnant are women and the ability to get pregnant is not required in order to be considered a woman.

If everything goes well, I will get to be a parent, a mother. For me, parenting will be a nonbinary experience. All the aspects of parenting that are typically associated with motherhood will be nonbinary experiences. Motherhood will be a nonbinary experience.

My ability to have these experiences does not diminish or negate my identity as a nonbinary person. Nor should my ability to have these experiences as a nonbinary person diminish anyone else’s identity as a woman.

No matter what society tells me, and even if all the people around me that relate to these experiences are women, my body is nonbinary because I am nonbinary, and therefore, my pregnancy is a nonbinary experience.

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In My Body

Note: Although this post is specifically about my experience of being pregnant, you might find what I talk about relates closely with other major life events such as health challenges, injuries, and aspects of transitioning. I hope you find it interesting, if not relevant to your own experiences.

Being pregnant is a weird experience. Everyone who is or has been pregnant experiences it differently, both physically and emotionally.

There are both positive and negative aspects to the process that we have to navigate. Some of the positive aspects can help offset the negative ones, but sometimes our only ways to cope with the negative ones also diminish the positive.

I am currently trying to deal with physical body pain as well as physical and social dysphoria while trying to stay present and experience the wonder of being pregnant.

Generally, the easiest way to cope with both physical pain and dysphoria are to distract myself, decrease my focus on my body. But that also takes my focus away from the internal changes related to being pregnant. This can make me feel like I’m missing out on the experience of being pregnant and decreases my ability to convince myself that the negative aspects are worth it for the sake of growing a human. Regardless, if the pain and/or dysphoria are bad enough, distracting myself from my body becomes a necessary survival tactic.

Most of the time, some amount of focus on the specific parts of my body that relate to the positive aspects of being pregnant actually helps offset the pain and dysphoria by making them feel worth it or at least by giving me something positive to focus on. These aspects include the expansion of my belly, the sensation of the baby moving, and knowledge about the baby’s growth and the changes in my own body.

So focusing on my body in specific ways can heighten my awareness of the positive aspects of pregnancy and offset the negative ones to some extent but too much focus on my body can actually cause the negative aspects and my awareness of them to get worse. This balance point is different every day and in different situations. For me, finding this balance point is an instinctual process.

Lots of prenatal programs encourage meditation, yoga, stretching, and breathing techniques, all of which require or encourage a certain amount of focus on or awareness of your body. Depending on where I need that balance point to be, these activities might do more harm than good for me at any given time.

Everyone’s strategies for managing the positive and negative aspects of pregnancy will be different. Some people may not even be aware they are using a strategy similar to mine. I only recently became aware that I was using this strategy myself. Some people may not be able to understand how this strategy works for me or why it is necessary no matter how much I try to explain it.

Our connection between our mind, body, and emotions is strange and complex. The more you understand how it works for you, the better you will be able to navigate these types of complex, conflicting, and life-changing experiences.

So far, I feel like I’m doing ok.

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Grief and Gratitude

This is not the experience of pregnancy I had hoped for. Everyone hopes for an easy pregnancy with no complications for the baby and minimal difficulty for themselves. Very few people get to experience this but that doesn’t change the hope or the emotional response when it doesn’t happen.

More than anything, I want to enjoy being pregnant and be able to celebrate how my body is creating a new life. But it is hard to feel happy about the experience and excited for it to progress when my body is in constant pain as a result.

Having hopeful expectations that aren’t met causes a feeling of grief. Grief about the experience I wanted to have, grief about not being able to be present and connected to the experience the way I wanted to, and grief about not being able to engage in my everyday life the way I normally would due to being pregnant.

Grief is our way of processing and letting go of those inaccurate expectations. Ignoring grief makes it stronger, makes it have a more insidious effect on my emotional state that I cannot counteract. So I choose to acknowledge it, process it, accept it, and talk about it. Maybe there are others out there who also struggled with grief while pregnant.

But despite feelings of grief, there is not a single moment that I am not grateful to be pregnant. There is not a single moment that I regret all the time, money, and emotions we put into getting to this point. Grief and gratitude can exist at the same time and often do. One does not negate the other.

When I talk about the struggle that I am experiencing as a result of being pregnant, I often get a sympathetic reaction but I also get comments of ‘it could be worse’ or ‘just be grateful you were able to get pregnant’ or ‘just wait, it’ll be even harder once the kid is born’. These comments are often accompanied by stories of terrible pregnancy symptoms, struggles with infertility or miscarriage, and comparisons between pregnancy and life with a newborn. While these are likely true stories, they do not often relate directly to my experience in a way that will help me cope or prepare for the future, nor do they acknowledge or hold space for my grief.

So next time you ask someone how they are doing, whether because they are pregnant or because of other difficult situations (of which there are so very many in the world at the moment), try to hear the emotion embedded in their experience and connect with that rather than the situation on the surface. You may have experienced a similar situation but had a very different emotional experience with it that will not resonate or provide support for the person you are talking to. But if you can relate with a story that shares the same emotional experience even if it was a completely different set of circumstances, this will be much more supportive and powerful.

Emotions are complex. Many conflicting emotions can exist at once within each person. Just because I am grieving certain aspects of this pregnancy experience does not mean I am not grateful for every part of it at the same time. And that is perfectly fine.

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Second Trimester Part 1

GENDER

I have stayed close to the middle of the gender spectrum over the past few months with some fluctuations towards the female side. This has made me feel balanced and stable within my gender, much more so than last time (see Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Gender).

But as I predicted, dysphoria has definitely gotten worse since telling people I’m pregnant and starting to show. The belly is not really an issue though it is the thing that people use to identify me as pregnant and then start treating me more femininely. Referring to my belly or the fact that I’m pregnant with typically feminine terms definitely increases my social dysphoria and feelings of invisibility.

Worse than the belly is the bra shopping and maternity clothes. Nothing makes top dysphoria worse than your breasts out-growing your bras every couple months. Unfortunately, I have some swelling that could get significantly worse with taping and rib pain that makes binding impossible.

I’m sure both physical and social dysphoria will get worse as I get closer to my due date. Unfortunately, with this social distancing we are all living with at the moment (due to COVID-19), I have less access to the various forms of support I’ve be building for myself over the last nine months (various queer discussion and support groups in my area and a bi-monthly queer games group).

PREGNANCY SYMPTOMS

I have considerably more energy than I did at the end of the first trimester. I have just started getting heartburn. So far I don’t have any swelling in my legs though I have been congested in the evenings and overnight for a few weeks.

Mostly, my joint pain has gotten considerably worse. For most pregnant people, this is a symptom that comes on later in pregnancy with the increased weight and change in posture. But for people with underlying inflammatory or connective tissue disorders/conditions, their symptoms can get considerably worse earlier on in pregnancy. This has been the case for me.

As of mid-March, I have been using a walker when out of the house. Most of the time I can walk around the house without a cane but sometimes I need it in the evenings. I have rib and neck pain, my knees ache, and my wrists, elbows, and shoulders are slowly getting worse the more I have to rely on them to support me when I’m walking.

Needless to say, my role at work has changed and my ability to contribute to household chores has decreased significantly in the last few weeks. I am trying to find creative ways to do things or shift roles to ones I can manage easier even if it’s not something I typically enjoy doing.

The lack of mobility is frustrating but feeling useless or like I’m just getting in the way is worse. I don’t mind having to use gait aids (it is part of my job to encourage people who would benefit from them to use them) but it is hard to deal with the reason I need the walker or cane – the constant but fluctuating pain. Looking ahead to another six months of this as it slowly gets worse is extremely difficult.

I am trying to stay positive and say ‘at least it’s for a good cause’ and ‘at least I know it will have an end point’ but I’d like to be able to enjoy the process of being pregnant, at least a little bit. Maybe once I am consistently feeling the baby move and able to share that with my husband I will feel more connected to the positive side of this process.

For now, I will keep taking it one day at a time, do the best I can, and take breaks when I need to.

How did your experience of your gender change as your body changed with pregnancy? What physical symptoms did you have to contend with?

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Gender Vs Sex

No, this is not a ‘gender’ reveal post.

First of all, what I would be revealing is the sex of my baby, not the gender. We can find out the sex of our babies before they are born based on seeing their genitalia on an ultrasound or having a genetic test done that tells us their chromosomal makeup. Both of these are markers of sex, not gender.

The whole concept of finding out the sex ignores the existence of intersex conditions and identities. The idea that we automatically know the baby’s gender based on their sex markers ignores the existence of trans and non-binary identities. So every time someone asks me what the gender of my baby is, it feels like an erasure of mine and my husband’s identities, even if the person asking doesn’t realize it or mean it that way.

We can assume that the baby will be cisgender (that their gender will match their sex) which is statistically more likely than the baby being trans, but we will not know their gender for sure until they are old enough to express it to us.

This is what goes through my mind when people ask me “What are you having?” or “Are you finding out?” or “Do you know the gender?” So of course, there is a long pause while I decide whether I want to educate, be snarky, or bite my tongue and play along with the social routine.

Is it worth the energy and vulnerability to educate people on why this question feels inappropriate to me? Am I in a safe environment to out myself or my husband in order to illustrate the point? Can I educate them well enough, with enough impact, without outing either of us? The mental and emotional gymnastics to figure out whether to challenge them on their assumptions behind the question are exhausting on their own.

Most of the time I answer the “What are you having?” question with “A baby” or if I’m feeling snarky, “Well, I’m not having a puppy…” If they ask if we’re finding out the gender, I usually say “Yes, we already have but we’re not telling anyone” even though it hurts me a bit to reaffirm their ignorance instead of contradicting it. Occasionally I’ll reply “You mean the sex?” or “Well, we found out the sex but the kid will have to tell us their gender when they figure it out for themself.” If you’re in a similar situation, hopefully these variations of answers give you some options when you don’t have the energy or safety to educate.

We decided to find out the sex of the baby before birth so that we would have time to process what it would mean to counteract societal influences, stereotypes, and our own preconceptions in order to raise them in as gender-expansive a way as possible. We decided not to tell anyone else the sex of the baby because we don’t trust everyone else to do the same work without our direct influence so the longer we can force those around us to think of the child as gender neutral the better.

As I have talked about in a previous post (Thinking Ahead to Parenting as a Non-Binary Person), we will be using the pronouns associated with their sex assigned at birth (or before birth in most cases nowadays). It would be too challenging for both of us to fight for neutral pronouns when the likelihood is that the child will be cis-gender. We will be giving our child every opportunity to explore and be exposed to all aspects of gender identity, presentation, and expression. We will be having open conversations about all aspects of gender and sex as they become relevant. We’ll see how this goes!

How do you respond to questions about finding out your child’s ‘gender’? Did you find out your child’s sex in advance of birth? Have you taken any specific steps to raise your child(ren) in a gender-expansive way? Please share in the comments! I’d love to hear your experiences.

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Non-binary and Pregnant (Again)

That’s right! I am in my second trimester of pregnancy!

HOW WE GOT HERE

After the miscarriage (see Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Gender), we continued with IUI for two more cycles (taking a month off between each as before). When that didn’t work, we tried a medicated IUI cycle where I took a follicle stimulating drug. The goal was to force my body to produce and release multiple eggs.

The drugs gave me hot flashes, dizzy spells, racing heart, and decreased appetite. We decided that if this cycle didn’t work, we would take a longer break to build up some money and prepare for IVF. The two week wait was particularly intense and when it came back negative, it took extra time and energy to recover from.

IVF

We calculated that it would take about eight months to build up the money needed for IVF but with the help of both of our families, we were able to start much sooner.

The IVF process involved a lot of hormone injections, abdominal discomfort from enlarged ovaries, many internal ultrasounds, an egg harvesting procedure, daily embryo updates, and eventually an embryo implantation.

What with all the hormones in my system and the aching ovaries, I had no idea if I was pregnant or not until the blood test. Which came back positive!!

PREGNANT AGAIN

This time, we knew for sure that the egg had properly developing genetic material inside so we had already avoided the cause of my previous miscarriage. Over the next few weeks I slowly developed the typical first trimester symptoms – fatigue, nausea (luckily not too bad), and increased hunger and thirst. The aching in my ovaries slowly faded and resolved by about week six.

We had our first ultrasound at week 7. There it was, a little bean, floating in a pool in my womb. Better yet, there was a little fluttering spot in the bean that showed a heartbeat!

My pregnancy symptoms continued to worsen until week nine when the nausea suddenly disappeared. My appetite and thirst increased even more. Around week six I started to have increasing joint pain. I have chronic SI joint problems and low level body inflammation and often take naproxen to manage pain. It is a wonder drug for me but unfortunately, you can’t take naproxen or anything like it while pregnant. So, over time my SI pain has gotten worse and I have had to use a cane, wear an SI belt, and be careful what I do at work.

THE GENDERY STUFF

The IVF process had a lot of ups and downs with regards to gender. There were times when I felt like I fit right in and felt affirmed as a woman, in awe of what my body was doing. Then there were times when I felt very out of place, at odds and uncomfortable with being identified as a woman. At those times, using the women’s bathroom and signing many documents that identified me as a woman were particularly difficult.

I was forced to be aware of and interact with my ‘female parts’ in invasive and unavoidable ways. I had many transvaginal ultrasounds throughout the IVF process, one of which fell on a particularly dysphoric day, after which I immediately had to go to work, and took me hours to recover from. All procedures since then have been slightly more difficult regardless of dysphoria just because of the memory of that experience.

During the pregnancy so far I have been floating around the female side of neutral, much closer to the middle of my typical gender bandwidth than the last time I was pregnant (see Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Gender). Is this because I have had more time to become comfortable and confident in my gender or because the hormone balance is different this time around? Who knows. Regardless, this means I have had more balance but slightly more dysphoria than last time.

LOOKING AHEAD

As I move into the second trimester and start to show more and tell people, I’m expecting my social dysphoria, and eventually my physical dysphoria, to get worse. Hopefully I’ll be able to manage this ok with the support that I have and a lessening of the first trimester fatigue.

I will try to post more frequent updates on how things are going and what being pregnant is like as a non-binary person.

If you or someone close to you is going through the IVF process and you would like more details on my experience or someone to talk to I am happy to share in a more private setting. Feel free to email me or leaving your contact info in the comments.

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Pregnancy Fears, Hopes, and Strategies

Being pregnant is a huge undertaking for your body. It makes permanent changes to lots of areas, includes lots of discomfort and unpleasant experiences, and involves a decent amount of risk. It changes how you are viewed by society and how strangers interact with you. And it is (or can be) the first step in one of the biggest changes anyone can make in life – becoming a parent.

So of course I have all the typical fears:

  • How will my body change?
  • Risk of miscarriage (Ha! That already happened once)
  • Huge life change
  • Adverse symptoms for nine months such as nausea, fatigue, and joint pain
  • Birth trauma
  • Postpartum depression and isolation

Pregnancy is also one of the most feminizing experiences a person can have. So, as a nonbinary person, I also have gender related fears:

  • Will my sense of where my gender is on the spectrum shift in unpredictable ways due to hormones?
  • Will my social dysphoria increase to unbearable levels due to the quintessential feminization of my body?
  • Will my physical dysphoria increase due to my chest getting bigger and my pregnant belly?
  • Will I struggle to find clothes that fit me that are not hyper-feminine like typical maternity clothes are?

But on the other side of my fears is what I hope for:

  • My gender identity will shift to the more feminine side of my range like it does during my period and result in minimal dysphoria with pregnancy changes
  • I will have fewer physical discomfort symptoms than I am expecting
  • Many of my current clothes will fit throughout pregnancy since I prefer looser clothes to begin with (though they will end up being more fitted as I get bigger)

Now that I have actually been pregnant once, for a short time, and only in the first trimester phase before the hyperfeminization of my body happened, some of these fears and hopes have shifted. I now know, or am more confident that my gender will shift to the female side for some or all of my pregnancy. Hopefully this will help with the social and physical dysphoria.

But this caused another area of discomfort: feeling like I was missing half of who I was. And after I had a miscarriage, my gender swung back to the male side with a resurgence of dysphoria that I was now unaccustomed to. You can read more about that in Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Gender. So I can now add ‘postpartum dysphoria’ to my list of fears.

Here are some strategies I’ve come up with to help me through this process:

  • Look for alternative maternity clothing stores or just buy larger sized clothing from cheaper places
  • Come out to as many people as I am comfortable with so that I have lots of options of people to hang out with in a gender affirming environment to combat social dysphoria and invisibility/inauthenticity
  • Focus on the personal, wondrous, internal feeling of growing a life inside me
  • Be kind to myself post partum while I’m learning how to deal with dysphoria again and review my personal journals and previous blog posts about how I deal with it

If you have a similar identity to mine, I hope that sharing my thoughts and experiences with pregnancy will help you feel more comfortable in your skin or at least not so alone during this experience. If you have someone in your life who is pregnant, maybe this will help you understand that not everyone who looks pregnant identifies as female and what that might feel like.

Do you have any stories of your own or strategies that got you through pregnancy with dysphoria?

Do you have any questions or specific aspects of this experience that you are looking forward to hearing more about?

Leave a comment below! I’d love to hear from you.

Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Gender

IT WORKED!

We were pregnant! If you missed the story of how we got here, check out Getting Pregnant is Hard to do Without Sperm.

The first thing we felt was excitement. The second was anxiety. Not because suddenly such a big thing was happening, but because we had spent so long stopping ourselves from being excited in order to avoid the pain of disappointment that any excitement we felt triggered anxiety. This reaction slowly wore off and we allowed ourselves to be happy and excited but the more excited we got the more we wanted to share the news. Suddenly, we had a secret again.

I knew I was pregnant before we got the results. I know that’s a cliche but it’s true. My breasts were so sore that I couldn’t touch them, days in advance of when I normally have PMS symptoms. I was fatigued to the point of being in a daze. These symptoms continued and were joined by mild to moderate intermittent nausea. All the typical symptoms but nothing extreme. If you know me at all, you know I can’t keep anything to myself. Especially if it involves distress. I much prefer to complain – I mean, commiserate – about it with others. Luckily, a couple people at work were in their second trimester and gave me a small community for support with this new adventure.

GENDER WHILE PREGNANT

If you’ve read other posts on this blog, you may already know that I am gender fluid, shifting between moderately female and mildly male with the majority of time spent in the neutral space between. But, as I talk about in Menstruation and Gender, I consistently shift towards the female side during my period. The same thing happened when I was pregnant. Except that I wasn’t just pregnant for a few days, like when I’m on my period. So I shifted to female and stayed female for two and a half months.

After about three weeks of being consistently female I started to feel like the male part of myself, Ray, was imagined, a dream, a ghost. I was missing half of myself, unable to experience my full range of gender that I had only just recently struggled to understand and accept. This was a symptom of being pregnant that I couldn’t so easily explain to or commiserate about with others.

EARLY ULTRASOUNDS

Because we were followed by the fertility clinic, we were scheduled for early trans-vaginal ultrasounds. The first one was when I was 7 weeks pregnant. The image on the screen showed a slightly small gestational sack in my uterus but no yolk sack or fetal pole. This was mildly concerning but not conclusive since it was still early and the gestational sack was small. We went back the next week for another one. It showed the same result which was significantly more conclusive of a blighted ovum. With some googling, I learned that this happens when the egg that was fertilized happened to grow without any genetic material inside it. An ’empty egg’.

So, I had to come to terms with the fact that at some point in the next few weeks, when my body figured out something was wrong, I was going to have a miscarriage. I was waiting, and dreading, but not yet able to grief or process because if I did, I would be grieving until it happened, which could be days or weeks or a month. But I had to go to work as usual, travel to visit my family, and stand with my friend in her wedding. So instead, I became emotionally constipated, numb, and burnt out.

While visiting family, I had some spotting and cramping but then it stopped again. When we returned home, we had a final ultrasound that showed the same result and gave an official diagnosis of a non-viable pregnancy. This triggered a referral to the early pregnancy loss clinic. They called me four hours later and reviewed my options. I could let the miscarriage happen naturally (which my body didn’t seem to want to do), take a medication that would induce severe enough cramping to force my body to miscarry (sounds terrifying), or have a procedure (Dilation and Curettage or D&C) where they put me to sleep, dilate my cervix, go in, and scoop everything out. If the first two options didn’t expel everything I may end up needing the D&C anyway. Since I had known this was coming for what felt like an eternity already, I work in a hospital so medical stuff doesn’t bother me, and I had had a polyp removal six months prior via the same procedure, I opted for the D&C. It was scheduled for three days later.

RECOVERING FROM MISCARRIAGE

Both the physical recovery and the emotional recovery took longer than I expected, despite warnings from everyone I talked to who had also had a miscarriage (it is surprisingly common given how little it’s talked about). Physically, I had a few days of mild cramping and fatigue. When these initial symptoms faded out I felt like I was better and returned to work only to find that more than half an hour of being on my feet (I have a fairly active job) caused waves of moderate to severe fatigue, shakiness, dizziness, and hot and cold flashes. My body was in hormonal shock.

The most frustrating part physically was that knowing why it was happening and trying to connect with my body to calm it down did absolutely nothing to help. It felt like my body’s operating system had crashed and was taking forever to reboot. So I started doing really slow, gentle, breathing pace exercises. Anything from dynamic stretching to Qi Gong. Almost instantly, my mind-body connection began to repair itself. It was such a dramatic improvement at a time that I needed it most that I have kept up with these exercises ever since.

Emotionally, I expected to be a wreck as soon as the procedure was done and maybe the day after. But because I had not allowed myself to feel the grief for three weeks I was in an emotional holding pattern. I thought that maybe I had been processing my emotions this whole time and I didn’t need to have a strong, overt reaction. But the exhaustion after the second day back at work meant that I didn’t even have enough energy to hold my emotions back and once I got home I broke down and had a couple hours of intense crying and grieving with my lovely husband for support.

Overall it took just over a month for me to feel like I was back to my normal self.

GENDER WITH MISCARRIAGE

Going through the procedure itself and being in a ‘Women’s Hospital’ didn’t feel dysphoric since I was still feeling very female at the time. A week or so after miscarriage, my gender started shifting slowly back to the middle, then to the male side. And there it stayed for almost three weeks. This felt both good and bad. Good, because I was finally able to experience the other half of myself that had been missing for the last two and a half months. Bad, because all of a sudden I had dysphoria again. And I was out of practice with how to deal with it. While still being very emotionally raw.

Initially, it was very distracting and a constant irritation that sucked up a lot of mental and emotional energy. But I slowly remembered the strategies I had been using before and became acclimatized to the discomfort of dysphoria and it faded to a background buzz.

TALKING ABOUT MISCARRIAGE

Over the last few years both myself and my husband have been through some pretty major experiences that all have different levels of taboo and layperson knowledge/understanding. When I talk about our fertility struggles, very few people have negative reactions to discussing that and it doesn’t feel threatening for me to open up about it and though most people don’t know the variety of options, they have a general understanding that there are medical options and often know someone who has used them. When I talk about gender identity or transitioning, I don’t always know what reaction the other person will have and often have to deal with a negative or ignorant response. Most people have little to no understanding of nonbinary gender identities or the transitioning process to the point that they can’t even relate to whatever it is I’m telling them about unless I explicitly state what emotions are tied to this experience.

When talking about miscarriage, everyone instantly understands that that would be a difficult thing to go through, understands what emotional response is appropriate, and provides support. And yet, it’s still something that isn’t often discussed openly. I’m guessing this is partly because historically, it was viewed as the fault of the woman that it happened and was shameful. But nowadays, I think we’re mostly past that (based on the reactions I get when I talk about it) so I’m guessing it’s not discussed simply because it’s an emotionally difficult thing to talk about and considered a very private experience. I’d like to change the culture of silence around miscarriage and normalize talking about it and then eventually, normalize the idea that people of any gender identity could have a miscarriage.

THE JOURNEY CONTINUES!

At this point, we are still trying to get pregnant. There are a few more options we are willing to try and since the last one worked, I feel like it is likely to work again. But we have also discussed what our limit is in terms of how long we want to try for and how much money we are willing to put towards it. We are not tied to the idea of the child being genetically related to us (seeing as how it won’t be genetically related to Jake anyway) and open to considering adoption if we reach our personal fertility limit.

Subscribe to the blog or keep checking back to get future updates and find out what happens next!

Have you had pregnancy struggled or miscarriage? For those of you who are trans/non-binary, how did pregnancy and/or miscarriage affect your gender? Please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your experiences.

Getting Pregnant is Hard To Do Without Sperm

When Jake and I first met we were unsure if we wanted kids. Once our lives stabilized it seemed a lot more feasible. Around the same time we spent some time with a couple small babies and had our parental instincts kick into high gear. Since both of us had a uterus and ovaries we had a choice of who would carry. Jake was more worried about being able to bond with the kid and I was more worried about the physical process of pregnancy so initially he was going to carry (this was pre-transition for him). This decision came with the caveats that if for some reason he couldn’t conceive or if gender ever became a question and he was no longer comfortable with it, I would carry.

Since neither of us produce sperm, our options were sperm banks, fertility clinics, or known donor. We were both less comfortable with the known donor path and there was a two year wait for our local fertility clinic. So the best option for us was to start with a home insemination program run by a sperm bank. We started saving money as each attempt through this program would cost between $1,500 and $2,000. When Jake’s gender questioning led him down the path of transitioning and he started to come out, we figured that was enough emotional stress on its own so we put the baby making on hold.

A year and a bit later, things had calmed down and we were ready to start trying. We started with home insemination from the sperm bank in Toronto. We signed up for the program, had a consult, and got blood tests done. We went through the online catalog and each month on day 1 of my cycle we would send in our top three choices to the sperm bank. On day 11 a 2.5 foot tall box would arrive which contained a large cryo container and a tiny vile of frozen sperm. It also contained specific instructions on how to thaw it and inject it. I tested for ovulation (LH surge) each morning and when it was positive we carried out the instructions. Then the dreaded two week wait (that anyone who has struggled to get pregnant will understand) began.

After four cycles and no success we decided to save the rest of the money we had put aside for future options. We quietly asked a few friends and family members if they would be interested in being a donor for us and ended up trying twice with two different donors (four more cycles). This involved a lot more social engagement and logistical planning but ultimately followed the same pattern of make plans, test for ovulation, do the thing, wait two weeks. Again, no success. We decided it was medical intervention time.

We went to our family doc to request a referral to the fertility clinic. Since we had only technically completed 8 tries (equivalent to 8 months of TTC – trying to conceive), he was reluctant since the typically referral criteria require 12 months of TTC. So instead, I got a referral to a women’s clinic where they ordered more specific blood work and other tests to make sre there was nothing structurally wrong. When this all came back normal, that doctor finally referred us to the fertility clinic.

The two fertility clinics in our city (one public and one private) had recently amalgamated which cut the wait time from 2 years to 6 months. When we finally got our appointment there was more blood work and tests. They started me on a low dose of Synthroid to get my thyroid levels from low normal to high normal. On the scan of my uterus they found a fairly large polyp that they decided should be removed prior to any insemination attempts so I was on a waitlist for that for another four months (which turned out to be 7 months). I had very little warning when my surgery date came up so, suddenly, I was having surgery (which went totally smoothly) and then we were told we could try on the next cycle.

Except with all the waiting I had slacked off and hadn’t gotten the mandatory counselling session booked, a requirement before ordering sperm. Within a week we had that done (a stupid, expensive hurdle that I could rant for a paragraph about but I will spare you), we ordered sperm (a fairly straightforward process since we had done it before), Jake got his final blood work done, I had my surgery follow up, and we were ready to try!

We decided that we would start with IUI (intra-uterine insemination) with a natural cycle (ovulation is not enhanced or induced with drugs) since I don’t have PCOS or endometriosis or other conditions that interfere with the menstruation and ovulation cycle. Again, I peed on sticks to detect ovulation, we phoned the clinic early in the morning when I got a positive result, and went in a few hours later. We received a mini report of the quality of the sperm and how well it had woken up from cryo. The insemination was completed by a nurse and off we went.

The two week wait was even worse than last time. Unfortunately our first attempt didn’t work. The month after we were out of town during my ovulation dates so we gave ourselves the month off to regain our emotional stability and tried again the month after. Somehow, this time felt different. A week after insemination my breasts became very sore and I had a few sharp pains in my uterus area. Since we were doing a blood test for pregnancy (HCG) two weeks after insemination we didn’t bother peeing on a stick. This time, the result came back positive. We were pregnant!!!

Read the next part of our journey in Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Gender (coming soon).

If you relate to any part of the story above or have any questions, leave a comment below and I will respond!