Destination Family

A little less than a year ago, T and I started discussing the possibility of growing our little family. We were living abroad at the time and had a small (naughty) puppy, and I don’t think either of us felt capable of handling a real life baby person at the time. But we were both curious and interested in the possibility, nonetheless.

Then, in 2018, everything changed. We moved back to the States and resettled in what we consider to be our permanent home area. Our puppy grew up into a less-poorly-behaved and mildly well-adjusted dog. We began putting down roots, feeling comfortable, more secure in our future. And our attitudes towards family began to change.

I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but we suddenly began to talk more seriously about having a child. It was still in the abstract in terms of time at this point. We started playing a game: imagine a parenting nightmare, tell the other one, and see what each of our initial reactions to that scenario would be. If we could agree – or at least could eventually come to agreement – that was a good sign that we’d be on the same page as parents. If we could do this for long enough to make ourselves comfortable, then we’d get more serious about moving ahead.

After several “what if…” games involving scenarios about just about everything from childhood disabilities, rebellious teenagers, and what I imagine is every parent’s worst fear: what if our kid is a psycopath?, we determined that we were, in fact, almost always on the same page. We knew that we could in no way imagine every single scenario that would cause us consternation over the course of our future child’s life, nor were we likely to have such calm, thoughtful conversations in the face of parenting adversity, but we still felt pretty pleased with our performance in these imaginary parenting conundrums.

Still, I was a hold out (more on that in a later post). You can never really feel 100% ready, I’d tell myself. Sure, I was 90% there, but was that enough?

Then one day, while showering (I do my best thinking in the shower, truly), I decided it was time. I got out of the shower and said to T, “I’m ready.” She had no idea what I was referring to, not having been party to my 10 minute solo dialogue, but it didn’t take her long to figure it out.

From that moment, everything went into superdrive. As we’ll set out over the course of this blog, the fertility process for families like ours is crazy, multifaceted, complex, overwhelming, and exhilarating. We shopped for and then bought sperm, set up and met with our fertility doctors, and learned more about the baby-making process than I think either of us ever expected.

We’re now in a holding pattern until we really begin our “trying to conceive” – or TTC as it’s known in all the very active social media mombian groups – process. So what better time to start chronicling our journey?! So here we are. And here we plan to share our thoughts, fears, joys, struggles, and just general TMI about this process with some yet-to-be-determined audience. Cheers to our final destination: family.