Once again – life has totally interfered with my blogging habit and things have continued to move forward and change. Not long after my last blog post – life took another turn. Some of you out there already know about this change and have dutifully kept it off of Facebook and Twitter per my request. I thank you for that.
Figured it out yet?
Yes? No? Maybe so….
Well, in the event you don’t already know or haven’t noticed me passing on the cocktails lately (HINT) – I am thrilled to announce that my girlfriend/life partner Dale Ann and I are starting a family! As of Tuesday, October 26th I am exactly 20 weeks pregnant with…. well, I still can’t tell you yet because Dale is working on a surprise for her co-workers this Friday to tell them. Needless to say we are working on deciding on names. Feel free to use the comment section below for suggestions but no promises.
So – naturally, Dale and I understand you may have a lot of questions about how a lesbian couple in Oklahoma (or anywhere) goes about deciding to start a family. Well, like straight couples – a lot of discussion, reflection, anxiety and excitement. We do realize we face a few different options and challenges that others don’t and we’re happy to discuss them. Dale and I have agreed that the most frequently asked questions are:
- How did you decide who would carry?
- What was the method?
- Did you know the donor?
Now – we’re happy to answer most questions but there may be a few we still don’t have answers to or feel the answers are a little too private to share. We’ll also be incorporating some video in this process to make it more dynamic. We hope you’ll appreciate our candidness and respect our privacy as well if we decide not to elaborate at times. For example, I will not publish our doctors’ names in order to safeguard their privacy and ours. We are very thankful we were able to find such great practitioners in Oklahoma but do realize we live in Oklahoma and may face bias.
All of that being said – this will not become an open forum to debate the validity of our future family. Why? Because this is my blog, my family and I will delete any comments I believe “cross the line” and threaten our family, privacy or emotional well-being. Our goal is to be as open as we feel comfortable regarding the experiences and obstacles we know we will face as a same sex couple raising a child.
Parenting advice, swaddling advice and wisdom regarding child rearing are not only welcome but expected! We’ve had hundreds of questions we wanted to crowd source over the past few months but haven’t been able to.
So thanks for listening… pray for us, think of us, send positive energy our way because Dale and I are about to enter parenthood with all of you other crazy parents out there!
Lanie & Dale
Lanie James
