My unique family.

Lately there has been so much negativity going around, so I wanted to take some time to write about my family because they're pretty awesome and I love them. It's time to put your rainbow colored glasses on motherfuckers because things are about to get gay and feelsy.

My family is just like everyone else. We're probably cooler and more fun than most people you know, but we're relatable. Our home is warm and filled with a bunch of assholes cats. As I sit here, my apartment is a fucking mess and there are baby toys strewn across the floor. There's a shit ton of dishes in the kitchen sink that are calling my name, and my coffee has gotten cold. I have my orange tabby asshole cuddled into my side and my little boy is fast asleep in his swing. I live the glamorous, sleepless, sweatpants-every-day life of a stay-at-home mom while my girlfriend works in cyber security to support us. Yes, my girlfriend. Our son has two moms, and we are by most accounts, perfectly normal.

Yesterday, I celebrated the anniversary of the day I found out I was pregnant. I need people to understand what a fucking miracle this was. The timing, the chances. I don't know that I believe in destiny, but I know that a million little things had to fall into place for this to happen.

The day before I did the fateful peeing on a stick thing, I'd been curled up on the bathroom floor at work puking my fucking guts out and crying on the phone to my boss. My co-worker had to come in early to take over my shift and he jokingly suggested I had morning sickness. At first we had some fun back-and-forth about it after I scraped myself off the floor, but the more I thought about it, the more I started to realize I needed to rule it out. The notion was still a distant, messy, formula-soaked fantasy at this point - something that I was only entertaining for a break in the monotony of my work, eat, sleep, cry, work routine. It wasn't real to me. The chances of me getting pregnant in our situation were so slim, it was comparable to winning the lottery.

We'd talked about it beforehand – the great and powerful “What if.” In fact, we regularly joked about our pretend baby. I had already been going through baby toys and clothes on the internet, planning my dream nursery, occasionally showing my girlfriend cute baby stuff. I would talk about how our pretend child was doomed to be anime weeaboo trash like their parents. We talked about how we would make sure they got to watch our favorite kids shows and how we would show them the video games we grew up on. I was walking around with this baby fantasy world in my head because my uterus was throwing a wild bitch fit.

How did I get pregnant? My girlfriend is trans and had been on hormones for a very long time. Her SRS (sexual reassignment surgery) was coming up, and her doctor had advised her to stop taking them for a few months. Its generally accepted that taking hormones is a baby juice killer, and that even after stopping, the sperm count doesn't usually rebound very quickly. Also I had only just stopped my birth control, and I had some health issues that could have affected my ability to have kids, so for me this meant getting pregnant the old fashioned way wasn't realistic. Regardless, we decided we may as well try while there was time to try. We joked that we were “rolling the dice” now, letting fate decide for us whether or not we would be parents. I tried to not get my hopes up.

I took the test early on Easter morning, two weeks before the surgery. I woke up before @echozaurora and went off to the bathroom. I remember giving myself a bit of a talk, telling myself that I would be crawling back off to bed soon and that I would probably have to give up on the idea of pregnancy. So I peed on a magical expensive stick and had to wait in silence for the longest fucking five minutes of my life.

Spoiler alert, I was pregnant.

I cried for a few minutes, staring at this pee stick that just told me everything from that moment on was going to be different. I was excited, buzzing, a disgusting slobbery pile of joy and tears, oozing my messy emotions all over the place. I couldn't wait to tell EVERYONE. I wanted to walk out of the apartment and scream it at strangers. I barely held it together as I came out of the bathroom and saw @echozaurora wide awake and staring at me expectantly.

I told her we were going to be parents. We hugged. We cried. We took turns excitedly making phone calls to our closest friends and family. I went out for a walk and I smoked my last cigarette before quitting right then and there. I ended up handing my unopened pack to a homeless man, announcing proudly to him that I was pregnant. He was more excited about the free cigarettes, but whatever. Later we went out to brunch and I tried to tell every stranger in the restaurant who would listen. Pretty sure the whole of Fort Lauderdale knew by the end of the day. I was probably being the most obnoxious human being alive, but I didn't care.

Here was our ingenious pregnancy announcement. The quote is courtesy of my best friend.

My pregnancy was uneventful if you count two big road trips and escaping hurricane Irma uneventful. Also, the first trimester was fucking brutal. The fact that no one warned me that I was about to spend six weeks of my life getting overly familiar with the inside of my toilet bowl is cruel and unforgivable. I reveled in every doctor's visit though. I loved seeing my baby grow bigger and more distinct in every ultrasound. There's no sound in the world I take more comfort in than his little heartbeat. I soon realized however that pregnancy is painful, and beautiful and terrible and exciting, but mostly its just fucking painful. Every stage was a new level of discomfort that I wasn't used to experiencing. It wasn't all bliss and baby kicks. I don't know who these people are who have these easy pregnancies I imagined I too would have, but fuck them. Fuck them to heck.

@echozaurora was a trooper the whole time because I was 100% every nightmarish stereotype there is for a pregnant person. She would make late night runs for my food cravings. She would rub my sore feet and back. She bought me one of those huge body pillows. She would let me cry at her over the weirdest shit. And she did all this right after having major surgery and I am pretty sure I was an obnoxious, bitchy, angry bottomless food pit through most of it, so she is basically a saint and I love her.

Bringing a human being into the world is by far, the most bad ass thing I have done to date. With a lot of help, and swearing, and screaming, and blood, and drugs I managed to deliver a healthy baby boy in December. He is the most wholesome and pure thing in the world, and I love every bit of him from the top of his abnormally huge head to his tiny toes.

We moved to Colorado right after he was born so @echozaurora could start her new job here, and things have been pretty good. It was a mission and a half to get here, and took everything we had in us, but we made it along with our cats. Now I have a nice little life surrounded by snow-capped mountains with the best little boy in the world, and the greatest girlfriend anyone could dream up. So there you have it, the story of our perfectly normal, unique family.