Thursday, November 30, 2006

What am I doing here?

I've started this blog to write about The Baby Experience. I do have another blog, where I do all the other things people do in their blogs: tell amusing little anecdotes about my daily life, complain about my job, do memes, whine about how much I hate Dubya and his little criminal friends, and gossip about my friends' love lives. That's different. That's for my friends, so I can stay in touch with them.

This blog is public, and it exists for the sole purpose of blathering about parenthood. Right now, you're going to hear a lot about what it's like to have a pregnant partner. Six months from now, you're probably going to hear a lot about baby poop. Ye faint of heart and stomach, be warned.

My inspiration is a book I'm reading called The Other Mother. So many interesting stories, but none of them is mine. Am I being outrageously egotistical to think that the world needs to hear my story? Maybe, but I don't care. I'm going to tell it, whether or not anyone ever reads it. So there.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

An Introduction

Hi. My name is Joy. I'm married to Amy. This is our daughter, Mookie:

As you can see, Mookie is not quite born yet. She will be arriving sometime in early March, or whenever she decides she is ready to face the world.

At the moment, she is living in Amy's uterus. She seems quite cozy in there. She doesn't have any complaints, anyway. She kicks and wiggles and squirms, but in general she's very well behaved. I imagine this is about the best behavior we'll see from her for the next 20 years or so.

Amy is, of course, her mother. So I am, even though she and I don't share any genes. I'm not sure what that makes me. Her mother-father? Her other mother? Her adoptive mother? Her non-biological mother? None of these labels work very well. I'm not male, or male-identified, and I don't feel or look in any way like anybody's father. I'm not genderqueer, or any of those concepts that I don't really understand. I'm a woman who loves another woman so incredibly much that we got married and are having a baby. "Adoption" doesn't really explain what I'm doing. "Non-biological" seems an unfair description; I'm just as biological as anyone else. I guess "other mother" will have to do.