PandeMommium

I'm Tired…So Tired…SAHM to 2 year old Twins and a 4 Year old…Did I mention I am TIRED!!!!!!!

Category Archives: Donor Conceived Children


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Grandparents …. and what they mean to children who are Donor Conceived.

I recently read a blog post over at Oliviasview Blog titled “Relative Strangers: what grandparents think about donor conception” and it prompted me to finally write a post myself about the role of Grandparents in the life of Donor Conceived Children.  I have thought about this many times, to be honest most of the time I see my kids with my husbands parents as they are the non-bio side of the equation, and my thoughts are always filled with awe and amazement.  His parents are have been nothing but supportive, loving and extremely present in the lives of our children.  One would think nothing out of the ‘ordinary’ if they were to see the kids interacting with them.

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This is their Gramma who is not biologically connected to them. BUT she is the proudest, most loving, accepting, amazing Gramma ever and these kids ask for her and talk about her constantly.

Growing up I had a cousin who was adopted and I always remember my Grandmother treating him differently, I never once saw her show him any affection, as a matter of fact I am not sure I ever even saw her address him directly, and he knew it!  I suppose I had a bit of a fear of something similar happening to my kids.  But to my relief it has not turned out that way.  Perhaps it is the difference in generations and the difference in what makes up a family these days.  Our family makeup is a very eclectic one.  There is divorce on both sides, remarriages, step-sisters, step-moms, step-grandmoms, step cousins, aunties and uncles who are non-bio….and on and on.  So our kids have already been born into a family that has a varied past in blended families and members of the family who are not biologically linked but very much a part of our everyday lives.

A while ago I stumbled across an article that spoke about parents of those who chose to donate sperm or eggs.  I never thought how they may be affected by the notion that there were going to be an undisclosed amount of biological grandchildren born to strangers. Their DNA, their Grandbabies and they would never get the chance to know them, to even know if they existed or not.  I sat with this thought for quite sometime, trying to figure out how I felt about it, that my kids not only had the grandparents they see but that they have an entire family they will never know, not just a biological dad or half-siblings they will never know.  They have aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents.  Then I shut it all off, it is all very overwhelming, and if I feel that emotionally entrenched by it all, I can only imagine how my kids are going to feel as they get older and start to realize the extent of their DNA and the lack of information they will be able to know about it.

This is a pic that was taken this past Christmas. This is a picture of Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and a Gramma who are not biologically connected to my kids, BUT who are the most amazing people in the world. You will never find better uncles, then these....

This is a pic that was taken this past Christmas. This is a picture of Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and a Gramma who are not biologically connected to my kids, BUT who are the most amazing people in the world.  Our kids are so attached and in love with each and everyone of them!

On another note, and one that caught me pleasantly off guard, there is yet another category of Grandparent in the mix.  I have been in contact with 2 of our children’s half-siblings.  One of the moms is a Single mom and she contacted me so that she would have the information to be able to give to her son if and when he wanted it, she stated that she was not particularly interested in extensive contact.  She did however facebook friend me and through that avenue we are able to share pictures of the children and keep tabs on daily life.  A short while after she friend requested me I got a request from her mother, the Grandmother.  She also was very polite and not wanting to be intrusive be she asked if she might be able to be a facebook friend so that she could also see her grandsons half-siblings growing up.  It struck me that in creating these children using a sperm donor we have thrown a monkey wrench into so many different family scenarios, and I will admit that in making our decision to use a donor I never once thought about the extended families on any level, in my mind it was all about us.

Along my travels through the interwebs I have bumped into the term ‘Epigenetics’, now I am not going to even pretend I am scientific enough to dissect the actual studies behind this term, but I will say that I know on the surface it is about the old argument of nature vs nurture.  For the past 4 years I have closely watched my children and tried to figure out if the traits and mannerisms they are demonstrating are coming from me – nature or my husband – nurture?  As of this day I cannot tell and a lot of the time I wonder if it really matters, does it matter why they laugh a certain way, or stand a certain way?  I could wonder forever, because they have family they will never know, and maybe it is the Mother of their sperm donor who stands like that or laughs like that, a Grandmother they will never know!


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Complete Bliss….What One Hour Can Mean to a Tired Mom!

As you can imagine it is pretty much complete chaos around here with 2 year old twins and a 3 year old.  I always get a kick out of people when they comment to me that I should get some sleep when the kids take their nap.  I used to give them the long involved timeline as to when my kids stopped napping and why even if they did nap it was never at the same time.  But now I just smile nod my head and give them a look of thankful acknowledgement that hopefully indicates to them that they have just given me the missing link in my life, the answer to how I can finally catch up on my sleep and regain sanity.

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However, sometimes once in a blue moon the twins actually nap during the day, and on an even rarer occasion then that they do it at the same time.  Today was one of those absolutely blissful days.  We had a busy day of getting our christmas tree and decorating it and then we also decorated the house for MJ’s 4th birthday tomorrow.  After all the festive fun was done, Sparky and The Boy crawled under their blankets on the couch and fell asleep within seconds of each other and miraculously napped for over an hour, which is unheard of for my kids.  All 3 of them stopped napping on a regular daily basis around the age of 1 and life threw me one more daily challenge of juggling 1 year old twins and a 2 year old who would not nap.

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But then there are  days like today when life hands me a moment, a peaceful, blissful minute when the gruesome twosome are sleeping simultaneously in the middle of the day.  It gives me time to stop and breathe and look at their peaceful little bodies, it allows me to erase months of crazy, and reset my gauges back to normal.  I won’t lie, once they woke up it was all tears and tempers, but I was able to handle it with more focus and tolerance…..it’s amazing what one little hour can do!!!!!


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Tiny

I was looking at my beautiful little boy/girl twins as they were running around gathering candy at an Easter Egg hunt and I could not believe they were going to be turing 2 on April 28th. I was thinking about how tiny they were when they were born and how I had them both bundled up at the bottom of my hospital bed squished between my legs so I could access them for feeding and bum changes while recouping from my c-section, and they were so small they fit in there with room to spare, and it hit me “TINY”.  So I grabbed a picture from the day they were born, April 28th, 2010.

My Babies

 


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I Feel Like A Prison Guard!

I feel like I am a prison guard patrolling the yard watching over the inmates and trying to break up their fights. The only slight difference is, the prison yard around here is usually the living room floor, the inmates are toddlers aged 2 and 3 and I have no weapons to protect myself! These days its all about the fights, the 2 year old twins like to get at each other, and the 3 year old just panics, cries and fights her way through everything. Hair is flying, fists are pumping and jabbing, teeth are gnawing and its getting ugly. Faces have scratches, there are teeth marks in the strangest spots and there are a significant amount of toy like objects being hurled through the air aimed at one another. The only other difference between me and a prison guard is that at the end of the day, the week, the month, I don’t get to come home and leave it all behind and I don’t get paid!

The Girls Have Their Brother Trapped & Yes I Took The Picture Before I Rescued Him!!!


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My Childhood

I recently posted one of my childhood pictures on Friends of Ricki (Lake) Facebook page, a great place where they are bringing Ricki’s new TV show that is starting this fall and social media together.  Today’s theme was childhood photos and I shared mine with the awesome ladies and gents of the group.  This picture is of me and my older brother in the Bahamas, we look miserable…but its probably just the hats and the shirts that my mom is making us pose with that is having that effect on us.

I have to say that I don’t remember much of my childhood, and why should I, as a kid we don’t really do very memorable things.  We are just learning to adjust to life and our environments.  Its a learning process and we don’t spend much time thinking back to when we learned how to speak and write and count.  I do remember my friends and playing, but only a little bit.  Mostly my upbringing was rather mundane.  I didn’t really think much of  it or how it was moulding who I was going to be until I was who I was to be, then I started to pick my years under my parents supervision apart and started pointing the finger at them for their mistakes.  But that is another blog post.

I was a fairly normal little girl, I thought that there were monsters under my bed, I saw angels flying around in my room, I talked to ghosts and I loved to be outside, fairly routine I’d say.

I played Dukes of Hazards on my bike with my friends in the neighbourhood, we were of course always being chased by Boss Hog, and the big crack in the road was the county line.  We played truth or dare, my brother and I rigged up after school haunted houses in our basement for the kids on our street as we were latch key kids.  Our babysitters were pot heads and we thought that was great, and they believed that I saw ghosts and even entertained my sightings by speaking to them as well.

If I look back I think I probably really liked being a child, the ages from 1-12 were pretty good for me.  I was in the “IN” group at school, as much as you can be at that age, the teachers loved me, I was a good student and like going to school.

I went to gymnastics camp when I was 7 or 8, and I loved it, I slept in a place they called the Zoo and our camp counsellor sang “One Tin Soldier” to us every night before bed and before she went out to party with the rest of the counsellors.  Her voice was beautiful and soothing, I still remember it.  I also stuck a big wad of gum behind my ear one night because we were making smoores and I wanted to eat them and not have to throw my gum out, I forgot it was there and woke up with all my hair stuck in the gum.  It is also the place I learned that if I was strong headed enough the ‘adults’ would eventually let me have my own way.  But with that I also realized what true embarrassment was.  I got the “WHY” award and had my first crush.  I also had a great pair of pink jeans I loved wearing.

Then I turned 15……


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My Maiden Voyage

As this is my maiden voyage posting on my new blog PandeMommium, I thought it only appropriate to share a bit more of myself and how I became fortunate enough to be able to use the aliases GENdMOM and PandeMommium and blog about my crazy and wonderful life with 2 year old twins and a 3 year old. Every week I plan on bringing you my tears and jeers when it comes to raising my kids and about not just being a mom but also a woman who is trying to crawl her way back to sanity! The following is my story in brief …..

I am a mom who wanted kids, ached and pained, kicked and screamed, got poked and prodded and worst of all was told that at the tender age of 35 I was of an advanced age for child bearing. Holy Crow, I was pissed. I didn’t want to be 35 when I first got pregnant, I wanted to do it right out of the marriage gate when I was 28, but things did not happen that way and it wasn’t until years of trying finally found me sitting in a fertility clinic picking a suitable sperm donor and having my fibroids and eggs measured to see if I was still able in my now elder years to become pregnant and bear children. I was given a bleak outcome, small eggs, big fibroids, 35 years old, IUI with Sperm Donor, there was not a great deal of hope from the doctors side of things, but after so many damn years of wanting kids I was not going to be discouraged. I thanked him, signed the paper work to say I understood that using fertility treatments could increase the chance of multiples which for me sounded like a win, to a fertility doctor it is a loss, the government does not like multiples and doctors that help create them, as they are a strain on the health system with many medical issues early on in their little lives. I left high with hope and went to the pharmacy to fill my prescription for clomid and wait for my sperm to arrive and my monthly cycle to kick in.

The Last Picture I have of Tobee 15 weeks

Two tries and success was ours, PREGNANT! It wasn’t long until I felt like something was wrong, I just had this weird  feeling and when  I went to  the gynecologist she told  me that I was being a nervous mom and that she knew I would think something was wrong until I was holding a healthy baby in my arms and only then would I believe her. I thought she was full of shit and I was right. My baby was not ok and at 5 months into the pregnancy I gave birth prematurely on my bathroom floor and our little girl was stillborn. I was devastated  and did  the  only thing  I could think to do, jump back on the fertility train for another ride. I did not want to grieve or wait but as it usually does life and my body had other plans for me. The doctors did not want me to try until the autopsy came back telling us what exactly was wrong with our little girl. They knew it was genetic, but wanted to be sure I was not the reason for the genetic default. The other kicker was my body would not co-operate and I would not stop bleeding. For the next 6 months I had numerous ultrasounds, more poking and prodding… YAY! I was put on birth control pills, not what a women who wants to have a baby is going to be very happy about. At certain points I was taking up to 3 birth control pills a day to try and stop the bleeding and to get my cycles back on track. It wasn’t until just recently that I found out I have Von Willebrands Disease which means my blood doesn’t clot so I bleed and bruise more then someone normally should. I still think those 6 months feel like the longest in my life.

6 months later, we had packed up our house, moved back across the country from BC to Ontario, we missed home and our families. We bought a small cottage that had been abandoned for 3 years and started tearing it apart and renovating it. In that time my husband started having second thoughts about using a sperm donor, he wanted to go back to the specialists and see if anything with his diagnosis had changed. Our original infertility diagnosis was Male factor due to unexplained Azoospermia. I was so pissed…AGAIN! This is when my kicking and screaming came into play. I knew that if he wanted to go see the specialist, it would mean more time waiting to try getting pregnant. We had found out that the genetic issue did not stem from me and we were advised to use a different sperm donor. I had stopped bleeding, my cycles where back on track and I was now a year older, but still ready to get going and my husband who had finally gotten on board after a longtime digesting our infertility diagnosis and looking into all our options, was now back tracking. But what was I going to say? He asked me straight out in the middle of one of my rants “Don’t you want a baby we have to be created with my sperm?” WTF, of course I did, nothing in this world would have made me happier, but we were told rather definitively by the doctor, or rather I was told “You will NEVER have biological children with your husband”. But love is strong and I loved him and wanted him to have his peace with it all as well. I waited another 5 months so we could both hear the word “NEVER” again.

The next month was a whirlwind. I found a fertility clinic, purchased more sperm and signed more paper work. Got poked and prodded and again two tries and I was pregnant. This time a happy healthy baby girl was born. We were finally on the other side of Infertility, we had battled it, kicked it’s ass, punched it in the face, called it bad names and spit on it’s entire being. We were winners. At least that’s how I felt. I was 37 when she was born, 2 years after we first walked into a fertility clinic and 9 years from when we got married and I threw my birth control pills out of the window. I was so excited that we had this little bundle of joy, I couldn’t wait to have another one, I always wanted 2 kids and waiting wasn’t an option for us, you know because I was getting really old now. So when our little bundle was 7 months old I headed back to the clinic to use up my sperm, I had 3 more vials left and was going to deplete my stash trying for another baby. The first month I was told I couldn’t even try, my ovaries had been hyper stimulated  and  it would not be  a good time to try…  I at this point was  livid and it was  in those moments that I learned that I am not a very patient person. So the next month when they told me I should wait again because I was only producing two eggs and it would be a waste of money and resources, I refused to listen and demanded that we go ahead. I got my way! 3 months laterwe found out we were having twins, and a month after that we found out that they had both tested positive for down syndrome. I think my world stopped in that moment, but only for that moment. Did I want to have an amnio, NO the risk of losing them was higher with twins, and even if they did have down syndrome, we would be prepared to pull all possible resources and give them everything that was needed. I said it before,  Love is STRONG and we LOVED them. I went to 38 weeks pregnant with them and was so big I couldn’t even fit behind the steering wheel to drive anymore. A smooth, planned c-section and there they were, Boy 5lbs 9oz and Girl 6lbs, and they were perfect.

Me Pregnant with THE BOY and SPARKY and I am not even 8 months along…..

So now we were done. I had my babies, I got to experience pregnancy and we became a family of 5. I had 3 babies all in diapers and over the next year I slowly lost my mind and had it reaffirmed to me that I don’t posses any great skill when patience is involved. I was put on mommy drugs to calm my anxiety and regained a great love for white wine. I am now 40 and my kids are all toddlers who never, ever stop. I am a SAHM, a Student, a Wife, and a Blooger and I am tired, frustrated and bored!… BUT as it is constantly pointed out to me when I complain about any of it, “isn’t that what you wanted??????”…


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SPARKY Sucks Lemons and Shoplifts

My babies have turned 2 and all of a sudden they seem so grown up.  I have really been observing them lately and how different Sparky and The Boy are form one other despite being twins.  THE BOY is much more like his older sister MJ, they both like quiet mornings, have an extremely particular sort of OCD streak to them and are both very emotional and sensitive.  SPARKY on the other hand, well she’s fireball in the mornings, could care less how messy the world gets and thrives off of stealing her brother and sisters things just to see them freak out and scream!  It is no surprise then that this week, she started eating lemons and shoplifting.

The lemon eating was funny at first.  I thought I would give her a taste, because most kids seem to want to try a lemon at some point.  So I gave her a piece and her brother a piece.  THE BOY reacted just as expected, he made a sour face while he tried desperately to wipe the taste off of his tongue.  But SPARKY, she threw her head back, pursed her lips together in a joyful, smug smile and said “mmmmmmmmmm”, and we haven’t looked back.  Every morning she runs to the counter and demands her lemon fix and the fun has stopped as I am not one to be fond of my children barking orders at me, especially at 6am…..the girl is weird!

THE BOY trying a lemon

 

SPARKY enjoying her lemon

The shoplifting really shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as I said earlier SPARKY loves stealing things from her siblings and gets great joy from it, but she also loves Dora and I now know she will stop at nothing when it comes to getting her hands on Dora merchandise.  We went to the mall with Gramma the other day and and as we were walking down the hall we lost site of her for one second, and I mean a milli second.  But before we even had time to panic, we heard her high pitch squeals of joy as she yelled “DORA, DORA”!!!  We turned around to see her as she came running out of a store yelling and carrying, more like hugging, a Dora suitcase.  In my moment of ‘thank god’ there she is relief and the second it took me to realize she had just stolen this right out of a store, I managed to get a picture, just like any good mom would do in this situation.  I then looked around waiting for mall security to tackle my 2 year old, but none were in site.  We quickly pulled her screaming and crying back into the store as we were trying to pry the suitcase out of her hands and return it.  The sales lady was astonished, she did not even see or hear her as she carried out her criminal act!  Everything turned out fine, she did not get arrested and my Mom and I tried hard not to laugh about it all because that would send the wrong message to SPARKY, and we wouldn’t want to do that, it would be irresponsible parenting ;)

SPARKY shoplifting the Dora suitcase


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My Introduction

My name is Allison and I am a married SAHM of 3 kids.  A 3 year old daughter and 2 year old boy/girl twins.  I originally ventured into the online world with my blog several years back when we got pregnant for the first time with our daughter who unfortunately did not make it and was still born at 5 months.  This was extremely devastating for us as we had been suffering from male factor infertility for the 7 years previous and had finally made the decision to use donor sperm to create our family.  However, our hearts still so wanted a child and we moved on and eventually had the children we so desperately wanted.  I start blogging in an attempt to find other moms/families who also had children born from donor conception and what I found was so much more.  I discovered I had more to write about then just being a mom of donor conceived kids, I also found that I got great joy from interacting with others about being a Mom, A Wife, A Student (yes I am also back in school), etc.  Most importantly I found an online world of friends and family.

The Gang!

I have been inspired to branch off from my first blog GENdMOM, which focuses on my life as a women who recently turned 40, being a student again, infertility, etc.  and create another blog that is “all things mommy and kids”.  I know, I know another mommy blog, but I feel that it is such a huge part of my life and I see this new blog as sort of a continuation of GENdMOM, the second half of the story.  Its the blog that talks about my everyday life with kids.  Its a place for me to journal about our experiences of finally being the family we so desperately wanted.  Good or Bad PandeMommium will have it all!

Ask me anything, my life is an open book as you will see from my blogs.  I am not shy nor offended easily.  I love the personal interaction, so please feel free to email me about anything if you are feeling to shy to ask on the forums.

I look forward to getting to know all of you!

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