Making a Boy

When we discovered that we had trouble with fertility, we launched a full-scale endeavor to conceive through the magic of modern medicine.  For twelve months Brent and I waited anxiously for "the stick" to indicate that I was ovulating.  We would then call our places of employment, take a half-day off, hop in the car at 5:30 AM and drive the two hours to Milwaukee for the 30 - 60 minute doctor's visit. First we'd grab breakfast at the coffee shop at the hospital, talk about normal everyday things as well as our hopes for a family, and then head up to proceed with the IUI (intrauterine insemination).  This was not easy on either one of us but it was physically painful for me and included a long, thin tube which would be inserted through the vagina and cervix and directly into the uterus to deposit its payload of sperm.  The procedure itself didn't take long, but I would stay reclined for an additional twenty minutes in the hopes that the little guys would have an easier time swimming to find their mark. We would then drive the two hours back to our community and return to work for the rest of the day like everything was normal.

Unfortunately, my body somehow interprets sperm as enemy and kills them all.  100%.  So, no baby making that way.

After a year of this routine and further testing to verify the hopelessness of making a child ourselves, we turned toward adoption as our preferred option to have a family.  Part of that journey included filling out a questionnaire from Russia about the kind of child we wanted to be matched with.  We chose "healthy toddler girl."  In part this was because we already had an infant son.  What could be better than one boy and one girl, right?

Fast forward to 2015.  Our teenage daughter tells us she feels she should be a boy, that "something's missing."  For a year she sees therapists, dresses and takes on the mannerisms of a boy, and takes on a male name and insists on male pronouns.  She is a "he" in mind and presentation but not in body. This is where modern medicine comes in to play again.  We find and endocrinologist who works with transgender people to administer hormones aligned with their gender identity - in this case testosterone.  Monthly, I take my child to the doctor to have him injected with a substance which will slowly - over a year's time - turn him into a boy.

And then I see the irony.  I wasn't able to make a baby from scratch.  I thought I had control over gender through adoption.  And while I'm not a biological mother to any child, now I'm making a boy! Without our support, this girl would remain a girl, but we are helping her become a boy.  The long year-long "pokes" sixteen years ago produced nothing at all.  But this year of shots will produce a boy, and I will have been instrumental in making that happen.  It's all quite contrived and crazy; but it is the life we are leading.  Thank you, modern medicine!