Papa can you hear me?

So I have made a new bloggy friend and she is a devastatingly good writer.

She is in a similar situation to me: she's gay, she using donor sperm to make a baby, she is using IVF, she's a she...see how much we have in common?

However, let me tell you the one big thing we differ markedly on: the identity of the donor.

She knows him, has a good relationship with him, she's moved house to be closer to him, they have coffee regularly and she even uses words like daddy and father when referring to him.

Honestly I mean no offence, but I cannot imagine anything more awkward or strange or icky.

The most we know about our donor is contained in a 10-page questionnaire. To us, he is a number. And it might sound harsh or clinical, but that's just the way we like it.

We met up with another friend while in Adelaide a week ago - she's in a same-sex relationship too, they have one little boy also and are also trying for number two.

Her school of thought was all about full disclosure also. "I cannot imagine having someone's sperm inside me from someone I didn't know, or like."

After I gagged, I kind of got her drift. But we actually prefer and like the not knowing. And thank Christ we agree.

Honestly, we are probably a bit gun-shy. Perhaps because T's parents have not been the most, shall we say, accepting of our relationship; and perhaps because we have read one too many magazine stories and seen one too many documentaries about known donor relationships going horribly awry. I guess it is just one less thing we have to worry about trusting.

I mean, we are devoted to each other and committed 100% - that's fine, I will never question that. But then you want to bring in a third party? Who you might not know very well, whose circumstances and mind could change for all sorts of reasons?

It was a preservation mechanism: both for us and whatever children we had, I think.

Of course, there is potential for Jay to go searching for this man when he turns 18. We will help him find him and go with him on the plane if that's what he wants and if that's what ends up happening.

Right now, we are flat out preparing for how we have that conversation - and how we have it age-appropriately.

Believe me, we have both lost sleep over wondering what the hell we are going to say if Jay comes home from Year 1 to tell us that his best friend was telling him that day that he was going camping with his dad on the weekend and where was Jay's dad?

At this stage, I am content to default to what the counsellor told us at the IVF clinic: your son will not have a father, he will have two mums.

And, my, wasn't it a relief to hear those simple words? My brain had over-analysed to the hilt...I was getting ready to draw diagrams, make a papier mache diorama, write a book, illustrate it, clip a topiary interpretation of the situation on the hedge outside and stage a play to help us explain how in god's name Jay came into the world and why he had two people of the same sex as his parents...this, yes this was much better.

"Well son, you don't have a dad. You have two mums."

The scary thing of course, however, is what is said after that...how we deal with that moment when Jay looks at us in the seconds after we deliver such forthright words with blank, naive eyes and his sharp little brain starts formulating the very next question.

Those words are something, but I know they won't be enough.

What will we say?

Who knows? But we will work it out, just as we have always done.

That was a very Hallmark end to the post, wasn't it? Didn't it smack of the "and they all lived happily ever after"?

But that's what I am slowly gathering about parenting. You just do your freaking best. Most days it's fine, some days it is spectacular and others, it's truly from a place called hell.

Umbilical links

I was watching three minutes of that reunion show Find My Family last night.
MasterChef was on an ad break and so I flicked away from the ads, not feeling particularly keen to have my ears assaulted by Harvey and his screechy wife Joyce.
There were these two girls in their 20s on there who were reunited with their mother. One girl had been given up as soon as she was born, the other one had lived with her mother until she was 17 months old - and then similarly handed over.

Can you imagine? Hell, I cannot begin to comprehend having a living thing grow inside you and then putting it up for adoption as soon as it pops out - let alone forming an incredibly strong bond with a little person over a whole 17 months and then making the call to do the same thing. That's 17 months of smiles, lullabies in the middle of the night when sickness makes it hard to breathe or scary noises make it harder to sleep...17 months of eye contact, warmth, touching, laughs, words, sharp pangs of anxiety when your little one cries and the sharper pangs of a swelling heart when that same little one sticks out their arms for you, and only you.

Anyway, they showed these three pictures and video of each other to each other - there was probably an equally teary, in person reunion, but I don't know, as MasterChef came back on and I needed to know if Carrie's spinach mistake would mean the end of her dream. (It would.)

Yeah, there were tears (from both Carrie and all three women on Find My Family) and at one stage, when the mother first laid eyes on photos of her long-lost girls, her face broke into this painful grimace of shock and utter regret.

A large, gnarled hand betraying decades of what was probably a bloody hard life whipped up to cover the raw emotion that her heart could not stop from contorting her cheeks, mouth and eyes in all different directions as she cried.

It was a powerful moment. It took my breath away.

Because it put me for a split second in the shoes of someone who had played a genetic role in creating a person...and someone who then, for whatever reason, had disappeared.

Then it made me realise how amazingly strong those genetic bonds are, no matter what kind of nurture may have overridden the nature in your mind.

And then, it gave me a tiny glimpse into what Jay might experience as he gets older and starts wondering who this man was who contributed to his life.

Of course I can understand it. Without this man, Jay would not be on the planet. No matter how much we raise him with two mums and explain that he doesn't have a father, but that he came into this world with this man's help and in a very special way...he is likely to want to know, he is likely to be curious. Right?

Then I allowed myself to slide into an empathy I have so far been afraid to confront - afraid only because I suspected to stumble upon an emotion that might make me uncomfortable. What would I do in a similar situation? How would I feel?

Of course I would want to know every little thing I could about where I came from. That wouldn't mean I wanted to deny the existence or the love of those who had raised me - but I would most certainly be curious. I knew this, but it was fuzzy and hiding somewhere in the outskirts of my conscience, out near the industrial areas.

Last night I thought plenty about it and I accepted it.

That was a powerful moment for me. It took my breath away.