Five minutes back from holidays and it’s like I never had them. The bustling environment of a school is always busy and loud – the atmosphere one of excitement mixed with both a healthy dose of terror and loathing. Once I’m there, I love it. It’s just the coming back after a delightful two weeks … Continue reading In the Blood
I’m often asked if how I feel about my eight year old Master M is any ‘different’ to how I feel about my biological kids. The answer is a resounding no. I carried him but he isn’t my child biologically. My partner at the time went through IVF and had her eggs removed, fertilised with … Continue reading The ‘Oven’
“When it comes to generating writing material, teenagers are gold. Their world is a narcissistic, anarchic, paranoid hell of anxieties and stresses about how they look; how popular they are or aren’t; and how fast or slowly, big or small their private parts are growing […] Lifts and pocket money aside, teenagers crave privacy – … Continue reading So Many Baskets
Now here is a contentious one for you... I write this entry with as much care and sensitivity as I can muster, having already experienced a taste of the polarising and colourful reactions to this ‘land mine’ of a discussion. I stumbled into this issue for the first time about fourteen years ago, completely by … Continue reading Donor ‘Siblings’
It’s a sign of growing old, I am sure, but I regularly think about my younger self and wish that I could go back and give myself a few timely words of advice. I also wish that my younger self would listen. Growing up, I hated my body. Forget that it was the only one … Continue reading Russian Roulette
It was one of the best, but also one of the worst years of my life in 2003 when Master Z made his way into our world. I was 36 weeks and 4 days pregnant and had suffered lower back pain all day. Thinking I needed to lie down, I went into the bedroom to … Continue reading Earlymark
Parenting is a drug. The highs are amazing, euphoric even. The lows: the worst come down ever. Nothing makes you confront your own feelings of inadequacy and fractures your sense of self-worth like a teenager with a bee in his (or her) bonnet. That same being you held to your breast and nurtured, that you … Continue reading Drug of Choice
Our excitement at being pregnant for the first time in 2002 was short-lived. Tragically, our first pregnancy ended in miscarriage at 8 weeks. It was three days after the Bali bombing in 2002 that we lost our first little one. We were actually supposed to be in Bali with my ‘in-laws’, T’s parents, at the time, … Continue reading Rocky Road
Conceiving our first child was by no means a simple task. My polycystic ovaries meant it was always going to be an uphill battle. Not that I knew this at the time. The long and short of it was I was never going to just fall pregnant without specialist help, whether I was gay or … Continue reading An Uphill Battle
I want him to read this while he still can. For me, the most difficult aspect of coming out was realising that my life was NOT going to head in the direction I had planned. Having to justify yourself to others around you, when you yourself don’t even feel it’s OK, is really, really tough. … Continue reading Old School
