Happy Birthday — An Oxymoron

By: John Jericiau

It’s been twenty-four hours and my ears are still ringing. I have a headache and I feel like my body has been through extreme boot camp. Did I just complete a triathlon? Nope! Did I just climb Mount Whitney?  No, I just survived another birthday party.

Devin and Dylan are in two separate preschool classes, each with 20 or so classmates. Throw in a sibling or two for each of those classmates, and you’re looking at a birthday party every weekend! And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing! Private homes, public parks, indoor gyms, outdoor venues, movie theaters, and bowling alleys – you name it and we’ve been there.

Don’t get me wrong – most of the birthday parties are valiant attempts at a good time. The hosts of the party are the haggard, stressed-out looking adults with smiles on their faces that quickly go south at the first fight, spill, or injury. They’ve tried their best to have a range of activities, food, and prizes for the kids, while keeping the adults in the party comfortable, fed, and feeling stress-free for at least these two short hours of their day. Best-case scenario would be for the parents to be there physically but able to detach mentally. You want to make the parents who are present happy, because you are fully aware that at some point in the year they will be trying their best to make you happy too. As you look around a party you see some parents enjoying each other’s company as if they’re at a cocktail party munching on hors d’ouevres, while others are alone in a quiet corner curled up in a ball, trying to regain some sanity before their kid becomes their responsibility again.

Yesterday’s party was another good attempt at a fun time, but it was not for me. Even I was excited to go since it was at a place we’d never been, hosted by parents I really like, and celebrating the birthday of one of Devin’s closest friends as well as his younger sister, who Dylan really likes. I knew almost everyone there, it required very little travel time, and I was hungry by the 11:30am start time. The boys were in really good moods, and they looked sharp in their outfits.

Within the first half hour of the party I found myself making a mental note of the things I don’t like about kids’ birthday celebrations, since this one happened to have most of them. In no particular order, these include:

THE NOISE
I have never stepped foot in an insane asylum, but if I did, I’m pretty sure it would sound like this party. How can little mouths produce such big noises? You don’t realize just how loud the rumble is inside the place until you try to talk to someone next to you, use the phone, or call out to your child who has selective hearing anyway. The loudness of the children is only momentarily taken over by the shriek of a parent yelling across the room for their child to stop pummeling their classmate. You’re almost startled by the silence when you escape inside the restroom.

THE FIGHTING
Do these kids actually get along at school? Are they really friends? Most of them are not playing – they’re surviving! Fists are flown and toys are thrown. No one wants to share the mini roller coaster, and the box full of plastic balls – the one that’s meant for them to sink into like quicksand – becomes ground zero for an epic battle of the boys. Parents just naturally rotate at officiating these battles, depending on who is the closest. The curled up parents get a pass.

THE FOOD
I’ve learned that the only thing kids eat is gooey pizza from wherever delivers, and the only thing they drink is juice from an envelope that each parent must learn to pierce with a sharp straw that can also be used as a weapon in the fighting described above. Yes, most hosts provide sliced and diced fruit to fill in the spaces on the table around the pizza and drinks, but most of the fruit ends up on the plates of the adults, since it feels so good to eat fruit without having to prepare it ourselves. Besides the fruit, the parents find themselves eating things we never ever eat outside of birthday parties, such as circular pita bread sandwiches or cold cut croissants. Of course, most of us get our calories from finishing the slice of pizza abandoned by our child. We just can’t let food go to waste, no matter how bad it is…

THE PIÑATA
I’m not sure who made this a staple of the birthday party, but it’s a bad idea. More often than not the child swinging the weapon (I mean stick) trying to chop in half their favorite action figure or Nickelodeon character (and then will go home and mimic this with their younger sibling) has no clue how dangerously close they are getting to the face of the spectating children. More often than not a child will wander in the path of the swinging stick, while the parents freeze in fear and cringe until the inevitable happens. Finally the piñata will mercifully split, and out pours thousands of pieces of amphetamines and uppers (I mean candy and chocolate) that will never be divided evenly and will evoke more of the above-mentioned fighting and noise.

Don’t even get me started on the goodie bag, the cake, or the bacteria-laden cesspool of toys. I’m going to refrain from talking about the condition of the available restroom. Anyway, I really don’t have the time. I’ve got to get the invitations out for Devin’s birthday party.

Hero

By: John Jericiau

I’m often asked why I have such a strong desire to have children of my own. It used to be that I was often asked how I have such a fit body, but that’s a different lifetime! I used to be most identified as a triathlete, but these days it’s as a dad. I’m not complaining, but I am happy that my husband Alen has not started calling me Daddy yet. Speaking of which, for the last 8 years Alen has called me “Babe”, but recently has reverted to “John.” I guess there’s something weird about calling someone who just turned 50 a babe. Or maybe because we have two young babes in the house, with another on the way (29 weeks from now!).

But I digress. Thinking back, there is a moment in my life where I definitely remember a seed being planted – a time I knew that someday I would become a father. It was the summer of 1984. I had just graduated from college (undergrad) and was halfway through a solo bicycle ride from New York (I was born in Manhattan) to Washington state and then down the entire pacific coast to San Diego (the triathlon capital of the world). This was a trip that required about 3 months of planning, and was supposed to include my college sweetheart Maria. A week before the start of the trip, however, Maria decided to hook up with my college roommate, so I decided to part ways but complete the bike trip as planned, much to the chagrin of my parents. I had never been west of New York, I was 22, and this was the pre-cellphone era, so they were scared of their oldest child being alone in the middle of the USA.

I averaged about 91 miles a day for 2 months in order to cover the 5460 miles, and each and every day was a unique, wonderful experience, and I got lucky. Except for four hours of drizzle in Michigan, I enjoyed sunny, warm weather the entire ride. No flat tires, no injuries. Twelve states plus a stretch in Canada as I traveled over the Great Lakes, it opened my eyes to a new world of interesting people, places, and things. I spent a total of $206 the entire trip, mostly due to the generosity of perfect strangers. I had a lightweight tent and sleeping bag packed on my bicycle so that whenever I got tired at the end of the day I could set up camp in convenient places like parks, schoolyards, churchyards, or even hidden behind billboards.

I only needed to resort to these campsites about half the time, however. More often than not the summer evening would play out like this: I would stop in a town to shop for food at a neighborhood market, and I would literally be swarmed by locals asking this young kid where he was headed and where did he come from. Out of this group of locals, someone would usually volunteer to take me home, feed me dinner, give me a bed and a shower, do my laundry, feed me breakfast the next morning, and pack a lunch for me to take as I headed out on my journey to the next town 91 miles west, where this sensational scenario would probably repeat itself. I was amazed at how open and giving the world was!

Halfway through the trip, in the middle of July, I came upon the Continental Divide. For those of you that don’t know, the mountainous Continental Divide runs from northwestern Canada along the crest of the Rocky Mountains to New Mexico. Every continent except for Antarctica has a continental divide. As I bicycled west, the mountains of the divide were so unbelievably high that after spotting them on the horizon it took me two days to reach the base! When I finally reached the base I was greeted with the following sign: EXTREMELY STEEP UPHILL NEXT 19 MILES. I took a deep breath as I started up what would turn out to be the most difficult 6-hour bike ride I have ever taken. The area was teeming with tour buses and sightseers, because the views were amazing. Scores of vistas dotted the road upward, where people could stop and get water, and cars and buses could stop and rest their weary motors. One particular tour bus departed from the base of the mountain at the same time as me, filled with kids from the Rocky Mountain Summer Camp program, or at least that’s what the very colorful sign on the side of the bus said. As I made my way up the mountain I would pass this bus at a vista, only to be passed by this bus on its way to the next vista, where I again would pass the resting bus. This happened over a dozen times, and each time it passed me more and more kids and adults from this bus would recognize me from previous passes and start shouting and cheering out their windows.

I later learned that this was a bus full of “disadvantaged” kids waiting to be adopted as they lived out their days in a local orphanage, and they were being treated to a road trip through the mountains by a local charity. I was amazed at how supportive they were as they passed me each and every time, but as I was within a mile of the top I stopped seeing them for a while – just when I needed them the most!

As I biked up the final curve before I reached the summit of the mountain, I could see (through my sweaty sunglasses) what looked like a scene right out of the Tour de France – people lining either side of the road, cheering and waving whatever they had in their hands. It was the entire Rocky Mountain Summer Camp bus, emptied out and waiting for me as I finally made it up the 19 mile mountain! I came to a stop among the crowd and was overwhelmed with emotion as they whistled and applauded and hugged me and patted me on the back. In all the hoopla and noise, the head counselor finally let me in on what all this was about: every single kid present was so starved for someone to look up to, someone to admire, someone to call hero, that watching me make my way up the mountain, I was their hero … at least for today.

I knew right then and there that someday, somehow I would have a kid of my own, and I would want him to say to me “Dad, you’re my hero.”

The 20 mile ride down the other side of the mountain was a speeding 29 minutes of cheering and screaming, but this time it all came from inside me. I was ecstatic, I was exhausted, but best of all I was somebody’s hero.

Trying to Fig It All Out

By: John Jericiau

The results of the three-hour glucose test for gestational diabetes came back within three hours: negative! We’re still forging on with proper eating habits, however, but it’s nice not to have the threat of a return to injections (of insulin) after enduring such a long stretch of hormonal injections. Now our friend/surrogate is constantly reading the labels of everything from TUMS to gum, checking levels of caffeine, sugar, vitamins, and minerals. How lucky we are to have a friend like her! As we all walked down Main Street for our weekly trek to our favorite breakfast joint this morning, I couldn’t help but smile as I watched her walk hand in hand with the boys. They are fortunate to have her in their life, but she is equally as fortunate to have them in hers.

Not that things aren’t sometimes a bit confusing for the boys. We just had the 11-week ultrasound to check on the condition of our fig-sized baby. It was thrilling to see our fully formed baby move around the womb when egged on by the IVF doctor as he poked around. The boys were right there in the exam room watching with wide-open mouths, demanding to know right then and there “Whose baby is that?” Dylan was so curious as to how the ultrasound probe was actually working that he tried several times to nonchalantly peek under our friend’s vanity gown.

“It’s your brother or sister”, I explained, “and it’s in her belly now because she is helping Papa and me grow it. When it’s all grown the doctors will take it out and then he or she will come live with us and be a part of our family.”

In the minivan on the way home from the exam we were bombarded with questions like a fast-paced tennis match. During the volley we tried to come up with an age-appropriate response to each question.

“Whose tummy did I come out of?”
“When will the baby be ready?”
“How does the baby breathe?”
“Can I help take care of her?”
“Are you sure there’s only one baby in there?”
“Does it hurt when she kicks?”
“What color will it be?”

The doctor gave us a DVD of the entire exam, and the boys have added it to their movie queue right next to Madagascar and Dora & Diego’s Winter Adventure. When we see our friend after a separation, the first question from the boys to her is “How’s the baby?” You can tell that they still think of it as our friend’s baby, and that probably won’t change until the baby is born around mid November, but that’s okay. It’s almost the same for Alen and me. Even though the finalization process (whereby our parental rights will be established) occurs next month, it won’t really sink in until we are holding Baby #3 in the delivery room. Although surrogacy doesn’t hold nearly the same uncertainty that adoption did for us, there’s still a certain degree of separation right now, especially since there are a few layers of dermis and a uterus between our future offspring and us.

Our friend really helps us out with babysitting duties as well. In fact, we’ve never had to hire a babysitter. Without fail, every Saturday for the last 3 ½ years we’ve been able to enjoy a date night thanks to her. She comes over Saturday afternoon and we leave in the early evening for dinner and a movie. The boys get excited for their own “movie night” with our friend. Our friend will spend the night in the guest room after the boys fall asleep around 8 pm, so there’s no rush to get home. I wait patiently for the text message from her “The angels are asleep” and then I can truly relax.

But our friend is her own person, complete with her own style of discipline and behavior, which at times is a little different from ours. For example, we prefer to handle things with purposefully steady, soft voices – our friend might not even consider the volume of her voice. We try to explain our discipline style directly to the kids while she is present so that everyone is on the same page, such as “Dylan, do you see that when your behavior got us angry we did not yell at you? Daddy and Papa prefer to explain things to you and Devin in a soft voice because we really want you to use a soft voice when you tell us things as well, understand?” Then we will proceed to tell them that even our friend will try not to yell at them, because yelling is not okay. She picks up on our message pretty well, but in the future we may even want to do something completely unorthodox like, oh I don’t know, talk to her directly about it like real adults! Baby steps, I guess.

It’s no secret that our situation is extremely unique, but I’ve always maintained that the more love that is shown to the boys as they grow up, the happier they will be. And love is something that our friend has plenty of!

Sugar, Sugar

By: John Jericiau

It’s the crack of dawn Sunday morning and we’ve made it on time to the three hour blood glucose test. We’re here because our friend/surrogate had an elevated one hour test result last week, and the doctors want to be sure she doesn’t have gestational diabetes. We went through this same drill almost five years ago with our youngest son, but the results were borderline so we just had to watch our diet and periodically prick our finger to check sugar levels.

We had received an email from Kaiser with specific instructions to show up at 7am, but they gave us the wrong building address. You’d think that an institution like Kaiser would have this down by now. With the help of a pleasant security man we made it to the right lab and our friend was forced to ingest a very sweet soda (after fasting since 8pm last night). Now we sit for 3 hours with other women (and their partners) in various stages of pregnancy and wait for each hour to tick slowly by, with no food or water allowed. I’m really hungry, but I will continue to fast in support of the situation. We’ll go to brunch when this is over.

Maybe it’s because we’re sitting in a bare bones, no frills Kaiser waiting room, but as we fast I’m feeling unwell. I’m just getting over some kind of 7 day illness passed to me from one of the boys. I now weigh more than I ever have in my entire life. My right foot continues to throb from a running injury several weeks ago (foot vs. hole). And I’m the older. For the past three decades I have been seriously in shape, and I’m not used to feeling fat, old, and in pain. I’ve really got to make a change for my body’s sake as well as the health of the members of my current and future family.

Before kids I could so easily resist food and snack temptations, but now not so much. I just didn’t have all this stuff in the house. Now I feed the boys their Golden Grahams just so I could shovel as much as possible in my mouth as they slowly and rationally chew theirs. I finish their mac n cheese so I don’t have to waste food. I’ll eat half eaten sandwiches, unfinished toast, and leftover quesadillas, all under the guise of cleaning up the mess. I’ll sneak a cookie here and a candy bar there from my boys’ stash, rationalizing that I am limiting their sugar intake which is a good thing. I don’t even have to be hungry; I just need the opportunity.

I have managed to cut out Diet Coke so that it’s no longer in our home, but that’s about the only change I’ve been able to make. I need to buy more fruits and vegetables, and make them readily available to my family (and friend/surrogate) in each and every meal. I need to limit my portion size during each meal. Because for most of my life I have burned up to 5000 calories per day with my triathlon training, I never had to think about calorie intake except to make sure that I was eating enough! That all has changed now that my workouts are so limited. I need to drink more water. I should be doing some weight training now that I’m 50. I really should stretch.

We’re at the 10 week mark and our baby is the size of a kumquat. With no more than 30 weeks to go I need to devise a plan, implement it, and stick with it for the rest of the pregnancy and into those first few foggy months after the arrival of our bundle of joy. I think I can do it. I’m feeling an increase in willpower just by writing this down.

Now where should we go for brunch?

Grape Expectations

By: John Jericiau

We’ve made it to 9 weeks, and the excitement continues! Our baby has ballooned to the size of a grape, with little hands and feet meeting each other for the first time in front of her body. We had yet another ultrasound a few days ago, and it was amazing to see and hear the heartbeat as it sped along at 164 beats per minute. The boys were both present in the ultrasound room during the procedure, just as they have been for the other two ultrasounds, but this time they were much more aware of what was happening. We were planning to keep the pregnancy under wraps from them for at least the first 12 weeks, but our IVF doctor, not being privy to the plan, asked them this time if they wanted to see “the baby.” “What baby?” our youngest asked, followed by the declaration “I want a baby sister”! Good choice! The doctor gave him a copy of the ultrasound which he clenched like a brand new toy, releasing it only long enough for me to ask the receptionists to make a photocopy of it so that our oldest son could have an ultrasound of his own.

Since everything looks great, we have one final ultrasound at 10 weeks before the IVF doctor releases us to our Kaiser obstetrician for continued care. Our friend/surrogate is feeling great – no more bleeding, a minimal amount of cramping, but hungry and thirsty and peeing up a storm. Because some of these symptoms sound similar to our son’s gestation, where our friend developed gestational diabetes along the way, we decided to go for the initial intake with the Kaiser doctors now rather than later.

At the intake appointment, which took approximately two afternoon hours with the boys in tow (spring break), our friend and I had to fill out a long questionnaire with lots of family heritage and past medical history questions. Our friend just handed this paperwork to me, since she is out of the biological loop and I was the only one knowledgeable about the family and medical history of the egg donor, Alen, and me. Some of the answers had to be adjusted to reflect the truth of the situation, but for the most part I filled out all the “mother” questions with the egg donor’s information. The nurses looked puzzled at times as they studied our two children wreaking havoc in the waiting room and compared what they were seeing in front of them with what they were reading in the questionnaire.

I had to ignore the multiple requests by the nursing staff that we immediately call the referral number for genetic counseling – those requests were based on the 40+-year-old pregnant woman standing in front of them and not the fact that the egg that was fertilized and resulted in this beautiful grape came from a 22-year-old girl. Lab work was done to get an idea of how my friend’s blood chemistry was looking. It was good to get this appointment out of the way so we could focus on choosing our ob-gyn in a couple of weeks.

We didn’t have to wait more than a couple of hours before the blood test results started coming back from the lab. Our friend’s sugar levels were as high as for our youngest son, so more extensive testing would be needed, and dietary restrictions would have to be implemented immediately. Gestational diabetes can cause problems during a pregnancy, not the least of which is an extra large baby at birth, making delivery potentially more difficult. Our son needed a vacuum to help pull him out at birth, and none of us really wants to go through that again. Another danger of gestational diabetes: both our friend/surrogate and our baby are at increased risk for Type II diabetes for the rest of their lives.

So the diet begins, and I’m starting too in solidarity: high fiber, low sugar foods, 8 cups of liquids per day, and small meals throughout the day. I need to lose a few pounds anyway, and we need a healthy baby, so this shouldn’t be too difficult. Anyway, it’s only for 31 weeks! And maybe it will help this persistent nausea.

Stayin’ Alive

By: John Jericiau

I have no idea how I’m going to make it through 40 weeks of pregnancy. The injections, the oral medications, and the vaginal suppositories all continue, although their days are numbered. Everything is numbered and measured. How far along? Eight weeks! How big is the baby? Blueberry size! How much nausea? Plenty! It’s a lot of waiting and worrying. Get to 12 weeks, when the chance of miscarriage is less. Get to 19 weeks, so we can find out the gender. Make it to 36 weeks, when the lungs will be developed.

Mice have it so easy. Twenty-two days from conception to birth! Wouldn’t that be nice?! On the other hand, I should be grateful that we’re not elephants – twenty-two MONTHS’ gestation. I’d be collecting social security by the time this baby was born.

It’s not that I don’t have plenty to do in the next 32 weeks. Everything I have put in storage needs to be pulled out and evaluated for usefulness and cleanliness. I guess we can give away all the double things – double stroller, double jogger, two sets of infant car seats and cribs. We have lots and lots of boy clothes that both of our four-year-olds wore only once or twice before they blasted out of that particular size on their way to their current size of 6 or 7. And the toys that were used briefly (sometime only on the day of receiving them) before being banished to a corner under the bed or in a storage chest – many are missing pieces or legs or heads, but out of respect for the gift-givers were not immediately discarded. Someone spent some good money on these toys, and I feel bad getting rid of them.

We’re also in the planning stages of a complete landscape makeover along with the addition of a room or two to our home. Truth be told, we’ve been stuck in this planning stage for the last 5 years, but we have renewed motivation to get this going. We have a good-sized yard, and the boys are at an age where they go outside and make up their own imaginative games. This will come in handy when there’s a newborn crying for a bottle or sleep or company.

As in life, this pregnancy will be filled with highs and lows to experience and survive. Here’s one: last week, nearing the end of week 6, we all returned home from a rather chaotic but fun-filled birthday party celebration at a nearby park. My friend/surrogate also attended, but she is beginning to tire easily. Once we were home, she made an announcement that she would need to lie down and rest awhile, but after a bathroom pit stop she opened the door and quietly called out to Alen. Even though I was on the far side of the living room and could barely see what was going on, I could tell immediately that something was seriously wrong – I’ve never heard worry in her voice like this. She was bleeding, and it was not an insignificant amount. I tried to stay calm as we called the doctor while my friend stretched out on the bed with some cramps and fatigue. She fell asleep for a couple of hours, and per our doctor the bed rest was extended for the remainder of the weekend until they could get us in for a Monday morning ultrasound to check on the baby. She had noticed some “clots” in her blood, which leads you to believe that something awful was happening, but by the time the ultrasound appointment arrived the bleeding had trailed off. I perused the internet all weekend, reading the tribulations of women who experienced bleeding at week 7 but continued on to give birth to a healthy baby, so I remained cautiously optimistic. The doctor seemed concerned, and quickly slapped the probe on my friend’s abdomen, as if to more quickly end the nightmare we were living. There was our little blueberry, heartbeat and all. I’m already proud of what she (or he) has endured, and I expressed my pride to our Baby #3 as I lowered my head to uterus level to say “We can do this!”

And I think we can!

Bully

By: John Jericiau

I’m going to write about something that I have kept secret for over 30 years. Mom and Dad, when you read this please don’t be sad or upset, because I got through it in one piece. Boys, when you read this some day (and you will), just know that in your generation there’s more awareness in this world about things, and your Papa & I try hard to never let harm come your way. And Alen, when you read this remember that the person you fell in love with (and continue to love) is the culmination of many past experiences, good and bad. I also have felt that sharing this information with you was more of a burden on your heart than an ease on mine.

But I can no longer remain silent. My silence is a show of disrespect for all the 13 year olds that have followed in my path and suffered the same pain and suffering as I have. Being quiet does nothing to help the thousands and thousands of kids that have to live their lives the way I had to.

I’m talking of course about bullying. After having seen the unrated movie Bully tonight as part of our date night (not exactly a romantic comedy), I realize that one of the things that I can do – I mean that I must do – is share my little story. If more people speak out about bullying, maybe more people will care about it.

My family and I lived in New York City until 4th grade, and I really don’t remember much about school there other than I liked it. I was interested in learning new things, and I was always excited to meet other kids and make friends. After my younger brother was hit by a truck (but survived) as he and I crossed what we thought was an empty street, my parents hightailed it out of there and moved us to the suburbs about an hour north of the city. Excellent public schools and beautiful countryside greeted us with open arms.

I dove right in to 4th grade, team sports, and any other extracurricular activities I could. As I progressed through elementary into junior high school I grew into a healthy, albeit skinny, teenager with no real issues (except for zits and braces) except for one thing – the school bus. Don’t get me wrong; there were plenty of nice friendly students on my bus route. It was a bus route that picked up all the kids that lived on the outskirts of my school district – we were literally a stone’s throw away from the next school district – so the other kids were not neighbors or close friends, but nearly all were still pleasant enough. Nearly all, except for the Smothers brothers.

Of course, Smothers is not their real last name, but because some of my high school friends might be reading this I’m going to omit their real name. The point of writing this particular blog is not to out them but rather out myself and bring myself down a path of healing and action for those that follow me.

I’d always kept an eye on these two as I rode the bus, because they were trouble and everyone knew it. I stayed clear of them, and counted my blessings that, thanks to some angelic route planners, the bus would pick me up near the beginning of the route and the Smothers brothers near the end of it. I sat near the front and friends filled in the other seats around me long before they had a chance to get on and make their way to the very back of the bus. Occasionally we would hear yells or screams of pain from innocent bysitters, but for the most part I had nothing to do with them.

All that changed when a newly hired route planner reconfigured the bus route just before I started 8th grade. We got the notice in the mail but I didn’t pay much attention to it. Terror hit me, however, when sitting on the busride home that first day and I realized that I was now the second to last stop of the bus route, and the Smothers brothers were the last! Our bus driver was completely oblivious to the happenings on the bus each afternoon, so for all intents and purposes I would be alone with this duo for almost ten minutes every day. I tried not to panic, but my worst fears were almost immediately imagined.

It started with throwing things at the back of my head and progressed from there. Kicking the back of my seat. Smacking the back of my head. Flicking my ears. Spilling things on my shoulder.

Thinking back, I have absolutely no idea why I told no one. I don’t know why I didn’t fight back. I know that I was (and still am) extremely embarrassed that it was happening, so it became my little secret. But I really wish I nipped it in the bud, because it escalated. Grabbing my books and throwing them out the window. Trying to grab my shoes and do the same. Punching me. Shoving me. Beating me.

This went on for months, but then finally I’d had enough. I ran. Literally. I started to run the 4 miles to school every morning and take a shower there before the morning bell. I upped my extracurricular activities at school so that I never had to take that bus again. But they still weren’t completely unavoidable. Once the brothers happened to bump into me at my locker at the end of the regular school day, so they stuffed me in it and locked it. Once they happened to see me go in the boys’ locker room right after school, so they snuck in, threw me across the locker room, and broke my ankle.

Didn’t these losers know who I was? Didn’t they know I would one day be Student Body President and Prom King? Didn’t they know I was popular, friendly, and an all-around good guy?

I don’t want my sons to experience this. It seems an inevitability when it comes to teenage boys, but maybe that’s actually a mindset that we can change – one story at a time.

The Sesame Seed

By: John Jericiau

There’s nothing like the Internet to make the time go by faster, especially when we were looking so forward to the six week ultrasound. I researched information regarding IVF statistics, and it looked like our chances were good that the ultrasound would show something positive. I read about early pregnancy symptoms, and besides a little cramping, our friend was having none of the ones listed. I calculated the exact due date based on the day of conception and came up with November 16th. Being that Dylan was four weeks or so early when he was born (with the help of this same friend), we might be greeting Baby #3 around October 22nd, which would fit right in with our family (remember that all four of us were born on the 22nd.) I also learned in all my world wide web reading that a beta hCG level of 156 (which we had at the 10 day post implantation mark) doesn’t necessarily correlate to twins. Levels much less than that have ended with triplets; levels higher than 156 have been seen in singletons. One more baby would be the best for our family, but we wouldn’t complain if we had twins (although with the boys exactly eight months apart we have always felt like we already have twins).

I signed up for a weekly email update to give us a heads up about what to expect each week and how the baby is progressing (size, organs, etc.) At week 5 the baby was the size of a sesame seed, so I kept one in my front pocket the entire week. Unfortunately this email update also alerts you to the things that can go wrong ( a lot!), and why it’s important to be taking vitamins and folic acid (she is!) and worst of all it lists the diseases and conditions that can start manifesting itself even at this early stage. One can’t help but have a mini panic attack upon reading the long list of ailments like Down’s Syndrome, spina bifida, and others that I quickly tried to delete without reading. Having a baby is a crap shoot; you just never know. Seems like almost everyone has something wrong with them – you just hope that your own child is perfect. As I am writing this blog entry sitting in one of my favorite cafes, a 60ish man enters and tries to order some coffee to go. His movements are very controlled at first, but then the more he converses and tries to point to items on the menu, the more his gestures become involuntary and jerky. He obviously has some type of tic disorder like Tourette’s Syndrome. Please, lord. Anything but that for our baby. Or Down’s Syndrome. Or Muscular Dystrophy. Or Cerebral Palsy. I obviously didn’t delete the list soon enough.

The daily medications and injections continue, administered by either myself or Alen (depending on who was getting the boys to sleep), and this is not without its own set of problems. The injection sites on our friend’s hips are getting increasingly painful, swollen, and irritated. She’s walking around like an old woman, can’t lay comfortably on her tummy, and is going to bed earlier and earlier. The vaginal suppositories (we don’t administer these, thankfully) are somewhat difficult to insert, and they are itchy. That can’t be comfortable. Alen (the physician) worries that she’s getting too much hormone. She can’t eat some of the foods she normally enjoys, and even the water in a store bought water bottle tastes bad.

But she doesn’t complain. Not once. She still heads out of the house at 5:30am every morning for work (she is staying with us every night since we need to give her the injection), and she still plays with the boys with her ever-pleasant attitude. I thank her every day for this gift, tell her that she is part of our family forever, and assure her that this is definitely the end of the road in the formation of our family.

As I continue my writing a couple of guys enter with a boy around 1 year old. Obviously together, obviously their adopted son, I can feel from across the café their love for each other and their love for their boy, and it makes me miss Alen and the boys. (They’re at an Easter egg hunt in Culver City.) One -year-old boys are so darn cute, and I get so excited for Baby #3. A girl would be incredible in our testerone-laden home, but a boy would be awesome too. And yes, it could be two of either, or one of each. I use a bathroom break as an opportunity to meet the guys and Kai, the precocious 16-month-old son of guy #1 who is in town visiting his brother (guy #2). Oh well, I guess I was feeling brotherly love.

It was so exciting to finally be in the exam room for the six week ultrasound. The whole thing took about three minutes. Our friend’s bladder was full which made viewing easier for the doctor. One baby popped up on the monitor almost immediately, with a strong healthy heartbeat. He looked around in every nook and cranny of the uterus for another, but in the end we have one apparently healthy baby, just as we had imagined, and just as we had hoped. Welcome to your 6th week, our little baby, and congratulations. You’re no longer a sesame seed. You’re a lentil! And right now there’s one in my pocket close to my heart.

The Thin Blue Line

By: John Jericiau

Waiting 10 days for most anything is difficult, but waiting for the chance to try a pregnancy test is excruciating. I started marking the calendar at day 2 post embryo transfer as I heard myself thinking things like “It’s out of our hands now” and “If it’s meant to be…” and “My life is so great already” but mostly “Please please work!” As I helped with the daily (and sometimes painful) injections into the upper gluteals of my friend/surrogate (the same friend/surrogate who helped bring our son into this world by the way), I would cringe at the sight of the bruising and inflammation and wonder what the heck was I doing to her! I wished so badly that it could be me getting the jabs. My countdown switched from days remaining until pregnancy test to number of injections left.

Alen left on a four-day business trip to Denver on day 8 post embryo transfer, and mercifully I got so busy with the boys that it was suddenly the night of day 9. I had picked up my friend from work on the way home from the boys’ swim lesson. She was sleeping at our house most nights so that we could give her the injection of medication(s) between 8-9pm each time. (The meds had to be given around the same time each day to keep the levels in the body constant for maximum efficacy.) We were almost home, and I quickly stopped in the nearby CVS to pick up milk, ice cream, and a card for our 93rd month anniversary. In a whim I found myself in the Family Planning aisle looking through the early pregnancy test kits. This was happening despite the fact that in my head I could hear the nurse at the IVF clinic warn against the use of these not-very-sensitive over-the-counter tests. This was happening despite the fact that in our previous experience during IVF cycles, including when our friend was actually pregnant with our son, we never were able to see the vertical blue line appear. But I just couldn’t wait. Plus I had a strange confident feeling ever since the IVF doctor limited our transfer to two embryos because they were so spectacular.

I showed our friend my purchase when I got back in the car, and she was eager to try it. I think she wanted a reason, and I wanted her to have a reason, to inject another day. We planned to perform the test after the boys went to bed and while I had Alen on the phone, but our friend absentmindedly used the rest room right after dinner (I actually yelled out “No!” as I heard the toilet flush while I was loading the dishwasher) so we had to hold off a bit. Finally nature called, and she took the test into the restroom while I got Alen on the phone. I tried my best to have a focused conversation with him as we waited in the kitchen for the required 3:00 for that vertical blue line, but the microwave timer was only at the 1:11 mark when we began to see what we thought was a faint vertical blue line. As I continued the conversation with Alen, our friend and I pointed with open mouths at the test piece and began to manipulate it under different light sources at different angles, but it still was definitely a faint vertical blue line. Was this really an adequate shade? We fumbled to find the directions in the box, and we found the fine print that said that a faint line was as good as a dark line. According to this, we were pregnant! As Alen and I were wrapping up our nightly conversation, I suddenly switched to FaceTime on my iPhone (similar to a webcam) and said “Oh, just one more thing! Congratulations!” as I showed him the faint vertical blue line. “Wait! Wait! Am I really seeing it?” he exclaimed as I tilted and rotated my iPhone as best I could before he was satisfied at the result.

Of course I jumped online and read all about false positives and false negatives, and decided to go to bed feeling more positive than negative. The blood test (which measures the level of the hormone hCG) was only one night’s sleep away!

Our appointment at the IVF clinic the next day was rather unceremonious. A sample of my friend’s blood and a few wishes of good luck from the staff. Now another wait. We got the test started before noon (11:49am) so we would get same day results between 2-3pm.

My caller ID screamed the IVF doctor’s name at 2:44pm, and I immediately broke out in a cold sweat. I was ready for whatever they were going to tell me. I wanted to hear that we were pregnant, and I wanted to hear that the beta hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) level was between 5-50, which denotes a positive pregnancy. Anything smaller than 5 is a negative pregnancy. Anything larger than 50 might mean twins or triplets.

I pressed the ANSWER button and before anyone could talk from their end, out of my mouth came a loud “Just tell me!” A quick reply by the nurse followed.

Positively pregnant!
Beta hCG level: 156.9

Interview with John Jericiau

Interview with John Jericiau by The Next Family

TNF: How has it been blogging for TNF?

I’ve always loved to write, but writing for an audience has been especially rewarding. I love getting the feedback about my writing and using it to improve in the following week’s blog. I’m always surprised when someone in my circle of friends or even in my community sounds so sincere about just how much they enjoy my writing. Wow! I love sharing experiences that my family and I are having in the world, since I’m just so proud of my family. Even the act of writing “my family” in the last sentence brings me such joy.

TNF: How is your family like every other family and how is it different?

Sometimes I feel like June Cleaver because I’m part of a typical American family. We try to get through the day with upbeat optimism like any other family. As a couple we have concerns about money and the economy, we argue about silly things just like anyone else, and we try to raise our children to become productive members of society. We get annoyed at each other for hogging the comforter on a cold night, and at the end of the day we can’t wait to tell each other how our day went. As a family we love to travel together, sing together at the top of our lungs in our minivan, go to the movies, and read books together. We cherish our similarities (like we all were born on the 22nd day of a different month, or all of our first names end with the letter n) and we marvel at our differences (like we are each a different skin shade).

On the other hand our family is unique. One is Armenian and one is Italian. One is adopted and one is the product of IVF. One is African American and one is a blonde surfer type. One of us can sing really really well, and one of us appears to be a good dancer. One of us graduated with a 4.0 from Berkeley, and one of us has swam around the island of Key West. One of us was born in NYC, one in Tehran, one in Santa Monica, and one in Hollywood. We all speak two languages, though not the same two for everyone. We all love to swim.

TNF: Did your family accept you and your lifestyle? If yes, explain and if not explain what you have done to help them to accept your decisions and your lifestyle.

My family accepted me almost immediately upon telling them “the situation” when I was fresh out of undergraduate school. A bit puzzled at first since I was very athletic, had most recently been in a 3-year relationship with my college sweetheart, and had many (and I mean many!) girlfriends in high school, they listened, grieved, and then showed nothing but acceptance from that point forward. I had some trailblazers that, before my coming out, taught my parents a few things about gay life: 1) an uncle; 2) a very close family friend; and 3) Billy Crystal on an old primetime sit com called SOAP (although Billy didn’t exactly help my cause!). And it wasn’t until Greg Louganis came out that my parents felt that the whole athletic jock thing jived with being gay.

TNF:How do you juggle the work at home with your jobs?

It’s a daily miracle that anything gets done around the house. Except for an average of 4 ½ hours per week of physical therapy (my life profession) that I perform in the evenings at a nearby clinic, I have abandoned my career to be a stay-at-home dad. It’s commonly referred to as a SAHD, although it’s not sad at all. I feel incredibly blessed to have this opportunity, and never have and never will take it for granted. I worship the ground that Alen (the breadwinner) walks on, and try my hardest to support every endeavor (and there are many!) that he attempts. Anyway, it’s a challenge to deal with everyone’s schedule and laundry and taste buds, but I’m trying my best! Being organized helps. Being proactive helps. Going with the flow helps. Sleep helps. Prayer helps.

TNF: What lessons do you feel are the most important to teach children in this day and age? Are there any lessons they, or perhaps we as parents, should unlearn?

Teach, no, demand tolerance in your children. Tolerance of the diversity that exists in this great world. The diversity of cultures, of genders, of races, of lifestyles. Give children specific examples and show them that it’s okay to be different. Johnny has two mothers? Great! Mark in your class likes Barbies? Awesome! Maria speaks Spanish? Fantastic! Teacher Talin wears a scarf on her head all the time? Interesting! Even parents need to learn to “clean the slate” and accept things that they may not have grown up with or be accustomed to. It’s amazing how closely our kids watch us and learn from us. Once when the boys were 2 or 3, we were riding in the minivan and I was cut off by someone not paying attention. I blurted “IDIOT!!!” and that was immediately adopted by both boys as the name to call each other when they’re mad. To this day I have to live with that erroneous outburst. I lost an opportunity to teach them that although Daddy was not happy with her driving skills, he should be tolerant of everyone’s driving skills on the freeway, even if she was applying makeup in her rearview mirror.

TNF: Any words of wisdom to pass on to our readers?

Each and every person on this Earth is trying to make it through each day in their own unique way, with their own unique thoughts, and with their own unique past. To expect people to fit into a few neat perfect categories is ludicrous. Diversity is normal, expected, and needed in a world where people help one another to survive. I learned some things in my athletic career that have stuck with me. First, I can look at the thousands of other runners in a marathon I’m racing in, and although we are all running at our own pace, we are all feeling the same pain as we push ourselves along the course. So it is in life. You’re less different than you think from the people around you. Secondly, I’ve learned to take things one step at a time. When I left home on my bicycle to embark on a 5500 mile solo ride from New York to Washington State and then down the entire Pacific Coast to San Diego when I was 22, I would have been completely overwhelmed had I thought about the magnitude of my endeavor as a whole. When I have raced the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run), it wasn’t prudent to consider the whole race at once. Dissect the race or the ride into smaller more digestible parts, and it’s a lot easier to swallow. So it is in life. Accept the challenge ahead of you, and then attack it one day at a time, one hour at a time, or one moment at a time. And if you’re just a regular family trying to teach by example tolerance and understanding, start with one neighbor, one classmate, one person.

TNF: Anything you want our readers to know about you or your family?

My one vice is Diet Coke. And ice cream. And gum.

My family life has been viewed by thousands of people through a 15-minute documentary called A Family Portrait, which has shown at many of the major film festivals around the country. Due to its overwhelming success, the producers have turned it into a feature film (which they are currently filming) called Modern Family: A Documentary. (http://www.indiegogo.com/Modern-Family-Feature-Documentary)

My family will grow by at least one in the next year with the (fingers crossed) successful pregnancy of our surrogate after the (hopefully) beaucoup production of fertilizable eggs from our donor. This will be immediately followed by the ceremonious tying of each others’ tubes in a quaint gathering among family and friends.

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