CJ was not feeling any of the induction efforts that began December 23. Their heart rate would drop with my contractions and, at times, take longer to come up than the medical staff liked. This almost resulted in an emergency C-section, where I would have been rushed off in minutes without Andrew able to come. We tried several methods and routes before deciding it felt safest to have a C-section, which turned out to be the best choice. CJ had their umbilical cord tightly wrapped around their neck twice, and a C-section would have been the only way they could have come into this world safely.

Overall, the labor and birth went as smoothly as one could hope given the situation. Andrew and I cannot thank the University of Washington (UW) Medicine staff enough. They kept us all calm and safe throughout our entire time at the hospital. They are truly amazing.

And we could not be happier with our new little one!

The amazing Sasha Rieko Photography captured my pregnancy for us! She also took our wedding celebration photos in July 2022.

We love the outdoors, and we are hoping our little one will too,  so we went hard on the woodland theme! Rachel even went through multiple drawer pulls to find ones that were naturey enough. We landed on small wolf heads and feathers.

We were excited to include Andrew's wooden rocking horse from his childhood as well. 

A big thank you to our friend Chiaryn for knitting the adorable stuffed bunny! Her and her husband Andy also added to our board book collection by gifting us "A is for Activist." 🥰 We've received many gifts from friends and family, which we greatly appreciate.

We are going to use and explore some forms of creative gender parenting. There are a lot of different forms (and names for) creative gender parenting. For us, we aren't going to focus on the sex of our child unless medically necessary, and we won't be assigning any gender roles based on sex (at least that's our goal). We will probably try to mostly use they/them pronouns for the baby within our home and dress them in a mix of clothing options. As they learn to talk and communicate, we'll check with them about clothing, hair style, toys, and pronouns, etc. We want them to know gender isn't associated with sex, and they are open to express their gender in whatever way they want.

We'll ask that friends and family support us in this adventure, but realize it might be usual to some people (even in Seattle), so we'll pick and choose our battles with people who aren't friends or don't know us. We're not going to worry too much about pronouns and gender with strangers or loose acquaintances until our kid makes it more clear what they want (which could change over time too).

It's not about removing gender, it's about reducing gender-based oppression and the stereotypes of gender. Rachel and Andrew will be learning along the way, too.