u/GardenEastOfEden

my son is about 2 1/2 and he has been literally obsessed with blue's clues since he started being able to watch tv. I grew up watching the OG show. He's seen all of blue's clues and you, and now we're going through the OG so he gets more, and I get to relive my childhood.

I forgot about the rain song and how much it meant to me as a young child. It was how I learned about evaporation and precipitation, sure that's a formative moment, but it also was my favorite song at whatever age I was, I can't even remember, probably between 3 and 5 years old.

hearing this song again and seeing my son dance to it made me burst into tears out of nowhere. I had totally forgotten this song. I had spent most of my childhood in survival mode, as a closeted trans woman growing up in a very sheltered and abusive enviroment. I had lost a lot of the curiosity and joy that blue's clues taught me, i've only been getting it back in the last five or so years.

Ten, fifteen years ago, I didn't think i'd be where I am now. With a wife and son. I didn't even think i'd be here at all. But I am, and i'm reconnecting with my inner child when creating a space safe for my son's unfettered growth. It was surreal to feel just how deeply something simple and sweet can affect my soul when I've lowered my shield so to speak. And I think there's something more to it than just the connection between my childhood and my son's.

The rain song is legit an amazing song. I know it's a short one off song from a kids show, but the melody is amazing and the lyrics have almost a spiritual aspect of the cycle of life and death subtly weaved in. Maybe i'm reading too much into that part, but to me the journey of the rain drop is an analogy for our own lives as we grow and change. And the melancholy but hopeful melody and expressive emotion of the keyboard backing are just masterfully written.

definitely going to try and learn this song as a lullaby for my kiddo.

My doctor who is awesome and an ally, but is generally a cis women's health doctor, (not a trans focused endo like I used to have on my old insurance) has given me a prescription that seems odd to me. 1ml of 20g/ml (20mg dose) of estrodiol valerate intramuscular, every 2 weeks.

I am about 3 years on meds (with ~5 month detransition and retransition early on to get my wife pregnant) on oral estrodiol, spiro, and progesteron. All my doses have changed over time.

My estrodiol started small (2mg daily) and grew to a high dose (now 10mg daily, 6mg in the morning and 4mg before bed)

My spiro dose shrank (200mg daily to suppress T, now way down to 50mg a day since T is low and peeing is annoying)

My prog got raised just cause it feels nice to be on a high dose (200mg daily, 100mg at morning and night)

part of why i'm switching to injection is i'm looking forward to scheduling my vulvoplasty early next year at OHSU. They have, from what I've read, a mildly outdated guidence that oral estrogen increases the risk of blood clots, and since clotting during surgery is a mild concern, they want me to use a different method of E delivery for a while leading up to the surgery. So if I'm switching anyways, I may as well just switch now, since I've seen a lot of annecdotal reports on here and other sites that injecting can lead to some areas of feminization being more noticable and was already considering it for that reason.

Also, the other reason I'm switching to injection, is I have seen some people saying that oral route can lead to less absorbtion over years of use. My bloodwork has always looked good and sat comfortably between ~100pg/mL and ~300pg/mL. Although, my most recent bloodwork to get a baseline before switching to injections, was my lowest measurment ever, at only 89pg/mL. I don't know if that's due to lowered absorbtion, or just because I usually test around 2-4 hours after morning dose, but this time was more like 7 hours after morning dose. But that doesn't really matter at this point since I'm now switching to injection anyways.

I have never ever self injected medication so the measurment of dosage was confusing at first. Now that I have read up about standard dosages, i'm not at the doctors office to ask questions. But it seems really weird. It's a very high dose at very low frequency as far as I can tell. Not totally outside what works, but it seems suboptimal. I did find the feminizing injection calculator website, and it seems like I'll shoot to >1000pg/mL for couple days, then be at normal level for a while, but possibly dip below 100pg/mL for a day or two before the next injection.

Is this something I can try out and see how I feel and how my levels look at 3 months bloodwork, or is this a totally wild dosage that I should wait to start before talking to him again and requesting a weekly dosage instead? I do have a few weeks left of my pills to stay on oral while waiting for a response