I know that Lyn has heard a lot of great feedback on the birth story that she wrote from the NGP perspective (see part I and part II). I was also excited to read the story, but I didn’t really expect to learn anything I didn’t already know. I was there, after all, and Lyn and I have talked ad-nauseum about both births because that’s just our way. But I was surprised by her story, and I found that it illuminated my own experience in unexpected ways.

First of all, I realized that I hadn’t actually known as much as I thought about what the birth was like for Lyn. I knew it was “hard,” that she felt disconnected from me, and that she regretted not having more support for herself, but until I read her whole story, I didn’t realize just how lonely she was. Before Lyn was even pregnant with Ira, she told me we were getting a doula primarily for me. And while I was grateful for that doula, it wasn’t until I read this post that I really understood in my bones why she was so adamant about it.

I also saw through Lyn’s eyes how hard it was for me when I was stuck for so long, nearly complete. I think up until the minute that I read her post, I still believed that Leigh wasn’t born at home because I hadn’t been open enough or relaxed enough or a good enough birthing mom. Reading Lyn’s words, I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me! I sang for, what, 16 or 18 hours? And I think I wasn’t enough of an earth-mother-love-hippy to get the job done?!”  Apparently I did an amazing job giving birth, only there were things that were out of my control.

I clearly remember the moment that the epidural took effect, even though much of the birth is very fuzzy for me. During the last hours that we were at home, my whole world was pain that never stopped (I remember hearing in birth class that some women with long labors would sleep between contractions, but I don’t remember there being any “between”). I’m fairly certain that if a nice doctor had told me that the only way to stop the pain was to cut me open that I would have signed up then and there. But once the epidural kicked in, I realized what I had done, that I had landed us in the hospital, wrecked our homebirth, and placed the weight of the world on Lyn’s shoulders. I loved that damn epidural, and I knew I had done the right thing, but I hated myself. Somehow I think I always believed that all of those things were going on for Lyn as well. Reading her story I realized that they weren’t — she was dealing with her own set of difficulties and wasn’t spending any time at all thinking about what a failure I was. Instead she was trying to keep her own head above water while protecting me.

I guess that brings me to the last thing I realized. Because of all of the craziness that came with the hospital and, oh, having a newborn and all, I think I forgot something important. I forgot to say thank you. Luckily this story made me remember. So, thank you Lyn. Thanks for singing with me, and spending hours in the bathroom with me. Thanks for keeping me hydrated and making me eat that damn pineapple. Thanks for stepping aside when you couldn’t hold me steady, because that nurse was awesome and gave me just what I needed at the moment. Thanks for taking all of the hospital worries on yourself so that I could rest and feel safe. Thanks for catching Leigh and for not dropping her. Thank you for taking the crazy risk to build a family with me, and for working so hard to make that family strong and to keep all of us safe.

[Continued from Part I]

Our midwife came to the hospital with us (she and I carrying about a thousand useless tote bags of utter crap), and advised us to let her do the talking about how Gail’s labor was progressing. We got the most amazing labor and delivery nurse ever in the whole wide world, a woman whose name I swore I would never forget, but now find I can’t remember

After an endless wait the anesthesiologist came. He wanted to talk to us about being mathematicians because he fancied himself a bit of a mathematician. I wanted him to put a sock in it. I stood in front of Gail to hold her for the epidural, but I was shaking and there was no way I could hold her steady. I asked the nurse if she could do it. She was solid as a rock. Mostly I was grateful the nurse was there, with her well-rested energy and strong presence, forcing Gail to look into her eyes and hold still. But part of me felt like now I had failed Gail. Here we were, in the hospital, a place she didn’t want to be. She was terrified of needles. But I couldn’t hold her steady. I wasn’t doing my job.

The epidural started working immediately. Gail relaxed. She said this was the most amazing thing ever. She smiled, laughed, and started to crack jokes. The nurse started pitocin.

I needed to make calls: Gail’s mom. My parents. Everyone needed to know what was happening after a day and a half of silence from us. Suddenly I had their worries on top of my own. The hospital midwife chastised me for talking too loudly, saying that Gail needed to rest — another thing I was doing wrong.

Gail tried to sleep. She did in fits and starts. Later that morning, the baby’s heart rate grew concerning. They placed an internal monitor.

First the hospital. Then the epidural. Now the internal monitor. We were started down the cascade of interventions. Even though the internal monitor was providing reassuring information, at that point in time, it looked to me like there was no way we were getting this baby out without surgery.

I completely lost it. I don’t mean I was yelling or screaming, but I couldn’t stop crying.

The hospital midwife pulled me out of the room. She told me in no uncertain terms I needed to get my shit together. That Gail needed me to be strong.

I still don’t know whether to be grateful or pissed at her for doing that. I did calm down. Our own midwife suggested I call a friend. I went down to the hospital pay phones and called my close friend from grad school. She had a five month old. She had given birth at home. She told me it would be fine, that it was OK to be terrified, and of course I was a mess. It was a relief to talk to someone who was there just for me, someone who wasn’t telling me I needed to be strong, someone who let me be weak.

Our own midwife and the nurse encouraged me to go home and rest. It was just a few blocks away and they would call me to come back if anything happened. But what if something went wrong and I wasn’t there? What if Gail needed me? In retrospect, I know they saw how exhausted I was and knew it would still be a while, that nothing was dire, but at the time it seemed ridiculous, like they were telling me to abandon my wife and child. What planet were they on? I might be fucking up, but one thing I could do right was stay. And I was damn well going to.

We waited. Our midwife went back to our house to bring back food from our overstocked freezer (I had been cooking and freezing food for weeks). She brought back lasagna. I tried to eat it but it was absolutely disgusting. I forced my way through several bites. I ate some cereal and crackers from the hospital stash. A jar of applesauce was one of the only useful things I’d thrown in our hospital bags. I ate all of it and wished we had more.

Gail was progressing slowly, but it was progress, and no one mentioned surgery. There was a while that afternoon when I felt peaceful. I felt a quiet hope as I held Gail’s hand while she slept. I felt proud of her.

Sometime later in the afternoon on Sunday, maybe 3:00 or 4:00, a check revealed that Gail was fully dilated. The hospital midwife said it was time to get this baby out. It was time to push.

I could tell by the look in our own midwife’s eyes that she disagreed, and I suddenly remembered the one and only useful thing from our birth class: that with an epidural, it was often wise to let a woman “labor down,” to give time for the body to get the baby much lower on its own before starting to push in earnest. When the hospital midwife left, I looked at our midwife and said something like “we should wait longer right?” She nodded, and at that moment it was like the three of us, Gail, our midwife, and me, were in on a little conspiracy.

Our midwife suggested “Let’s ask for the anesthesiologist to come turn down the epidural. That will take forever and is a good idea anyway.” We asked the nurse for the anesthesiologist, and at least in my memory, she gave some signal that she caught onto the stalling plan. Now she was in on it, too.

It did indeed take forever for the anesthesiologist to come. And when he did, we decided that now it was a good time to talk math. We talked about our research, his various mathematical interests, both Gail and I milking the conversation for all it was worth, and then, eventually, we got around to turning down that epidural. Some time later, as the epidural wore down a bit, Gail started to feel an urge to push, the baby was indeed much lower due to our stalling, and it was time.

Our nurse stood on Gail’s left holding a leg. I stood on the right holding the other leg. Everyone was directing Gail this way or that way for how to push. Everyone was encouraging her and cheering, admiring what great progress she was making. After so long in labor, after things seemed so out of control, Gail completely took charge. She could feel the contractions coming on, and would round everyone up to pay attention at each one. She was doing this. I loved that.

Because the baby had passed some meconium, the pediatric team was brought into the room. Our nurse mentioned to the pediatrician that it would be nice to keep the baby on Gail’s chest provided s/he made a good cry. Since the meconium had been light, that should have been OK. The pediatrician said sternly “Absolutely not. Not after everything this baby has been through.”

He was the only hospital employee who made any insinuation we had taken undue risks with our baby’s health (We had not, the baby was well monitored for the entire course of the birth and we had a solid plan for back-up care). I was so excited for our baby to arrive that I managed to pay him no mind, and didn’t realize until later that he was a jerk.

The hospital midwife pulled me around the end of the bed. As our baby was born, we did a four-handed catch. The baby was a little blue, scrunched up, and amazing. I was surprised that at the end, the birth was so fast, that on one push we didn’t have a baby, and on the next one we did. Our baby was here. In my hands. Right now. It was 7pm on the dot, Sunday night.

The baby was placed briefly on Gail’s belly while the cord was quickly cut, and everyone asked me if we had a boy or a girl. I made a quick look and said “A girl! She’s here!…Wait! I’m not sure! I didn’t get a good look!” but she was, indeed, a girl. Our daughter.

She was whisked over to the pediatric team, who suctioned and checked her. Our midwife gently pushed me over to the table and said “It’s OK. Talk to her. Hold her hand. Touch her.” She was perfectly fine, whimpering and wiggling. I think it was the nurse who arranged things so I would carry her back over to Gail. I couldn’t have been more than 6 feet from the bed but it felt like 10 miles.

The path was glowing before me, but was riddled with treacherous obstacles that magically moved, as everyone warned me to be careful and pulled random IV poles, equipment and cords out of my path.

I placed Leigh on Gail’s chest. We stared at her together, amazed that she was finally here. We sang her a song, huddled together under what felt like our own gently glowing dome of light. Everyone else in the room disappeared. It was just the three of us. Together. Our family. Finally.

Thanks largely to our nurse, we got to skip eye antibiotic and shots, and Leigh never left our side. Our nurse brought the scale, and even the hearing test machine, to our room. As some of the chaos subsided, Gail asked did I want to hold her? I took off my shirt, reached for my daughter, who screamed bloody murder when she was moved, but, bless her, immediately settled as I held her naked on my chest, singing and talking to her.

Our nurse gently helped Gail get out of bed to the bathroom, and helped her shower. She had stayed late just for us. She lobbied for us to be able to leave as soon as possible (which was what we wanted). She helped us order food. After a while, both the nurse and our midwife left for the night.

As we lay down late that night in our dark room, Leigh snuggled in with Gail on the bed, nursing incessantly (already), me on a hideous and uncomfortable hospital cot, I sobbed.

Our baby was here. She was beautiful and healthy. Gail was healthy. I felt overwhelmingly relieved and grateful. I felt the beginnings of new kind of love, a deep connection to my child, to my wife. We were becoming something new. Together. I was absolutely exhausted and raw, still starving, and unable to choke down food without feeling sick. I felt both hollow and full.

The next day’s hospital midwife (a new one) came into do our discharge paperwork. “You had such a long haul,” she said. Gail nodded. “Just know it’s not always like that. Things will go more smoothly the next time.” After she left, both Gail and I were sad. We knew that if our family plans played out, there was not going to be a next time. This was likely Gail’s one shot at birth. This is what she got. I was angry at that midwife for what I’m sure she thought was a supportive comment. For our family, it wasn’t.

My grad school friend and her husband came to bring us home. We tucked Leigh into her carseat (we weren’t allowed to leave without one). We all walked outside, and our friends helped Gail into a cab. Our house was only a few blocks away, and we didn’t trust ourselves to install the carseat in the cab, so I gently lifted Leigh out of the carseat and held her in my arms, as my friend walked us home. It was so bright outside. I noticed every bump in the sidewalk. Leigh was so calm. That first walk felt both terrifying and empowering.

Once we were home, Gail started to feel stronger, but I crashed hard. She had just labored for two days, not slept in three nights, and yet somehow she was calm and full of energy. I, on the other hand, had been up the same amount of time, eaten roughly the same (piddling) amount, slept about the same (tiny) amount, but had not birthed an entire baby. Yet I was an utter wreck. Those birth hormones were something else.

There is more to the story: settling in as a family of three, nursing, parenting a newborn together, how cared for we felt by our community and our families. But this is most of it. This is what Leigh’s birth was, for me, as the mom who did not birth her.

It was exciting, excruciating, amazing, terrifying. I felt powerless, lonely, inept, awestruck and powerful.

Gail came to a place of peace with Leigh’s birth much sooner than I did. She was proud of herself for going to the hospital, for asking for the help she needed (something that is not easy for her to do), for growing and birthing a seriously amazing baby.

For a long time, I carried a lingering sense of failure: for not thinking of the right way to help Gail find a way through at home, for doing too much, for doing too little, for falling apart, for encouraging Gail to labor longer at home, for caving and going to the hospital too soon, and mostly, for being weak (what kind of person comes out of a birth in worse shape than the woman doing the extremely arduous birthing?).

That sense of failure was complicated by the implication that if I thought I had failed, then by extension, did I think Gail had failed? Of course I couldn’t possibly think that! She was tremendously strong and perseverant. I mean seriously, who sings their way through most of active labor? A rare and beautiful person, who has deep reserves of grace and goodness. But maybe part of me did think she had failed, because I couldn’t kick the feeling that maybe I had. It was hard to figure out. I’m not sure I ever really did, but the feeling faded with time, as the work and love of parenting took up more space, and the experience of birth receded.

Three years later, the tables were turned. For entirely different reasons we were again in the hospital instead of at home, and late in a long, arduous and now stalled labor with Ira, we found out he was also asynclitic, positioned in exactly the same problematic way his sister had been. But instead of feeling hopeless or afraid I knew immediately that everything would be fine, that if Gail could do it, then I could do it. So it was that three years later, I felt a profound connection to Gail’s experience of labor, I felt in my own body how strong she had been, and those few last regrets fell away.

An introductory note: This story has been a long time coming. We weren’t writing here when Leigh was born five and a half years ago. But even when Ira was born and we’d been writing here for some time, we stopped short of a full birth story. This blog is quite public, and the experiences felt highly personal and private to our family, like they would lose too much power in the sharing. That said, I confess that I absolutely love everyone else’s birth stories. I eat them up in every last detail, and think all of you owe me a complete blow-by-blow!

When we placed our hasty call for NGP birth stories, I was finally inspired, convinced that I had an obligation to tell the story of my experience of Leigh’s birth. But when I sat down to write I struggled to find my voice. I could write what I had seen happen for Gail, but I felt an intense drive to discredit what I experienced myself, to take care emphasize that it was really nothing, it couldn’t have been all that arduous, because for goodness sake, I wasn’t birthing a baby. I felt a constant pull to minimize how hard it was, to emphasize Gail’s trials and successes, to disappear and take on the role of reporter, not participant.

But after reading N’s story of Cricket’s birth, something clicked. I found a focus on the thoughts that filled my head, my raw physical state, the intense emotions and obligations that I felt throughout Leigh’s birth. This story still feels hard to put out so publicly. Leigh’s birth was long. It was really hard. Ultimately everything was just fine and nothing really bad happened, but it didn’t feel that way when I was living through it. I fear that if I’m honest about the parts that felt grueling, hopeless, or tragic, it will only sound like whining. I fear that you will all be thinking just what it seems I’ve been thinking about my place in Leigh’s birth for years, that what was hard or exhilarating or meaningful for me was unimportant next to the real work and meaning of birth, that this isn’t a story worth telling. That I still feel these things after all these years reminds me that in truth, this is a story that needs to be told. We have several other NGP birth stories from those who commented and contacted us (please continue to do so! firsttimesecondtime at gmail), and we are collecting these, but first, I’d like to make my own contribution:

Gail was 8 days overdue when contractions started at acupuncture on a Friday afternoon. We tried not to get our hopes up, but as the evening progressed they got more regular. Maybe it really was time. We tried to ignore them. We walked to the grocery store. We drank a beer each. We went to bed to try and sleep but didn’t.

I felt excited, terrified, relieved, and confident. I knew we could do this.

Gail was up early with contractions on Saturday morning. They were coming somewhat irregularly, but on average every couple minutes. They were getting stronger, and starting to really hurt. She was retreating to her own world. Our (home-birth) midwife was on her way, and we talked to her off and on through the morning, but it seemed like she was taking forever. I couldn’t get much feedback from Gail on what was and wasn’t helping and felt like I was just guessing. I knew I was supposed to keep her hydrated, so I plied her with water and recharge. I was starting to realize that the “techniques” we learned in our “natural childbirth” class were utter bullshit.

Our midwife got there mid-day. I felt so relieved that someone else was in charge. She checked Gail, who was now officially in active labor. At that first check, I was amazed that a cervix check could hurt more than a contraction, and hoped we wouldn’t have to do that again for a good long while.

Gail spent a lot of time in the shower. I stayed with her — repeatedly offering her pineapple or applesauce. She would eat a bite of applesauce every now and then, but at some point hated the pineapple with a passion. The bathroom got really hot. I had an impulse to get into the shower and hold her, but (a) there wasn’t room and (b) it didn’t seem like she wanted me to. I asked later, and indeed, I had gotten that one right, she had not wanted me in there. Gail’s contractions were intense, more time spent contracting than not. I remember wishing she could get one of those breaks they talked about in birth class. Five minutes apart would have been awesome.

I forced myself to eat some soup and to drink some juice, but I didn’t want to be away from Gail, and I didn’t want to eat near her since it bothered her.

My most visceral and positive memory of Leigh’s birth is sound. Starting sometime on Saturday morning Gail began to sing through contractions. She sang these gut-wrenching songs from Jewish liturgy. She would start to sing as a contraction came on. Her voice would get more intense, and at the peak, the sound was beautiful and haunting.

The one way I felt like I could really connect with Gail while she was in labor was to sing with her, many of the same songs we’d been singing to the baby for months. We sang these songs over and over, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes not. I walked her around the house, me walking backwards holding her arms, her shuffling forward, singing our baby into our family together.

The second midwife came sometime later (afternoon? evening? I don’t know, but I think it was still light). Both midwives assured me things were moving along. We all thought we’d have a baby soon. Gail’s labor got more and more intense. She started to throw up between contractions. Sometime after dark our midwife set up the birth supplies in the bedroom and I changed the sheets on the bed.

We all thought this was happening.

Only then it didn’t happen.

The midwife did a check, and Gail wasn’t ready. She labored on. We all waited. We tried to get Gail to rest, to labor lying down on the bed, to close her eyes and relax between contractions, but she had a lot of pain between contractions. She never really got a break. We tried all different positions to reduce her pain. I reminded her over and over to relax her shoulders. The midwives tried to trade off getting some rest in our spare room. I tried to rest some while I lay with Gail on the bed. There was not much rest to be had.

Gail had been stalled, nearly completely dilated for hours on end, and we decided it was time to break her waters. Her contractions got much more painful and much more intense, which I hadn’t known was possible.

Gail stopped singing.

The midwife did a cervix check, and then sat, staring at a model doll’s head, fitting it through a model pelvis, looking like she was solving a puzzle.

I sat with the second midwife at our kitchen table in the very early morning; during one of the few times I left Gail’s side. The midwife had encouraged me to take a break, to eat, to do anything I found relaxing. I warmed up a bowl of soup (it was green gumbo. I have never been able to eat green gumbo again since that night). I got out my knitting — a small gray toy wool elephant. I tried to eat. I asked the midwife if everything was going to be OK and she told me that it would, that birth is hardest in the early morning, before dawn. She told me about her first birth, which was long at the end like this one. She said we were doing so well. That conversation, those few minutes with that midwife, who had such a calm and solid presence, was one of very few times during the entire labor where I felt deeply cared for and supported. We were supported as a family, and in particular Gail was supported, but especially once things got hard overnight, I spent much of labor feeling very alone.

The baby was asynclitic. The head was tipped such that it was not pressing evenly against the cervix. Gail had been stuck at about 9 cm, but unevenly dilated, overnight. Our midwife gently suggested it might be time to think about going to the hospital. The baby was doing great, but Gail’s labor was slowing down. She was utterly exhausted. It might be that an epidural and some sleep were what we needed for this baby to come. She said we didn’t need to go yet, but soon it might be time.

With mention of the hospital, a new wave of fears came flooding over me. If we went to the hospital were we walking straight into surgery? The whole reason Gail wanted a home birth was to avoid a c-section. The idea of surgery really freaked her out (I had some other reasons of my own). She’d been in active labor for so long, would they really let her labor longer? I willed our baby to rotate. I willed Gail to relax.

But there was nothing I could do. I could barely even remember why we were doing this. The idea of a baby, an actual child, was so far away.

In our last ditch attempt to stay home, I got Gail dressed in the early morning light. We went outside and she walked, with one foot on and one foot off the curb, stomping up and down our quiet city street. This was our last possible trick to get the baby to rotate. It didn’t work. Gail was getting less dilated. She was exhausted. It was time to go.

Partially on our midwife’s advice, we had not packed a hospital bag. What that now meant, was that after not sleeping for two nights under extremely high stress, I had 10 minutes to pack all the stuff that everyone else mulls over for months. I did a fantastically crappy job. I frantically ran around the house, dumping all kinds of stuff we didn’t need into canvas tote bags, only to realize when we got to the hospital that I had almost none of the things we actually needed.

On Gail’s last trip to the bathroom before we went out the door, we found the baby had passed light meconium. This confirmed our decision that it was time for medical help. The second midwife bid us goodbye. She said we were doing amazing, that we just needed to keep our good attitude at the hospital. I was sad she was not going with us. I think I had imprinted on her during that early morning conversation. We loaded into our first midwife’s car for the few-block drive to our back-up hospital and were on our way.

[Continued in Part II]

Leigh started kindergarten this fall. She’s doing great and we are slowly adjusting to being parents of a “school-age” kid.

Our district is extremely supportive of GLBT-headed families. They have a family-liason specifically for GLBT issues, who is a resource for teachers, students and families. We’ve always been certain that the school and the district will have our back should difficulties arise.

It’s nice not to worry about the big stuff, but we all still have to find ways to navigate the day-to-day interactions. We’re the first two-mom (or two-dad) family that Leigh’s teacher has had in class, so we can tell there are some things she’s unsure about, not in that our presence makes her uncomfortable, but in that she wants to do and say the right things. To the extent we can, between back-to-school night and drop-off/pick-up we’ve let her know we’re available for any questions, and more than that, we’ve tried to be forthcoming with information, including at some point in there I told her that Gail gave birth to Leigh. We’ve also tried to both be present at drop-off and pick-up and school events.

At Leigh’s first parent-teacher-conference, we were reminded again how glad we were to have picked the parental “titles” we did. At the end of the conference we checked in with the teacher to make sure both she and Leigh were doing OK with the two-mom explanations, and let her know a few more details about how Leigh came to be (i.e. conceived via banked donor sperm, and we do not know the donor. This might seem like overkill, but since Leigh can explain it all, and probably will at some point, we want the teacher to know the brief adult version). At this point, looking at me, the teacher said, “Now, you gave birth to her right?”

“No, it’s the other way, Gail gave birth to Leigh.” (remember, we’d already told her this)

“Oh, but she calls you (Lyn) ‘Mama’ right? and you (Gail) ‘Ima’?”

We clarified our titles, let her know that “Ima” is hebrew for “Mom.” She also asked how careful she should be to always say “Ima” and we answered that she really doesn’t have to be, that Leigh goes back and for between “Mom” (for both of us) and our individual “titles” with ease, but that it is nice if she sometimes uses the right titles. I also said that we were both “pretty interchangeable.” What I was trying to say with that last comment was that we are both really in there, both “primary” parents, that she can communicate with either of us and the message will get through, that there’s a reason she hasn’t figured out who is “more” the mom so she’s not going crazy. I don’t think I pulled it off gracefully, but I do think she got the intent. (I don’t like how the way I said it, that we’re “interchangeable”, implies we are actually “the same” — but hey, I can’t always be perfectly deep and balanced on the fly.)

We were glad the teacher felt like she could ask us these questions, and inwardly, I know both of us were doing a private “high five” about our selection of “titles.” We’ve written about how our somewhat inadvertent title selection (with the more identifiable “mom” name going to the less socially recognized (non-bio) mom) helped solidify our family early on. Five years later, it still makes us happy that Leigh’s use of our titles (likely combined with both of our presence in the school) overcame both a strong resemblance in looks and being previously told who carried Leigh, such that for a little while, the teacher perceived me as the mom who had given birth, and more to the point, helped the teacher see both of us as integral in her life. It’s another reminder that the parental titles our kids use day-to-day are powerful tools to shape how other people perceive our families, and that if you want to be perceived as a mom, particularly if you won’t be giving birth, taking a title that easily identifies you as a “mom” can go a long way.

If you haven’t already, go read this post at Breaking into Blossom. RLG does a very thoughtful analysis of how the ways in which we advocate for natural birth options can cause unintentional harm, to all parents, both those doing the birthing and not.

She makes lots of smart points, but the theme that stands out to me the most, perhaps not surprisingly given our favorite topics around here, is how preparation for, discussion and assumptions around birth, particularly “natural birth”, impact NGPs (non-gestational-parents, here meaning those with pregnant partners as opposed to adoptive parents, though I think much of what she writes in that post is also important for adoptive parents). R writes:

“If we claim this space as entirely female (and birth-mama centric), then NGPs have no role here. This incredible right/journey/privilege is marked as one that birth-moms take alone. And on the surface, this makes sense. I mean, why shouldn’t birthing women claim this power as theirs and theirs alone? They offer life, for Pete’s sake; they offer life-sustaining milk. These facts are used to empower them. Your babies need you much, much more than they need anyone else. But even as it offers empowerment, this rhetoric puts the heavy weight of early parenthood back on women…There’s very little talk in the natural childbirth community about NGP-child bonding because it’s understood to be secondary. It can wait.But can it? Without the benefit of holding these little beings inside of our bodies, isn’t it especially important to attend to NGP-child bonding? If all we carefully cultivate is bonding between women and their (birth) babies, aren’t we relegating them to being the primary parent at six months, too? And at two years? And at five years? Aren’t we contributing to the creation of the very distance between fathers and their children that we simultaneously bemoan?”

Here at FTST we like to think and write about what it’s like to parent a kid your wife birthed. We’re big on NGP’s, particularly lesbian non-bio-moms, finding our own voices and our own solid place in our families. And yeah, we’ve hit on some themes around the early parenting that R writes about above, about choosing to take your place in your child’s life as early as possible, about how the work we need to do to make that connection is both the our central challenge and our greatest strength. But by placing her observations in the context of birth itself, R helped me realize that we’ve never really written about birth as non-gestational-parents, and come to think of it, I’ve read very few birth stories that deeply incorporate the experience of a non-birthing parent.

So R’s post, and the ensuing conversations, have me thinking we need to change this. We need to tell our birth stories as NGPs. I’m still sorting this out, but I don’t think I mean the stories of how our babies were born, the logistics of what happened when, but rather our internal experience, our own transformation as the process unfolded. We need to add our voices to the conversation around birth, and not as secondary voices, not as the last little paragraph or the occasional editorial comment, but strong stories in their own right.

In one of many conversations we’ve had on this post, Gail said the following:

“Birth is scary and wondrous and will freak your shit out…Having experienced it from both sides, I can say that both experiences are intense in completely different ways, but we don’t really attend to the intensity of birth or post-birth from the NGP’s point of view because it’s all the birth mother’s show.”

So, I’d like to attend to that intensity. Let’s tell our stories. Gail and I are still mulling over our contributions, but I wanted to get this up while R’s post was still a bit fresh (well, at least not a million years old).

Have you written your NGP birth story somewhere already (and I’m including dads here!)? If so, would you be willing to send it our way or link back to this post? If you don’t write anywhere publicly, but want to add your voice to the mix, get in touch with us at firsttimesecondtime at gmail. And to be clear, R wrote her post largely inspired by messages in the natural childbirth community, but here I’m thinking beyond that, to our place in birth, any kind of birth.

We were recently interviewed for a new-ish site, It’s Conceivable, that seeks to be a one-stop shop for good information on family building for queers. So far, it looks like they’re doing a great job, particularly at including information and stories from adoptive families, and dads, in addition to the usual glut of lesbian moms via donor conception.

You can read our interview here, and consider stopping to take a look around, especially if you are still in the planning stages.

It’s happened a few times lately, that upon finding out that I’m one of two moms in our family, I’m asked by another parent how to explain two-mom families to their kids (lately this has been in adult contexts, not with my kids in tow). Most recently, a dad I was talking to mentioned that he knows a two-mom family in his neighborhood, and that his own kids are asking how that family had their kids. He doesn’t know how to answer, and in fact doesn’t even know the basic facts needed to really answer the questions (i.e. were the kids adopted? or did one (or both) of the mom’s give birth? He met the family well after the kids were tiny, so he has no idea).

I encouraged him to talk to the parents, and find out how they are explaining things to their kid’s friends, but he felt like he didn’t know the parents well enough for that. We really wouldn’t mind such a question, and would be glad to help other parents have such conversations with their kids** (the more other people’s kids understand our families, the easier life is for my kids), but I get that it isn’t necessarily all that comfortable. I also know many queer parents object strongly to any “nosy” questions along these lines, so perhaps his concern isn’t misplaced. That said, I think by the time kids are school age (which these kids were), most of us are used to it, find the questions much less challenging, and have our answers down.

The conversation moved on, but I wish I’d given him a bit more information, some language to explain to his kids that some two-mom families adopt children, and some have kids with the help of a man called a sperm donor (or just “donor” if “sperm” was too much), and that both moms are “real moms” no matter how they had their kids. It might be nice to throw in a line about two-dad families and single parents, though it was clear that this dad’s kids really wanted to know HOW the moms in this particular family had their kids, not the list of family-constellations we tend to throw out to younger kids. That’s a way more toned down version than our kids get, but might have been enough to satisfy his kids, and certainly would be better than nothing.

I’m sure that whoever these kids of two-moms are in some distant neighborhood, they are perfectly skilled at handling the questions that come their way, but I feel like I missed an opportunity to help this dad and his kids be a bit more informed and when/if they asked, and maybe a chance to help this dad feel a little more comfortable with his neighbors.

So what do you think? What do you wish straight parents explained to their kids about queer families? Do you have any good ways for them to do the explaining? (Remember though, they aren’t used to this. The questions surprise them even more than they surprise us.)

———

**NOTE to any of our real life friend who happen to be reading: Please do say if you need help figuring out how to talk to your kids about our family.

[Comments were accidentally turned off on this post for a while, but they are up now, please discuss!]

When Leigh was a baby, I loved going out with her by myself. I’d take her to new parent groups or to run errands as the only mom in evidence. I loved the freedom and confidence I felt. I soaked up every last compliment about my fabulous baby, and every assumption that I was a mom just like any other, no questions asked. I could choose whether or not to out myself when the inevitable questions came, but I often waited to do so until later in the conversation, or sometimes not at all.

Last week Gail mentioned that she felt bad not outing herself when, at our neighborhood park with Ira, another parent asked her “Where did he get that beautiful hair?” (he has long loose golden curls). She breezed past the question, agreeing to the beauty, briefly describing our reluctance to cut his hair (ever), but remained mum on the probable source (my family is full of towheads and our donor has produced at least one other). She wondered later if maybe she should have explained more, effectively outing herself both as queer and his non-bio-mom. Not necessarily a big deal, and these days we usually err on the side of more information, not less, but for whatever reason, in that moment, she decided to pass.

When she brought it up later, I told her that I actually think it might be important to pass sometimes, to get those moments when you don’t have to explain, those times when, especially as a non-bio-mom, you can just blend in.

I’ve given advice along these lines to my fellow non-bio-moms many times — “Get out alone, build your confidence,” but I’ve always thought of it as most important during baby and toddlerhood. But last weekend, Leigh and I traveled alone to New York City. I’d been anticipating that it would feel nice to have time just with her, outside our regular life, reconnecting in a way that is hard in the day to day shuffle (even more so now that she’s in kindergarten every day), and it definitely did feel nice in exactly that way. But it was also nice to be out with her, on a grand adventure, being seen by people who don’t know us at all (the grumpy subway worker, the restaurant wait staff, the smiling lady on the sidewalk…) as what we are, mother and daughter, with no explanation needed.

After I noticed this feeling, I wondered if it felt good in the same way as going to Family Week last year, when I felt a surprising relief and joy at being just one queer family among so many. But at family week I found myself watching the other families, craving an understanding of what made them tick: How did they structure things? How did their kids come to them? Was their family like ours? It’s possible that it was just me scrutinizing (I love understanding people and relationships), but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one, who when suddenly awash in a whole sea of families like ours, was soaking up as much information as I could.

But this weekend was exactly the opposite. There wasn’t any scrutinizing at all. Neither Leigh nor I had another mom to explain, or make sure was included. I got to shut off my perpetual radar that picks up when we are (and are not) read as a family in new situations. It wasn’t a huge shift, but enough that I noticed that it was nice to get a weekend “off” of explaining, and a weekend “on” with Leigh, just the two of us (well, the two of us, plus all the fabulous friends we got to see). And while I’ve framed this here to some extent as a non-bio-mom thing, largely because we bear a higher burden of explaining (e.g. comments on Ira’s curls at the park don’t give me pause, but they do for Gail), but I think it applies more broadly, and after feeling how nice it was, I also realized that a weekend “off” of explaining was a privilege. There are plenty of families that have a lot less time off, if any at all, (I’m thinking here specifically interracial families, or perhaps families in which either a kid or a parent has a visible disability), and it probably gets really tiring.

——

Photo Credit: FreeFoto.com

As we’ve written about before, a big shift for our family over the last two years or so (about a year of that was thinking) has been connecting with families containing kids via the same donor as our kids.

As Gail mentioned in her last post, when Leigh was a baby, we found out (though we weren’t seeking out this information) that a friend was pregnant via the same donor. She wasn’t someone we were close to at that time, but definitely someone we knew, and we had several close friends in common. I was in no way ready for this information. Of course I knew there would almost certainly be other kids in the world from the same donor, but before this information was plopped in our laps, they were in some vague other place “out there,” having absolutely nothing to do with our immediate family. We were going to think about them “later,” at some time in the future, preferably distant.

A few years of parenting changed things, and a little more than a year ago we decided it was time to look at the DSR, and once we did, we got another surprise. What do you know? another person we already knew was registered there already! This time around, the discovery felt like an absolutely wonderful surprise. I already knew one mom in this family and liked her a lot. An extra connection felt like a wonderful bonus.

I don’t know if the same has happened for other donor groups but we’ve had a couple recent additions (possibly due to the recent round of press), and after sending our now customary intro message, we got yet another surprise.

Yep. We already knew yet another family. We don’t (yet) know them so well, but we were on the same “queer baby” circuit when Leigh was tiny, and have seen them around a few times over the years. Again, they seem like a wonderful family, people we’re happy to be connected to, but this time the recurring theme started to feel a little daunting, and a lot less surprising. If you’re starting to think all these connections are due to a huge donor group like those in the news, our listed donor group is nowhere near that size (yet). We’re still in single digits for number of families listed (though the group will certainly grow).

A few years ago, we read an academic sociology book called “The Family of Woman” by Maureen Sullivan. It’s a qualitative study of two-mom families, published in 2004. One point Sullivan made in her book book, is that lesbian families are more likely than straight families to know other families with children via the same donor. She points out a few reasons for this, which are now hitting home for us in a much deeper way than on my first reading.

Sullivan writes that as lesbian families, those of us conceiving with banked sperm are more likely to be selecting from a limited pool of donors, in particular, the pool of ID-release donors. Without a father to “protect” and with absolutely no hope of NOT disclosing to our kids that they are donor conceived, we are more likely than straight families to choose banked sperm that comes with the possibility of our kids finding out more donor information in adulthood. Note here that what matters here is not the type of sperm per se, but rather that many of us are choosing from a substantially more limited pool of donors. The second factor is that since we’re lesbian parents with kids, we’re likely to be hanging out with other lesbian parents with kids, and there’s a good chance their kids were conceive via banked donor sperm (note I’m not saying all, of course there are lots of families with known donors, and lots of adoptive families, but still, tons of us have kids via banked sperm and none of us became parents without a third party involved somewhere). So, we’re more likely to know each other because we’ll know other queer families anyway, and those families may well have been selecting from the same limited pool of donors that we were.

Depending on geography, further concentration can come from the social reality that as parents, we socialize with parents of kids close in age to our own, and individual donors are usually only available during a limited time window of a few years (and thus likely to produce kids close in age). If you throw in a few more limiting factors, like selection for a specific ethnicity or religious background, the probability of knowing another donor-sibling family already goes up even more. Thinking about it in this light, I wonder how I ever thought that donor-half-siblings were just “out there” somewhere else, how it initially came as such an upsetting shock that other families in our own social circle had chosen the same guy.

My feelings on this recent understanding are in flux. Over the last 5 years, I’ve felt alternately devastated, thrilled, and now, perhaps a bit deflated over realizing just how normal it might be connected via our donor selection to other families we already know, right here in our every day life. I never used to wonder when I met a new family if our kids might be linked, but now? If the right demographic clues are there, it pops to the front of my mind, and I definitely wonder. Does she have Leigh’s nose? Does he have Ira’s hair? I listen for clues that the other family might be open to connection. I casually mention knowing a donor sibling family we know so they’ll know we are.

When we made the choice to use banked sperm, I never expected to wonder these things, or to be parsing the proper way to navigate this particular social territory. But one thing I note now, is that these questions, this curiosity, is something my kids are likely to experience in a more profound way than I ever will. Donor conceived adolescents and adults report wondering when they meet new people if they may be genetically connected. It affects how they date. It affects the friendships they form. For some, the effects are profound.

So for now, I’m making note of the wide range of feelings and reactions I’ve had to what at first seemed like surprising connections, the feelings of shock, disappointment (even anger), later of thrill and excitement, and now, understanding that actually these probably aren’t really amazing coincidences at all. Our kids were already living in a social circle where genetic donor connections between families were present and real, even if as parents we hadn’t (yet) chosen to access the information. I hope that in some small way, by remembering the many feelings and thoughts I have now, I’ll be more open to and understanding of my kids’ lived reality, both now and as they grow.

—-

I’m not sure that we’ve ever noted this explicitly, but I want to state here because it is particularly relevant, that we are very open to hearing from donor conceived people who find their way here. I realize this may be a daunting place to comment publicly, since sometimes the interests of parents and of donor conceived people can be in conflict, and this is obviously a space primarily for parents. But to the extent you are willing to share, we welcome you to the conversation. As always, we trust our commenters to be both respectful and thoughtful, and have rarely been disappointed. If a public comment seems out of reach, we welcome hearing from you privately at firsttimesecondtime at gmail dot com.

About six years ago, I got pregnant after insemination with frozen donor sperm, and nine months later Lyn and I had a baby girl, Leigh. Like most parents, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Unlike most parents (but perhaps like many parents actually reading this), part of what we had no idea about was donor conception. I literally had no notion what it might mean to me, to Lyn, or to our non-existent children when I started surfing around the web, looking at sperm donors. We had briefly considered trying to find a known donor, but rejected the idea as involving too much uncertainty and too great a possibility of going badly. So I was looking at donor profiles, thinking about things like the donors’ height, hair color, responses to stupid questions, and even their blood type, but I didn’t necessarily think of them as real people, and I didn’t think about the fact that, in a way, I would be entering into a permanent and serious relationship with one of them. But like most parents-to-be, Lyn and I leapt in without knowing if we could swim, or even realizing that the water might be a little deep.

Early on I figured out that I was getting more than I bargained for because my wife, Lyn, started talking about how invisible she felt, how afraid she was for the future, cherishing the process of becoming a mother but feeling left out of it. We talked and talked, because, frankly, that’s what we do. Sometimes I heard her. Sometimes I thought she was tilting at windmills (she wasn’t). But we talked it all out, and we were ready.

Except that we weren’t. I still had no idea what it was going to be like to be a parent to a person who was donor conceived. What would Leigh think of it all in the future? Would she resent the choices that we made for her? Would she want to meet her donor or genetic half-siblings? Well, at least all of that was far in the future and we had plenty of time to figure it out.

Except that we didn’t. We had our first encounter of a sort with a donor sibling when Leigh was a few months old, and we weren’t ready. Thinking about it now, I wonder how we could have been so blind that we didn’t see that it was bound to happen sooner rather than later. When it did, it shook our world up. But as Lyn has written about, we grew and we learned and we thought we were prepared for the future.

Except that we weren’t. A couple of years later Lyn gave birth and we had a baby boy and the game seemed to have changed again. Our thoughts about donor conception shifted. We felt an openness that we hadn’t had before, and we started to think about posting on the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR) and reaching out to the other family we knew with a child via the same donor as our kids.

As queer parents, our families are threatened. There are legal threats, homophobia, and all of the external threats that can batter our families. But there are also internal threats that come from the way that we create our children, fear that a non-biological mother won’t be seen as a real mother by herself, by her partner, by the queer community, and by the wider straight community. It is this threat that led us, after Leigh’s birth, to swear that we would never interact with the DSR, and that caused us to completely flip out when we suddenly found out we knew someone who had a child via the same donor. It is this threat that has many of us clinging fiercely to our nuclear families, rejecting the possibility of connection with people genetically linked to our kids.

Genetics is important to pretty much everyone, even if we want to say it is not. Yes, love makes a family, but my love for Lyn and my desire for children with her isn’t the whole truth of how we came to be parents. The whole truth is more complicated, and the whole truth is part of my legacy to my kids. I’m confident they can sort it out – but I do want to make sure I’m on the ride with them, that I’m not asking them to do work that I’m not willing to do myself.

Lyn and I are now at a very different place than when we started down this road. We now welcome connections to donor siblings. Yes, we welcome these connections for the kids, but also for ourselves, and we are pursuing them one step at a time. But we’ve also already done a lot of the sometimes messy work of establishing a safe and secure space for both of us as non-bio-moms in our family.

So often, discussion of the DSR in queer parenting circles comes down to whether or not you are “for” or “against,” with some parents insisting we all should register and start making these fabulous connections ASAP, while others insist that any acknowledgement of a donor “sibling” relationship fundamentally undermines everything that we have fought for as queer families.

For us, and I’m sure for many families, the reality is somewhere in between. While we are now grateful have access to the DSR as a resource, and are extremely positive about the connections we’ve made, seemingly placing us in the “for” camp, I actually would prefer to see families hold off on DSR connections (especially while kids are very young) until they are absolutely sure that their families are solid, and in particular in two-mom families that the non-bio-mom feels secure and strong in her relationship with her kid(s). There’s no rush – any donor siblings out there are still going to be genetically connected to your kids if you wait a few years. In the meantime, your job is to build a great family. If you are a bio-mom, you need to be supporting your partner in being a terrific parent, doing your part to make sure she has space, time and support to fall deeply in love with her kids.  The DSR can wait until she is ready.

And if you are a non-bio mom, you can get ready. You may never want to post on the DSR or meet half-bio-siblings of your children, and that really is OK. But you need to make your relationship with your kid great. You need to grind down any threat that you feel until you can hardly even see its shadow, which means being there with your kid, being out in the community as a parent, and (hopefully) getting the legal protections you need so that you don’t have to worry. That’s how you get ready. Because even if you never touch the DSR, there’s a good chance your kid will want to. It won’t mean that they don’t love you. It may mean that they want to know more about their genetic background, or that they wonder about people they’re connected to but they’ve never met, people who they might want to call family. You have to be ready because you want them to be able to walk their path without worrying about you. You want them to be able to go off and form those connections if that’s what they want or need, knowing that they’ll always be able to come back home to you, and, to quote Where the Wild Things Are, to that place where someone loves them best of all.*

—-

* Thanks to Clio for recently reminding us about the wonderful things that book says about “home.”

I wrote this post as part of the new Love Makes a Family Blog Carnival. Check out the next post in the carnival over at Bionic Mamas here. Also check out some great posts from last week as well.