Gail and I have been writing here for about four years, and we’re ready to say goodbye.

What we’ve thought about and written here has been absolutely formative for us, for how we understand each other as parents, our relationships with our kids, our place in the world as a queer family. We’ve found an amazing community in our readers and in other writers blogging about queer families. Writing here has helped us to take a good solid look at both the hard stuff and the amazing stuff about our own family, and to examine what it takes to build families like ours. I like to think that the record we’ve made has helped other families get on their feet and maybe helped some to notice things they might not have seen otherwise. I hope we’ve sometimes provided that bit of recognition, that sense of “Oh, maybe I’m not the only one who feels this way.”

Posts here have gotten even less frequent of over the last several months, and we know this has not gone unnoticed. People have asked us to write more, and despite intentions, and even the occasional good idea, we just aren’t. There are lots of reasons for this, most of which are just life moving on, and energy going towards other things. Partly though, I think we’re cutting back because we have already said what we came here to say.

Instead of leaving the blog just hanging here, we wanted to officially let you know that we are stepping away. In some sense, where we ended, with a long-overdue story of Ira’s birth from the non-bio-mom perspective, seems fitting. When we started writing here, we were in the thick of trying to conceive the baby that turned out to be him, and we’ve always had a passion for understanding and describing our experiences as non-gestational-parents (NGPs).

We can’t really say for sure whether or not we’re going to be back. My gut sense is that we’re moving on. But we’ll be keeping this writing public at this same url. At this point, we’ll be closing comments on old posts, but leaving this thread open, and you can always reach us at firsttimesecondtime at gmail. Thanks everyone for the smart comments and good thoughts over the years. Keep talking to each other, telling your stories, and looking hard at your assumptions.

And with that, we’d like to leave you with links to some of our favorite posts, in no particular order:

• Mother or Father?
• Non-Bio Mom Manifesto
• NGP Birth Story Round-up
• Flying Solo
• When your toddler prefers one parent
• Old Pain and New Paths
• “Maybe they won’t care”
• Inducing Lactation: a wrap-up of the big experiment
• Who should birth the baby?
• An old scar, revisited
• Third Time?
• Do you love them differently?
• Donor Sibling Registry: Yay or Nay or… 
• How do we refer to parents in two-mom families?
• I’m grateful for the chance to be an NGP
• What we did right without knowing it (3 parts, starts here)

Many many months ago, inspired by this post at breaking into blossom, we placed a call for more birth stories from the perspective of the non-birthing parent and promised to write our own.

The birth stories that resulted from that call (that we know of) were absolutely amazing. I hadn’t realized when we encouraged writing (and promised that we would) what a challenge it would be to write deeply from my own perspective as a non-birthing parent, and the act of both reading and writing about that experience, less as reporter, and more as participant, was profound. Gail and I both came away with new insights into the births of both of our kids.

So I really wanted to do an awesome round up post. I wanted to respond individually to each story, pull out and analyze themes, really do justice to the amazing work.

Thus I set the bar too high, and never actually did it (one of the best ways to get me not to write something is for me to promise to write it….I should know that by now).

But all of these stories stand on their own, and thus don’t need my help anyway. So, in case you missed any, and yes, these are now all now many many months old, here are the birth stories that I know of that resulted, at least in part, from that call (or at least came out around the same time), all of which contain a very central, clear and honest voice of the non-birthing parent, in this case all queer moms, but I think any non-birthing parent present at birth can get a lot out of these stories as well. Did we miss yours? Drop us a line at firsttimesecondtime at gmail.

Parenting Cricket:

http://parentingcricket.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/birth-story/

Footnotes on the Family Tree:

http://footnotesonthefamilytree.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/little-mans-birth-story-part-1/

Breaking into Blossom:

http://breakingintoblossom.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/brams-birth-story-part-one/

Insert Metaphor:

http://insertmetaphor.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/goldies-birth-story-finally-part-1-of-2/

And in case you missed them here, Gail’s version of Ira’s birth:

http://firsttimesecondtime.com/2012/04/iras-birth-ngp/

And my version of Leigh’s birth:

http://firsttimesecondtime.com/2012/01/leigh’s-birth-ngp-part-i/

At long last, this is my contribution in response to our call for NGP birth stories, about the birth of our second child:

In the last couple of months of pregnancy, we found out that Lyn had a dangerous complication called cholestasis of pregnancy. This was a difficult time for both of us, but there were certain difficulties that were particular to me. We found out that Lyn had this complication because of intense itching. Since itching is part of many normal pregnancies, we came to understand the problem, and the magnitude of the problem, only gradually. For weeks, I was up with Lyn in the middle of every night giving her massages that calmed her down and kept her from scratching her skin raw as she told me about the new part of her body (eyeballs, anyone?) that was itching. Lyn mentioned there was a condition she had heard of that could be a possibility, and at the same time, our midwife sent Lyn for lab work. We both agreed that she shouldn’t look into it through internet searches, since searching about a condition you think you might have only leads to excess worrying. So I looked into it. What I found was alarming. The symptoms described exactly matched Lyn’s symptoms, the condition was rare and often difficult to have diagnosed, and it came with an alarming risk of neonatal death.

So after I read enough information to worry me, I talked to Lyn and told her I was quite worried and what I understood about the testing she’d need (which agreed with what our midwife recommended). Then I started reading the medical literature, and much of it I didn’t share with her at the time. I was doing this with her express permission because we both felt the need to protect her emotional state. But I think that this is something that happens to non-bio-moms and dads — we can end up holding some of the worry to protect our spouses. We are the ones who are putting on the “game face” and keeping it together, so that the mom who will be giving birth can fall apart.

I can’t say that I did the job perfectly. I remember being a wreck. I felt like Lyn’s belly had changed from a nurturing home for our baby to a menacing haunted house that could take our baby from us without notice. But that’s exactly what Lyn feared and felt guilt about, so I couldn’t voice that to her. I knew that this pregancy was not just important to her because we were going to have a baby, that it also represented her connecting with and trusting her own body, something that doesn’t come easy for her. And somehow her body managed to become the enemy again. Back then, I wrote about some of the positive aspects of getting to be a caregiver,but I didn’t write about how powerless I felt to protect either our baby or my wife.

Our planned homebirth was out the window, our baby was in danger, and my wife was facing an early induction. There was nothing I could do about any of it. I couldn’t even allay her fears because they were all justified. After we received the diagnosis, she went on medication that helped with both the itching and the dangers to the baby, and that helped to relax us both a little, but we were still afraid, and we were still going to have a baby in the hospital with heavy medical intervention. That meant the prospect of a C-section loomed over both of us.

One of the difficulties I had at the time was worrying what would happen to Lyn if she had to have a C-seciton. I worked hard on having a firm belief myself that Lyn would have a vaginal birth. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if the baby had to come out through surgery. This was Lyn’s only shot at birth, and it was really important to her, and she really didn’t want to have surgery. To be perfectly frank, if it came to that, I wasn’t sure Lyn could handle it. That’s a terrible thing to thing to think about your spouse — that she can’t handle the challenge ahead. The fact is that if surgery had become necessary, she would have been OK. It would have been difficult and Lyn would have grieved, but we all would have recovered. I wish that I had realized that back then, and that I had trusted her more. It would have made the birth much easier for me. Instead, I stuffed that fear down and focused on the positive, and on pumping Lyn up for the challenge of an early induction.

We had a lot of support from a doula and our midwife as we headed to the hospital, but the induction was slow. Several times it looked like things were moving along and they stalled out instead. Our doctor agreed we could go home to rest after the first 24 hours failed to produce progress, and we came back the next morning for more, but nothing much was happening. The doctors were as patient as you can expect from doctors, but were still pushing us more and more, and reasonably so.

Lyn and I had requested that no one share numeric information about “centemeters dilated” with Lyn because we wanted to protect her from discouraging information, especially with a long induction. Overall that was a good decision, but it was violated one really unpleasant time when a new nurse came in, told Lyn that she was only a few centimeters dialated and implied that Lyn didn’t really have cholestasis seriously enough to need an induction. Talk about feeling powerless. I pretty much wanted to kill the nurse. Luckily our doula and the doctor on at the time helped us negotiate getting a new nurse, but it was a definite blow to my spirit and my sense of being able to control our environment at the hospital. And at the end of it all a second day went by with pit cranked high but no sustained intense labor. That night, we turned off the pit so that we both could sleep and so that Lyn could eat. The next morning would be our last shot.

I called my mom several times during this saga, and talked to Leigh. I was feeling increasingly worried about her as well. We’d been away from her for twice as long already as we ever had before, and I didn’t see an end in sight. I was so grateful to my mom for taking such good care of her, but I could also also hear and feel the stress she was under as she tried to keep Leigh calm and happy, when Leigh was more and more stressed about us and about the birth. That added to my general feeling of worry and powerlessness. I felt I had to stay with Lyn because she was going through such a scary time, but I also knew that Leigh was going through a scary and lonely time as well, and while I knew she was in good hands, I also knew that Leigh really wanted her moms.

The next day Lyn went back on the pit and we got to work again, but there just wasn’t much action. That day we hit the wall. We both knew that Lyn was moving ever closer to a C-section. The doctor was pushing us to break waters. I lost my faith that our vaginal birth would happen.

That was a terrible time for me. I was sure Lyn was going to have a C-section, and I wasn’t convinced she could handle it. I broke down. For me, part of the trouble is that I remembered when we had broken my waters when I was giving birth to Leigh. It was terribly painful, didn’t move labor along at all, and I didn’t want to take that path with Lyn. We were at the point where it was that or C-section, but in that state, to me breaking waters meant we’d probably have surgery anyway. I felt that the induction was failing, that our fears were coming true, and that I just couldn’t be there for Lyn anymore. Luckily our doula was there, and she told me to take a break. I took a shower while she gave me a pep talk. I told her my fears and she managed to talk me down from the cliff. She also told me I needed to get out of the room, take a walk, and talk to a friend. So I did. I called a close friend, who told me that she had been in a similar spot with her birth and everything turn out OK. My faith was restored and I was able to head back into that hospital room and tell Lyn that she could do it.

Our birth support people took a break for themselves, since we had been in this together for two days already, and Lyn and I waited for the breaking of the waters. I made one big miscalculation at this point — I didn’t realize that breaking those waters would suddenly change everything, and speed everything up, even though that’s what we were hoping for. Labor became more intense for Lyn quickly after the waters were broken and I was starving. Oh, and I needed to pump. Remember that during this whole birth I was trying to use the breastpump as many times as possible so that I would be prepared to nurse our son in a month.

At one point I remember that Lyn was in the tub and I had to ask a nurse to be with her so that I could pump and scarf down some food. After all of our support and all of our careful planning, I was pulling away from Lyn just as she needed me. Around this time, Lyn’s mom arrived at the airport. We had expected she would be there a day or two after the birth, but we told her to drop her bags off and come to the hospital and that she just might make the birth.

My memories of the birth get very fuzzy at this point. Everything was getting very intense, and Lyn was having trouble holding on. I really felt like I wasn’t able to give her everything that she needed. But finally our midwife got back on the scene, and Lyn really connected with her. I think it was both a blow to my ego and a relief to have the midwife there. Lyn clearly needed her, and her presence was calming and centering. Lyn had been holding on to labor while I was her main support and had been doing a great job, but she felt like the labor was too intense and was starting to feel out of control. I don’t think I had enough control or enough presence to really tether her to reality. She was in a lot of pain. No, really, a lot. That’s what birth is like when you have pitocin running the show rather than oxytocin. It’s very hard, and it doesn’t come with the hormones that soften the pain or put you in that dream-like detatched state. When I gave birth to Leigh, I don’t actually remember ever being scared. I remember it hurting and really wanting the pain to stop, but I don’t think I was ever afraid, and I attribute that in part to the dreaminess of oxytocin. I don’t think the same was true for Lyn, and I’m so glad that we had strong labor support people to anchor her. I was a great cheerleader during labor, and I think I did a fine job supporting Lyn, but I wasn’t the rock that she needed when contractions were turning the world inside out. Later Lyn’s mom arrived and she became Lyn’s main focal point. Again it was both hard and a big relief that Lyn wasn’t dependent on me. With her mom and the midwife, Lyn moved through every contraction like a superhero.

At some point, the doctor checked Lyn and called me out into the hall. We were still trying to give Lyn as little information as possible. I clearly remember the doctor starting to tell me about the check and describing Lyn’s progress as stalled and the baby ‘s position by tilting her head. “Wait, the baby is asynclitic?” I asked incredulously. We’d been going for three days and now this baby had the same problem that Leigh had three years before that caused us to transfer to the hospital (from a planned homebirth). Basically Lyn’s cervix was thin on one side but thicker on the other. This is a complication that I made it through without a c-section, but I did have to have an epidural. I knew that Lyn was still wanting to avoid an epidural, but I also knew that it might be a necessary step. The doctor and I decided that Lyn could labor for a while longer, but that we’d need to do an epidural if there was no progress soon. This is actually my biggest regret of Lyn’s labor. I think that if I had everything to do over again, I would have told Lyn that the baby was tipped (she figured it out on her own anyway) and that an epidural might be in order. Lyn maintains that I made good decisions, but I still have a lingering worry that I could have saved her from some pain and that the birth still would have turned out great. I think part of this lingering doubt is that I didn’t trust her not to freak out, and I really should have.

I went back into the labor room and started to get the information to the three other labor support people that were there. We didn’t tell Lyn, but she could tell what was going on. She was in the tub at this point, and laboring really hard. She was having an urge to push but the doctor said absolutely no pushing.

About an hour later, the doctor wanted to do another check and offer the epdural. I didn’t realize it until I checked with our midwife, but Lyn had decided that she was ready for an epidural. It was hard for me when I found that out because I hadn’t really known what was going on for her and started to worry that I wasn’t making the best decisions.

The doctor did the check and got a big grin on her face and told Lyn that she was complete. Lyn sprung out of the bed and landed on the floor in a squat, ready to push the baby out. The doctor convinced her to squat on the bed instead, reminding her that hospital floors aren’t all that clean. There was excitement in the room as Lyn started to direct us all and tell us what coaching and support she need to push this baby out. I hadn’t seen all that much of Lyn, actually, in the previous few hours of labor. While she was in the tub, she had four labor support people (including myself), plus a nurse who was in and out. All of those people were trying to fit in a small bathroom, and I was usually hovering around the door of that bathroom. I wasn’t feeling that connected with her at that time, and I was really wanting to find the right spot to help her in pushing, so I was grateful that she was able to tell everyone what she needed, including me. It helped me to feel like I was really contributing. Lyn did an amazing job of being clear about her needs, and she was amazingly polite. I remember she would repeat at the start of every contraction that she couldn’t do it, but then she rode every contraction out so bravely! The doula, midwife, and I tried to talk Lyn into taking the pushing slow, but she was having none of that, and I can’t say that I blame her. She’d waited forever for labor to even really start and then we’d been telling her for the last two hours not to push. She was ready to get that baby out.

After that, everything went amazingly quickly and Ira was born just a half-hour later, at 11:45pm, a little over 72 hours after we first entered the hospital. Once he was about to come out, the doctor got me to come down and do a four-handed catch. So many of the details of the birth have left me, but I still remember the warmth and wetness as he slipped into my hands. He was so alive! I cut the cord and Lyn and I met our new baby, who was perfect in every way. While we were doing that, the doctor was realizing that Lyn had complicated enough tearing that she needed to be stitched up in the OR, so after 45 minutes or so, Lyn was wheeled out to have anesthesia after all (a spinal), and I got to be alone with our new baby. Lyn reminded me me that I should nurse him, so I got to give him his first drops of milk before taking him to the nursury and being at his side while the nurses did their thing. While I was in the nursery with him, most of our labor support left, and Lyn’s mom moved our things into a postpartum room. When Ira and I were done in the nursury, I left Ira with Lyn’s mom and visited Lyn in the recovery room, where I got to tell her how proud I was of her.

A little while later, Lyn made it to the postpartum room. She was perky and wide awake, and I fell asleep on the uncomfortable chair-bed with Ira on my chest. The next night, I went home and spend the night with Leigh, while Lyn’s mom spent the night with Lyn and Ira at the hospital. It was hard to leave them and feel so far away, but I needed some real sleep and Leigh needed to be with at least one of her moms. I think somehow that night away was a metaphor for one of my biggest lessons from the birth, that I don’t have to be everything for Lyn. Sometimes she needs other people, and that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t need me.

Lately, a bit more space has opened up in our lives. It took us a little while to notice, but it’s definitely there.

Leigh started kindergarten in the fall, which increased the logistical hurdles in our week (double drop off and double pick up). As of September, my job up and moved a two hour commute away which upped the logistical demands even more (yes, I really said two hours, but I don’t have to go to the office every day, and that’s by train so I can work for much of that time).

But even with these hurdles, Gail and I are both feeling a little more breathing room, like maybe we’re gradually exiting the frantic pace and demands of parenting super-little-kids. Leigh is starting to have a world beyond our own family, and so far, she’s thriving. Ira, now rounding the bend towards three, has always been a pretty focused and self-entertaining guy, but his games are getting deeper and more involved, especially when Leigh is amenable to playing with him, so on weekends they will sometimes go long stretches without needing us at all. I’ve started to feel my own interests coming back (interests beyond daily survival and staying afloat at work, though those are obviously still primary).

I picked up my trumpet again, after nearly a decade hiatus (I played seriously through college) and joined a local band. Gail has been going out in the evening on her own sometimes, spending a little extra time with her own mom or friends. We’ve both been taking a little more liberty in the evenings, to head out on our own and not worry much about missing bedtime, because, well, bedtime just isn’t that hard anymore, and the parts that are hard on the off bad night are not really any better if we are both home. At shabbat services on Saturdays, there have been a few times lately where we were both sitting in services, together, and either a kid was snuggled quietly on a lap following along, or they were both off playing somewhere, not needing anything from us, and not disrupting services (of all of these, that moment may have felt like the one that took longest to arrive. I found maintaining even a vague semblance of a meaningful spiritual life while parenting small children was damn near impossible, and extremely frustrating)

Parenting very young children is great work, but it’s hard work, and the demands can be relentless, especially with both of us working at jobs we care about deeply, and also trying to juggle schedules to make sure we get nice chunks of solo-parenting time (we both still structure our work to take a day home per week). So it is with some surprise that I realize some of those demands may be lifting. Of the two of us, I’m the most prone to both reminiscence and regret, so for me, noticing this is a tad bit bittersweet. But mostly, I’m proud of us, for taking some time to find our own space in the world again, as individuals with interests beyond our kids, for surviving, and mostly thriving, for these last 6 years or so. I’m proud that our kids are starting to find their own place in the world, to build and rely on their relationship with each other, to reach beyond us, just a little.

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.