Five Images Of My Family
One
I will have seven children, because seven is a magical number, and also it just feels right. Plus I have five girls’ names picked out and I really like them all. Probably I will have five girls and two boys. My mom asks “and what will you do if you have more boys and less girls? What if you have all boys?”
I shrug.
We will live in a big farm house in the country and I will be thin and willowy (I have never been willowy) and wear a floor length skirt every day. I will spend my days engaged wholly in the holy joy of being a mother. The children will be well adjusted and mostly get along with each other. The girls will wear long skirts, and have long hair, and learn how to play the piano. The oldest will probably be wise beyond her years, and help me around the house and with her younger siblings. In the afternoons, while the younger and rowdier children are playing out on our big, green, lawn, we will sit in our airy living room and talk with the windows open. She’ll ask me questions about when I was younger, and I’ll patiently share my wisdom with her.
We might also sew, and we’ll definitely drink tea.
My husband will be good and kind and he will support us, I suppose. I figure he’ll have dark hair, but I don’t think about him much more than that.
He’s a means to an ends, really.
My mother asks what I’ll do if he disagrees with me, if he doesn’t like the name Emily or David.
“They’re MY kids!” I snap at her, “I’m going to give BIRTH to them.”
Two
We’re going to move to Oregon.
Me and my boyfriend. Well, we’re going to get married and then we’re going to move to Oregon, so he won’t really be my boyfriend anymore, will he? I have this idea: only Out West can we be free. And we need to be free. We need to be free from all of the middle class suburban expectations. My boyfriend thinks getting married is probably a middle class suburban expectation too, and that might be true, but I still want to get married. I need to get married and I can’t exactly explain why, except that it feels like something is slipping away from me, and it feels like if we get married maybe the slipping will stop. I asked him while we were driving around aimlessly one day, and he said “ok.” I said “hey will you marry me?” and he said “ok.” We’re going to have a pagan wedding, I have it all planned, he says that’s ok too.
In Oregon he is going to own a record store. He’ll sell indie music and things, and I’ll paint every day, and we won’t have a lot but we’ll be comfortable. We might not have seven kids. Having a target number is childish and silly. We’ll have however many kids we end up having. It’s no big deal.
But we’ll have at least five.
Well, I will, anyway. I’ll have one with him (as a symbol of our love!), and then who knows how many lovers I might take on the side! We are very modern and enlightened. Plus, it’s important to mix up the gene pool as much as possible. Plus, I have a crush on this girl in my anthropology class, and if I sit in the quiet long enough, I notice that I am frustrated.
Reproduction as a radical act, that’s what we believe in.
Our kids will be half feral but they’ll be fine. I’m not going to be too involved, I’ll be so busy with all that painting. They’ll appreciate having an artist for a mother when they’re older, I’m sure of it, even if they don’t get it when they’re little.
Three
This man. This man is the love of my life, I’m sure of it. He’s a musical genius, for one, and also he’s literally the only man I’ve ever been attracted to. And I can’t be gay, so he has to be the love of my life. He’s a poet. He’s so smart.
One day he’ll make an album. He’ll publish a book of poems. One day he’ll finally agree to open this relationship up so I can have sex with WOMEN again. I miss it so much. One day he will finish one of the ten projects he’s always talking about.
We’re going to get a cheap loft downtown and paint it loud, glorious, colors. We’re going to be well dressed and fabulous, because he loves fashion and I love him. He’s going to stop worrying about his rich parents and finally find the space to be himself, the him I know he can be. They don’t understand him.
Probably we’ll have twin boys. We’ll name them Noah and Isaiah. One of them will have his middle name for a middle name, the other one will have my father’s.
They’ll have a ridiculously long hyphenated last name because there is no way in hell I’m changing my name. It won’t fit on any of the school forms. Sorry. kids. Feminism is important.
If we have a girl, I’ll name her Lily. Lily is the only one of the list of five girls names that I’m still in love with. I have to have a little girl named Lily.
He’s not ready to talk about any of this.
But he will be. I just have to be patient. He’s going through so much right now, with his parents. I hope all the good lofts aren’t gone before he’s ready.
Four
I’m going to be single forever.
That sounds sad, but really it isn’t. After I came out, everything changed. Everything got easier. I can’t find a girlfriend; I’m starting not to hate being alone.
I’m going to be a single, poor, gay, mom, and it’s going to be fine. It’s going to be amazing. I know I can do this because I’m a strong person, and lots of people are single moms anyways and it’s fine.
I mean sure, I might date sometimes, but I don’t need a partner. Partners just get in the way. And what are the odds that I would meet a woman I would want to be with who would also want to have children with me? I can’t even picture it! Partners just want to control how you parent. Partners just hate the names you pick. Partners just complicate everything.
And I don’t have time. I am running out of time.
My mom says, “but what if you have a hard pregnancy?”
She just doesn’t get me. She doesn’t know what I can do. She doesn’t know what I can handle. She doesn’t know how strong I am and she makes me so angry.
I’m going to have a baby. I’m going to be a mom. We’re going to have dance parties every day, even if we do live in a studio apartment. And we’re going to be happy, so happy. I’m going to get started just as soon as I can get the money together to buy some frozen sperm. It won’t be that much longer now, I’ll figure it out.
Five
I am sitting in the livingroom writing, and I can hear my wife in the bedroom, quietly chanting our son to sleep. He is seven months old. She has been chanting this particular chant (one she learned at the zen Buddhist temple) with him since before he was born. Since before he had ears to hear. She leaned in close to my growing stomach and she chanted, while I lay in bed feeling like death itself and wondering why in the world I ever wanted to be pregnant. The first time she chanted to him when he was on the outside, he got so still and calm and thoughtful looking. Can a newborn infant look thoughtful? Well, apparently a newborn infant can, or at least an emotional and overtired parent can see thoughtfulness, whether it is there or not.
This is the life I never really expected to lead, and yet somehow it also isn’t at all surprising. Somedays I think it’s the life I wouldn’t let myself dream of.
We’re broke. I mean we are painfully broke. I worry about money constantly. I was so sick during my son’s pregnancy that I couldn’t work, and then I had complications recovering from birth and couldn’t work, and finally I started freelance writing to pay the bills. I didn’t really realize it until it was happening, but it’s like I accidentally started doing what I wanted, after years and years of day jobs, not because I was brave but because I was desperate.
We live in a small two bedroom apartment. My wife takes the bus every day to her kitchen job at a local restaurant. My days are filled up with my son — with playing and trying to learn to crawl and teething and breastfeeding and reading the same five board books over and over again — and frantically writing whenever he takes a nap.
I am so tired and my limbs ache every day.
I desperately want another child.
But it’s not to be. Having this one nearly destroyed me, in every imaginable way, and he is here and he is lovely and he needs me. I can’t risk destroying myself for the dream of a bigger family. So I try to find time to clean the kitchen. I try to find time to fold the clothes. I try to find time to take a shower.
When my son gets fussy I pick him up and carry him around the house. We stop by the wedding photos that hang on the wall. We had two weddings, one about a year before I got pregnant, and one this past summer, after he was born and after the ban on legal same sex marriage in our state was overturned by the Supreme Court decision. That wedding was at the Buddhist temple. That wedding included our son.
“See?” I say to my wide eyed baby, “That’s mama, and that’s ma, and that’s you! And this is your family.”
This is the family I never dreamed I would have, and it’s the only family I can manage to dream of now.
Mama Outsider: Learning Black Zen in a White House
I moved in with a white family because sudden poverty broke my brain. Literally. My brain has been on high alert since Ferguson exposed racism in technicolor and made my job so uncomfortable that I left it without crafting a plan B, then moved my daughter and myself into the room where I held my father’s hand as he took his last breath. In short, I’ve been tortured. My brain has responded by pumping the adrenaline it thinks I need to survive this pain. When the brain is high on adrenaline, its capacity to process information and make rational decisions diminishes.
This is how I came to be laying across my mother’s bed, talking to a cute, racially ambiguous girl on the phone for the first time and agreeing to move in with her and her two daughters the next day. My broken brain put everything into two categories: pleasure and misery. My main goal was to increase pleasure and reduce misery and the problem was that my brain was unable to adequately gauge either.
Black Zen is accepting that “it is what it is.” I hadn’t reached Black Zen that morning, so my attitude toward life was “It is what it feels like.” My mother’s house felt miserable. The idea of the cute girl’s house felt pleasurable. I was hopeful. I packed my clothes thinking of ideas and ideals. The ideal living situation: two single moms skipping the first-comes-love narrative to support each other financially and emotionally and get over on the system. I packed my clothes and uprooted my daughter on the radicality of it all.
I quickly found out that racial ambiguity was more than skin-deep. I say this not to make the dubious argument that a person isn’t Black “enough,” but to acknowledge the truth that some racially ambiguous kids are raised to be color-blind — to think of every racialized slight as inexplicable, ambiguous ignorance with no pattern or history. To never have to face America in the ways I’d been made to face it since I could read.
By the time I read her text asking if my “baby daddy” was safe, my bags were already packed. “That’s racist,” I wrote, then softened it, “But I know you didn’t mean it that way.” But I didn’t know she didn’t mean it that way. What I did know was that she hadn’t even considered the implications, which is an unfortunate symptom of color-blindness, but also the reason that she’s happier and more social than I am. Here’s the thing — I have studied race, class, gender, and representation as a graduate student. I don’t say this to brag, but to admit that my studies have ruined me for the colorblind world. My brain is crammed with a lot of clutter that most people don’t use on a daily basis. And what I’ve learned in my year away from the university and on various forms of government assistance is that it’s easier not to know.
Not knowing the racial implications of “baby daddy” might have made my life a bit more livable this year. I might not have felt as wounded by my caseworker if I hadn’t read Patricia Hill Collins like some Holy Roller’s Bible. My love for the writing of bell hooks, a Kentucky girl like me, couldn’t save me from Kentucky. Instead, it has provided a lens through which everything looks like white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. The fresher fruit at the Kroger’s five minutes away from my roommate’s eastside house is proof of the world order. Her young daughters throw high-decibel tantrums and my first thoughts are about my daughter’s potential public mimicry and the children who have been murdered by police officers for less. I have begun to parent with a demented hypervigilance that I’d hitherto only seen in stores.
“Don’t touch a damn thing or I’ll pop you!” a mother said to her toddler son just two years ago when my student loans were still placing me securely in the lower middle class.
“Why some people mean?” my 3 year old daughter had asked, holding tight the hand that wasn’t paying for some toy she didn’t need.
“Some people are just angry,” I said with not a little disdain for the mother who had snatched her son’s hand and dragged him away from the toys placed at children’s eye level. I couldn’t have imagined then the financial strain that turns people into exposed nerves, tortured by every ask.
In the past year, I have told my daughter to stop asking for things through my own gritted teeth as if she was the reason I couldn’t afford a “yes.” In short, I’ve been mean. Why some people mean? One income that isn’t a livable wage plus racism will do that to you, and you can’t imagine the rage until you’ve lived it. I don’t excuse myself. I am practicing mindfulness, learning to notice my feelings and where they sit in my body. I am trying so hard to be nice to my daughter, who didn’t ask for a mean mommy with a cortisol-riddled brain.
Living with a colorblind family has given my brain space to adapt to the gray area between pleasure and misery. I am retraining my brain to withstand discomfort. I am learning that every bump isn’t a threat. I am learning how intentional colorblindness can be a sofa, a place to take the occasional short nap. I am learning that I don’t have the kind of brain that can “stay woke” without periods of rest. I sometimes feel like the spook who sat by the door, squirreling away my training in willful blindness to plot a revolution. I am training myself not only to survive the kind of job I left, but to navigate white spaces deftly enough to spot allies (which don’t exist to the cortisol brain) and support those who are like me — wide awake and impervious to Zen.
Mama Outsider: No Place Like Home
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“You need to move closer to your family and never leave them again.” I still don’t know whether the property manager was being shady or honest, whether she was backhanding me out of frustration at my inability to budget well enough to pay rent or sharing wisdom she’d won the hard way about trying to escape the people you most need.
I left Louisville fifteen years ago to escape the reach of my mother’s swinging belt. I told myself I’d never return to live, even if that meant limiting contact with my other family members who’d loved me best they could in those terrible teenage years. I missed my father’s last years staying true to my promise to myself and here I was, here I am, home again. Begging favors. Needing help. Leaning on a momma who long ago put down her belt.
In those last months in Baltimore, I’d lost my mind. I’d taken a job at a rich private school that didn’t pay me enough to afford the rich private preschools they suggested for my daughter. I’d chosen an apartment out of my budget to live closer to the administrator who eventually felt embarrassed, betrayed by my inability to play nice with spoiled students who called her by her first name. Baltimore was a haze of eviction notices, disciplinary meetings, and weed. Copious amounts of smoke settled into the clothes I’d strewn about my apartment as if to illustrate my giving up. My being overwhelmed. My failure to “build community” while grieving my father, learning a new job, raising a child, and getting used to a city whose inhabitants were always wondering how a person could leave a city like Atlanta for a city like Baltimore.
I should never have left Atlanta. It was a city people dream about. I had friends. I had arts. I had access to the resources at my university. I had enough connections to gain meaningful employment. I had depression. And the latter made all the former nearly invisible, shrunk their magnitude like a funhouse mirror, made it seem like the whole city was on fire and Baltimore had the only hydrant. A brain with depleted levels of serotonin does strange things. It makes an ex-girlfriend look like the only person who could ever have loved you, the last person who ever will. It makes the acquaintances she dates without regard to your feelings about it seem like close friends who’d stabbed you in the back. It throws around phrases like “stabbed you in the back” to describe pain that a person with enough serotonin would register at papercut level. Stinging, unfortunate, ignorable.
I felt like I had to leave. The professionals I’ve since seen call it a lack of coping skills. My friends called it short-sighted. Some spiritualist might call it fate. The Buddhist woman who is trying to recruit me calls it self-designed suffering. I call it fucked up.
Every day since my father died has been at least a little fucked up. There is no such thing as a non-fucked up day when you are a Daddy’s girl without a father. The world doesn’t feel safe anymore and to say that is to admit to being crazy, under-medicated, out of touch with reality, too hung up on the past, or “without good insight.”
Baltimore’s was the second welfare office I’d visited. The first was in Atlanta where I’d tried to access Medicaid for my daughter when I decided to continue a pregnancy that all the people who loved me said was ill-timed. There is no good time to be broke and a mother, but that’s another story. The third welfare office I’ve visited is in Louisville, KY, just minutes away from my mother’s house. This office has been the cruelest, causing my pre-existing serotonin deficiency to turn everything gray.
Maybe the property manager was saying that broke mothers need family most. Maybe she lived that reality. Maybe she’d also wanted to leave her birth city, but had thought of her first child as an anchor to a place she didn’t want to be. Maybe she’d been close to eviction without a plan B. Maybe she’d been a piss-poor budgeter with a penchant for shopping at thrift stores. In those Baltimore days, I didn’t even see the inside of a mall, but I spent chunks of change at Goodwill on things that in hindsight, I could have done without. Maybe she saw me in herself or herself in me or maybe she was just being mean. “And don’t ever leave.” A warning. A curse. A thing I obey because what I remember most about my mother’s belt is that stepping out of line is painful. Maybe I live in my hometown because I am still afraid of life’s leather sting.
This is what I know now, serotonin deficiency notwithstanding: I survived the lash once and I can do it again. I am doing it. Mine is the story of a bulldozed first plan, a razed second one, and a fledgling third. Mine is the story of a margin momma sharing the journey as she finds her way home.
Mama Outsider is a series about single motherhood at the margin. It’s about queer parenting that doesn’t fit the gay-married, donor-pregnant perceived norm, race and class, and learning to find love in the dark.
I Thought Getting Pregnant Was Hard; Then I Had a Toddler
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Kids are hard. Period. If you think this is going to be a feelgood boast of queer parenting, you’ve come to the wrong place. Here are some links if you’re seeking examples of highly filtered and unrealistic standards of living: Pinterest.com, LDS.org, and my cousin Tara’s Facebook page. For same-sex parents, bringing children into this world is often complicated. We have to deal with courts, fertility monitoring, cryobanks, and sperm — lots and lots of sperm. That’s the easy part. Don’t think for a second that once our kids are here, the struggle is over.
The original deal was that my wife, Megan, and I would each carry a baby using the same donor. (Isn’t that the GREATEST perk of having two uteruses in the family?). Our kids would be biologically connected to each other, and my wife and I could each experience pregnancy. I’m older, which meant I would go first.
Choosing a donor was easier than we thought. We had close personal friends who offered to donate for us. It was flattering, but we decided against it. We didn’t want to know our donor, so we chose our donor from a cryobank in California. This way, when the inevitable moment of adolescence comes, our child won’t scream, “I’m calling my dad!” An unknown donor would leave no question that we were the parents. As it is, she has enough loving grandparents, aunts, and uncles to run to when she hits puberty.
We like cryobanks: no lawyers, no fuss. And the children can still make connections to biological family through donor siblings with sibling registries. We call Quinn’s donor siblings “dibblings.” We’ve met two of her dibblings so far, and we love them with a love that could most closely be compared to first cousins.
After paying the cryobank the registration fee, we picked the cutest damn picture we’ve ever seen of a little boy. He looked like the perfect mix of my wife and I: light squinty eyes, dimples, and brown scraggly hair. (His profile didn’t disclose that he was a homicidal maniac, but obviously all #TheQuinn’s less favorable traits come from him.) Anyway, in an ironic twist for any lesbian, my wife and I spent our life savings on 15 vials of sperm and prepared for a home insemination.
We never expected it to work on the first try.
Megan did the insemination. In most cases, she pretends she is a professional at everything, but even after reading all the information she could find, I could tell she had no idea what to do. She didn’t want to waste one of the million dollar vials of sperm so she nervously practiced with fruit juice. Let’s be clear here — as much as I like the idea of being inseminated with fruit juice, she was only practicing with getting the “sperm” into the syringe. She poured the juice carefully into the back of the syringe while keeping her thumb over the tip so as to not lose a drop of the precious elixir. As she replaced the rubber plunger, the pressure inside began to build… She removed her thumb, and the practice spermshot up and splattered across the ceiling. I screamed, “My babies!”
That night, Megan had nightmares of making the same mistake with our real insemination. Despite her sleepless night, we decided to proceed with our plan to do the insemination without a doctor because we could create a magical, romantic moment. But, as soon as we lifted the lid of the cryotank and saw the plume of nitrogen fog spill out, the romance was gone. We dropped the tiny vial into body temperature water and watched it wiz, pop, and crackle until a tiny drop of pink liquid pooled at the bottom. I’ll spare you the actual details and suffice to say that somehow, in an act of pure luck and coincidence, Megan actually managed to get the sperm to its destination.
Two weeks later, she hugged me and my breasts felt so tender I almost cried. We rushed out to buy a pregnancy test and stood gape-mouthed in absolute shock when the smiley face appeared. It was Christmas Day 2012. Today, Quinn is a happy, active, 17-month-old bundle of sass. Since her conception, every day has felt like an action movie. She has us running and cleaning and crying more than we ever imagined. We thought her conception was a miracle? Ha! The real miracle is that we’re all still in one piece.
Recently Megan and I went to our weekly Sunday dinner at my in-laws. It’s good cooking and company if you ignore the overt attempts at religious conversion. “The Quinn,” as we sometimes call her, seemed to be innocently laying on her tummy reaching for something under the couch. The adults were in the living room avoiding taboo topics when there was a loud pop and piercing scream. The lights flashed, and we looked down to see that Quinn’s hair stood perfectly on end. Her eyes were wide with terror — and glee.
A partially-broken outlet hidden in the carpet was to blame. No one had remembered it was there. Leave it to Quinn’s grubby little hands to find a loose wire in the carpet and electrocute herself.
Once the immediate panic wore off and we determined that she was all right, we rushed out to buy more plastic outlet covers. Apparently, 1,564 of them weren’t enough. FYI to new parents: there is always a cursed spinning wheel hiding somewhere. Adults are physically unable of finding these potential minefields. It is guaranteed that your walking, drooling danger detector of a child will be drawn to these toddler booby traps.
We’ve covered the outlets, taped the corners of tables, moved cords and toxic cleaning chemicals. Yet, she finds disasters before we can prevent them. We bought baby gates for the stairs, but didn’t count on her holding fast to the dog’s tail as we let him out. He dashed out and pulled her airborne to the bottom. We can no longer have dinner parties because she finds abandoned wine glasses, smashes them, and dances in the glass shards. Parents of toddlers are superheroes. We save lives daily.
The outlet covers haven’t helped much. Quinn has now felt the adrenaline rush of electrocution, and she wants more. Everywhere we go, if she sees an open outlet, she runs for it: restaurants, homes, stores. The only thing stopping her from being zapped again is my wife’s catlike reflexes. This may be the only time in this column that I am admittedly grateful for my wife’s soccer skills. Other than keeping my wife in a constant state of injury, Megan’s quick actions have saved our lunatic daughter on many occasions.
There are perks of queer parenting. When Quinn is tearing apart the local Target, women in passing don’t know which of us is more deserving of her judgemental glare. Sometimes she glares instead at the innocent, unknown gentleman standing unfortunately too close to us.
And yet, despite being witnesses to the terrors of toddlerhood with Thing #1, Megan and I are at it again trying for Thing #2. The best gift we can give our daughter is a sibling, right? As new parents, we’ve begun to master Quinn’s antics, so she needs a cohort: someone to pour nail polish on the carpet while the other is coloring the walls with a Sharpie.
Now we’re trying for baby #2. We wanted our kids to be close in age. Even though we were successful at home before, we cut out the chaotic home inseminations and went straight to our gynecologist. We tried shortly after Quinn was six months old, but this time with Megan as catcher. Seven catastrophic attempts later, we decided maybe Megan carrying our kid wasn’t in the cards.
Our OBGYN is a family friend, which might sound awkward, but really, how comfortable is anyone at their yearly checkup/violation? For the sake of this article, we’ll call our family doctor friend “Susan,” because that’s her name. She has been amazing in helping to get us knocked up. She comes into the office on nights, weekends, and anytime we ask. She also pretends not to mind as Quinn runs around her office shredding documents and kicking her in the shins.
Since it was Megan’s fault that we wasted 7 expensive vials of sperm, we went straight to getting me a IUI insemination performed by “Sue.” I’ve only had sperm in me twice in my life. The first time, Megan and I created #TheQuinn, so we are hopeful, sorta, that this one would work just as easily. We won’t stop trying until we have at least two suicidal maniacs at home to destroy the calm fabric of our marriage that we have fought to create in the midst of our conservative state of Utah.
It’s unbelievable all the hard work, emotions, and bureaucratic mess we’ve had to go through just to be legally married and have children. Things were so easy when it was just the two of us. We went out, we danced, and we stayed up late. We didn’t have to watch movies with cartoon tigers and ponies in them unless the recreational activity of the night called for them (…kidding). We didn’t trip on toys or have to wipe up puddles of pee or projectile poop stains.
But then, I have times like this one. In this moment, the three of us are together on the couch. Megan has Quinn wrapped in her arms. They’re whispering, tickling, and giggling together. Quinn is the only one who can turn my cocky wife into a mush puddle. She’s made us both come alive and aware in a whole new way. I can’t help but look down at my flat stomach and hope our next baby is already there growing.
Making babies, raising babies, and keeping them alive and happy is hard work. It isn’t for everyone, but if we want to do it, then no one can stop us. LGBT families are all beautiful. We don’t have children by mistake; we fight for them.
It’s funny. We have legal documents declaring our marriage valid in two different states. We’ve been together and in love for years. But it was the birth of our daughter this daredevil, this personality, that really made our home feel like family. Now, we want nothing more than to fill it with another little maniac — Lord help us.
Editor’s Note: Since writing this piece, Candice and Megan have welcomed another little person into their lives: Tucker! You can watch their lives unfold through their YouTube series, The Barretts. This video of Quinn meeting Tucker will probably make you cry, you’ve been warned.
Donor Siblings: The Happy Unexpected Bonus of Lesbian Parenthood
“Dibling” is a word I first heard after my daughter was born. It means “donor siblings” — children who share half their genetic material through a sperm donor. Ella, our daughter, has a lot of diblings — in fact, they number at 20 as I write this, with more on the way. Getting pregnant via IVF (in vitro fertilization, when the egg is removed, fertilized in a laboratory dish, and implanted in the uterus) with sperm from a sperm bank came with a lot of surprises: the odd experience scrolling through pages of profiles for a donor (something like a cross between online dating and the science of the movie Gattaca!) and the huge box of injectibles that showed up at our apartment one day (I cried). But by far, the diblings are the most beautiful and sublime surprise of them all.
Somer and I spent a lot of time going through websites to find the perfect donor. Should he be a musician or a doctor? Really funny or really sincere? Asian or European, or both? (Somer is mixed race and this was a factor for us.) After going back and forth, we settled on two: a sweet guy in the medical field who had a long list of volunteer experiences, and a Californian opera singer whose parents were anesthesiologists. We played Russian roulette with our baby making, alternating them each round of IUI. When we started IVF, we used the nicer guy’s sperm. The sperm bank had his pictures, so we knew he was good looking, and I felt like I could look into his eyes and see exactly who we were dealing with. I got pregnant via IVF, and we didn’t expect the donor to be in the picture until Ella turned 18. He was an open donor, so she could chose to look him up at that point and make contact.
While I was pregnant, our sperm bank did something pioneering: they created a beta social media site that clients could use to connect to other people who had used the same sperm. They even included the donor himself. This. Was. Mind-blowing. Suddenly I was looking at all these little boxes online, little question marks where the faces would be, each one representing another human that shared half of my daughter’s DNA.
Somer was leery about connecting to the donor. There are practical risks, whether perceived or very real ones involving legal custody should we establish contact so early. There are also psychological and emotional ones that she experienced as the non-birth parent: a vague sense of feeling threatened by the donor and wanting to establish our family unit before involving the donor, should Ella choose to. It was important for us that Ella have the choice to contact him in the future, but effectively we would be taking that choice away by making it now.
However, when it came to the other babies conceived with the same donor sperm, we were incredibly curious and wanted to connect. So we reached out with bated breath, and waited for responses. One by one, they came rolling in, each time an adorable new baby revealed. Some shared Ella’s features and some looked completely different. It was all very surreal.
Interacting with the other moms was a bit like trying to make a new friend with someone you’re really interested in, while trying to play it cool and not too eager or weird. Somer had to hold me back from coming on way too strong. I wanted to know everything immediately! Where do they live? What do they look like? What’s their family constellation? But for a few weeks, I settled on just seeing photos of the other babies and sending innocuous messages like, “What a cutie!” Also, because the site was managed and moderated by the sperm bank, all of our messages had to be approved before they were posted — so there was an annoying lag time between posts and replies. As we became more familiar, that lag time seemed like an eternity. I had a newborn and I wanted to share pictures and stories with other moms, ask questions about their babies, and find out what characteristics our little ones shared. It was like building our own mom group, but on steroids: the super mom group of all time!
We continued to share photos and post messages, and one day I felt bold and decided to include a picture that also included Somer and me. “This is our family.” While I waited for a response I pictured lots of straight families on the other end. For some reason, I assumed most of those using the sperm bank would be hetero couples with fertility issues. I felt the familiar tinge of coming-out anxiety, wondering if the rest of the parents would be homophobic or unaccepting. It hit me in the gut.
Well, one by one the other families were revealed — and there were queer families aplenty! There were some hetero single moms in the mix, but by far the lesbian moms were representing. Seeing all the mamas behind each baby was so thrilling, like uncovering a new piece to the puzzle — “oh that’s where the nose came from!”,”no wonder he has red hair, but he and Ella have the same eyebrows!” It was fun and somehow I instantly loved all these other babies out there who were connected to and reminded me of my little Ella.
Now that the lesbian bomb was dropped (with no casualties), our friendships were progressing and the lag time on the sperm bank site became more irksome with Big Brother monitoring the site. We soldiered on, as new families continued to register. Finally, some of the moms suggested we go “rogue” and take this party off the sperm bank site and onto Facebook so we could chat in real time. Within minutes, the walls came down and we suddenly went from somewhat awkward acquaintances to new friends. People even asked if we could be actual Facebook friends! We checked out each other’s pages and saw each other’s lives: hobbies, photos of extended families, shared posts, home towns. It was the first time I had ever really made friends with strangers online — but then again, I was never connected to strangers before in such a unique and compelling way, through our children.
These women and their babies are Ella’s extended family, and I can say I have grown to love all of them. I can’t speak for every sperm bank user’s experience, because they may not get as lucky as we did, but the group of women we met are spectacular in every way. We value similar things: at our core, we all chose the same donor out of hundreds of options because of his kindness, his genuine demeanor, someone down-to-earth who spoke lovingly of his own siblings and seemed like a nice, caring person. Oh, and it didn’t hurt that he was good-looking too! Our decision changed the course of each of our lives.
The diblings are from across the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, which is very helpful when there’s a need to chat at all hours of the night — someone is always awake! But who am I kidding — anyone with a newborn never sleeps anyway. We learned that despite being from different countries, we had a lot in common. All the mamas are inspirational women with a range of careers and an unconditional overflowing of love and special gratitude for our families. Interestingly, we’re all in our 30s and 40s which speaks to the wave of parents starting families later in life and its correlation with a certain amount of planning and stability.
We post every milestone of our children’s lives. We send cards and gifts for birthdays. One mom has a tradition of making a collage of pictures for each baby’s birthday, which literally brought me to tears when Ella turned one. We share and laugh at our little ones’ first dance moves, messy eating habits, favorite silly faces. We compare notes on rashes, allergies, teething, and quirky body parts (“Does your kid also have a hooked pinky toe?”) We talk about whether or not we want to contact the donor, and respect each other’s opinions. We’ve watched our babies grow into toddlers. And we make plans to have our kids in each other’s lives.
This past summer we met some of the diblings. The experience was like no other. I guess it could be analogous to a huge family reunion where you meet your 3rd cousins for the first time. But that’s not exactly right. We share a bond with the other moms, but our kids share actual DNA. And seeing your child’s smile when they play with their half sibling — seeing the same glimmer in your child’s eye reflected in the faces of her diblings — is magic. It was all so new, yet all so oddly familiar. The dibling meet up — complete with matching shirts — was one of the most memorable and exciting experiences of parenthood, and in my life. And it was all so unexpected — a happy surprise along our path from wanting to be parents, to sperm bank, to the day Ella was born, and throughout the rest of her life.
12 Ways I’m Still a Total Punk After Becoming A Mom
Becoming a mom is a whirlwind. Life has higher highs, lower lows, and an overall increase in stress that has to be managed in what seems like less hours in a non-stop day. I could go on about the learning curve with newborns (why is my kid crying? is there a multiple choice questionnaire?!), the late nights that feel like torture, the exhausting feeling of being on demand 24-7, all the stuff you hear parents say…and how it’s all worth it, every minute, for the unimaginable happiness that fills you up in return.
But one of the most challenging aspects was the subsequent redefinition of self that totally took me by surprise. Before being a parent, I always used a varied palette of nouns and adjectives to self-identify: musician, punk, queer, prankster, lesbian wifey, reality tv sellout, reader of Russian literature, suspected Cylon, etc. Now, 99% of that former identity is packed into a small part of my day-to-day.
Now I am mom, mostly, before everything else, eclipsing nearly all the rest.
But I won’t let those 30-odd years of personal development go to waste! With every ounce of grit, punk aesthetic and creative spirit, I hold on to those principles of starving artist days past and strive to integrate them into this new realm of diapers, strollers, and temper tantrums —my kid’s, of course…ok, and mine.
And now, here are some reflections on how my new role and former punk self are expressed.
MOM vs. PUNK
Ways I am like a mom now: I un-ironically watched the Today Show this morning.
Ways I am still a total punk: I ironically watched Kathie Lee & Hoda afterwards.
Mom: I’m up at 6:30 with Ella.
Punk: I’m exhausted from staying up too late mixing.
Mom: I walked an extra 5 minutes for errands because Duane Reade had a sale on diapers.
Punk: I had forgotten an umbrella and said $%&* it, not like I’ll actually catch pneumonia or something.
Mom: I also got a York Peppermint Pattie at the pharmacy because “needed my chocolate fix.”
Punk: …I let Ella try some too.
Mom: I consistently need to double down on caffeine fix because of mom exhaustion.
Punk: But I prefer locally roasted coffee from cafes that cultivate pretentious barista culture.
Mom: I’m now a regular at the playground, learning names of other children and able to identify their age ranges.
Punk: And I’m pretty sure I scare all the other parents at the playground with my skull tee and the ripped jeans I wear *literally* every day.
Mom: I’m delighted at myself for multi-tasking things like dishes, baby feeding, cleaning up toys, running errands, reading the New Yorker and cooking meals.
Punk: I’m delighted at myself for distorting the crap out of the chorus synths in our new track and adding appropriate feedback intro.
Mom: Not showering for days because I’m too busy.
Punk: I still don’t care about showering for days ’cause I am sooo counterculture.
Mom: I make playdates with other moms.
Punk: Playdates are “record store shopping” and “happy hour at music venue.”
Mom: I get very excited about Ella’s new play kitchen.
Punk: I get very excited that Ella learned to plug in 1/4″ cables and likes to dance to old Motown singles on 45.
Mom: I’ve fully embraced baby bjorns, strollers, and diaper bags as a new fact of life.
Punk: I experience a form of embarrassment (a fellow punk mom friend and I have termed it “mom shame”) because no matter where I go, the presumed “cool” is sucked out of the room since I’M A MOM NOW — representing the adult, responsible world, the absence of untethered spontaneity, a sobering and serious image that stands for permanent life change.
Mom: I love spending every day with my kid, who has given my angst-tinged existence an entirely new dimension of love and joy and magic I never knew was possible.
Punk: I don’t give a fuck who knows it.
Missing Someone Gone While Raising Someone New
Read Caitlin’s previous writing on her first and second pregnancies here!
I have learned, already, that it takes about six weeks to come up for air. Well, to be fair, we’ve been on several outings; my internet presence has taken more of a hit because these are the nicest months in Chicago and therefore spending my now extremely limited free time in front of a computer seems sacrilegious. But let me start at the beginning, or his beginning anyway.
I slept remarkably well the night before the scheduled c-section — better even than my wife. We had to be at the hospital to check in at 6 a.m. for an 8:45 surgery, and that’s when the waiting became pretty unbearable. They took me to the prep area, I was hooked up to monitors, got asked lots of questions, talked to the anesthesiologists, nurses, doctor, and the surgeon. I was really anxious for the surgery and in retrospect, in some ways being under general anesthesia (as I was last time) was preferable to the waiting and the expectations.
Sleeping on Mama C
I was most apprehensive for the epidural/spinal block as I’ve heard some nightmare stories of reactions, and I must admit, it wasn’t pleasant and I would have liked to avoid it if it were possible. One, the initial numbing shot was painful, despite the two kind nurses holding my hands (my wife wasn’t allowed in until the last moment). A student placed the catheter, which was fine, he did perfectly (according to his supervising doctor, who was very reassuring for me as she kept saying things like “wonderful placement, excellent job.”) Despite the attempts to ward off nausea prior, I did have to turn my head and puke into a cup the student held for me, but it all worked as it should, and I was numb soon enough and the show began.
My friend described the sensation like “rummaging around in a purse,” and it totally felt like that. No pain, but you can feel where they are in your body. I kept thinking they were taking the baby out, but it was just my organs (talk about disconcerting). The surgeon was going to do a transverse incision this time, but he discovered that my previous classical scar was thinning dangerously, so decided to repeat that cut so that when they closed me up they could add sutures and try to make it stronger so that subsequent pregnancies would be possible. It’s still hard for me to reconcile the thought that one freak condition in my first pregnancy has threatened all subsequent chances at having children. Some things aren’t fair.
But then – he was born! And crying! I had asked for very few things in my birth plan — delayed cord clamping, and skin-to-skin and breastfeeding as soon as possible. Now, our hospital is wonderfully militant about the latter two things anyway, so I wasn’t surprised when the nurse first opened my gown, then laid him on my chest for a bit, then held him upside down over my shoulder as that was the easiest position for him to nurse in with me so covered up. It wasn’t quite what I envisioned, but I can’t complain at all — I had my baby nursing while I was in the OR getting sewn up. Not for long, but enough for me to feel like I got everything I could possibly get considering the circumstances. Then my wife got to hold him as they stitched me up and we rolled into recovery.
All the mother-baby rooms were full; a lot of people were checking out at and then the rooms needed cleaning, so we were in recovery for a while (ironically, when I checked out not even half the rooms were occupied — I guess “feast or famine” is typical in an L&D unit). I wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere anyway, since my body temperature was hovering around 95.0 and I wasn’t allowed to leave until it was 97. So I was piled with warming blankets (I didn’t feel cold at all, but I guess being in a cold OR and having your innards exposed tends to cool you down). Our chaplain friend from Ander’s stay in the NICU stopped by because she knew we were going to be there, and we just relaxed and cuddled the baby. The good part about being in recovery so long was that by the time I left, I was feeling really well — all the epidural effects had worn off.
We named him Graeson Robert (the “son” is a nod to his older brother Anderson). He was in the average range for head circumference and length, but was considered small for gestational age, so he had to undergo a battery of tests, including sitting for 90 minutes in a car seat strapped up to sensors to ensure he could maintain an open airway and circulate oxygenated blood. They had to do that test while he was sleeping, so they started at midnight on our second night, which was traumatic for me — it was the same oxygen saturation monitor that Ander was on that kept plummeting for him. Graeson passed with flying colors, but that beeping machine had me on edge for the whole time, despite our attempts to distract ourselves by watching HGTV. He passed all his tests, actually, including GAINING weight even in the hospital, which our pediatrician called “unprecedented.”
So here we are! Settling into life with a newborn, which is still rather surreal. I can’t believe I can just pick him up and cuddle him whenever I want. I’m so accustomed to asking permission to hold other peoples’ babies. I’m glad I over prepared to be incapacitated, because now that I’m actually pretty functional it feels remarkable. The only bummer at first was his smallness on outings – he was too small for all the carriers to be safe, so we could just do stroller outings. We were a little surprised that our pediatrician said we could take him out whenever we wanted, as long as we avoided crowds and made anyone holding him wash their hands. For some reason I think we both thought newborns were more fragile and needed to be inside for the first few weeks, but apparently not, which is also good for our own sanity.
So far, we’ve made it to the Chicago Botanic Gardens (including the butterfly exhibit and our first nursing-in-public in a gazebo in the English walled garden), to three different beaches, for several walks in the neighborhood (including lunch and dinner in the park), to the Art Institute and to the Arboretum. I’m just as surprised as anyone that we have managed all these things, though we did have ample help from both my parents and in-laws. Having them here really forced me out of my comfort zone, which was probably good for me, since I was really crippled by anxiety at first.
I’ll never know if my anxiety is normal new-mom jitters or a consequence of having already lost a child and knowing from my doctors that I shouldn’t try to get pregnant again for another two years at a minimum. The exhaustion set in around week three, and that’s when I had a few grief meltdowns too. You see, we wanted another boy, and Graeson looks just the right amount like Ander — basically identical except Ander had distinctive golden blond hair, while Graeson’s is a red-brown like mine. I think in a lot of ways it’s better that way. There are already too many moments where I’m startled by how much he looks like Ander — and unfortunately, the moments all bring me back to Ander dying, because that’s the only time we saw him without any tubes or tape on his face. So Graeson living sometimes reminds me of Ander dying, which is a bit of a jolt. Mostly, I am taken back there when I have G asleep cradled in my arms, head thrown back and mouth open. Once, my wife sang a song to Graeson to get him to sleep that happens to be one that we sang to Ander as he was dying (“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”) and that made me cry and just felt really sad for a while.
There were some happy “Ander moments” too. On Ander’s last night, our wonderful NICU nurse brought in her Nikon and took hundreds of photos of his last day, many of which we have hanging in our house and which we will cherish forever. The same nurse excitedly came to our house after Graeson was born to take a photoshoot of him, too. We haven’t seen the final photos yet, but her compassion, love and talent ensure they will be just as cherished as those of his brother.
To end on a lighter note, here are the top six things I have learned in the first six weeks of parenting a child. Hopefully, some of this will help someone else!
1. You can’t really have too many swaddles or burp cloths. You will never use either more than once, or twice if you’re lucky, before it’s covered in breastmilk/poo/pee/spit up. Same goes with your own bed sheets.
2. Relatedly, it is true that you will do laundry every day. I didn’t actually believe that one, but then we had to change our sheets nearly every night for a week due to baby vomit. (Note: he doesn’t even sleep in our bed, and yet this managed to happen.).
3. Navigating “helpful” parents and in-laws is harder than parenting your newborn. Example: when you are strapping your child in his car seat (perfectly competently) and suddenly have two extra pairs of hands trying to “help” you, which really just makes the baby irritated and makes it impossible for you to actually buckle the straps.
4. I would love to “sleep when the baby sleeps.” Could someone please get my child to sleep for longer than 30 minutes at a time? He’s one of those babies who needs help falling asleep on his own, which means we must either strap on the Boba (a Moby-like wrap) and go for a walk, or practice the Karp method of soothing (swaddle, sway, shush, side/stomach, suck) or some other active thing to get him to take a nap, particularly from 8-11 a.m. and 8-11 p.m. Usually we manage to get him to sleep right about the time he is ready to wake up to feed again.
5. I get why people would have baby wipe warmers, particularly at night. I have solved this problem but just letting him stew in his dirty diaper for most of the night. I know. Not ideal, but you try getting a screaming baby to nurse happily and fall back asleep at 3 a.m. and let me know if you’d do anything differently!
6. Despite being somewhat constrained in my daily activities, this parenting thing in the first few weeks isn’t a bad gig. In fact, I watch so much daytime TV that maternity leave feels like a bit of a racket. But don’t tell my boss!
Where Hope and Grief Can Co-Exist
You see, when you have lost a baby for no explainable reason, you have bad days and good days in the months between your baby’s death and the process of trying to conceive, again. One summer Saturday was the worst, bringing tears and despair, revealing my darkest fears to my wife while we lay on our backs in a tent during a rainstorm, waiting for the clouds to blow past before making dinner of orzo and vegetables over our Jetboil. “I just can’t shake this feeling that it’ll take years to have a baby, and by then I’ll be sick or otherwise unable to enjoy it,” I told her. “I can’t break out of this fatalistic funk in which I’m too decrepit to teach my child to throw a baseball.”
Now that we have conceived our rainbow baby, I indulge in the good days of wild hope more regularly. On good days, I feel peaceful, believing that I will carry this pregnancy to term without complications and get to take home a living, smiling baby who can breastfeed on their own. On good days, I can worry about whether I’ll seem overprotective if we get a video baby monitor. I remember that a colleague just had twins at 47. Another adopted a baby at 45. No one will think less of me for being an older mom; I won’t be so old that I won’t be able to help my kid move into college, see my grandchild.
In the second trimester though, I found the grief and hope coexisting in my heart. My wife and I struggled to both continually honor or son Anderson’s memory while opening our hearts again to a new child, who is ours whether they make it to birth and beyond or not. We vacillate about telling others we are pregnant, torn between not wanting to get their hopes up and yet needing their support should something happen. As the second trimester began and progressed, we continued to try to celebrate this baby’s existence despite the fear and doubt.
Second Trimester Diary
Week Thirteen: We have another ultrasound to check for chromosomal anomalies, the nuchal fold test. It takes a while as we have to poke and prod him into the best position, but I love watching him squirm and salute us. There is a scary moment, though, when the tech says “don’t clean off your belly yet, I just want to check I have all the measurements” and leaves the room. She is probably only gone for ten minutes, but it feels like 20 to us as we wait anxiously, wondering if there is actually bad news and she needs a second opinion. When she returns she seems surprised when we fire off “is anything wrong?” (There isn’t.) I don’t want to be a crazy patient, and I don’t want to overreact. But I don’t want to underreact either.
Ander’s butterfly garden.
Photo Copyright: Jane MacAlpine
Week Fourteen: The wife and I continue to struggle about whom to tell and when. I’m terrified to tell people. I don’t even love having told my mom, because she can’t hide her excitement (she sends us name suggestions every day), and it just makes me terrified if I ever have to tell her bad news.
Week Fifteen: I think my boxing instructors are starting to notice that I’m appearing “lazier” than usual — the fatigue really hits me this week! I figure I’ll tell them soon, but mostly due to vanity; I don’t want to be perceived as lazy or cutting corners. I’ve started to modify some of the core activities for my own comfort, as I’m getting the first bits of obvious pudginess. I wear maternity pants once, but mostly because they are cute corduroys and make me feel good. I feel the baby fluttering for the first time.
Week Sixteen: All the results from genetic screening show that I’m low-risk for having a baby with a chromosomal issue. I had no reason to suspect otherwise, but it’s still good to hear. Because things are going so well, I’ve just been seeing the physician’s assistant. She’s very sweet, but I think part of the problem is that *I’m* too cheery when I see her. “Things are going great!” I’ll say. “I feel really good!” So the visits are short and positive and normal, which means I’m only seen every month, like a “normal” person. Since this is my second pregnancy, too, and I’m not at the centering-based, midwifery practice I was at last time, everything seems to have a different feel. While on one hand, I have no physical reason for the handholding, on the other, I think I need to be a better advocate. As this pregnancy progresses I’m getting more and more anxious that something will go wrong and it’ll be missed. I crave the extra reassurance.
Week Seventeen: I discover I have gained as much in this pregnancy so far as I lost in the last one. I feel like I’m in limbo. Most of my symptoms are gone, but I can’t feel the baby really move yet. It’s a very disconcerting place to be. I still check obsessively every time I use the bathroom to make sure I’m not bleeding, and vaginal discharge still freaks me out (even though I know it’s the normal type and completely okay — it’s just the sensation that freaks me out, especially if I can’t get to a bathroom quickly).
Week Eighteen: We try to file our taxes and realize we need a Social Security number for Anderson. I’m convinced I applied for one, and tear apart my files looking for it. I never lose anything, but it just isn’t there. I go to the Social Security office with birth and death certificate in hand, but they can’t even tell me if I had previously applied, let alone give me a number for him, which causes me to cry in front of the agent. I know I can file my taxes via paper with copies of the two certificates, but it feels like just one more thing he doesn’t get.
Week Nineteen: This is when the bleeding started again last time, marking the start of the abruption. The mood swings this week are intense. I have a breakdown when my mother starts enthusiastically suggesting things to do for my sister’s bachelorette party. I have to miss the wedding, and the “real” bachelorette, and my mother is planning the bridal shower, so I have been planning the “family” bachelorette party in May (which is the end of when I can really travel). I have everything planned, but when my mother starts suggesting activities and offering to buy the tickets, I start sobbing and trying to explain that this is the only thing I can do for my sister and I had all these great plans and she was taking over my special day. My mother is horrified to have upset me — of course, she had just been trying to help, thinking I was stressed from the pregnancy — darn pregnancy hormones!
Week Twenty: The tech at our Level Two ultrasound knows our history and is clearly very experienced and very calm and sweet. She keeps pointing out things reassuringly (look, there’s his brain, it looks perfect; look, nice long legs and big feet, etc.). A maternal/fetal medicine specialist meets with us, and the only potential complication he mentions is that my placenta is lying a little low. He said normally he wouldn’t even mention it, but there is a 50/50 chance I could have some spotting or bleeding and he wants to assure me that if it were to happen, it would most likely be the placenta’s location near the cervix and not indication of a threatening abruption, as otherwise there are no visible clots or any other indication that the placenta is compromised. However, then he mentions that they found an echogenic intracadiac focus during the ultrasound, which doubles my risk of having a baby with Down Syndrome. But, since I tested low-risk on my earlier scans (less than 1 in 5,000 chance) and since the ultrasound showed no other fetal abnormalities that may signal a chromosomal issue, my risk is still around 1 in 2,000 so still so insignificant that he didn’t think it initially even worth mentioning. I’m not sure I’m glad he did or not.
Week Twenty-one: I’ve started to realize that I just might have a full-term baby. With Ander, we knew he’d be at least a bit early. I had been reading preemie and micropreemie blogs, preparing for RSV lockdowns, occupational therapy, learning disabilities, accommodations, worrying about every little cough and sniffle. Now I’m starting to realize I might have a baby without the stress and strain of the constant worry of a micropreemie. It’s almost too much to think about!
Week Twenty-two: We talk names. I struggle with the fact that we named our son Anderson, as that was the only name we both loved and agreed on. This child feels like they will get a “second best” name, and yet this is the name we’ll hopefully get to use for years. We do the March of Dimes walk in Anderson’s memory.
Week Twenty-three: My grandmother dies at 87. She will never meet my children. This is the week I went into labor with Ander and was placed on hospital bed rest. Despite these two triggers, we decided that we will stop going to our monthly bereavement group now that I’ve started to show. We are the furthest ahead in our grief journey in the group, and the others are just starting to maybe thinking about talking about trying to conceive, and we get new people all the time. I can only imagine how I would feel if I had just lost a baby and went to this group for the first time and there was a pregnant lady there. Horrible.
Week Twenty-four: The legal limit of viability in Illinois, the gestational age where the doctors will take heroic measures to save your baby. The week Anderson was born. I made it. From here on, I’m in uncharted territory.
Week Twenty-five: To give you a sense of my recent paranoia, here is what I Googled just this weekend: Can my maternity support belt be too tight? (Verdict: no.) Am I leaking amniotic fluid? (Verdict: no.) Am I having Braxton Hicks contractions, or is it the baby balling up? (Verdict: probably the former, but it’s totally normal). Should I be concerned that my fundal height didn’t change from 20 to 22 weeks? (Verdict: no. It’s still within the realm of normal and even a full bladder could affect the measurement).
Week Twenty-six: My hips, thighs and back are sore. I’ve definitely popped and I LOVE looking pregnant. Most times and most days, I love everything about being pregnant, especially the movement. My wife is so excited. She hosts an end-of-year BBQ at our house for her grad students, and they decorate onesies for the baby. Part of me is a bit hesitant, as it still feels too soon to be “celebrating,” but the other part of me is ecstatic and embracing all the fun parts that I didn’t get last time. I am scared a lot, but I’m also excited and hopeful a lot. We started getting gifts, and it’s a little frightening at the same time that it’s thrilling. One part of me can’t wait to rip into the box, while the other part of me is wondering how we’d go about returning all these gifts if we had to. I have moments when I panic and just ask Ander over and over to take care of his sibling. Some days I don’t think the fear and anxiety will ever end!
This Powerful Multilingual Campaign Features Asian Parents Who Love Their LGBT Kids
The video, titled “Family is Still Family, Love is Still Love,” begins with a woman named Rosetta Lai looking straight into the camera, wearing a bright pink blouse and dangling earrings. She says, in Cantonese, “I am proud of my daughter. I’ve always been proud of my daughter. It’s time to take a stand to really support your children, my children, our children. Share your story of love and acceptance for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children. After all, family is still family and love is still love.”
This PSA is one of nine multilingual videos produced and organized by the Asian Pride Project and the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA). These PSAs are all a part of the Asian Pacific Islander / American (APIA) Parents Who Love their LGBT Kids campaign, which includes families coming together to publicly support their children in a number of different languages and dialects, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi (in Hindi with English Subtitles and English with Hindi subtitles), Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Lao and Tagalog.
These videos are not only available on YouTube, but are also airing on Asian ethnic TV stations in June on stations including KSCI-TV (or LA18) in Los Angeles, KTSF in the San Francisco Bay area, AAT in Seattle, Crossings TV in Chicago, New York and Sacramento. The campaign is aimed not only at the LGBT APIA children, but also their families — the campaign attempts to connect with not only people who have access to internet, but to older generations who might have more access to media through Asian-language television stations.
Elena Chang, a co-director for the Asian Pride Project and the producer and director of the multilingual campaign, had accessibility and viewership in mind when deciding to air the PSA on Asian language television stations.
“How do we target some of these Asian families that may not have as much access to the internet? Well, they watch TV,” she says. “They might not be watching Fox or Channel Seven, but a lot of them with language barriers, they do stick to DramaFever, or some of those Sing Tao shows. They have Filipino cable networks. So we were like, let’s try to get in on that.”
Courtesy of www.NQAPIA.org
What struck me as a particularly affecting and culturally aware angle is the campaign’s emphasis on family above all else. The campaign is not just about accepting LGBT APIA individuals, but about families coming together to support their children. “[We wanted] to put some brave parents out there to show that it’s really okay to love your queer child, and at the end of the day, the quote is ‘family is still family,’ and family has always been such a strong part of Asian cultural identity,” Chang says. “We wanted to emphasize children. We wanted to emphasize family — mother, father.”
In all of the videos from the campaign, family is emphasized through the appearance of mothers and fathers speaking together to support their children. One video stars Kamlesh and Harcharan Bagga coming together and speaking alongside their gay son. The three of them stand together as they say, in Hindi, “Family is still family.” Phandia Phivilay talks about her lesbian daughter in English with Lao subtitles, Clara Yoon speaks in Korean about her transgender son, and Vinay Chaundry speaks to his genderqueer child in English with Hindi subtitles. The videos each demonstrate the love, support and willingness of APIA parents to publicly speak about their LGBT children.
Courtesy of www.NQAPIA.org
“Something we quickly learned was that families go through a coming out process to support their queer children. They have become the representative [for LGBT families in their communities], like Clara Yoon [who speaks in the Korean campaign], Deana Cheng [who speaks in the Mandarin campaign]. People in the LGBT community and straight community are able to identify who these people are,” Chang says. “All these parents are really brave because someone like Clara, she goes to church. If her PSA is playing on a network, people will see her. And the fact that she is able to step up and do something like that is just really, really brave.”
While all of the videos use approximately the same script, each video contains a parent speaking from the heart about their child, and emphasizes the phrases, “I’m proud of my child. I’ve always been proud of my child.” The look in the parents’ eyes as they said these lines, no matter if I could understand the language or not, made my heart swell — each parent always looks like this isn’t a scripted line, it’s something they are saying from their heart.
Courtesy of www.NQAPIA.org
As an APIA person with a non-native English-speaking family who has not always been accepting of me as a queer person, seeing these APIA parents speak so honestly about their love for their children is so important for me, and families like mine, to see. The campaign’s message — that LGBT people are not alone, and more importantly, families of LGBT people are not alone — hits me in my heart, especially as a person whose family didn’t know that having an LGBT daughter was something that they had in common with other people in the APIA community. The campaign’s emphasis on families speaks to me, and I hope that other families will watch these PSAs and see that having LGBT children is not a lonely, estranging thing, but something that can bring families together.
“In Korean, there’s this saying … which means ‘Don’t do anything that would make people look at you twice.’ And I think that says a lot about how a lot of immigrant families in the United States tend to think,” Chang says. “You go with the whole, you go with the group — anything that moves away from that is scary. It’s scary and it’s new … I think it’s really powerful and I want to use that type of energy and apply it to something that is queer-friendly. You want to talk about being like the group, as a unit, right? Let’s emphasize that,” she says. “Instead of worrying so much that your child is different and people are going to talk about your family because someone is ‘dysfunctional’ [for being LGBT] how about we try to flip that mentality and apply it to … let’s be collectively conscious and loving to one another?”
Courtesy of www.NQAPIA.org
The emphasis on family coming together in this campaign is not just to emphasize how APIA families can be loving and accepting, but also to acknowledge how some APIA families can have a difficult time accepting their LGBT kids. Chang is speaking from her own personal experiences when she was putting together the campaign. “I lost a very good friend of mine very young, and a lot of it had to do with family. I’m not just doing this for her — I feel like even if people don’t take their own lives, a part of you dies inside when you do not have some kind of acceptance within your family,” she says.
“I’m lucky because for the most part my family has come around, but it took a lot of work. It took a lot of work. I feel like now that they have come around, it is my responsibility to not take something like that for granted and do whatever I can to make the road less crazy for others. Because I just know that once my father came around to accepting me, I just felt like I was truly free,” Chang says. “And if I felt like that with one member of my family, I can’t imagine what other folks feel like when their whole family does not accept them.”
Courtesy of www.NQAPIA.org
The API Parents Who Love their LGBT Kids campaign is not only attempting to make these messages of family, acceptance, love and belonging accessible to older generations of API individuals with language barriers through these videos, but has also put together a series of one-page, printable “fact sheets” that have been translated into “19 Asian languages and scripts — the largest number of languages ever translated from a single LGBT document,” according to the NQAPIA website. The fact sheet is available to download in English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Urdu, Tagalog, Ilocano, Khmer, Hmong, Lao, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Arabic, Chinese (both simplified and traditional script) as well as Korean, Japanese, and Thai.
The multilingual video campaign is not just about finding ways to support APIA individuals, but families, too. “We realize that we’re not just making these videos for young gaysians [gay Asian people]. We’re making these videos for families — straight allies. We’re filming these families for families — it’s not just a queer resources,” Chang says. “And I think that’s what sets Asian Pride Project apart from a lot of different LGBT organizations. Because we’re not just here to serve the queer youth — we want to, obviously, but we realize that in order to serve them we need to bring the families in.”
Courtesy of www.NQAPIA.org
As an Asian-American woman with a Cantonese-speaking family, hearing Rosetta Lai say she is proud of her daughter in Cantonese is incredibly affecting, and watching these PSAs brings me to tears every time. To hear these words being spoken in the language my mom, dad, grandparents and aunts and uncles speak means the world to me. When she looks into the camera and says “I am proud of my daughter. I’ve always been proud of my daughter,” it’s almost like she’s speaking to me, and my family, too.
Visit the NQAPIA website for links to the video PSAs as well as the “Family is Still Family, Love is Still Love” translated fact-sheets.
Baby Products I Never Needed: A Minimalist, Freeform Approach to Preparing for a New Baby
“Am I ready? What do I need?”
This is the warbling inner voice that greeted me this morning as I greased up my 32 week pregnant belly. The emotional content that trailed and lingered was rich with familiar (perhaps even collective) anxieties. In a consumerist driven society like my beloved Canada, many riches are to be found and made where shared major life-change anxieties churn. Oh, how I remember the cascade of personal hygiene products incessantly advertised, each cleverly promising a smoother (and sexier smelling) passage through puberty. Shudder. I dare not consult Amazon or the TV for guidance about parenting. At least, not yet. Anxious, groping shopping is a hollow rite.
Today, I’m seeking a comfy balance in preparing once again for new parenthood while experiencing totally reasonable feelings that anticipate an inevitable, monumental shift in the day-to-day. Readiness aside for a moment, “What do I need?” The internal responses that start to trickle in diverge into two clear streams. The first stream, very much influenced by my western culture, translates my question as, “What do I need to buy (to calm this anxiety)?” The second stream, very much influenced by my vulnerable ever-opening heart, hears, “What do I need to feel (to access the source of my anxieties to meet my actual needs)?” I don’t mind speaking to both of these voices, and I don’t resent the ease with which I can purchase helpful manufactured wares, but there’s the rub. What is helpful right now?
Needs. Stuff. New parenting stuff. Let’s talk about this.
First off, I’ll give you a little personal context here. I am very much pregnant with my very much planned second child. I’m a genderqueer single parent who lives a quiet life in the deep woods. My first baby was home-birthed on my living room floor. By nature, I tend to be a rather primal, sensual and sensitive creature. I dig mindfulness and simplicity. I’m big on economy of personal energy, self empowerment and basking in beauty. I nurture a restorative lifestyle… while single parenting. Yes, it’s definitely possible. I’ve put much careful thought and feeling into what objects live with me and my little one(s) in my home sanctuary. I feel both deeply comforted and inspired by my living environment. What I create at home supports my parenting, my livelihood and my personal growth. This kind of home design involves me being very honest with myself about how I actually live, my sensitivities and what matters to me independent of the “What every new parent needs” magazine articles or well meaning family input.
Here’s a personal review of commonly marketed parenting wares and western culturally endorsed parenting preparation practices. It’s been four years since I home-birthed my first child, and now, a few months before the arrival of another. The past four years have, for the most part, flowed beautifully and efficiently on the daily home rhythm front and I’m satisfied with the relatively minimal “parenting stuff” I acquired. But that’s my comfort zone: minimal. These first couple of lists lightly graze what can be bought to equip the home for the new parenthood experience. First I’m discussing what doesn’t work for me and why, and then I’m including a list of things that definitely do work for me. Take from them what’s useful to you and know that your experience might be very different from mine, which is also perfectly great. I don’t participate in judgy mom culture! Now on with the lists.
New Baby Stuff I Never Really Needed
A Freshly Painted Nursery
Can’t do it. In much less feral circumstances I do not tolerate the odious smell of paint, VOC free or otherwise. My little family’s bedroom is shared and swathed in lovingly hand-oiled wood, so imagining myself with heightened senses after birthing and the ethereal days/weeks/months afterward, having my nose led by solvents to a separate room separate to find my baby doesn’t jive.
Baby Crib
I like to sleep with my babies, on a mattress, on the floor. When I’m exhausted, I appreciate the convenience of propping my body on one side as my infant nurses then we both sleep. A lot. I once tried to imagine rolling myself out of my nest to stagger down to a room animated with night cries and I couldn’t make it past the doorway in my head before bear grunting, “No.” I don’t sleep very well unless I feel baby’s body, hear her breathing. This lowers my heart rate significantly. A small chirp from my infant is all that is required to rouse my attention. She used to nap on my lap as I meditated. Her spontaneous naps became my cue to meditate, or sleep (hint: restorative parenting tip # 1).
Changing Table
Immediately, I hear the voice of a neuropsychologist mentor of mine from university who worked with head trauma. I don’t own a changing table. I love floors, especially pelvic floors. Deep squatting to attend to infants strengthens a Mama’s pelvic floor, greatly reducing the incidence of the notorious pee sneeze. Just sayin’.
Baby Monitors
I am my baby’s monitor. Lucky for me, I’m able to have my babies on me or beside me as I go about my day, work and all.
Bouncy Chairs / Exersaucers / Floor Gyms
As I mentioned above, I’m a big fan of carrying babies. That is, without the use of baby wearing devices (which I love, thank-you Ergo). What human little monkeys! When given the regular opportunity, from a remarkably young age these wee ones will hold on to their loving, baby-carrying adults. All those strengthening core muscles, developing fine and gross motor skills, and little brains lighting up all while actively taking part in baby’s own transport. Amazing. That, and things like bouncy chars are really bulky, and sometimes, I’ll say it, ugly. If not second-hand, many carry a chemical smell that hurts my senses. Often they are not age appropriate for a newborn and wouldn’t be used for a few months, if ever.
Pacifiers
Instead of using pacifiers to silence or soothe my little one, I breastfeed on demand, which tends to meet her needs. This isn’t possible for everyone, but it works for me.
Baby Bottle Paraphernalia
Did I mention how grateful I am for my milk-producing breasts? I did develop a nasty case of mastitis after my first baby was born, which was painful and discouraging. I pumped my breast to clear the way for healthy functioning. For years afterward, typically around two in the morning, I thanked my breasts for my not needing to fiddle and diddle with bottles and rubber nipples and brushes.
Strollers
I used to be a survival instructor many years ago. I always carried my gear, and sometimes people, atop my load bearing, powerful hips and snugly against the core of my body for long treks so I wouldn’t exhaust myself with awkward weight distribution or use of smaller joints to do the bulk of my work. After spending nine months slowly adjusting to carrying a baby inside my body, it just makes sense to me to keep that rough weight distribution going. Oh yah, then there’s the whole baby-caregiver mutual attunement (physiological and emotional) factor. That’s nice too.
Infant hygiene products
If you’ve ever smelled the top of the head of your newborn, then later, again and again found yourself huffing your newborn’s head with oxytocin stimulating delight, you’ll know what I’m talking about here. Newborns have a good smell that I don’t ever want to wash off. I didn’t own any infant hygiene products, and I didn’t bathe the protective vernix off my newborn’s body. When I did eventually bathe her, it was with water or with breast milk. Really — breast milk. Especially on bums.
Baby tubs and Buckets
This may sound ridiculous, but ever since I watched a tragic baby-themed episode of Oprah in the nineties, I cannot place babies and buckets in the same space in my mind without welling up. On a more uplifting note, I own a cast iron tub scavenged from a field, which I now luxuriate in nightly. I occasionally share this experience with my little one. My mother is a big fan of plopping infants in her kitchen sink, and I do afford her this honour, as long as she puts the Johnson and Johnson products back in her bathroom cupboard.
Diapers
I was gifted a giant bin of super soft, second-hand quilted pre-fold cotton diapers, wool covers, the works. I was also gifted a big pack of newborn disposable diapers. Then I met my daughter. She fiercely informed me with all of her newborn communication powers that she would have NONE of ANY of THAT, cloth or disposable. Nope. Then I opened a gifted copy of the book, Diaper Free by Ingred Bauer and discovered the wonderful world of natural infant hygiene. Basically, a bare-bummed baby.
How does this work? Perhaps another post all together might clear that up, but what I will tell you is that we never contended with a rash on her tender skin. Pre-fold diapers became one of the most utilized pieces of parenting gear I owned. I carried/wore this child with a layer of wool and a pre-fold diaper next to my body. Much of the time I was able to “sense” when she needed to eliminate and I would hold her over a little potty or outside on the grass. At night she slept on layers of wool, sheepskins, and a cotton pre-fold under her bottom. Somehow, while sleeping, I also seemed to sense when she would pee and I’d wake up and swap the wet pre-fold for a dry one. I considered all this a service of assisting rather than training. She later essentially taught herself to toilet. Sometimes I would diaper her for visits with diaper-loving/peepoo fearing folk. Sometimes she would tolerate this.
Car seat
Fuck yes. This I actually needed, just not very often because I don’t place an infant in a car very often. But when I do, thank you rear facing car seat. Now if only there was a car seat/baby carrier that somehow also attaches to Mama’s body, comfortably, “safely” in the car. Come on, I know someone out there is just itching to develop this!
My Favorite Parenting and New Baby Items
- Washable Sheepskins
- Moses basket
- Wool (re-purposed or otherwise, especially old cashmere) EVERYTHING to keep small bodies warm, and absorb pee
- Colourful silk (re-purposed or otherwise) EVERYTHING to diffuse light, feel wonderful against the skin, uplift
- ERGO baby carrier/Ring slings/Rebozos
- A freezer full of lovingly made nourishing foods
- Fresh fruit and veggies all the time
- Chocolate
- A big fat reminder that all your baby really wants/needs is YOU
- A comfortable place to seat yourself with a very little person (rocking chair, hammock, papasan, bolster, zafu, floor, whatevs)
- Comfortable clothing for Mama that baby can be worn inside
Now that we’ve talked about how to equip our homes, what can be done to equip ourselves for the experience of both birth and parenthood? Here are my recommendations:
A “Blessing Way”
Either instead of or in addition to a traditional, product-laden baby shower. This is an event where your birth support kin gather, share stories, hold space for your personal needs and free-flow of wild birthy feelings. Activities often include the creative preparation of talismans and gifts intended to assist you before and during birth. Blessing ways serve to love you exactly where you are. There is not much of a focus on baby products or fundraising. Blessing ways can help access what you actually want/need/desire for your birth and new baby experience while creating an opportunity to ask for assistance ahead of time. A blessing way is a big prayer for you and baby, with nourishing snacks and beverages.
Frozen food parties
It’s probably a good time to ask yourself what you really enjoy eating, what foods comfort and nourish YOU. Then, ask your friends and family to come over and make them, for you, and put those meals in your freezer. This is an incredible personal investment that your body’s future needs will definitely thank you for.
A deep clean and purge of your home before a single baby purchase happens
This can also be in the form of a party. Often when my anxieties prompt me to gather, I take a step back and purge first, while there’s still time (dun, dun, dun… just kidding… no, really). Steep yourself in the experience of your home space as it is now. Then imagine how you would like your new parenting experience to feel. I found a very open loft space in the woods with lots of light. I decorated with hand-painted silks from artisan friends. I found an enormous hand-tied wool carpet (second-hand from an estate) that invites me to spend more time on the floor. Plants grow everywhere. This was a start for me. I have minimal furniture to appease my desire for a sense of openness and natural movement. I scaled back, a lot, before I added any new baby stuff. I also cleaned. With wonderful smelling essential oils that reduce anxiety. I waited, to hear what I needed next. I added nothing until I felt a very clear prompt. I also fashioned a mixed CD of the music that made me feel like planet earth is a wonderful place to be. Then I sat in the space, listening, imagining baby’s arrival. This somehow assisted a smooth transition from baby in-body to baby in-arms. We still like to listen to it.
Massages for YOU while learning how to massage infants
During my first pregnancy, I just so happened to live near a massage school that gave free massages to pregnant women. Glorious. So glorious feeling that often, shortly afterward, I would life model at an art school to capture a gestural wisp of how AMAZING I FELT. And students didn’t have many opportunities to draw super preggo figures. I also picked up a gently used copy of the book, Infant Massage by Vimala Schneider Mcclure. This book helped me enter a soothing imagined experience of new parenthood and later became quite ragged as my new infant glistened with jojoba oil.
Booking ample time off for after baby arrives. Book support of loved ones as well.
Although I did book a lengthy, commitment-free postpartum retreat for my first child, I must admit, I failed to book ample social/family physical support. In fact, I didn’t ask for it at all. For some reason, I took on a very rugged, independent homesteading persona/approach to my baby-moon. I’m not doing that again this time around. Sign me up for pampering from my beloved. Love up my four year old daughter who will definitely need extra support during her own monumental life shift. Grandma, Grandpa, Apu, sweet besties, I call out for your support and thank you in advance. These are my cleaning and cooking and taking small children out for long hike elves and angels. Priceless. So grateful already.
So here I am, still greasy bellied, preparing for baby. I’ll let you in on a little insight that does bring me comfort: I cannot be “ready” for birth, or parenting. A huge wave of anxiety dissipates when I embrace this fact. This is cosmic, uncontrollable, unpredictable territory folks. Birth will come. I will surrender. I will parent. I’m still surrendering. I am listening. What I have and what I am is enough. My needs do feel met. And because I’m willing to feel, I know I am able attune to my own shape-shifting needs as I go along, attuning to my baby’s needs. Quite the dance.
Oh also, there is an electric device that warms baby bum towels that I just might pick up and give a whirl the next time I visit the big city. I just can’t seem to resist. Product review to eventually follow.
I got this.
And so do you.
Call For Submissions: Brand New Queer Mamas
feature image via shutterstock
We’re growing up a lot around here and we want desperately for this site to grow up with us. In fact, Laneia and Riese have made this their #1 priority for 2015 — to get more stuff on this site geared towards gay ladies in their thirties, like them!
First up? We’re looking for a columnist in a same-sex relationship who is either currently pregnant with their first baby, or who has recently (within the last few years) birthed a brand new human into this glorious world and would like to write ~1,500-2,500 words about it every other week or so. Basically you’ll be talking about the joys, trials and tribulations of becoming/being pregnant, getting ready for a baby, and being a new mom. We’ll want some of this to be about the period of time immediately after your human burst onto this planet, but that can be done in retrospect if it’s been a year or two since that time.
To apply, send an email to riese [at] autostraddle [dot] com and laneia [at] autostraddle [dot] com with:
- YOUR MOM in the subject line.
- A brief cover letter that tells us who you are, your writing experience and the kinds of things you imagine you could write about in this column.
- Either a draft of what would be your first column (preferred, but we realize you’re probably very busy and might not be able to pull this off for an application) or links to examples of your writing online that will give us an idea of your writing style.
- If you have a clever title idea, we’re all ears.
Please do not send us any word documents!
The main thing we’re looking for is a witty and intelligent writing voice and somebody we can count on to meet deadlines. Payment is $50/post. Deadline is Monday February 9th!
While you’re all here, we’re also interested in hearing from adoptive parents, single moms, step-parents, and parents whose babies aren’t really babies anymore! And we’ve had multiple requests for a story about sex after childbirth. If you can speak to any of these things, please hit up our submissions page!
Also, if you’re in your thirties and have requests for the types of stories you’d like to see, let us know in the comments!
Adventures in Baby Making as a Single Black Lesbian
feature image via shutterstock
They say parenthood is full of surprises. They say it changes you in ways you’d never expect. They neglected to mention, however, that the path to parenthood itself can also change you and is full of surprises as well. I never thought I’d be trying to get pregnant. If you had told fifteen-year-old me that I would not only allow sperm inside me but that I would also pay thousands of dollars for said sperm, I’d have laughed you off the face of the planet. One, I have a very visceral negative reaction to even the idea of semen. And two, while I find pregnancy fascinating and beautiful, the idea of tiny fingers caressing my ribs from the inside freaks me out.
So how is it that I’ve found myself setting aside a couple of hundred dollars each month for the purpose of buying sperm and hopefully getting pregnant? A weird synergy between my identities and realities — a mix of being poor, having anxiety, being a queer person of color, and society’s biases against my identities — lead me to my current baby making path.
Whether or not I’d become a parent was never a question for me. I knew that I would be a parent as instinctively as I knew that I loved girls. I can’t recall a time when I wasn’t aware that I wanted a kid or that I was enamored with girls. It was my relationship with my own mother that inspired me to become a parent. My mother and I were always very emotionally close, I’ve always been able to talk about pretty much anything with her without fear of being judged and she has always been willing to hear me out when my desires conflicted with her parenting decisions. We’ve also always been physically close, lots of snuggling, lazy back rubs, and tickle fights. I’ve always known that I wanted to share a similar kind of relationship with a child of my own someday.
My discomfort with pregnancy meant that I always assumed I’d become a mom through adoption. My own anxieties and assumptions about spending years with a child and growing to love them only to have them returned to their birth parents led me to believe that fostering to adopt would probably not be the best path for me. I then favored international adoption because the process was much more streamlined than domestic and once you were matched with a child you almost always ended up going home with that child. Being poor or, more politely, working class meant that international adoption was not financially feasible for me since the average cost of adoption is higher than my annual salary. I thought that perhaps domestic adoption might be where I’d settle in but when I read up on the process I had to come to terms with the reality that, even when using a black-focused agency, living in a homophobic and couple-oriented society meant that I was less likely to be chosen quickly by birth parents. The line most adoption agencies give is that birth parents typically choose two parent families over single parent families and heterosexual families before queer ones. As a single black lesbian it was not out of the realm of possibility that I would be chosen, but the wait to be chosen was almost guaranteed to be longer.
Buying sperm and getting pregnant started to seem like a better path for me as a queer black woman. I didn’t need anyone’s approval to get pregnant. As long as I had the money for the sperm the sperm bank would sell it to me.
My reaction to the idea of semen
Via youtube.com
The first step was selecting a sperm bank. The sperm bank I chose was selected because of their large database of donors, their reviews, and the fact that they openly helped singles and LGBT would-be parents. Though, as is unfortunately typical, I noticed the cis normative practice of using the term “woman” and she/her pronouns at times to describe the person getting pregnant which ignores the reality that not everyone who gets pregnant identifies as a woman. The next step, selecting a donor, is where race became a factor in my parenthood journey again.
Among the many search criteria one could use in a donor search, from educational degrees to blood type, there was race. Initially when I started my donor search my only “must haves” were that the donor be agnostic/atheist (I felt we should agree on that fundamental world view at least) and that the donor be “open,” meaning that they were willing to be contacted by the child after age 18. I felt that my child should have, at least, the option of contacting their sperm donor if they felt the need. Having been, essentially, abandoned by my father as a child I knew what it was like to have certain curiosities about the person who contributed to half your genetic makeup but to have no way of getting answers and I didn’t want that for them. I also felt that, for me, having an open donor elicited none of the anxiety that fostering to adopt did. With fostering to adopt it could be two years before the adoption is finalized, during which time the birth parents could possibly regain custody; that’s too much uncertainty for too long. With an open donor neither the child nor the donor have any identifying information from one another until the child turns 18, and that would be only if the child chose to seek the donor out; that risk of getting to love the child only to lose them was basically not there in that situation.
Around that time I cut off all my chemically straightened hair, went natural, and begun working on undoing the damage that living in a white supremacist society had done to my self-image as a black woman. If I’m being fully honest, before I started reconnecting with myself as a black person, I didn’t want my donor to be black. The donor could be a light skinned PoC or white but not black. I figured that if my child were mixed they may end up with lighter skin and eyes which might confer a bit of light skin privilege to combat the disadvantages to being born to a brown skinned black queer woman. Plus, I thought that they would probably be prettier than they otherwise would be if they were fully black. I told you guys I had internalized some shit.
Cutting my hair had been the first step in shedding anti-black thoughts. Even though I hated going to the salon and hated the chemical burns I occasionally got on my scalp from relaxers, I had been hesitant on going natural. But why? I knew something had to be up in my brain because there was a lot of resistance to a seemingly simple solution. Why would I hesitate to avoid the long waits at the salon, the chatty hair technician who always talked about the men I’d attract with my new ‘do (no thanks), and save some money in the process? It took some time but I begrudgingly admitted to myself that I worried that my natural hair would be rough and nappy, that having such hair would make me unattractive to potential partners. I had been getting relaxers since I was ten and couldn’t remember what my natural texture was like, except that people always said that it was very thick. Once I realized that I had internalized such poisonous thoughts, I immediately vowed to turn my skeptical gaze on myself and to name and recognize any other internalized racism, and purge it from my being.
I started this process with Tumblr. I made a profile and only followed pages that made me happy (like cute babies of any species) or that spoke the truth (like critiquing power structures). If I reblogged an image it was only of lovely people of color, especially black women, that made me feel proud of my brown skin and kinky hair texture. Having black beauty normalized and reaffirmed like that bolstered my self-esteem as a brown black woman. To my surprise, my newfound appreciation for myself and my community quickly spread into making my blackness a central part of my identity, which included making black issues something I devote myself to as an activist. Along the way to self acceptance I realized that I had changed my mind about my donor. They needed to be at least a person of color, if not black. So now I had three criteria instead of two: the donor needed to be a PoC (preferably black), atheist/agnostic, and open. I started my search.
Seriously though, how could I have been biased against this adorableness?
Via pocinqueery.tumblr.com
I decided to start with race because I figured it would give me the biggest pool to start with which could be narrowed down with my other criteria. Imagine my surprise when the number of donors available dropped from 507 (the full list) to 12 when I searched for black donors. Only 12 donors on the whole list of 507 were black. Adding the “open” criteria brought the number down from 12 to 5. I knew that such a small pool of options would not work for me, so I would have to open up from only black donors to PoC donors. But, for curiosity’s sake, I added my last criteria of “agnostic” before giving up. I ended with 2 possible donors. That experience did make me wonder why the number of black donors was not more proportional to the general population.
After reading up on sperm donor qualifications and experiences I realized that the donation process itself may decrease feasibility for black donors to complete the process. Donors have to be able to make it to the bank at least once a week for six months to a year to deposit contributions, they have to abstain from ejaculating for three days before contribution days, and with some banks they are not paid until the end of the contract. Black populations are disproportionately affected by poverty and it seems obvious that poor folks might have difficulty securing weekly transportation to make it to the bank. Poor people would have a tough time making it to the bank when they’re open (bank hours are generally 9-5) without having to take off work. The fact that some donors are also only paid at the end of their six month to a year contract might also discourage donors to dedicate so much time and effort to the process when the payoff is so far away. Not being paid during the process might actually make it harder to see the process through until the end. I understood that the process was put in place to protect the health of the recipients and guarantee that the product would be up to appropriate standards but the rigors of the process meant that black donors, who were disproportionately likely to be affected by poverty, were more likely to be unable to meet the process requirements. It also meant that recipients of color often had fewer options if they wanted donors of their own race or ethnicity.
Widening my search to all open PoC agnostic donors gave me a much more manageable donor pool of 37. I looked for donors who seemed like people I’d be friends with in real life. They needed to seem queer friendly, anti-racist, and should not show signs of having a savior complex. They got bonus points for being explicitly feminist or pro-social justice. Anyone who seemed into critical thinking and skepticism also earned bonus points. I ended up jiving with five donors and decided to make my first financial investment. I purchased the childhood photos for the five donors so that I could see what they looked like (my bank does not include any photos in the free donor profile). Eventually I decided on a biracial lawyer who works with people who are treated unfairly, encourages his future offspring to question everything, and values his family very much. He’s quite the cutie! (for a guy.)
The sperm for my donor used to cost just over $700 per vial when I first picked him (recently the price rose to just over $800) and because I’m poor I knew I’d have to start saving immediately in order to be able to afford a few vials. I had already decided that it was in my best interest to buy at least five vials of sperm whenever I was ready to make the purchase. For one, it was more economical. If you bought five vials then the bank would give you a year of free storage. For two, I wanted to secure a small stock pile in case I didn’t get pregnant the first couple of tries. I set my savings goal at, at least, $100 per paycheck. Sometimes though if big unexpected expenses came up I missed my goal because I don’t make enough to absorb unexpected expenses *and* save a decent chunk of my check.
not my actual savings…my money storage device is not nearly that cool
Via lifeyourway.net
While doing research on other people’s experiences with sperm donation I read in a book, Knock Yourself Up, that if you couldn’t afford to buy one vial of sperm per month and pay the doctor’s office fees for insemination, that you couldn’t afford a baby. It gave me pause and made me wonder if I was too poor to have a kid. I wondered if I should wait. Then I realized that people who made less than me made it work so I probably could as well. If I waited until I felt certain that I made enough money I might never have a child. I had already done the work of securing a support system of people willing to help me and researched what kind of social support services I could turn to if the need arose. It would have to be enough. The idea that if one didn’t have $800-900 of disposable income per month they shouldn’t have kids is classist as hell anyway so fuck that noise.
I’m skeptical of your classism
Actually, besides that one quote claiming one couldn’t afford kids without hella extra income, Knock Yourself Up was one of the better books on baby making while single. As I went in search of books that were relevant to my journey, books for singles using sperm donors, books about black experiences in pregnancy, and books on queer pregnancy, I found myself mostly disappointed by what I found. Besides the fact that it was hard to find books on those topics, especially books that were recently written, I found myself annoyed at the lack of intersectionality (thank you Kimberlé Crenshaw for coining such an excellent term). The books I found that addressed my needs as a black woman (talking about the racialized differences in treatment by care providers, unique pregnancy risks, and poorer maternal and fetal outcomes) were generally heteronormative. The books for single sperm recipients were more queer friendly generally but sometimes were a bit classist or racially biased. Queer-specific books often assumed readers were coupled and also were racially biased. Actually, unless it was a book specifically about PoC, all of the books had a bit of racial bias. Even seemingly small things, like the fact that the people on the cover are always white and very few of the families featured within the book were families of color, contributed to the sense of exclusion from the pregnancy and childbirth conversation. Carrie Murphy of the Mommyish blog has a really good article about this. Despite some difficulties, I did end up building a small stack of pregnancy and parenting books that were very inclusive and made me feel good about all the aspects of myself. I’ve also got a few more to look into.
So this is the journey that led to me saving hundreds of dollars each month in the hopes of someday getting pregnant despite being squicked out by some aspects of pregnancy. I never thought this would be the path I’d chose for parenthood but amazingly I do think it’s the best fit for me, even if it wasn’t my first choice. I don’t need to appeal to white hetero folks in order to become a parent through pregnancy. Even though it’s hard to find resources that are inclusive enough to cover most aspects of my identity, those resources do exist whereas finding books on adoption written by PoC was basically impossible. Some days my anxiety makes me worry about whether I can financially weather having a kid and whether I’m capable of properly shoring up my kid from the racism and homophobia they’ll experience simply from being born into a black queer led family. Generally I’m optimistic, though; you have to be strong to survive in a society that’s not only not built for you but that actively disadvantages you at every turn, and I’ve survived this far. So maybe my pregnancy path isn’t as simple and straightforward as baby books would have you believe it should be because I’m a poor QPoC with anxiety, but it has been an interesting worthwhile journey so far. I can’t wait until I can take the next step. Just another year or so of saving money then I can buy my sperm and start in on trying to conceive.
Future goals.
Via tumblr.com
Butchbaby & Co. Brings Maternity Wear Out of the Women’s Section
Feature image via Gajus/Shutterstock
To me, maternity wear has always been the light blue, gauzy polyester dress with the faux lace collar that my mother wore to her baby shower before my sister was born. She looked beautiful in it, but it was such a particular style: pretty, delicate, feminine feminine feminine. And while that style works well for the femmes of the world, it leaves out a huge number of people who have just as much interest in pregnancy, style and comfort.
So thank the universe for Butchbaby & Co., a new clothing company by Vanessa Newman and Michelle Janayea, and their upcoming seven-piece maternity line for androgynous and masculine-identified parents-to-be. Vanessa got the idea in college, when she and her best friend were daydreaming the rest of their lives and realized some things: They both wanted to carry children, and neither had ever seen the clothing they pictured wearing while doing it. The standard options of scoop-neck tees, loose, flowy tunics and maxi dresses whispering gently of femininity didn’t appeal to their butch tastes. So Vanessa decided to make her own. She teamed up with designer Michelle, and Butchbaby was born.
Vanessa and Michelle
via Butchbaby & Co.
The pair has already produced some prototypes, and they’re planning a crowdfunding campaign for next fall. By winter 2015, you’ll be able to pick up the pieces they’ve designed so far:
- T-shirt
- Oxford button-up
- Flannel button-up
- Pullover sweater
- Signature jogger pants and jacket
- Boxer brief underwear
- Pregnancy bra
There aren’t any prototype images out yet, but I can’t wait to see them. For email updates on their progress, subscribe here, or follow the company on Twitter.
Well… what can we say, we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re working on making some great androgynous maternity wear for you! #FirstTweet
— Butchbaby & Co. (@butchbabyco) December 6, 2014
“This Is A Book For The Parents Of Gay Kids”: A Coming Out Conversation with Bruce and Phyllis
This Is A Book For The Parents of Gay Kids is “A Question and Answer Guide for Everyday Life” by Autostraddle friends and all-around superheroes Dannielle Owens-Reid and Kristin Russo. The book came out of a need for parents that they saw in their work at Everyone Is Gay, where they provide advice and promote conversation among LGBTQ youth.
“LGBTQ youth across the world were itching for a place to ask questions… soon we began to receive questions… not only from kids, but also from their parents, teachers, community members, aunts, boyfriends and others.”
The book covers a lot of ground related to sexual orientation and things parents might have to negotiate in relation to their kids’ lives: first reactions, community reactions, religion, sleepovers, sex, health and concerns about their kids’ safety and futures. There’s straight-up advice, peppered with anecdotes from kids and parents, and from Kristin and Dannielle’s own lives. The book touches on gender identity, but that’s not the book’s focus, and so while I wouldn’t disregard it as a resource for the parents of trans or gender non-conforming kids, it probably wouldn’t be the first thing I’d recommend.
The book is carefully done, gently meeting parents where they’re at, and providing them or prodding them towards the resources they need to go further. The question and answer format sometimes reads like a choose-your-own-adventure situation for parents who are trying to figure out what they need to be doing or not doing, based on their particular circumstances. (There’s even a flow-chart to help parents figure out when/if they should tell other people about their kid’s sexual orientation.) I was especially impressed with Dannielle and Kristin’s navigation of language while answering questions from the perspective of parents who react to their kids’ sexual orientation with more hesitation or resistance. The book is at once empathetic and firm, acknowledging and validating how deeply rooted these feelings can be, while also challenging them and offering alternative perspectives.
The book also always encourages dialogue between parents and kids, which brings us to the next thing:
I emailed my dad, Bruce, and my grandma (his mom), Phyllis, both Autostraddle readers and recent comment award winners, and asked if they’d like to have a three-generational conversation inspired by the book. They agreed, and so we all read it and converged on my dad’s house to discuss. This is a book that speaks to families from a diverse range of experiences. Not every section will be applicable or relevant to every family, and so our conversation springs from a few passages that resonated with the three of us.
M: So, what did you think of the book?
Phyllis: I felt like book’s main theme was for parents and families to be supportive.
Bruce: I think it’s a lot of common sense things you should do if you’re decent and reasonable. But I think it’s interesting to see other parents’ perspectives. It’s kind of mind-boggling to think that one parent’s reaction is to think their child is going to hell, or how do I tell my friends or co-workers? And I guess a lot of things would be different if we’d been in a different community. I didn’t worry about you in school, and that could have been a huge concern. The “Is this just a phase?” question was something that resonated. And also, “Am I allowed to ask questions?” That’s something that comes up sometimes. I don’t feel like I need a lot of help or guidance in dealing with these other issues that are addressed in the book.
M: I think the book is a helpful conversation starter, particularly regarding the earlier years when I was coming out. What sort of things do you all remember about my coming out?
Bruce: One of the things that really resonated was in the chapter on first reactions. And I know you’ve mentioned a couple of times over the years that your mother’s and my first reaction was, “Are you sure?” which I think is a pretty normal reaction. Because you were pretty young. And there’s one of these little blurbs, under Chapter 2: “I think this is just a phase.” And you were at an age where we didn’t think of you as having any kind of sexuality.
Phyllis: How old was she?
[at the same time, Bruce says, “sixth grade” and Maddie says, “sixteen”]
M: What? No, no, not sixth grade. Fifteen, I think.
Bruce: You were younger than fifteen, weren’t you?
M: Well, what’s your memory of me coming out to you?
Bruce: My memory is that you were still in middle school.
Phyllis: Bruce, you told me sixth grade.
Bruce: I thought you were pretty young.
M: I did not come out to you in sixth grade.
Bruce: Fifteen, really?
M: What I remember is that I told you and mom when I came out to my friend C*, which I had been nervous about. I assumed that you knew or had deduced, but you two were like, “Came out as what??”
Bruce: No we certainly hadn’t deduced anything. And it’s not one of those moments that’s blazoned into my memory. Because what I remember is that you hadn’t talked about any relationships and we hadn’t seen any. And part of it was that in high school, or whenever, you didn’t really fit in very well, socially, in your community, and so one thought we had was that maybe this was something you were doing to establish an identity or something like that. And maybe a way to rebel against those conservative friends you had. But it wasn’t really something that we dwelled on.
M: Grandma, do you remember me coming out to you?
Phyllis: Oh, vividly!
[everyone laughs]
Phyllis: That was because it was such a total shock to me. For me, the whole thing has been sort of an education, because I was really, I guess, quite naive. I remember your room being filled with dolls, and I thought, “That’s the most feminine thing in the whole world!”
M: I also remember it vividly.
Phyllis: My major reaction was I didn’t want to upset you by letting you see how shocked I was, so I was telling myself, “Please — be cool!”
Bruce: I do remember me telling you, Maddie, “You tell Grandma.”
Phyllis: Because I remember asking you, Bruce, “Where are the boyfriends?” And you didn’t really say very much, and the next time you [Maddie] were at my house, that’s when you told me.
M: I remember you saying to me that it never occurred to you that I’d be gay, because I’d always loved dolls and that was so feminine to you.
Phyllis: Yes, right, it never would have occurred to me. So I’m very happy to read all these books.
M: What else came up for you when you were reading it?
Phyllis: Well, I think when you first told me, I somehow didn’t feel free enough to ask you questions, and I don’t know why. When did you become aware you were gay, Maddie? That’s a question I didn’t think I could ask when you came out. That would have occurred to me then, but maybe I was afraid, because I was so surprised, of not seeming accepting. So maybe I was more careful than I should have been.
M: The first gay thoughts I remember having were in sixth grade — which is how I know it wasn’t in sixth grade that I came out to you and Mom, Dad. But I came out to the first people on my fifteenth birthday.
Bruce: Who’d you come out to first?
M: L and A.
Bruce: Oh.
M: But I think, I remember C at some point in 8th grade, talking about how if she knew any gay people that she’d definitely disown them.
Phyllis: And at that time you were suspicious that you…
M: It wasn’t even really suspicion. I walked away from that conversation — and I remember this so vividly, walking up a ramp to leave the middle school cafeteria — and I knew that it hurt me in a way that was more than just my feeling indignant. And then I went to camp and was sort of delighted to learn about the counselors who were gay. And then I met my high school friends. And lots of my high school friends were identifying as not-straight in the early days of high school, though I can’t speak for how they identify now.
Phyllis: So how old were you then?
M: Fourteen. Those first couple years of high school were significant years.
Phyllis: And that’s when you talked to Mom and Dad?
M: Yeah, I mean I just really thought you guys knew in some way or another.
Bruce: No. We hadn’t even talked about that.
M: It was when G and I were being… intense pen-pals. It was definitely a romantic relationship, but it went pretty undefined for a long time. Dad, did you think anything of the question in the book about what to do when kids want to have sleepovers? Because I remember Mom being sort of unsure of what to do about that, especially it had been established that G was my girlfriend and she was coming to visit.
Bruce: I don’t think we did anything, did we?
M: No.
Bruce: It wasn’t something I was too worried about.
M: I remember telling Mom she really didn’t have to be worried about anything happening — and nothing did.
Bruce: So if you were fifteen, you came out a year before Mom died?
M: Like six months.
Bruce: Really? My chronology is all messed up.
Phyllis: Was she shocked?
M: No!
Bruce: We had the exact same reaction.
M: Yes, the two of you had collectively the exact same reaction.
Bruce: We were a little surprised and kinda thought it could be a phase, and that she was flocking.
M: Yeah, I remember being mad about that.
Bruce: Yeah, I know.
Phyllis: You were mad?
M: Yeah!
Bruce [to Phyllis]: We weren’t taking Maddie seriously.
M: No, you weren’t.
Bruce: I understand! But it’s interesting, I didn’t realize you had a whole group.
M: Oh yeah. It was a whole group. Did you ever think about like, beyond the obvious immediate people in the family, how to tell people about my sexual orientation, like with your co-workers, Dad? Especially while I was a student at our school, when you were teaching there. Did things come up with that?
Bruce: I haven’t had a negative reaction from anyone. It sometimes came up at school, like when another teacher wanted to set you up with her son. It was interesting to think about how you’d phrase it. Do I say, “Maddie’s gay?” It sometimes sounds kind of odd, and the other person doesn’t always know what to say.
M: What about you and your friends, Grandma?
Phyllis: Well I had you at school, giving a lecture on gender and sexual orientation. People came and said very nice things to me about you and your talk, but also, remember, this is New York in Greenwich Village.
M: Yeah, I mean, Grandma, I remember saying this to your class — the time and place when I have grown into my queer identity has been probably the best time and place for anyone, anywhere ever. Raised by raging liberals in the New York Metropolitan Area, sent off to Vassar.
Phyllis: It’s seemed that you were happier every year at Vassar.
M: Yeah, I mean I think the book is directed at families that are having a harder time than we’ve had, but there are definitely things in our lives that I thought were relevant. There are certainly things I would point to that I don’t think my family handled precisely right, as probably anyone would do. But 97% of the time, I’ve felt so supported and embraced. The most interesting and challenging part to me has been wanting to push further and bring all of you also into the queer parts of my life that are more about politics than who I date. I also want you all to feel as comfortable with my friends who are queer and trans as you are around me.
Bruce: Bring them over for Thanksgiving!
Phyllis: Well I feel like you bloomed since you found the gay community. Do you think so?
M: Yeah! And I love that I can share everything I’ve written on AS and that you comment on my articles and win comment awards. That’s really important to me.
Phyllis: I want an Autostraddle Comment Award Winner Button.
M: We should arrange that.
Bruce: Honestly, trans and gender issues aren’t something that I know much about, and when I’ve asked you, you were not the best teacher about that. You kind of lectured me, and sometimes I say things wrong, and it’s really not something I’m that comfortable talking about with you. It’s not fun to talk to you about that stuff, and it’s also not something I’m hugely interested in. I’m much more interested in what your friends do rather than how they define their identity. I’m perfectly interested in talking to them and listening to what they do, but I don’t think talking to them about identity is something that would be considered appropriate, so where do you go with that?
M: You’re right that it’s not appropriate to bring that up, and it’s something I’ve been trying really hard to negotiate myself, because I take the way I talk about gender and gender identity seriously. I feel, as someone who isn’t trans, in a family that’s been totally accepting of everything about me, that I want to bring you guys in and teach you about gender-related issues and be able to refer to my friends who are trans as they want to be referred to.
Bruce: So you’re talking about pronouns and stuff?
M: Yeah, and something that is hard for me to do, and that I have tried to do, with varying success, I guess, is to both respect them and their life and be consistent in how I would act around and treat them in our community, while also trying to increase my family’s awareness and be patient as you all learn.
Phyllis: Do you have close trans friends?
M: Yes.
Bruce: Like I said, that’s not what I want to spend my time on. We can talk about politics or whatever, but identity isn’t really what interests me. I’ll call them whatever they want. It seems like sometimes there are questions that are off-limits, so it makes people uncomfortable because they don’t want to do the wrong thing, because there’s a whole new set of social norms that people aren’t ready for. Sometimes it’s stressful.
M: Well I think it’s also stressful on the other side, to be in a setting where they don’t know how they’re going to be received. And also, it hasn’t always gone smoothly when I’ve tried to have our family refer to my friends how they want to be referred to. Like with my friend, S. When I would try to sort of quickly clarify that S’s pronouns were they and them, suddenly the conversation would shift to questions about what pronouns and name S went by before. I understand that as a matter of curiosity, but it makes it hard that if I want to be talking about S as a person, it becomes a conversation about gender when I refer to them with their correct pronouns.
I don’t want to refer to my friends incorrectly just to avoid having a mildly tense or uncomfortable conversation in which you learn something new about gender. And I also don’t want to exclude you from knowing about important parts of my life if they happen to involve people who do gender differently than you’ve seen before.
Phyllis: See English is such a tough language. I worked for a doctor in genetics, and in his first language, they didn’t have gendered pronouns, so the doctor would be examining babies and would always use the wrong pronouns, so the baby would be laying there naked, and the parents would be horrified. You realize when something like that happens, how powerful those pronouns are.
Bruce: Yeah, it creates a shock.
M: Yes, I mean it’s true, that it’s really embedded in the way we approach the world. “They” pronouns are something I work on constantly, because I need to make it part of my natural vocabulary. Everyone needs to work on extracting all the ways that gender is embedded in the way we see the world. I mess up. I think everyone does.
Bruce: Maybe we should read another book next.
M: Yeah, a regular book club with Bruce and Phyllis. Thanks for having this conversation!
Bruce: You’re welcome.
*All people mentioned in this conversation are referred to by letters which are not their first initials.
**This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
You can buy the book or catch Dannielle and Kristin on tour before the end of the year.
Hauntings and Banishings: Loss and Rage for a Queer Adoptee
feature image via shutterstock.com
I attended a craft lecture entitled “Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Woolf: The Marriage of Life and Art” at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. The lecture was given by Margot Livesy, a Scottish fiction writer whose six books include Banishing Verona, The House on Fortune Street, and Criminals, to name a few. While her lecture focused on braiding together the complex narratives of Woolf’s novels with Woolf’s personal life, I was most struck by her description of what she called Virginia’s “hauntings and banishings” — which refers, in part, to the sensation of writing a personal narrative out of a personal history. “Virginia Woolf,” she said from her perch at the podium, “felt a great sense of relief when she finished writing To the Lighthouse, having mourned her mother’s death from the ages of 13 to 44, and having completed a story based on what she remembered of her mother, suddenly found the hauntings of her quite inexplicably gone.” Woolf, as far as she has been portrayed after her death, struggled with mourning the death of her mother for nearly all of her short life. This is due, in large part, to her father’s insistence that the family not mourn the passing, and that they instead continue as if nothing transpired at all.
The inability to discuss and mourn her mother played a significant role in Virginia Woolf’s writing, as well as her notorious mental breakdowns and sense of self and place in the world. In a letter to a friend, Woolf described this uneasiness “as if I were exposed on a high ledge in full light. Very lonely. L (Leonard Woolf, Virginia’s husband) out to lunch.. No atmosphere around me. No words. Very apprehensive. As if something cold & horrible – a roar of laughter at my expense were about to happen. And I am powerless to ward it off: I have no protection.” (Lee, pg. 187) In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa “always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
Listen. Despite the fact that I have been at this creative writing conference in a kind of strange time warp for the last ten plus days, I am not trying to turn this into an undergraduate thesis on unease in modernist thinking/writing. However, the lecture on Virginia Woolf was also presented to me at the same time that Riese’s amazing article on loss was being circulated around (even by Cheryl Strayed! Ahh!!!). So, coupled with the nearly 25th year anniversary of my own mother’s death, I’ve had loss and belonging on the brain. Though my own story is different from the two brilliant babes I just mentioned, it got me spinning my wheels about what belonging and loss mean to a sense of identity, particularly in the queer community, where a sense of belonging and origin is so fragmented and complicated and even, for some, rooted in intense trauma depending on how/when/why/if we come out. Whether or not you are out in the world, being queer and belonging to a community of marginalized folks (even if it’s a community you only align with in a spiritual or distanced way) has its own problems with feelings of enoughness and the disenfranchisement or everyday trauma of living with an identity that is consistently questioned or belittled. To say nothing, of course, of how queerness intersects with race, class, ability, gender identity, etc.
But what about how identity interacts with having a dead parent? Woolf was a cisgendered, educated white woman who has been re-appropriated into the “queer canon” of literature, and even in the comfort of her relative privileges, the loss of her mother (and reaction of her father to that loss) was enough to un-self her for the majority of her short life. With the information, how does this show up in my own story, having two dead parents and an adoption narrative? How does queer identity make more difficult feelings of belonging, and how does it seek to repair it? On a more basic level, what resources are even available to adoptees, and is there a community to speak of where one can find themselves reflected in others who share similar stories of origin? These questions, of course, have basis in my own history. I lost both of my parents before the age of five and bounced around the Arizona state housing system until I finally moved to California to live with my maternal aunt. I was adopted by her when I was eight, in 1994.
These were also the questions that I was asking myself in 2010 when I stumbled across a blog called Bitch, You Left Me which was started in 2010 by queer writers Liz Latty* and Mariama Lockington, who saw a lack of representation and community in adoption narratives. The two connected at a reception for a literary reading that was part of the AFAAD, or Adopted and Fostered Adults of the African Diaspora Conference in Oakland, CA.
Bitch, You Left Me is “a collaborative effort between adoptees to create a space where we are ‘allowed’ to explore our rage in an environment where we will not be chastised for being ungrateful or fucked up for being really pissed off about our experiences as adoptees. We are interested in building community and healing through creative expression, transforming our fear of attachment into action, and reclaiming our authentic voices, the ones that have been silenced by the fear of losing family and home.” The name comes from the lack of representation of anger and rage in adoptee communities. “We were most troubled by our own feelings of anger and where to put them since adoptees are usually never given space or permission to explore those particular feelings. Seeing that anger reflected back to us in an adoptee-only space (the reading) that was a safe container really struck a chord with us,” Latty said of the project’s title. When I reached out to her to ask her about queer adoptee identity and the origins of BYLM, she responded with this:
“It really did feel like a new reality, an atmospheric shift. I think that adoption so often happens in forced isolation — either because of closed adoptions and old school thinking about disclosure, or adoptive families don’t have or don’t try to create community for their kids around this experience. You know, sometimes parents want so desperately to pretend we are their bio kids, or that we’re just like every other family and generally not call attention to the whole ‘one of these things is not like the other’ situation, that we’re forced into wearing this thing in isolation. And besides feeling like you inherently don’t belong where you are is just isolating in some ways even if your family does have adoption community or if you have adopted siblings.”
Latty has an excellent point. Depending on the specific situation, adoption tends to happen away from the public eye, on the complicated precipice of trying to merge backgrounds and people into a streamlined family. In the most general sense (which assumes that an adoption is relatively ‘straight-forward’, or occurs while the child is young, by strangers, is an amicable arrangement, etc), adoption attempts to bridge the gaps between families and individuals utilizing a(n arguably deficient) model of nuclearness that has little give and elasticity for accommodating differentness. Add any one of many other factors (transracial adoption, adoption of older children, international adoption, adoption with unclear boundaries, adoption of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, adoption of queer or trans children, etc), and the stakes of belonging and integrating get even higher.
What’s interesting about the point that Latty makes is one of public versus private: if adoption (generally) happens in insolation, and queerness (generally) happens in the public eye (assuming, of course, that the adoptee in question is out), then how do we merge the two potentially conflicting identities in a way that holds up and makes space for all of their complications? The closet is particularly complicated for adoptees, who have much at stake when considering being open about something that has historically incurred rejection, compounding the initial trauma in particularly traumatic ways. Many adoptees feel as though coming out as queer is a risk that could lead to further alienation and abandonment by their families.
Latty continues:
“I honestly felt like I grew up not knowing anyone else who was adopted. There was no one to talk to about it or reflect my experience back to me. I felt very, very alone in the world. It wasn’t until I was almost 30 that I sat in this room full of adoptees at the AFAAD reading and heard this deluge of words that I now understand, in part, as is the language we (adoptees) use to talk about ourselves and our experiences to each other. When it’s safe. When there’s no one around we have to protect or stroke. It was fucking mind blowing. Does this have anything to do with queerness? I’m not sure where all the intersections lie, but and I’m really interested in that investigation.”
When Bitch, You Left Me first came across my table in 2010, I was eager to submit and was thrilled when one of my poems was chosen for publication. When Latty sent me the proofs of the poem, along with a copy of my bio, I saw that she had listed me as “July Westhale is an adoptee living out of Oakland, California … .” Horrified, I emailed her immediately and asked her to remove the identifier from the page. I didn’t identify as an adoptee. I didn’t know anyone else who was adopted. I was taken into a family that was related to my bio fam, and so I felt more like I’d had a different experience. I wasn’t a plant in a new, foreign garden; I was a cutting transplanted into familiar pastures. Though this analogy is flawed and actually not true of my experience of my adopted family, I was nonetheless unenthused about claiming an identity that, until very recently, I hadn’t even thought of as an identity. Latty obliged, but was curious about my hesitation, and asked gentle, probing questions about my decision. Over the course of following months, we had an illuminating conversation in which I found myself much changed: I felt seen, heard, and validated in my experiences just simply having another person who mirrored back to me a common landscape.
As for how adoption relates to queerness, I recognize the problems of paralleling and making similar two such distinctive experiences and identities, particularly when the margin for differing intersections is so high. However, both identities struggle with a sense of belonging, or of lacking. Both identities struggle with how to reclaim family if and when their bio family fractures. To bring it back to the opening of this essay, Woolf was living in a time when queer women were thought of as ‘inverts’, and homosexuality (or genderqueerness to speak of) was considered to be a result of mental illness or deficiency. Considering that both identities fall into the same fault lines of family and how the individual takes up space in the world or sees themselves reflected in the world, it’s not horribly far off to believe that the two can be in conversation with each other.
*Liz Latty is the author of Split (Unthinkable Creatures Press, 2012). Her work can be found or is forthcoming in make/shift magazine, Jupiter 88, The Feminist Wire, and HOLD: A Journal, among others. She was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, as well as the Jackson, Phelan, and Tanenbaum Literary Awards from the San Francisco Foundation. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and lives in Brooklyn.
40 LGBTQ-Friendly Picture Books for Ages 0-5
To care for small humans, all you have to do is keep them fed, watered, rested and equipped with the necessary cognitive and emotional skills to process the constant onslaught of heterosexist and cissexist messaging that assaults our senses every day. No big deal, right?
I was one of those kids who inhaled books growing up — as I suspect many of you were too — but now as an adult in bookstores and libraries I’m often exasperated at the options available to my younger siblings. There’s so much I want to share with them, and it’s rarely easy to figure out how.
Adults can debate endlessly about when it’s appropriate to “expose” children to “sensitive” topics like sex and sexuality, gender expression and diversity, non-conventional methods of conception and so on, but kids don’t live in isolated bubbles — they’re right here in our complex, messy world with us. And for many of us and the kids in our lives — queer kids, kids of queer parents, kids who don’t otherwise belong to heterosexual two-parent families, kids with other queer relations — these “sensitive topics” don’t just exist in the abstract: they’re our lives! We owe it to these kids to help them make as much sense of themselves, their families and our society as possible. That’s where these LGBTQ-friendly books come in.
From personal experience, most of these titles will likely be hard to find in store. Buying them on Amazon through the affiliate links in this post will give Autostraddle a small kickback (thank you!), but if you’d rather shop local, plenty of our Queer Girl City Guides will point you to your closest queer bookstore. Try requesting them at non-specialist bookstores, too, so that other kids might find them. Don’t have small humans of your own to shop for? Queer picture books make great gifts (the shopping process is far less anxiety-inducing than trying to find suitable clothes, I promise) or your community library might have some use for them.
10,000 Dresses
Written by Marcus Ewert / Illustrated by Rex Ray
Every night, Bailey dreams about magical dresses: dresses made of crystals and rainbows, dresses made of flowers, dresses made of windows… Unfortunately, when Bailey’s awake, no one wants to hear about these beautiful dreams. Quite the contrary. “You’re a BOY!” Mother and Father tell Bailey. “You shouldn’t be thinking about dresses at all.” Then Bailey meets Laurel, an older girl who is touched and inspired by Bailey’s imagination and courage. In friendship, the two of them begin making dresses together. And Bailey’s dreams come true!
A is for Activist
Written and illustrated by Innosanto Nagara
A is for Activist is an ABC board book written and illustrated for the next generation of progressives: families who want their kids to grow up in a space that is unapologetic about activism, environmental justice, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and everything else that activists believe in and fight for.
ABC: A Family Alphabet Book
Written by Bobbie Combs / Illustrated by Brian and Desiree Rappa
Have fun with the kids, moms, dads and pets in this delightful book that celebrates LGBTQ families as it teaches young children the alphabet.
The Adventures of Tulip, Birthday Wish Fairy
Written by S. Bear Bergman / Illustrated by Suzy Malik
Tulip deals with the birthday wishes of all the nine-year-olds in North America. When a wish Tulip is unfamiliar with crosses his desk, from a child known as David who wishes to live as Daniela, he seeks the wise counsel of the Wish Fairy Captain and learns some new Wish Fairy Skills. Tulip gets in a little hot water, but ultimately his compassion and thoughtfulness win the day.
And Tango Makes Three
Written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell / Illustrated by Henry Cole
In the zoo there are all kinds of animal families. But Tango’s family is not like any of the others. This illustrated children’s book fictionalizes the true story of two male penguins who become partners and raised a penguin chick in the Central Park Zoo.
And Tango Makes Three is one of the most challenged books in the US. In a recent incident that was pretty much internationally recognised as a gross move, the book was taken off the shelves — and slated to be pulped, lest its dangerous content fall into the wrong hands — by Singapore’s National Library Board together with The White Swan Express: A Story About Adoption and Who’s In My Family: All About Our Families. Following public outrage, two of the books were later returned… to the adults’ section.
Roy and Silo aren’t the only same-sex penguin couples in the Central Park Zoo (just the most popular ones) and Tango later paired with another female penguin herself. However, the male penguins were eventually kicked out of their nest and split up, with Silo taking up with a female penguin named Scrappy and Roy joining a group of unattached males. Anti-gay crusaders would have parents tell their children the “truth” after reading this book and I wholeheartedly agree — not as a cautionary tale, but a wonderfully queer illustration of mutable sexualities and evolving relationships.
Backwards Day
Written by S. Bear Bergman / Illustrated by KD Diamond
Backwards Day, set on the planet Tenalp, introduces us to a world where there are seventeen seasons, including one where bubblegum falls from the sky for three days and a single day when everything — everything everywhere — is backwards. Andrea looks eagerly forward to Backwards Day every year, so she can turn into a boy for the day. But one year she doesn’t turn along with everyone else. She’s miserable. The very next day, however, she turns into a boy — and stays that way! He’s delighted, but his parents are distressed, and take him to the big city to consult with Backwardsologists.
Be Who You Are
Written by Jennifer Carr / Illustrated by Ben Ruhback
Based on the author’s experiences with her own children, this book traces the story of a young trans girl and her family. Born “Nick,” Hope’s family supports her when she says she no longer wants to be called a boy or dress like a boy. Her parents find a group for families like theirs.
The Boy Who Cried Fabulous
Written by Lesléa Newman / Illustrated by Peter Ferguson
The only thing Roger likes better than exploring the world around him is describing it. And Roger describes most things as fabulous! But his parents have a different view. They want Roger to see things the way they do, so they ban “fabulous” from his vocabulary. Fabulously illustrated by Peter Ferguson, this cheerful tale will have children rejoicing along with Roger at all the fabulous — no, marvelous! no, dazzling! — things that await him when he steps outside.
This book has plenty of repetition, so it’s great read out loud in class. What could be more fabulous than a group of smalls yelling “fabulous”?
Daddy’s Roommate
Written and illustrated by Michael Willhoite
This story’s narrator begins with his parent’s divorce and continues with the arrival of “someone new at Daddy’s house.” The new arrival is male. This new concept is explained to the child as “just one more kind of love.”
Reviews warn that the characterisation of the couple in this book might be a little dated, but it’s still worth looking out for as one of the first few out there (it was published in 1991) to portray a same-sex couple in a positive light.
The Different Dragon
Written by Jennifer Bryan / Illustrated by Danamarle Hosler
This bedtime story about bedtime stories shows how the wonderful curiosity and care of a little boy, with some help from one of his moms, can lead to magical and unexpected places. Join Noah and his cat, Diva, on this nighttime adventure and you too will leave with an unforgettable new dragon friend!
Everywhere Babies
Written by Susan Meyers / Illustrated by Marla Frazee
Every day, everywhere, babies are born. They’re kissed and dressed and rocked and fed — and completely adored by the families who love them. With an irresistible rhyming text and delightfully endearing illustrations, here is an exuberant celebration of playing, sleeping, crawling, and of course, very noisy babies doing all the wonderful things babies do best.
This board book has gotten considerable flak for its (very, very subtle) “homosexual depictions” of babies being — unthinkably! — cuddled by same-sex couples, so it’s safe to say you’ll probably love it. With a little luck, it might also be more easily inserted into the libraries of your more conservative relations than some of the other books on this list.
Felicia’s Favorite Story
Written by Lesléa Newman / Illustrated by Adriana Romo
It’s bedtime, but before Felicia goes to sleep she wants to hear her favorite story, the story of how she was adopted by Mama Nessa and Mama Linda. And so Felicia’s parents tell her how they flew off in a big silver airplane to meet the baby girl who was waiting for them, and how they loved her from the very first moment they saw her.
Goblinheart: A Fairy Tale
Written by Brett Axel / Illustrated by Terra Bidlespacher
Using “fairy” and “goblin” in lieu of female and male, the author has created a timely allegorical fairy tale. A youngster named Julep, who lives in a forest tribe, insists on growing up to be a goblin rather than a fairy. The tribe learns to accept that Julep is a goblin at heart, eventually coming around to support the physical transition that must be made for Julep to live as a goblin.
The Great Big Book of Families
Written by Mary Hoffman / Illustrated by Ros Asquith
This fun and fascinating treasury features all kinds of families and their lives together. Each spread showcases one aspect of home life-from houses and holidays, to schools and pets, to feelings and family trees. Ros Asquith’s humorous illustrations perfectly complement a charming text from the acclaimed Mary Hoffman; kids will love poring over these pages again and again. A celebration of the diverse fabric of kith and kin the world over, The Great Big Book of Families is a great big treat for every family to share.
When I first stumbled upon the wonder of London’s Gay’s the Word bookstore, this was the first book I bought for my then 6-year-old brother. Not (only) for the queer content, but because it was the only book on the shelves that had a hijabi mother on the cover. Can’t recommend it enough.
Heather Has Two Mommies
Written by Lesléa Newman / Illustrated by Diana Souza
This minor classic presents the story of Heather, a preschooler with two moms who discovers that some of her friends have very different sorts of families. Juan, for example, has a mommy and a daddy and a big brother named Carlos. Miriam has a mommy and a baby sister. And Joshua has a mommy, a daddy, and a stepdaddy. Their teacher Molly encourages the children to draw pictures of their families, and reassures them that “each family is special” and that “the most important thing about a family is that all the people in it love each other.”
In Our Mothers’ House
Written by Patricia Polacco
Marmee, Meema, and the kids are just like any other family on the block. In their beautiful house, they cook dinner together, they laugh together, and they dance together. But some of the other families don’t accept them. They say they are different. How can a family have two moms and no dad? But Marmee and Meema’s house is full of love. And they teach their children that different doesn’t mean wrong. And no matter how many moms or dads they have, they are everything a family is meant to be. Here is a true Polacco story of a family, living by their own rules, and the strength they gain by the love they feel.
It’s NOT the Stork!: A Book About Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families, and Friends
Written by Robie H. Harris / Illustrated by Michael Emberley
Young children are curious about almost everything, especially their bodies. And young children are not afraid to ask questions. What makes me a girl? What makes me a boy? Why are some parts of girls’ and boys’ bodies the same and why are some parts different? How was I made? Where do babies come from? Is it true that a stork brings babies to mommies and daddies? It’s Not the Stork! helps answer these endless and perfectly normal questions that preschool, kindergarten, and early elementary school children ask about how they began.
It’s Okay to Be Different
Written by Todd Parr
It’s okay to be a different color. It’s okay to dance by yourself. It’s okay to wear glasses. It’s okay to have a pet worm…. It’s okay to be different!
Jacob’s New Dress
Written by Sarah and Ian Hoffman / Illustrated by Chris Case
Jacob loves playing dress-up, when he can be anything he wants to be. Some kids at school say he can’t wear “girl” clothes, but Jacob wants to wear a dress to school. Can he convince his parents to let him wear what he wants?
King and King
Written by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland
Once there lived a lovelorn prince whose mother decreed that he must marry by the end of the summer. So began the search to find the prince’s perfect match and lo and behold… his name was Lee. You are cordially invited to join the merriest, most unexpected wedding of the year.
King and King and Family
Written by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland
Join newlyweds King Lee and King Bertie on their journey into the noisy jungle. The kings are greeted by wild animal families, but the royal travelers suspect that something more significant awaits them in the trees. King & King soon discover that there’s no adventure more wonderful than starting a family of their own.
Love is a Family
Written by Roma Downey / Illustrated by Justine Gasquet
Irrepressible young Lily loves her mother dearly. But when it’s time for Family Fun Night at her school, she worries… and worries. What will the other kids think when she just brings her mother? Will they be the strangest family there? But when they arrive at Family Fun Night, Lily sees all her friends having fun with their families — of every shape, size, and color. She learns that there are as many ways of showing love as there are stars in the sky.
Mister Seahorse
Written and illustrated by Eric Carle
When Mrs. Seahorse lays her eggs, she does it on Mr. Seahorse’s belly! She knows he will take good care of them. While he swims waiting for the eggs to hatch, he meets other underwater fathers caring for their babies.
Molly’s Family
Written by Nancy Garden / Illustrated by Sharon Wooding
The members of Ms. Marston’s kindergarten class are cleaning and decorating their room for the upcoming Open School Night. Molly and Tommy work on drawing pictures to put on the walls. Molly draws her family: Mommy, Mama Lu, and her puppy, Sam. But when Tommy looks at her picture, he tells her it’s not of a family. “You can’t have a mommy and a mama,” he says. Molly doesn’t know what to think; no one else in her class has two mothers. She isn’t sure she wants her picture to be on the wall for Open School Night.
Mommy, Mama and Me
Written by Lesléa Newman / Illustrated by Carol Thompson
Rhythmic text and illustrations with universal appeal show a toddler spending the day with its mommies. From hide-and-seek to dress-up, then bath time and a kiss goodnight, there’s no limit to what a loving family can do together.
Monday is One Day
Written by Arthur Levine / Illustrated by Julian Hector
A love note from a working parent to a child, counting the days of the week — each one a special opportunity to spend time together. One by one, the days of the week roll by. Monday is one day, Tuesday is blue shoes day, and Wednesday is halfway day. When Saturday and Sunday finally come, it’s time for little ones and the adults who love them to play, share, and celebrate. Every day of the week offers a special opportunity for families to enjoy being together!
My Princess Boy
Written by Cheryl Kilodavis / Illustrated by Suzanne DeSimone
Dyson loves pink, sparkly things. Sometimes he wears dresses. Sometimes he wears jeans. He likes to wear his princess tiara, even when climbing trees. He’s a Princess Boy.
Oliver Button is a Sissy
Written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola
A little boy must come to terms with being teased and ostracized because he’d rather read books, paint pictures, and tap-dance than participate in sports.
The Princess Knight
Written by Cornelia Funke / Illustrated by Kerstin Meyer
Violet is a young princess who wishes she could show the world that she is just as brave and strong as her brothers. But her strict father insists that she get married, and her brothers only mock her when she wants to be included in their fun. So Violet decides to use her intelligence and bravery to show everyone — once and for all — what she’s made of. Disguising herself as a boy, Violet takes part in a knights’ jousting tournament. When she wins the contest, she reveals her true identity — and wins the prize of freedom!
Rough, Tough Charley
Written by Verla Kay / Illustrated by Adam Gustavson
Charley was rough. Charley was tough. Charley wore fancy blue gloves. Charley Parkhurst always was more comfortable around horses than around humans. One of the most respected stagecoach drivers in the old West, Charley also kept one of the biggest secrets anyone could keep.
The Sissy Duckling
Written by Harvey Fierstein / Illustrated by Henry Cole
Elmer is not like the other boy ducklings. While they like to build forts, he loves to bake cakes. While they like to play baseball, he wants to put on the halftime show. Elmer is a great big sissy. But when his father is wounded by a hunter’s shot, Elmer proves that the biggest sissy can also be the greatest hero.
Too Far Away to Touch
Written by Lesléa Newman / Illustrated by Catherine Stock
Zoe’s Uncle Leonard makes her feel special, taking her out to lunch and star-filled afternoons at the Planetarium. Though ill and always tired, he surprises her by decorating the ceiling in her room with hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars. Uncle Leonard can’t promise Zoe when or if he will ever get well, but he reassures her he will always love her and, like the stars, be “close enough to see.”
This book specifically deals with AIDS, but would be appropriate for any child coming to terms with terminal illness or the death of a loved one.
What Makes A Baby
Written by Cory Silverberg / Illustrated by Fiona Smyth
What Makes a Baby is a book for every kind of family and every kind of kid. It is a twenty-first century children’s picture book about conception, gestation, and birth, which reflects the reality of our modern time by being inclusive of all kinds of kids, adults, and families, regardless of how many people were involved, their orientation, gender and other identity, or family composition. Just as important, the story doesn’t gender people or body parts, so most parents and families will find that it leaves room for them to educate their child without having to erase their own experience.
In 2012, the Kickstarter project to publish this book raised almost 7 times its target amount. I own it and can verify that it is by far the most inclusive, approachable and beautifully illustrated book I’ve come across explaining the fundamentals of baby-making. And it made Ali cry.
When Kayla Was Kyle
Written by Amy Fabrikant / Illustrated by Jennifer Levine
Kyle doesn’t understand why the other kids at school call him names. He looks like other boys, but doesn’t feel like them. Can Kyle find the words to share his feelings about his gender — and can his parents help him to transition into the girl he was born to be?
The White Swan Express: A Story About Adoption
Written by Elaine M. Aoki and Jean Davies Okimoto / Illustrated by Meilo So
In China, the moon shines on four baby girls, fast asleep in an orphanage. Far away in North America, the sun rises over four homes as the people who live there get ready to start a long, exciting journey. This lovely story of people who travel to China to be united with their daughters describes the adoption process step by step and the anxiety, suspense, and delight of becoming a family.
Who’s in a Family?: A Book About All Types of Families
Written by Robert Skutch / Illustrated by Laura Nienhaus
Family is important, but who’s in a family? Why, the people who love you the most!
Why Don’t I Have A Daddy?: A Story of Donor Conception
Written by George Anne Clay / Illustrated by Lisa Krebs
As the little lion cub notices all different types of families, he starts to question his own family. His family consists of his mother and him. The little cub learns that while there is no “daddy” in his family, there is a donor lion who made his life possible. Through his mother’s love and nurturing, the lion cub understands how special he and his family are.
William’s Doll
Written by Charlotte Zolotow / Illustrated by William Pene du Bois
More than anything, William wants a doll. “Don’t be a creep,” says his brother. “Sissy, sissy,” chants the boy next door. Then one day someone really understands William’s wish, and makes it easy for others to understand, too.
The Worst Princess
Written by Anna Kemp / Illustrated by Sara Ogilvie
Princess Sue dreams of finding her Prince Charming. But when that Prince proves to be a bit more traditional than what she had hoped for, Princess Sue — along with the help of a fiery dragon — becomes determined to find a way to get the fairy-tale ending that she always envisioned for herself.
At one point Princess Sue looks like she’s about to trample the Prince while on her dragon, having bested him in a joust. MISANDRY IS REAL.
Zinnia and Dot
Written by Lisa Campbell Ernst
Meet Zinnia and Dot — two plump, self-satisfied hens who bicker constantly about the quality of their eggs. Whose are more lustrous, shapely, smooth? Their rivalry rages until a weasel bursts in and steals the eggs —all but one, a particularly prime specimen. Just in time, they realize they’ve got to stick together to protect their prized egg.
It was, unsurprisingly, pretty hard to find books that featured queer people or families of colour. However, you might be interested in the Flamingo Rampant Book Club!, a soon-to-be-launched children’s book series which aims to celebrate LGBTQ2S kids, families and adults, moving away from the dominant narratives of struggle, oppression and bullying, as well as to centre the stories and writing of people of colour. Creator S. Bear Bergman (author of The Adventures of Tulip, Birthday Wish Fairy and Backwards Day, both of which are listed above, as well as co-author of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation) is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, while Miriam Zoila Pérez of Colorlines has written a more in-depth piece about the series exploring related issues of marketability, how racism is portrayed (or sidestepped) in children’s books, and the portrayal of girls of colour.
This list was put together with the help of Pooja Makhijani, a writer, editor, teacher, book artist, mother, and New Yorker living in Singapore. Check out her blog and latest initiative, The Feminist Parent.
OPEN THREAD: Keeping It Queer in the Suburbs
By Cheryl
Fourteen years ago, I moved out of San Francisco to the suburbs, to shack up with my betrothed. When you do that, move out to the suburbs, San Francisco revokes your queer credibility card at the westernmost point of the Bay Bridge. San Francisco looks at you with an expression part pity, part genuine concern and asks, “What’s it going to be like for you out there?” as if you’re moving to the unforgiving Sahara, sans provisions. At least that’s what it was like fourteen years ago.
I spent the earliest months of my suburban transplantation bemoaning my new hometown’s lack of irreverent activist drag nuns, feminist avant-garde theater and visible LGBT people. Tired of hearing me complain that mine was the only car in any given parking lot with a rainbow sticker on it, my bride-to-be finally shot back, “If the fact that I [blank] your [blank] with my [blank] isn’t enough to convince you that you’re not the only lesbian in the neighborhood, then fine, I’ll put a rainbow sticker on my car.” Humbly, I conceded that yes, a sticker would be a lovely addition to her Nissan’s hind quarters, thank you very much.
Before we added two children to our household, I had plenty of time to pull myself hand-over-hand along the queer oxygen cord, back to the mothership of The City, to indulge in film festivals, literary readings, shopping, dancing and dining amongst the rainbow tribe.
But post-kids, and especially post-elementary-school-enrollment, most days my activities are anchored within a three mile radius of our house. These days, instead of riding the train into The City to hear a favorite poet read at Books Inc., I’m acting as the official (and proud) scorekeeper of our kids’ Little League team. In a way, this makes me more lesbian than I was pre-kids: I drive a Subaru with a trunk full of athletic equipment. But it’s not my equipment, so that doesn’t really count.
As much as I love the empowering notion of “queering space,” when I’m the only person at the school talent show rehearsal who recognizes the irony of five fifth-grade girls wearing spandex hot pants, dancing to “YMCA,” it just feels kinda lonely. (Bless you, Twitter and Facebook, my lifelines to queer minds in those trying times.)
I know I’m not alone amongst my queer parent peers when I say that in many ways, I have more in common with straight parents than I do with my kid-less queer counterparts. But I don’t want to let go my connection to the vibrant, boundary-breaking, mind-opening, inventive, inspiring queer culture that’s not immediately accessible to me in my strip-malls-and-big-box-stores environment.
So. How do I keep it queer in my day-to-day life in the suburbs?
PHOTO CREDIT: CHERYL DUMESNIL
I read. Poems. Memoir. Fiction.
When I’m waiting in the school parking lot for the bell to ring, or in the bleachers at baseball practice, or in the lobby of the place where my kids take music lessons, and I bust out a book like Michelle Tea’s Valencia, or Aaron Smith’s Appetite, or Steve Fellner’s The Weary World Rejoices, or Ellen Bass’ Like a Beggar, or Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, or Stacey Waite’s Butch Geography, or Judy Grahn’s A Simple Revolution (a partial–in both senses of the word–list of titles I’ve read or reread in the past year), I feel two aspects of my identity, queer and parent, knitting together into one seamless fabric.
How about you? What do you do to keep it queer? (Seriously. I’m looking for suggestions.)
Originally published on villageq.com. Republished WITH PERMISSION MOTHERF*CKERS.
It’s A Boy*!
She swallowed two pills with a sip of tap water and looked at me. I don’t know how she knew what was going through my mind — all the what-ifs and why-nots and should-haves. All the regret, and all the sadness, while I watched the person who used to call herself my boyfriend disappear with a sip of tap water. I didn’t miss having a partner who could pass as male. I didn’t even really miss straight privilege. It was something else.
“Would it make you happy,” she asked, “If we tried for a baby? Before it’s too late?”
We had talked about it off and on for months. We already had one child — our amazing little girl, who was born out of a previous relationship — but our little family still seemed like it was missing something. I found my eyes watering every time I held or saw a newborn baby. I would look at the old photos of my wife, a chubby-cheeked kid in boyish clothes that didn’t suit her, and I’d sigh. I felt like there was a child who I had known my whole life, a little boy with intense, dark eyes and an underbite. He was supposed to be part of our family.
We both knew that on hormone replacement therapy, she might have as many as two years of fertility left, or as few as three weeks. It wasn’t the best time. We were broke, we were young, we were stressed, and I had more than my fair share of health problems that I knew would make pregnancy difficult. But we knew it was now or never. There was always adoption, if we would ever be allowed to adopt, and there was always the option of using a donor, if we could ever afford it, but we both knew that putting our child into the realm of “one day” would mean writing him out of existence. “One day” would never come unless it was today.
Later that night, we were skin-to-skin under a pile of warm blankets. I ran my fingers through her black hair while we talked. Just tonight, we agreed. We’ll try tonight, and tonight only, and if it’s meant to be, it will happen. It wasn’t the most responsible possible plan for conceiving a baby, but it seemed right. I had never known my skeptical, atheist wife to put stock into the invisible cosmic force of “meant to be,” but the leap of faith gave me comfort. Sometimes, there’s something to be said for leaving the most difficult decisions in the hands of destiny.
I kissed her and she pulled away for just a moment. “You have to promise me,” she said, locking her eyes on mine, “Promise me that you will never, ever call me the father.”
I promised.
Last week, my wife and daughter sat by the examination table while an ultrasound technician pressed a wand against my swollen belly. A grainy black-and-white image developed on the screen: a fluttering heart. A little round head. Tiny arms and legs. I felt a tiny quiver when it raised its hand — five little fingers — as if it were waving hello to us. I smiled and looked at my wife, who suddenly burst into a high-pitched fit of tears. I knew what was happening to her. It hadn’t really hit her that the baby was real. Not until she saw it.
The sonographer smiled at both of us. I wondered how many times she had witnessed this scene in her career. She moved the wand a little to my left and smiled again.
“It’s a boy.”
I already knew — I’d told my wife that I was sure it was a boy, just two weeks after we conceived — but, in my mind, I put an asterisk next to the word. It’s a boy, until and unless he tells us otherwise, I thought. It’s a boy who will be raised without gender roles. It’s a boy who will be defined by his heart and mind, not by the organs that happen to be between his legs. It’s a boy who will be loved wholly, deeply, and completely by the two women who created him.
A preacher in North Carolina wants to send gay couples to concentration camps, where he says we will become extinct, along with our queer genes, within a generation. “You know why? They can’t reproduce!”
My stepmother says that being gay doesn’t make sense, because two men and two women have never, “in the history of the world,” conceived a child together.
Sixty-two percent of people in my home state vote against marriage equality. Their number-one argument is that queer families aren’t real families. Most of us — or, by their perception, all of us — can’t have children who are biologically related to both of their parents. That, they say, makes our love unnatural, and even sinful. I’ve often wondered when they’ll start trying to ban postmenopausal women and other infertile people from marrying.
Here, there be dragons. We aren’t the first queer couple to conceive a child, and we won’t be the last, either. But this territory is strange and uncharted, and it often feels like we’re alone. After scouring the whole online globe, I found a total of two other couples like us who are expecting babies this year. The conversations have been strained. We’re looking at each other and desperately hoping that at least someone might know what we’re supposed to do next.
Our baby will be born this summer and will join the family with two loving moms, one doting big sister, a hyperactive dog, and two purring kitties. I don’t know what the future has in store for our family, or, in particular, for my son. I don’t know how much his rights will be limited by our relationship, or if boys really do have a need for masculine role models, or when we will all grow exhausted with the people who lean in close and ask, “Is she the dad?” I do know that our son will never once doubt that he is loved and wanted, and I’m grateful every day that we have the rare and wonderful opportunity to be his mothers.
Special Note: Autostraddle’s “First Person” column exists for individual queer ladies to tell their own personal stories and share compelling experiences. These personal essays do not necessarily reflect the ideals of Autostraddle or its editors, nor do any First Person writers intend to speak on behalf of anyone other than themselves. First Person writers are simply speaking honestly from their own hearts.
Adventures in (Lesbian) Baby-Making
We asked you to send us your stories about being truly unstoppable lesbian moms, and the following essay by Lynne Marie is our contest winner! Thank you to everyone who submitted essays — you all are seriously unstoppable, and brilliant and inspiring and I want to be your best friend and hear all your stories all the time. —Laneia
I can’t remember if it was the first shipment of sperm that got stuck in California or if we’d already tried once by then.
It seems like I’d remember. But those early days just blur together now.
Even the middle days are not so clear. That time we tried in the doctor’s office in the middle of the workday? We’d been at it more than a year already. I wore a navy linen dress and came back to campus afterward to meet with my new boss. Did the semen really trickle down my crotch as I set my face in a shape of curious attentiveness? It seems unlikely, what with the vial being smaller than a thimble and the insemination having gone directly into my uterus. But I remember stickiness and linen, the bruised internal feeling that follows a speculum, and my desperate lack of interest in anything but the collision of sperm and egg.
The weekend the sperm got lost, Peach brought Tizzy up from New York to visit. I told Liz that Tizzy was our London friend who came to the states all the time to visit her various lovers and friends from college, when she travelled the U.S. as a footballer. I didn’t tell her how attractive and funny and flirty Tizzy was. It was fun to see Liz blanch as they came off the bus.
“You didn’t tell me she was cute,” she snipped.
It would have been a good weekend if I hadn’t had a god-awful cold, if we hadn’t decided to stop eating everything delicious — wheat, dairy, meat — if I wasn’t so worried about the damned sperm. At lunch at P&E’s I ordered the hummus platter without the whole wheat roll, even though everybody knows the whole wheat roll is the best thing on the menu. I was so congested all I could taste was the lemon I squeezed onto everything. I was so feverish I wondered how I was going to walk home.
I kept thinking, “I only get to see Tizzy every few years, I should be enjoying this more.”
I kept thinking, “I wonder where my damned sperm is?”
I left Peach and Tiz in town with Liz and went home to hunt down my sperm. It should have been waiting for me in our back hall on Friday, and here it was Saturday and no one knew where it was. I called the nice girls at the sperm bank again. Finally someone called me back.
“We found it,” she said. “It’s at the Oakland Airport.”
Whenever I think about that shipment, I imagine a silver canister of liquid nitrogen tagged with universal biohazard labels circling endlessly on a baggage carousel, all the other luggage anxiously pulling away from it.
Most of the lesbians I know got pregnant on the first try. This is not actually normal but it kept happening, so it seemed normal. Also all of the women in my department at the University got pregnant. We laughed at staff meetings and said, “It must be in the water.”
I drank the water, but I didn’t get pregnant on the first try. Or the second or third, either.
The process of figuring out when to buy the sperm was challenging. I had to take my vaginal temperature every day and track it on some kind of chart. Also, there was a very fancy ovulation predictor we bought at Walmart that tracked things automatically. We hated to buy anything at Walmart, but that’s where the fancy ovulation predictors were, so we braved the bright lights and wide aisles.
I had to pee on a special stick every day during the middle weeks of my cycle then push the pee-stick into a slot in the computer. It would tell me whether or not I was ovulating. It could tell me when I was approaching ovulation. But it couldn’t ever tell me exactly how many more days it would be before I ovulated. So I still had to guess about when the sperm should come out of the freezer in Oakland, be placed into the canister of liquid nitrogen, and get sent to the airport.
Samantha gave me a hard time about buying the ovulation predictor and the pee-sticks at Walmart. “I bet you could order them online,” she said, after I’d concluded I couldn’t. She’d put a fair amount of energy into trying to fight Walmart coming to her little town and they’d come anyway, so I wanted to cut her some slack.
But I had to think: “You can get sperm from that husband of yours any time you want. I’ve got one chance a month and I’m gonna be damned sure it gets here on the right day.”
A year after we hooked up, Liz and I stuffed her belongings into a rental car and drove over the bridge to my apartment in Brooklyn so we could bank her rent and plot our escape from New York. It wasn’t long after that until we borrowed my dad’s wood-paneled station wagon and drove out to see a financial advisor in some leafy Connecticut suburb. He came highly recommended by an evangelical Christian on my job. He assumed that we would adopt in a future so distant we didn’t need to start saving for it, but that we’d need a $30,000 car soon. Our combined income was under $100,000. We set up bank drafts that sucked most of both paychecks into mutual funds every week.
Liz flattened a woodchuck driving home from the Christian financial adviser’s office. She couldn’t swerve without causing an accident on the parkway, so she aimed that tank of a car right over its doomed, slow-moving bulk with tears streaming down her face.
There is a sperm bank within 100 miles from our home, an entirely drivable distance, but it didn’t have an identity release program. The identity release bank we chose, over three thousand miles away, offered the largest available catalog of sperm donors willing to be contacted by their future progeny upon the child’s 18th birthday at the child’s request. These donors’ vials had a surcharge for the privilege of an option that might never be taken. In the online catalog these donors are marked “yes” in the identity release field. We came to think of them as “yes donors.”
I’m supposed to say that there are lots of ways to make a family — that “yes donors” are right for some families and “no donors” for others, and some dykes just get knocked up by a good friend or neighbor, and that’s a great choice too. But there was never any choice about it for me. I could not know my donor. I did not want even the shadow of a parent other than me or Liz. I feared the whispering presence of grandparents or siblings. I wanted legal-clad certainty that he could never initiate a shift from donor to dad.
I wanted him to be sure, as sure as a person can possibly be, that he was just giving me sperm. Even if what I got was was a baby.
But as deeply as I knew that I wanted to be knocked up by a stranger, I had no idea what my kid — my imagined, wished for, yet un-conceived kid — might want. What if he wanted a father? What if she needed another family? What if my child was so different from me that he needed to know the other side of the equation, where his personality originated? What if she was so curious that she couldn’t stand part of her own self being a mystery?
What if, in some future so far away I couldn’t even imagine it, my child—a person who didn’t even exist yet needed to know?
The Zen koan asks, “What was the shape of your face, before your mother or father was born?”
We chose “yes.” We paid the freight.
Shake, Don’t Wipe!
Motrin®‘s mission is to create solutions that stop pain from stopping you. Motrin® does this by effectively treating at the source of pain, allowing you to stay extraordinary and granting “unstoppable power.” Also unstoppably powerful? Moms. Of course around here, when we talk about Moms we’re talking about queer Moms. Lesbian Moms face unique challenges on the road to extraordinariness, and thus Autostraddle and Motrin® are proud to bring you “True Stories of Unstoppably Extraordinary Lesbian Moms,” an essay series featuring some of our favorite “mommy bloggers” telling stories of challenges faced and tackled.
The third piece in this series is from Deborah Goldstein, Managing Editor at VillageQ and Publisher at Peaches & Coconuts.
“You can’t do that to him. Shake don’t wipe!!” yelled Matt, Wendy’s husband from what sounded like the other side of their house. Wendy was relaying my conundrum to Matt while I waited not so patiently on the other end of the phone. I hadn’t quite achieved the level of panic, but I was concerned enough to seek outside counsel.
Sometimes, when you’re in the business of parenting, you have to phone a friend for a bit of perspective and advice. Sometimes, you have to phone more than one. And sometimes, moms need input from dads just as much as they do other moms. Parenting is stressful, high-pressure business. One misstep, and your kid’s therapy will cost exponentially more than college tuition, she said neither confirming nor denying that she was speaking from personal experience. This particular mom needed to hear from all interested parties to avoid a monumental parental gaffe.
Few developmental milestones set a parent up for supreme failure than toilet training. Do it wrong and the results may be catastrophic. We could have ended up with an anxiety-ridden excessively controlling delinquent who covered our bedroom walls in feces in the middle of the night, or at least a very constipated child. Who knows how many crimes are committed each year due to lack of regularity? I was at my most vulnerable in facing the pressure of managing a healthy, affirming, supportive and hygienic toilet training. Having already successfully chaperoned one child out of diapers, our friends Wendy and Matt would be my consiglieri during this critical time.
Had I been toilet training a daughter, I wouldn’t have felt as conspicuous. Due to our basic mechanics, there are few choices in the early years. Sit, wipe, flush, wash. Children with boy parts have the option to sit or stand. Should we start with a seated potty or stand him up on a booster and take aim? Or do we invest in a child-sized, training urinal? Yes, they exist! Then there’s the matter of wiping. While all children wipe the backside, only girls are expected to blot in front. This double standard made no sense to me when blotting would clearly benefit both parties.
“But Wendy,” I said justifying our recent toilet training teachings, “what about the residuals? A good shake isn’t always sufficient, is it? You can’t guarantee that there won’t be leftovers after a shake, can you? Sure, it makes sense that girls wipe, but why don’t boys? Isn’t the goal the same for both genders? Shouldn’t everyone be taught that clean, dry underwear is preferable over picky, stained underwear? Ask Matt. Ask him!”
Before we had children we discussed all the challenges two women would face. We knew it wouldn’t be easy but then again, when is it ever? We tried to anticipate some of the questions our kids would ask, and we tried to prepare answers to have at the ready. We contemplated some of the ignorant people and ugly situations they may meet in their lives and discussed how we would empower them with education, love and confidence. We’d surround ourselves with a supportive community and hope for the best. We never talked about whether boys should wipe or shake.
I waited for Wendy to submit evidence in favor of boys wiping themselves after evacuating. I paced back and forth while I waited for the verdict. I knew what Matt would say. Boys don’t wipe. The fact that they should wipe is not evidence enough to teach our son to be the only wiping boy child at preschool and beyond. I had to ask myself the question that I never wanted to ask out loud or even in my head, “Would a father have done a better job?”
I loathe that voice in my head that negates all that Gabriella and I have done to create our family and provide a safe and supportive environment for our children. I loathe that taunting, judging voice, but I can’t pretend it’s not there. I hear it when Asher asks me if he’s going to have to shave when he gets older and I wonder how I’m going to teach him. I hear it when the neighbor kids ask Asher to play football with him, and he doesn’t know the first thing about the game because he’d rather watch a cooking show than football. I hear it every time we’re standing outside a public restroom, and I have to decide whether to let him go into the Men’s room by himself.
Of course, I know how to shut that voice up. I answer myself with all the intellectually correct responses. “What of all the single mothers, by choice and otherwise, raising sons? What of the straight, married mothers who take on the most of the day-to-day child rearing? What of the fathers who also prefer a cooking show to football?” I quiet that voice temporarily, but I’ll never be rid of her entirely. There’s too much at stake to feel completely confident.
All parents wonder if they’re doing it right. We all focus on our shortcomings and worry that we’ll do our children a disservice because we aren’t everything they need. In my heart I know my son does not need a man in the house to realize all that is amazing about him. I know that Gabriella and I are good parents who could not love our children any more than we do. I also know that we have created a strong and supportive community amongst our friends and that there is no shame in checking in with them to gain a little perspective every now and then.
“Matt says you can’t do that to him anymore,” Wendy reported, and from the other side of the house I heard Matt chime in once more, “Shake-don’t wipe!”
“Ok,” I conceded. “He’ll shake.”
I work at a preschool now, and I accompany many young children to the bathroom. Most of them are in the early stages of toilet training. Occasionally, I help pull up underpants and push down flush levers. The other day, I helped a small, 2-year-old boy up on to the toilet seat, his preference being to sit while he peed. I knew his mother and father from the neighborhood, but we weren’t close enough to discuss his toilet habits. When he finished, he held out his hand to me.
“Do you want me to help you down?”
He shook his head, no.
“What do you need?”
He pointed to the toilet paper.
I ripped off some paper for him. “Kank-you,” he said as he gave himself a wipe.
Deborah Goldstein is a freelance writer, blogger and managing director for VillageQ.com, a community site that gives voice to the experience of LGBTQ families. Deborah publishes a medley of miscellany on her personal blog Peaches & Coconuts, identified by Huffington Post as one of the 7 Favorites For Post 50 Women. At times, she steps out from behind the screen to bring her words to life at spoken word events such as Edgy Suburban Moms, Listen To Your Mother, Funny Pages and Staten Island’s annual arts festival, Art by The Ferry. Follow her on Twitter at @psandcs.