Queer Mama for Autostraddle Episode Eleven — My Birth Story Wasn’t At All What I Expected

I wasn’t at all scared to give birth. I’d spent most of my happily uneventful pregnancy feeling like a warrior goddess. My yoga teacher complimented my squats in the twice-weekly prenatal class I attended. I breathed deeply, grinning, with both hands plunged into ice during my mindfulness in childbirth and parenting classes. I’d read Ina May and Peggy Vincent and Natural Hospital Birth and Labor Day and half a dozen other titles. I was more than prepared; I was excited.

Early labor selfie

I have a unique relationship with pain. I’ve ecstatically subjected my body to intense sensations many people would find horrifying. I know something about endurance. I’d studied about how labor should go and ways I could help it along. I had an awesome doula who had birthed seven children of her own. I had a supportive partner with absolute faith in my ability to joyfully birth this baby.

A few weeks before my due date I re-made our little altar to focus energy from pregnancy to birth. As I had so many times in this journey of making and carrying this baby, I sat alone at my kitchen table, closed my eyes, took three slow breaths, and pulled a tarot card from my Osho Zen deck. The Master. Last card of the Major Arcana. I don’t believe in tarot, really, but I like it as a tool for self-reflection. I’d pulled some seriously powerful cards along this journey and now here this one was. I was going to rock this labor.

When I realized I was most likely in labor, in the early morning of Friday, August 21, I was giddy. We had coffee and breakfast at a cafe, gentle contractions coming steady. Back home, we tidied and washed dishes and laundry. I dismantled an old planter on our deck and replaced it with new ones we’d bought a few days before. I was hugely pregnant, 39 weeks and 6 days, and huffing and puffing and using power tools and feeling powerful and thrilled that I might very well be meeting my baby that day, sooner than I’d imagined.

It took me over an hour to fold two baskets of laundry, having to pause every few minutes for a contraction to pass, and I thought yeah, this really must be it. At 2pm we walked up the big hill near my house with a view of the whole city, and I stopped to close my eyes and breathe each time I felt my uterus tighten again.

Walking uphill

Back home I really started to get into the rhythm of labor, swaying and humming. The contractions came just like a wave, like everyone had said. I could feel one coming on as I readied myself on all fours or draped over Simone’s lap or leaning over the bed, breathing as I went up and up in intensity, peaking for ever-longer stretches, easing back down the other side. In between I rested, feeling drifty and blissed out, enjoying the pause, letting the oxytocin bathe me in soft feelings as my body did the work of birthing this baby.

My water broke around 6pm, and I gushed fluid now and then during contractions. I felt glorious, making up songs to welcome our baby as I labored, “sounding” more intensely during the contractions, feeling increasing, though not unmanageable, pain. The doula arrived, and she and Simone pushed my hips together during contractions and fed me sips of water through a straw.

At 8:30pm, more than twelve hours since labor had begun and at least eight hours of 90-second-long contractions just a few minutes apart, we decided to go to the hospital. There is so much more that could be said about this decision and about what happened when we got there, but there we were at the hospital. One step closer to holding Tiny in our arms.

The best part of laboring in the hospital is UNLIMITED HOT WATER!!! I spent hours in the shower, gloriously hot water streaming over my aching back or tight stomach during contractions. The other best part is not having to worry about mess. When things really got wild I peed and pooed with abandon all over that hospital bed and clean dry things would just appear.

Our doula dimmed the room, soft lighting from LED candles, and drew baths and kept me hydrated. Simone was ever present, curating music as my mood shifted, loving and trusting me as only she can. The pain was intense, and I was belting gospel music at the top of my lungs, dancing in the shower, fully in it, surrounded by Sounds of Blackness singing, “Hold on / you can make it / hold on / everything will be alright.”

In the middle of the night the pain was nearly overwhelming, magnitudes greater than it had been at home. I had to get on the hospital bed for intermittent monitoring of the baby’s heart rate for 20 minutes of every hour. Stuck there, hooked up to a finicky machine, I felt a bit of panic rise every time I felt a contraction coming on. I had to immediately make sure I was in position, on all fours usually, bracing myself for the smashing waves of sensation. At some point the only way to work with the pain was to push into it with all my might.

I was bearing down with all the force of my body into the pain, imagining each contraction moving that baby down and eventually out of my body. I labored like this for a long time before the midwife said it seemed like I was having the urge to push. Seemed like?! Hadn’t I been pushing for hours already?! Each time a provider came to talk to me it took what seemed like forever, as they could only get about a sentence out before I went into another contraction. 90 second contraction, brief moment to get my bearings before the next one.

The hospital midwife checked my dilation. It was 12:30am, 4 hours after I’d been admitted at 4.5cm, and I was 6 centimeters dilated. Not at ALL close to the time when you’re supposed to want to push. Though no one said anything, my wheels were spinning. What was this premature urge to push about? What if I injured my cervix and then the baby couldn’t get out at all?! I’d read about how bad it could be to push on a still closed cervix, causing swelling that then prevents further dilation or even possibly a vaginal birth at all.

I was scared, but I found my resolve. I reminded myself I only had to meet each contraction one at a time, that all I needed to do was stay focused and visualize opening. That was my body’s job right now, to allow each contraction to soften and open my cervix fully so I could birth this baby. After how boisterous I’d been, this phase was intensely quiet. I was on all fours on the bed breathing as slowly and quietly as possible with each contraction, visualizing my cervix opening, using every fiber of my being to resist the urge to push. I needed total concentration to meet each contraction; this was the most mentally challenging part of my labor.

By morning I was pushing again, bursting a huge second bag of waters all over Simone at 7:30am. We all thought this would allow the baby to finally really descend. We were laughing and triumphant. By 10am it was confirmed that I had dilated to ten centimeters. I had done it! I was so proud. I pushed with all my strength in every position imaginable.

Tiny wouldn’t budge. A midwife realized Tiny was posterior. Only a few days before she’d been anterior; perhaps she’d rotated during labor, trying to descend. It’s harder to get a posterior baby out, the widest part of their head not matching the widest part of the pelvis quite as well. I was having double contractions, the second one beginning right after the last, with no pause in between.

More hours of pushing with zero progress, and the doctors recommended we try manually rotating her. I huffed nitrous as three times they inserted their hands inside me to try to turn her while I was blinded with pain. Tiny didn’t move. I pushed into the afternoon without progress.

I spiked a fever. My water had been broken for over 20 hours, I’d had at least four internal exams and several whole hands inside of me. Infection was highly likely. I’d been pushing in every position with unimaginable strength, doing everything right, doing everything I could. Tiny hadn’t moved an inch. The doctors gently recommended a c-section.

In one last hail mary pass for a vaginal birth, they inserted an epidural. Necessary for the c-section in any case, perhaps it would let my uterus relax enough for something to shift. I pushed for another hour, pushed so hard my vagina was swollen for days. Pushed so hard I burst several blood vessels in my eyes. The doctors thought it was time for a c-section. I agreed. Nothing had changed for many hours, no progress at all. It was time to get this baby out.

I had dreamt of holding my child for the first time. After the painful, glorious sensation of pushing her out she’d be placed, still slippery, on my chest, and I would weep tears of joy and gratitude and tell her how much I loved her. I would kiss her soft head and snuggle her tight until she settled down. It would, without a doubt, be the most beautiful moment of my life, welcoming this miracle in the flesh, examining every perfect inch of her, the tiny fingers and chubby toes, her pale eyebrows, her seashell ears.

The moment I met my child for the first time was nothing like I imagined it would be. There were no tears and no laughter. My heart didn’t burst at the seams. I felt nothing.

When she was removed from my body and Simone went to her, exclaiming “she’s here, beauty, and she’s so healthy,” I felt mostly nothing. Dissociated, a little sad that I could hear my wife in her joy and couldn’t meet her there. I knew I was supposed to feel happy, to feel relief.

But I wasn’t happy it was all finally over, wasn’t happy my baby was safe. I was on the brink of sanity, exhausted, wanting so badly to close my eyes but terrified simultaneously that I would just disappear if I did, missing my baby’s first minutes entirely. I so badly wanted to close my eyes, to float away, but I didn’t want to be gone.

The lights were so bright, all eyes on me, and yet none at all. I was already gone in a way, an object in the operating theatre. Increased risk of hemorrhage. Elevated temperature. Internal scalp monitor. Low transverse incision. This won’t be a simple procedure. A stuck, stuck baby and the anesthesiologist saying “just a few more minutes” over and over and over again while Simone begged him to give me something to ease the panic.

Tiny Dancer Jude was born on her due date, August 22, 2015. 8 pounds, 7.6 ounces, 21 inches long, and a 98th percentile head that was molded into quite the cone shape from all her hours trying to make it through, one ear totally flattened from being wedged some which way against bone. She was hearty and perfect, ready to nurse in the recovery room, gripping her tiny hands around our fingers. She was here.

I was traumatized by the c-section, and, perhaps worse still, the recovery. I said again and again to Simone that I would have pushed for several more days of unmedicated labor if I’d known how bad it would be. I felt swindled. This is a routine procedure? It was hell on earth. You have a lot of time to think when you have a newborn, up at all the darkest hours, replaying the events of the birth over and over again.

I wondered what would have happened if I’d been at home like I’d always sort of wanted. Could a skilled midwife have gotten that baby out? Was it something about the hospital environment, the constant monitoring and interference, that prevented me from having my baby vaginally? Did I give up, did I just not try hard enough? Could I have avoided this c-section?

Or was it the only possible outcome? Was I really one of those very rare cases where the baby just wouldn’t fit through, whether because of sheer size of her head in relation to my pelvis or because of her posterior position? A hundred years ago, or in a part of the world without access to a hospital, without access to antibiotics, I might have died. We both might have. What does it mean to have a body that couldn’t birth my baby? Was I a failure for lack of effort or by design? Which was more tolerable? Here I was again, just like after my miscarriage, realizing that sometimes it doesn’t matter how bad we want, how hard we try, how much we prepare and do everything “right.” Sometimes we don’t get to control the universe or the outcomes.

When my milk came in and I fell asleep with hospital heating packs on my breasts I woke up suddenly in terror, labor flashbacks replaying in my head. When it took me 20 minutes to get out bed just to urinate, I wept, unable to bear how cruel it was to be recovering from major surgery while taking care of a newborn. I bled all over the hospital floor, losing so much blood on top of the nearly two liters (a standard amount) I’d already lost during surgery that a transfusion was briefly mentioned.

I hated the hospital. I was angry at the attending who came by and told me I had maybe, at best, a 20% chance of a future vaginal delivery given the size of my pelvis and the fact that second babies are usually bigger. I felt hoodwinked and devastated by the seemingly insurmountable recovery I was facing. I couldn’t get out of bed to pick up my child. I couldn’t lay on my side. It was excruciating to sit up every time I had to nurse her. I couldn’t believe this had happened to me.

It took many weeks and so many haunting hours playing the events over in my head and many sessions with my brilliant therapist and all the support from my most beautiful love to begin to integrate what had happened. To mourn the loss of the birth I had wanted. To accept that I had made the very best choices I could in each moment for myself and for my baby.

It struck me that I was a parent now, and I had done everything I could to keep my baby safe. This was my job. With Simone by my side I fell in love with this beautiful baby — not in an instant like I’d always imagined, but moment by moment, over many hours, despite my intense pain.

At first I was obsessed with figuring out which was it — a failure of body or of will. But eventually “so what?” became my mantra. So what if I had had a vaginal birth, I asked myself, as I physically recovered day by day. What would be different now? Would this beautiful baby be any different, would my love for her be?

Many of us put a lot of emphasis on our child’s birth, on our story of their birth. It’s their entrance into the world and our transition into parenthood after all. It is questioned and repeated, shared in whispers and with tears. The story is told again and again and again. It reveals something about who we are. It is a peak experience for many, good or bad. But it’s only the beginning of a relationship that contains so much more.

As I allow myself to fall into the fullness of my relationship with my child, I allow myself the fullness of my birth experience as well. I remember with sweetness all the beautiful moments even as I cringe with recollection of some of the worst. I remind myself of all the pieces that went exactly as I wanted, as I reckon with the much unwanted finale. I hold onto the contradictions. They are what make up our lives.

When I got home from the hospital and looked at that Master card sitting on the altar, I was pissed. I had been promised the birth of a master. It took me some time to realize that this was the perfect card after all, not despite the fact that the outcome I was most terrified of happening had happened but because of it. Life challenges us the most when we don’t get what we want, when things don’t turn out as planned, when we are reminded, yet again, that we can’t control the universe. I had met and was meeting, day by day, that challenge.

I love this Tiny with every fiber of my being, and I have come to a place of gratitude. I am grateful for every moment, even the excruciating ones, that brought her into my arms. I am grateful that I live in a time and a place that allowed both she and I to survive and come home healthy. I am grateful for the providers that made this happen, for the nurses who were kind, for all the family and friends who came to our aid as I recovered slowly from the physical and emotional trauma of the events, for my therapist, and for my love.

I am grateful for my own resilience. After the birth I thought often of my miscarriage, of how devastated I was, how depressed. I thought I might have a long road to hoe with this trauma too. But I reminded myself, too, of my recovery from that loss. Of the relief that comes with accepting that I cannot control the universe. Of the power that comes with being grateful, despite it all. Of the deep knowledge that I would survive this too, that I would come out the other end, deepened by pain, more able, yet again, to contain huge wells of joy.

We named her Juniper, this big-headed baby of ours, and she is growing strong and tall like a tree. Her first week of life contained more ecstasy and agony than I’d ever experienced in all my days, and not in any of the ways I’d expected it would. A fitting welcome to parenthood, Juniper is here at last!

VIDEO: Queer Mama for Autostraddle Episode Ten — Third Trimester

This is Part 10 of a 12 column series. If you’re just joining in, start at the beginning!

I am coming to the end of this pregnancy journey, which of course means the beginning of a much bigger journey. Time has flown by. I imagined at this point I’d be feeling quite tired of being pregnant. I mean three quarters of a YEAR being pregnant?! That’s a long time to give one’s body over to a new and unpredictable experience, to another person, a person I’ve never even met, a person pretty much guaranteed to be utterly unable to imagine what I’ve done for her already. (Kidding / not kidding!)

Twenty-eight weeks in, I entered the third trimester and thought, “this is it! The tie-breaker trimester!” So many people told me they were reading the series and decided “oh goodness, pregnancy is not for me” after my first trimester column, but then “oh wow, that sounds awesome, I totally want to get pregnant!” after my second trimester column. I felt some pressure on this trimester. What would it be like? Would it drastically tip the scales back from the nearly absurd levels of deliciousness I felt during the second trimester to the not-so-much-fun-at-all state of being of the first trimester?

I was warned by nearly every previously pregnant person I’d known that it got much harder again towards the end. The second trimester bliss and ease would not stick around. Pregnancy books, too, harkened of heartburn and shortness of breath and trouble rolling over and swelling and all sorts of grotesque ailments awaiting. I put off writing this column and recording the video for weeks, feeling like I must not have fully entered the third trimester yet, feeling like I didn’t have anything that different to say yet, feeling like something harder must be around the bend.

Here I am, though, at nearly 40 weeks (just three days from my due date!), feeling great. For me, very very lucky me, the third trimester has not particularly challenging or uncomfortable. It’s been actually pretty darn awesome. I feel a weird sense of shame writing this, like I don’t deserve it. Or like my experience will somehow diminish that of so many others who do feel just darn sick of it by the end. I suppose all I can say is I’ve heard it can totally be hard at the end for many, so you’ve been warned, people deciding whether or not to get pregnant based on my column. (Insert inappropriate-for-essay-form smiley face emoji here.)

This is not to say that I’m some sort of mythical creature who has had no physical complaints to speak of in the last several months. Although I never got the much discussed shortness of breath (maybe because I have a super long torso or did oh so much yoga?), I definitely had my bouts with heartburn. The worst was right after I traveled and thus was more out of control of my diet and routine. That shit hurts! I was woken up several times in the middle of the night with a burning throat, only able to fall back asleep on a wedge pillow all propped up.

Digestive enzymes with meals and chewable papaya enzymes just after cured me in the nick of time, 5 days into the nighttime wakings, the very day I sent Simone out to buy a bottle of Tums. Now if I get a hint of it, slippery elm tablets or chewing a few papaya enzymes does the trick nearly instantaneously. Much of my symptoms have been like that. Something will come up for a few days, bad enough to be annoying, perhaps, like hip pain that makes it hard to sleep, but then I will go to yoga a few times, or commit to doing hip stretches every night before bed, say, and the symptom will fade into the background. I’ve been very tuned into my body and doing my best to take very good care of myself.

There have been some more constant body weirdnesses, too, though, of course. I mean, I’m about to birth another human, I’ve gained 30 pounds, and my blood volume has nearly doubled, so let’s be real. I find them to be pretty minor annoyances though. I run much, much hotter, going from sleeping with a comforter to often with nothing at all. In these last few weeks of somewhat bizarre San Francisco heat, I’ve needed a fan in the bedroom to make it easier to sleep (no air conditioning here). When you’re pregnant your temperature goes up and your sweat point goes down (to make your body more efficient at cooling your baby, who has no way to sweat themselves…) So I sweat.

I’d also be remiss not to mention the hunger and thirst of the third trimester. I eat ALL THE TIME! If you’re anything like me, plan to increase your grocery budget, wanna-be-pregnant folks. Waiters stare at restaurants. I’ve filled my house with healthy easy snacks. I’m a little bit terrified about how much I will want to consume when I’m breastfeeding, when your caloric needs go even further up. Eating a ton of calories when you care as much as I do about the quality and healthiness of those calories can be a little tricky, but I’m doing it. That and more water than anyone would ever think humanly possible. I say this as an already very serious water drinker. Give me all the water. With ice cubes, please.

Given the fantastic quantities of water, and the baby’s ever-heavier head pressing on my bladder, I have to pee all the time again. It’s the trickiest when we’re out all day, or if I do too much of my water drinking the second half of the day and end up waking up seven times in the middle of the night to pee. But even then it’s not terrible. I figure I might as well get used to it, and I file it under minor annoyances whilst trying to remind myself to drink as much as possible before 3pm the next day instead.

Swelling, I should tell you, is also a thing that happens to most pregnant people at some point. Worst in the heat or if you eat too much salt (beware processed food!) or if you’re sitting all the time (as so many of us do for work.) At 35 weeks I could still don heels, but no longer, as my pregnant-in-summertime feet don’t fit. This stiletto devotee now wears flip flops regularly in public. They warned me motherhood would do wacky things to my identity. Aside from the aesthetic issues, feet and hands can get achy with the swelling, but massage and exercise and lots of water help.

So does, for me at least, an appreciation of this baby and this body. I just love how I look pregnant. I still kind of want to be pregnant forever. I don’t feel quite ready, even days from my due date, to give this experience up! I love this baby inside who makes this belly grow. She is so much stronger now (sometimes her jabs hurt but that’s cool too), and she gets hiccups all the time, which I find adorable. I feel my uterus contract more and more, practicing for labor and giving baby a little hug.

Sometimes I still feel in utter awe of being here. The depth of gratitude I feel for getting the chance to carry this little love to 28 weeks, 35 weeks, and now, here, more than 39 weeks is profound. I carry this gratitude with the weight of my previous loss, with the knowledge that not everyone who wants to gets to have this experiences, with the remarkable truth that there will soon be a person in the world who I grew in my body.

Y’all, I managed not to cry in this third trimester video, but here I am now, writing, tears rolling down my face at my desk, just a few feet away from our new rocking chair where I plan to spend hours nursing my baby. It is so very humbling, in the best possible way, to be taken over by this transformative experience. To be the custodian, for such a short time, really, of this new life, of this person who will grow up and feel all her own feelings and live out all her dreams and be wounded and sometimes scared and all the things that make us human.

I am still in awe that growing a person is a thing my body can do. In awe that it’s a thing bodies can do at all. That it’s how all of us got here. I feel tickled thinking about all the other completely mundane and utterly miraculous things I will get to witness in the life of this child.

I feel patient as I wait for Tiny to emerge, confident she will make her appearance when it’s just right for her. I wouldn’t mind if that took weeks more, might prefer it even, as I savor having her to myself in this sweet way. Feeling her ever more powerful limbs travel across my uterus. Listening to her heartbeat in weekly appointments. Falling asleep with my belly on Simone’s back as Tiny kicks her to sleep. We love you so much little one, and we look forward to meeting you so very, very soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlxRHr8JoSo

VIDEO: Queer Mama for Autostraddle Episode Nine — Our Kid Doesn’t Have Two Moms

This is Part 9 of a 12 column series. If you’re just joining in, start at the beginning!

I’m a queer femme who prefers she/her/hers pronouns and is super excited to be called mama/mommy/mom/ma or whatever variation our little muffin comes up with ANY DAY NOW! Okay, so she’s probably not going to start calling me mom any day now, but she is due to arrive really at any moment from here on out. Which omg holy shit. We are so excited to be parents of an outside-the-uterus baby, and we are checking all those last things off our pre-baby to do list. For those eagerly awaiting, Tiny still has no name, and neither does Simone.

Simone, the love of my life and the co-parent to our future child, is a masculine-identifying woman. She lets me call her butch at times because I think it’s sexy, but it wouldn’t be the first term she’d use to characterize herself. There isn’t a particular gender term that she claims, really, though I could also describe her as a boi, perhaps. Simone’s gender is complicated. She firmly identifies as a woman. Though she tucks them away in sports bras on the daily, she has beautiful boobs that she (and ahem, I) enjoys. She shops exclusively in “men’s” sections of clothing stores. When she puts on a dress, it looks and feels like drag.

Simone’s gender is simple. She’s a masculine-identifying woman who prefers she but doesn’t mind if waiters call her sir. She cuts her own hair short and wears the clothes that make her feel sexy, the clothes that make her feel like herself. It took her into her twenties to embrace this gendered self, but she’s been holding it with ease and confidence ever since.

When Simone and I got engaged, I couldn’t imagine anyone calling her a bride. Way too weird. Way too feminine. I was happy to be becoming her wife, but in no way did I envision her becoming mine. Calling her my wife felt like I must instead be referring to Cinnabon, Simone’s drag persona alter ego. Simone was not becoming my wife.

She was and would stay my partner. I realized quickly, though, that people never knew what I meant when I talked about my partner. Simone and I run our video production company together, so in some contexts people thought I was just talking about my business partner. In others, they assumed my partner was a man. They definitely didn’t always know I meant the person I was married to. The woman I was married to.

I started calling her my wife, sometimes, when it felt easier, or when I wanted to be sure someone knew what I meant. Now I use it at least half the time, because I’m glad it means people know right away that I’m a lesbian. Though I’m not a lesbian, and neither is Simone. Is this confusing? We’re both queer, really, but I do also identify as a dyke. I’m in a same sex relationship (now, marriage!) with a woman who doesn’t identify as a lesbian. Also, wife has three less characters than partner, and this is important on Twitter.

Simone and I have a little dog named Noodle. Actually, Simone adopted him a few months before we started dating, which we like to say was her signalling the universe that she was ready for some serious commitment in her life. I’m Noodle’s adopted mama. Simone is Noodle’s daddy. She always has been, it’s what she and I have always called her in reference to our boy.

She’s not, though, the daddy or the father to our child. For a long time I thought she might be. It feels the most natural for me to refer to her that way, after all, since I’ve been doing it about our dog for nearly five years. No reason not be a woman “daddy” to our babe. The main problem I could foresee is how confusing it would be to the world.

Simone gets misgendered all the time. This is mostly fine but can be scary, especially when we pull up to gas stations in towns we don’t know, parking lots filled with groups of macho straight men. Or when she comes out of a stall in a ladies room and a woman freaks out. What would happen when she was taking our child into a woman’s bathroom and that child was calling her daddy? Or when people couldn’t wrap their minds around using she pronouns for a “dad”? Not insurmountable challenges, but something we didn’t want to deal with necessarily all the time.

More to the point, in any case, is the fact that Simone doesn’t feel like Tiny’s dad or father or even daddy. But, if you haven’t yet gathered, she also certainly doesn’t feel like Tiny’s mom. Being called a mom makes her skin crawl.

People always assume we are a family of two moms, being that we are two women. We don’t fault them. Simone even hesitated with wanting to write or vlog about this because she was concerned about making all these sweet people who have tried to be inclusive of our “two mom” family feel bad about their mistake. She deserves, though, as we all do, to be identified how she wishes to be. And the people who love us or even just read about us deserve the chance to get it right, too!

The simplest title is that Simone is Tiny’s parent. How fortunate that we have a gender neutral term built right into our language. If you’re writing a letter, “dear parents” is great. Or if you’re introducing her you can say, “this is Simone, Tiny’s parent.” Hopefully schools and communities can without too much trouble fall into this preferred language.

Tiny won’t call Simone her parent, though. I mean we hope she will in some contexts at some point, as a descriptor, but it’s not exactly a pet name. It’s not a name we imagine playing peek-a-boo with. “Where’d parent go? Peek-a-boo!” And it’s not a name I imagine Tiny shouting up across the apartment, “Parent! I can’t sleep!”  While I’m mommy, what will Simone be?

A lot of our masculine female friends and some transmen we know who are parents have chosen to go by “baba.” Some of them like it because it means father in some languages, grandmother in others. Or simply because it’s something that is not mom or dad. Or because it’s becoming a thing, a gender identity to have community around. Simone has never identified with baba herself, though. She doesn’t love the ring of it and it doesn’t jive with her.

We’ve (okay, I’ve) looked at lists upon lists of options. People use all sorts of words of course for themselves as parents. Maddy or zaza. Ima or mima. Duda or madu or duna. Nothing on any of those lists speaks to Simone as her name. Sometimes, I know, the kid just makes something up, so maybe that will happen with us, and it will feel right, and we’ll feel silly for worrying about it at all.

For now we’re going with “Monie” (pronounced MO-knee). It’s short for Simone, and a pet name her friend’s children and other loved ones have called her in the past, so it’s already imbued with sweetness and intimacy. It rings with, but also sounds distinct from, mommy. Most importantly, it’s her own, and it feels right.

http://youtu.be/FO-7MEScVO4

We’d love to hear from folks further down their parenting journey (or folks right here with us! or folks still just beginning to think about this stuff!) about what it’s like for you as a gender non-conforming parent. What names did you pick? Did they stick with the kiddos? How has navigating your complicated/simple gender been in the world? Please share your thoughts! And thanks in advance to all who will now refer to Simone as a parent, not a mom.

VIDEO: Queer Mama for Autostraddle Episode Eight — The Baby Shower

I didn’t want to have a baby shower. I didn’t have a bachelorette party or a bridal shower. I know this is going to sound odd coming from someone who is currently vlogging the most intimate parts of her life on camera, but I feel sort of awkward being the center of attention. Unless I’m doing something I feel is worth watching, I guess, since I do love being on stage. But being the center of attention for something as mundane as growing a baby? And asking people for presents for it?

I didn’t think we needed a baby shower. Simone and I both have older siblings with kids who were handing down a fair amount of baby stuff, and so I was sure we didn’t really need anything else. I am pretty horrified by the amount of junk that accumulates around small children, all those expensive pieces of plastic that will eventually end up in a landfill. The anti-consumerist in me cringed at the idea of people buying us all these things. Where would we even put them in our 800 square foot apartment that also houses our business?

And what does the baby really need? A car seat, diapers, a place to sleep. Unfettered access to my boobs for food. We decided not to have a baby shower. Then, when I was 4 or 5 months pregnant, people started asking when our baby shower was. I realized people like celebrating babies, like celebrating the people they love embarking on a new chapter of their lives, and, let’s be real, a lot of people like buying tiny adorable baby things. So when a most generous friend of ours offered to host a baby shower for us, we said yes.

I started looking at lists of what a baby “needs,” and, despite my supposed desire to raise my children with nothing more than a bearskin rug and my bare breasts, I started thinking maybe there were just a few things that might come in handy once the baby arrives… I started making my own lists, and it started fairly simply. A baby bathtub did sound convenient, and a bassinet for the first few months. A crib, too, for later. Probably something to carry the baby around in.

My list quickly grew from there, as I consulted every corner of the internet I could find to decipher what we actually needed or wanted. Sure, we could change the baby wherever, on the floor, but maybe a changing station would be nice? Simone reminded me how many diapers we’d change a day. I knew I wanted to try cloth diapers. It’s (arguably, I know) better for the environment, but also it’s a whole heck of a lot cheaper. Over time that is – buying the initial stash can be kind of pricy.

Then there were the small practical things, like a snotsucker, baby first aid kit, a sunhat. There were also some things for the nursery (currently an office) we could use, like a dresser and blackout curtains. Bottles. A travel crib. Swaddle blankets. A diaper pail with reusable liners. What about a white noise machine?

I’m Type A, and an avid researcher, and when I decide to buy things I want the highest quality, most eco-friendly thing I can afford (“can afford” being a seriously subjective designation.) I spent the next three months looking at the reviews for baby products in every single category. Turns out there are a lot of rabbit holes to fall down in the world of baby stuff. People, you’ll be surprised to learn, have opinions about these things.

There isn’t just one best baby carrying device, there’s a whole community around “baby wearing.” Baby wearing, I learned, is a sort of religion, or perhaps a sub-sect of attachment parenting. It appeals to me because it seems so much more convenient than hauling a bulky stroller everywhere, and also it’s just so darn sweet. So what to get? There are ring slings and soft structured carriers, stretchy wraps and linen fabrics. There are things that can carry floppy infants and carriers meant for toddlers, all in dozens of different brands.

The baby wearers told me I should wait until my baby is here to decide what to get, come to a meeting (there are meetings!) and try a few of them on, but I didn’t want to wait. These things are expensive, and so I wanted to register for them. I decided on a ring sling because they are great for infants, my yoga teacher loves them, and they are easy to get on and off. My community of twitter mamas helped me solidify this decision and pick a brand, Sakura Bloom. I also decided on a Tula soft structured carrier for when the baby gets a bit bigger. Later we were handed down an Ergo and a Baby Bjorn. I’ll probably also buy a used Moby for $20 at my local kid’s resale store. Baby wearing here I come! I will report back.

For cloth diapers, there were even more choices. Flats or prefolds with covers? Something with inserts? All-in-ones? There are the easiest cloth diapers (all-in-ones), which are the most similar to disposables and the easiest for people unaccustomed to cloth. But they are also by far the most expensive, and they take the most time to wash and dry. Did I mention we don’t have our own washer and dryer? There are dozens of different brands of all these things. I decided to get mostly flats and some prefolds with covers from a couple brands, plus a few all-in-ones for ease for other caretakers, like her grandparents.

As I went into the depths of baby product internet review land I was nearly seduced by things like an adorable wooden baby “play gym”, but I just could not imagine asking someone to pay $135 for something I could probably make for $20. On the other hand, I had no problem asking for the $60 bathtub when the $15 one would have done the job. But we have a tiny apartment! And plan to have at least two kids! My choices were very carefully considered and yet of course also somewhat capricious, I admit this.

I could detail every decision for every product I put on our registry like this, but I imagine it might be somewhat boring other than to people who are about to make these decisions themselves. The big decisions, for you other soon-to-be-parents out there are as follows:

1. The Lotus Everywhere Travel Crib
More expensive than other brands, but the only travel crib free of flame retardants and very well reviewed by moms.

2. The Halo Bassinest
Not the prettiest bassinet (see this hot little luxury number) but well made and convenient and really darn nice compared to a lot of the options (not cheap though, so we better use it at least twice).

3. Glass bottles

I’ll stop there, but feel free to ask me questions in the comments if you want to know more or geek out on baby products or cloth diapers or whatever with me. And tell me your favorite baby items! Though I really probably don’t need to buy too much more at this point. I still have a too long list of items to get, things like diapers and detergent, a drying line, maybe the white noise machine.

The shower itself was incredibly dreamy, and of course not really about all this stuff at all. Simone and I wanted to make our marriage legal before the baby came, and we surprised our guests with a little wedding ceremony at our shower.

We renewed our vows to each other and said new ones to our sweet little baby, and we signed the paperwork that made our marriage legal in California. And then, just about a week later, it became legal everywhere. Our hostess surprised us with the most awesome hot pink wedding cake I’ve ever seen, which we ate amidst mountains of other delicious food.

We played no games, thank goodness, but we did ask guests to write little letters to us and to our baby. I love real letters, these tangible expressions of love and support that I can re-discover time and time again, and I’m so glad we did this. You should watch the video to hear some of the incredibly generous, funny, and thoughtful messages our friends left us and our daughter. She is so lucky to grow up surrounded by such a caring group of friends and family, and so are we.

http://youtu.be/lVS8iEneIeo

I felt so grateful, then, at our baby shower, and I feel so grateful now still, to be transitioning into this next phase of our lives as parents with all this community around us. I know all these decisions about stuff I probably spent way too much time on are really the tiniest, most meaningless decisions we will make in the life of this child. We are going to have so many more and harder decisions to make. I will rely on the internet, my online parent communities (including you fine folks here!), and all these wonderful people as we make our way. Just a month to go!!

VIDEO: Queer Mama for Autostraddle Episode Seven — Help Name Our Baby!

This is Part 7 of a 12 column series. If you’re just joining in, start at the beginning!

Okay dear Autostraddle readers, we need your help! This baby could come in as little as a month, and she doesn’t have a name! Simone and I have been talking about names off and on for years now, but we’ve yet to settle on something. I think maybe my commitment-phobia is rearing its head.

Simone says choosing a name is not unlike choosing a sperm donor. It’s this big, totally subjective decision we have make together for our future child that will be with her for life. Well, or not, as it’s actually not that hard to change your name, whereas changing your sperm donor retroactively is actually biologically impossible.

I think maybe other people don’t find these decisions as hard as we do.

How does a person go about naming someone they’ve never met? What did you do, readers who’ve done it? (Or maybe you just named yourself, tell me about that, too.) We started in the abstract several years ago when we were thinking about baby making, compiling a list of names – boy, girl, and gender neutral – that we thought we liked. We considered all the family names we could think of, but none quite landed. Eventually I bought a couple baby name books and we began looking through those, too.

As, ahem, you’ve probably gathered, Simone and I have very strong opinions about things, and they are not always shared opinions. One of her favorite names is the name of a super shitty ex of a friend of mine, and I have such negative associations with the name that I couldn’t possibly give it to my child. One of my favorite names is the name of her ex-girlfriend’s cat. Damnit. Or there’s the name of that person who was kind of a bully in high school. Or a former lover. Or too similar to the name of someone very close to us.

That’s the thing about names — they carry a lot of subjective weight based on when and how (and if) we’ve encountered them. Or whether they’re suddenly at the forefront of popular culture; Dora and Olivia come to mind. There’s also the more aesthetic qualities. The sound of the name, what imagery it conjures. How delightful it is to say, how easy to spell. Does it jive with our last name?

I think Juniper is an awesome and adorable name, but I’m pretty sure Juniper Jude sounds like a cartoon character, and probably not in a good way. We considered and rejected a fair number of J names because of this. So that’s our first criteria, readers, the name shouldn’t begin with J. I think. Unless you have a really good idea, then give it to me anyway. Oh, also, the baby’s middle name will probably be Everhart, which is the maiden name of my paternal grandmother, so take that into account. __________ Everhart Jude.

June, a name we both like (shocking!!) was also rejected, though not so much because it begins with J, but more because it’s only one syllable. Something about having two one syllable names can make it sound terse, or incomplete. I confirmed this with a friend with two one-syllable names. People often say huh? like they missed something, when he introduces himself, even though his first name is simply John. But now that I think of it Miles Jude has a pretty nice ring to it, though I’d probably want that name more for a boy. So in any case that’s our second criteria, more than one syllable in the name.

Speaking of Miles, that brings us to gender. When Simone and I were first considering names, we thought we should err towards the gender neutral side of the girl-name spectrum. We know a good number of masculine-identifying women and so many trans men who haven’t liked their more feminine given names. But that’s the problem with “gender neutral.” It mostly has just come to mean sort-of masculine. Lover of femininity that I am, was I really willing to write off all the beautiful feminine names because our kid might not be femme?

We decided no, we wouldn’t do that. Our kid can change her name if and when she wants, and in the meantime, we will call her a name we love, even if that’s feminine! In any case, I have friends who’ve later changed their names not because of gender at all, but just because they wanted to be called something else, so there really are no guarantees. After wrapping her mind around it a bit, turns out Simone really loves some of the more feminine names, and we seem to gravitate towards old fashioned elegance or southern flair with our lists these days. Names like Adeline or Eloise or Loretta. Bring on the powerful, feminine names, people!

We also like feminine names with a more andro nickname though, as it seems nice to have that available. Josephine has been on and off our short list for a while, and I like that it is feminine and elegant but has a simple and more boyish nickname (Jo) as well. An androgynous nickname is not an absolute criteria, but it’s an added bonus if available. In general, actually, we prefer names with nicknames, which is sort of funny because neither Simone nor Haley have clear nicknames at all. But nicknames are so cute! We love them! I call Simone Simone-y, and we have approximately 405 nicknames for our dog. Vivian, with so many cute nicknames – Viv, Vivi, simply Vee – is currently a front runner.

Part of thinking about nicknames, and about the gender presentation of the name (is that weird to say, that a name has a gender presentation?) is wanting a name that feels versatile. Which brings up all sorts of feelings. I love frou frou names and once had the thought, “Can a Tallulah be a CEO?” How fucked up is that? Why couldn’t a Tallulah be a CEO? And since when do I hope my daughter will be a CEO anyway?! Clementine Jude could be a badass artist, certainly, but what if she just wants to be boring and mainstream? (Just kidding, darling, I’ll never think you’re boring, do whatever you want in life!)

I tend to think names change, our interpretation of them changes at least, depending on who’s wearing them. I always thought of Simone as quite a feminine name before I met my Simone. She’s quick to point out, though, that’s it’s actually a boy’s name in some parts of the world. Simone thinks names have a strong power, almost as if we are pre-determining a trajectory for our child based on the name we give her. That’s some serious stuff. How can we possibly decide?!

I don’t fully agree with Simone about pre-determining trajectory, but I do think names have power, and I do think it’s quite a decision to make for another person. I kind of want to meet her before we decide. Not that her personality or some essential essence of her will be revealed in the first 24 hours or anything. But I don’t know, maybe something will become clear. The look in her eyes or her tiny face or the way she enters the world giving us some clue into who she is and how we should name her. The next of many honors, little one, letting us choose your name. Well I guess she’s not letting us exactly (Tiny can’t really consent yet!) but it’s something we get to do as parents, something we have to do.

Something we have to do very soon!! So please help us. Send us all your favorite name ideas. More than one syllable, unique but not trendy or too out there (whatever the heck that means!), sounds good with Jude, versatile and pretty and powerful. I know she’s going to be quite the gal, and she needs a name that can match her ferocity or tenderness or whatever it is she turns out to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipKRVnBwv5o

Tell me the story of how you got your name, and if you like it. Have you always liked it? Or do you kinda hate the name your parents gave you? Tell me that too, and why. Write your suggestions in the comments. And if we choose your name, you totally get a prize. We just haven’t decided what that is yet.

VIDEO: Queer Mama for Autostraddle Episode Six — Finding Out the Sex

This is Part 6 of a 12 column series. If you’re just joining in, start at the beginning!

Sometimes I almost can’t believe that I’m growing a PERSON. Twenty-nine weeks inside me now, skull firmly lodged by my bladder these days. I imagine, sometime in the distant future, looking at my grownup child with their now adult-sized skull and thinking, “wow, that thing was once inside me. I grew you.” Wild.

I know so little about this creature I’m gestating, and sometimes I wonder what kind of person our baby will turn out to be. What passions, what personality, what will our relationship be like? There’s no information available about who this person will be, though I sometimes like to guess based on how active the baby is or what kind of music causes the most kicks.

The only real clue one can get about this baby inside, and a very murky clue at that, is what genitals they appear to have or what sex chromosomes (depending on how and if one chooses to get the news). I always knew I wanted to find out the sex of my baby. I don’t know that I would’ve gone out of my way to find out if it cost like a ton of money or required some special procedure, but given the choice? Hell yeah, I wanted to know. I didn’t want some ultrasound tech knowing something major about my baby that I didn’t! Or weirder yet, having to hide this big piece of information from me by swooping by the genitals at every ultrasound.

Simone was impatient to know from very early on. She wanted something more concrete to envision about this child, and she wanted to start talking more seriously about names! I felt patient, knowing it was likely (all being well healthwise) the only big piece of news we’d get for the whole fortyish weeks with this babe inside.

I need to pause here and say, in case it isn’t obvious, that Simone and I both recognize that gender is a social construct and that a person’s sex and gender aren’t always determined by what their genitals look like at birth. Whether our child has what appears to be a penis or a vagina or even xx or xy or another chromosome combination entirely doesn’t really tell us who they will turn out to be. They could be intersex or transgender or genderqueer or gender non-normative in some way that is yet to be named.

Our own gender evolutions have been complicated. Simone was a tomboy who ran around shirtless until she got to the age where other people were uncomfortable that this girl, no longer just a child, wasn’t wearing a shirt. She had crossed that invisible line created by our fucked up society between shirtless and topless. In her pre-teen and teenage years she felt stifled, awkward, and distressed by having to perform “girl” in the ways being modeled around her. It wasn’t until much later, after she came out even, that she came into her own gender as a masculine-identifying woman. She-identified, men’s clothes-wearing, handsome and tender. Still frustrated by the fact that men can run around without shirts while she can’t.

I’ve mostly always been femme, though I didn’t always know it, and I definitely didn’t always own it. I came into my femme-inism as a teenager frustrated by the double standards around sexuality for boys and girls, unwilling to accept unequal access to things like having sex just because it felt good. I enjoyed my feminine powers of seduction, though also tired very quickly of the way I was treated as a white, pretty, bubbly blond young woman. I diminished my femininity for some time because of this, wanting to be taken seriously, whatever that meant, wanting to be a sex object, too, sure, but also so much more.

It wasn’t until I found queer community that I really came into my own femininity. I met powerful, sexy, brilliant, tough femmes who I wanted to be (and, ahem, also make out with). I was suddenly surrounded by people I felt could see me in my wholeness, people who respected my femininity, elevating it to the place I believe it deserves. Our culture’s relationship with femininity is oh-so fraught, and queer culture gave me a totally different terrain upon which to play with gender and embrace my own identity. I believe in the radical potential of femme.

I also just love “girly” stuff – hot pink and sparkles, stilettos and short skirts. But I don’t shave my legs, and I keep my nails short. I pick and choose the pieces of femininity I want. I’m lucky to live my life and feel in my body in such a way that I rarely feel a pressure anymore to conform to gender norms that don’t suit me.

This is supposed to be an essay about finding out the sex of our baby, and I have digressed oh so much already. Can you tell I care a lot and think a lot about gender?! This is complicated, intimate stuff people, and I feel committed to revealing the complexities as best I can. So I’ve given you a sense that Simone and my genders are complicated, and that we very much understand that sex and gender are not somehow essentially tied, so why did we even care what sex the baby appeared to be?

One queer friend put it this way: the child is likely, statistically speaking, to identify in some fashion with the gender they are assigned at birth. So this piece of information does give us a big clue as to who they might be or, at the very least, a clue as to how the world will be towards them in their early years.

I’ll be straight up – I’ve always wanted to have a daughter. I love girls and women and mostly choose to surround myself with them in my friendships and in my life. Being a lesbian separatist would be problematic in so many ways, but I sometimes fantasize about it anyway. I am drawn to people choosing to live in the world as women, across the whole spectrum of masculinity and femininity, cis or trans, queer or not. I’m also drawn to femmes, male or female-identified, and I’ve joked with Simone for years that all I really want is a princess, boy or girl, and that I won’t stop having kids until I get one. Which I realize means I will probably end up with a pack of the butchest kids you’ve ever seen. And then I’ll be that mom hoping they date someone girly so I can shower them with the pink things my children rejected.

As I compiled our registry, before we found out the sex, I filled it with hot pink items, because that’s my favorite color. I mean the baby doesn’t care what color the bathtub or stroller is. I’m the one who has to look at it! I realized that people looking at our registry would likely just assume the baby was a girl, however. I thought about how all my pink stuff would be considered transgressive if it turned out we were having a boy, but read as gender normative to most of the world if it so happened we were having a girl.

I was so nervous the day of our 19-week ultrasound, much more preoccupied with whether the baby was healthy and growing well than with what sex they might be. It had been 7 weeks since I’d last seen our baby, which felt like far too long, since I’d been spoiled with so many early ultrasounds due to IVF. I was in that weird part of pregnancy where I only felt I was pregnant because I wasn’t getting my period. I had started feeling some movement, but it wasn’t consistent and wasn’t as distinctive as it would grow to be in the coming weeks.

The ultrasound tech walked us down two long hallways into a small, sterile room with giant screens, dimmed the lights, and drew a smiley face on my belly with lube. Seriously. I only noticed this in retrospect, reviewing the footage. She took her time, entering numbers into the computer, fiddling with dials, checking all the important things off her to-scan list before finally the baby turned their butt and legs towards the wand.

“It’s not looking like there’s much between the legs,” she said. Simone and I laughed nervously. “Yup, nope,” the tech said, moving the wand back and forth, and from that moment forward our baby became a she.

It wasn’t until after I heard confirmation from the doctor that our baby did in fact look healthy and well, until after I wiped the gel off my stomach and pulled my shirt back down, until I got outside even, on the way to our car, that it really sunk in. I was having a daughter. I am having a daughter. It is with reverence, complexity, and so much bliss that I share this news with you now. We are having a baby girl!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IwyLgs0DHc

VIDEO: Queer Mama for Autostraddle Episode Five – I Want To Be Pregnant Forever!

All of a sudden, somewhere between twelve and fourteen weeks, I woke up and pregnancy was everything I ever wanted it to be and so much more. It’s hard to say how much of the crappiness of the first trimester was the IVF hormones and how much was normal first trimester stuff, but the day I went off my progesterone injections I had so much more energy.

I was lucky, too, that, like clockwork, my “morning sickness” (ahem, pregnancy induced nausea, which most certainly did not happen only in the morning) disappeared. I stopped having so many weird food aversions and a desire to only consume huge amounts of carbs, yogurt, and oranges.

Off the progesterone and, uterus floating up out of the pelvis, I stopped getting up 5 times in the middle of the night to pee. The early part of the second trimester was marked by an absence of symptoms, mostly. No nausea, no fatigue, no peeing, little moodiness. For several weeks I thought “well, I haven’t gotten my period in a long time so I guess that means I’m pregnant.” Not bleeding felt like the only real clue.

Then my belly started to grow, bit by bit, until somewhere around 18 weeks when I felt like it just popped out and I could see it growing in real time. My boobs went through a second growth spurt too. I reveled in my changing body, staring at myself in the mirror all these new curves, feeling a feminine lusciousness.

I felt well enough to start exercising again and quickly became obsessed with prenatal yoga, all juicy hips and pelvic floors and rooms full of pregnant ladies. Across the threshold of that early more dicey time, and holding onto that faith I’d cultivated, I told myself I was no more likely to lose this baby now than at 35 weeks, and so I might as well enjoy it. (I realize that might sound like a bizarre comfort to people who’ve never experienced loss, but there you go!) I saw my future in these women, huge bellies and powerful warrior poses.

I actually felt like the earth mother goddess I had envisioned becoming. I decided I wanted to be pregnant forever. Those of you who’ve been reading my column are probably thinking, holy 180! And it’s true, it felt that dramatic to me, too. In a way, I think the bliss came in that way it only can after a dark time. I thought often of Kahlil Gibran’s lines of poetry: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

I was overflowing with joy, with gratitude for making it this far in my pregnancy, with curves and creativity. An expansiveness that connected me to all the beauty and love around me. There would have been a time in my life where this much gushing would have been embarrassing to me, the level of sap I rose to, but not now. I felt a deep empathy for everyone around me, and rather than feeling like all these feelings were a terrible strange burden, like I sometimes did during IVF and the first trimester, I felt so very grateful for them. It felt so good to look at the world with so much compassion and tenderness.

This sweetness and sensuality drew me ever closer towards Simone. I would wake up each morning and stare at her, slightly baffled by how magnificent she was. In awe that there she was, in our bed, yet again, day in and day out. That somehow I was getting to spend my life with this wonderful person. That we had chosen each other, and that we kept choosing each other, over and over, as we plan to do for the rest of our lives. I could lay there, puzzling over how lucky I was, staring at her and snuggling back in, for hours.

Sometimes, though, just staring at her wasn’t enough. I had to have her hands on me, needed her to devour me, over and over please, and just never stop. Every inch of me felt hyper attuned to each touch or kiss, all that extra blood flow and sensitive breasts being put to good use. I was ravenous, pretty much all the time. It might have been overwhelming if it wasn’t so much fun. Our sex is often interplanetary, but during these months there was super extra holy wow total transcendence mind blown don’t worry I never to need to come back from here-ness.

Slowly, as I wasn’t sure at first if it was really happening, the other coolest part of the second trimester began to happen. I began to feel the baby move. At first there was a lot of, “is that?!” But later it was unmistakeable. On a trip away from Simone I captured my belly moving for the first time, real evidence that there was a little person growing inside me. A little person with legs to kick and hands to punch and a head to head butt me with and somersaults to do.

Tiny Dancer makes me laugh and laugh with her/his moves, like s/he’s telling me some kind of joke or discovering something new for the first time or even fumbling around all uncoordinated. Whatever it is, I find it very funny. And I find it very sweet.

I am carrying my baby inside my body, teaching him/her about the world through my experiences. Every good feeling transmitting those hormones through the placenta. Every taste filtering into the amniotic fluid. Teaching her/him the sound of laughter and music and Simone’s voice. Teaching him/her about how beautiful and filled with sensation the world s/he is coming into is going to be.

I felt so present during the second trimester (lots of mindfulness probably helped). Because of my miscarriage, because of how hard we worked to get here, because of all the people I know still trying (or who have decided to build their families in other ways, or not at all), I take nothing for granted. Not a moment. I savor every kick, every new curve, every song Simone sings to our little one. I feel very aware of how fleeting this time is, how we will never be here again.

I can’t guarantee I will ever get pregnant again (I so hope to, of course), but even if I could it would be a totally different experience. A different baby, a different pregnancy, a different time in our lives. And likely (oh, how I hope) I’ll have a little one in the world clamoring for my attention. As I approached the end of the second trimester I became more aware of this transition on the horizon. Baby as beginning and end. The end of this era of us, of me and Simone, of our early years as a couple. It will never be just the two of us, ever again.

As I rounded the corner towards the second trimester I felt both patient and ready. Simone and I are so ready (whatever that means!) for this new phase of our family, a phase that will no doubt call upon us to both strengthen our bond as a couple and release some of our hold. But I felt in no rush to get there, either, as I looked to the last trimester of pregnancy and our last few months together. You can take your time, baby. I want you fully cooked.

I write this in the early days of the third trimester, with a keen awareness that the only thing certain in this journey of pregnancy, of parenting, of life is that EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE. So stay tuned with me for what this last phase of pregnancy will bring. If you’ve been pregnant, chime in with comments about what I should expect next!

https://youtu.be/IYBLXHifJr8

Watch the video for more on the second trimester, and, always, sappy moments between me and Simone, and, yup, more tears!

VIDEO! Queer Mama Interviews +one: They Want To Help You Get Pregnant

I heard about +one, a new integrated product and platform that helps lesbian couples conceive, from multiple sources simultaneously. My networks were super excited about it, and I know you will be too, dear Autostraddle readers! +one is poised to fill a serious void for us in terms of resources, materials, and peer-to-peer support.

If you’ve spent time searching the depths of the internet for accurate, up-to-date, trustworthy information about how to conceive — from medical, legal, financial and emotional perspectives — you know how seriously lacking it is. +one intends to provide tons of content on their website in the form of articles, webinars, and personal consultations with experts. They’ll also have a forum for folks to connect and share experiences.

For folks who want to conceive at home, they’ve got a sexy product for that too (currently designed for use with a known donor.) It’s a reusable, all glass and silicone, insulated collection cup and applicator, designed to make it as easy as possible to suck all that precious semen up and shoot it inside yourself (or your partner). The kit also includes simple to read in-the-moment instructions so you know what to do.

I got my hands on the prototype, and it’s awesome. Also, I really like glass — and rad queer/women-run businesses serving our underserved communities! Watch the interview to hear directly from two of the founders, visit their website, and stay tuned for their launch.

What +one wants most right now is to hear from you! Sign up for their mailing list on their site and get in touch with them if you have ideas or resources. Also, share your stories, challenges, and joys of your conception journey in the comments. They’ll be hanging out down there and would love to hear from you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKjV_AqQ–4

VIDEO: Queer Mama for Autostraddle Episode Four — First Trimester Realness

This is Part 4 of a 12 column series. If you’re just joining in, start at the beginning!

If you’ve been following along, you know how badly I wanted to be pregnant and how hard I worked to get pregnant. I thought this meant that actually being pregnant would be pure bliss. Oops.

A lot of this journey for me has been about letting go of expectations, letting go of any semblance of control. This is probably one of the things I’m going to need to be learning for the rest of my life, but damn if the first trimester wasn’t a good teacher. Look how much my baby is teaching me already, and s/he’s not even here yet!

Tiny Dancer at 10 weeks

One of the many messed up things about IVF is that you feel like you’re in the first trimester before you actually are, as the hormones precede the embryo transfer and any possible pregnancy. They also tend to give you more hormones, and for longer, than you really need for safety, so it’s like going through a seriously jacked up version of first trimester. Yippeee!! If you thought shoving large amounts of progesterone into your body through a giant needle sounded bad enough, wait until you hear about the side effects.

Progesterone made me TIRED. Unfathomably tired. Because I’d been through IVF before, I was a little more ready for it this time, and I filled our freezer with easy meals and said no to pretty much anything I possibly could. (Sorry, friends, for those twelve weeks I was a total hermit! Now you know why.) I was so thankful I worked for myself because I could, and did, nap whenever I needed to. So much sleep.

In addition to growing a still very tiny baby, my body was also creating a new organ: the miraculous placenta!! How incredibly cool is that?! It also created blood vessels to support the placenta, and increased my blood volume, too, while my kidneys filtered all that blood even faster than usual. Hormones are powerful stuff, whoa. The uterus also expands and the combination of all these things together is directly responsible for another lovely first trimester symptom, peeing ALL THE TIME. Turns out the sleepless nights, for many of us, begin long before baby even gets here.

Me at 10 weeks

I started waking up multiple times in the middle of the night to pee, and I just decided to roll with it. I read 3 to 4 books a week during those 12 weeks. I grew to love it even — look at all the reading I could get done! It made me feel like maybe waking up with a baby every few hours to breastfeed wouldn’t be so terrible after all, as long as I just surrendered to it. (Not the same thing, I know, but just let me have this one, okay?)

Sometimes, though, I woke up terribly nauseous. I once made and consumed an entire pot of oatmeal at 2am before I could fall back asleep. Food aversions combined with nausea were a particular kind of hell. Nothing would sound appealing to eat, but the hungrier I got the more nauseous I got, which meant the less I wanted to eat, which meant the worse I felt… I started setting my alarm for every two hours to remind myself to preemptively just eat something. Lots of yogurt and toast, the lowest sugar granola bars I could find, and tons of citrus. I shoved handfuls of lettuce into smoothies to make sure I was getting enough greens.

Simone was delighted I was nauseous. It was a good sign for a strong and healthy pregnancy! She proudly marched through the door loaded down with bags filled with every assortment of snack I thought I could stomach and all the ginger candies our local co-op stocked. “I really feel like I have a pregnant wife now!” she beamed.

I was happy about it, too, at least for a while. I cried tears of joy the first (and luckily only) time I vomited. I was really truly pregnant, raging hormones and all. I would wake up in the morning and smile at my nausea, glad it was still with me, gradually much less glad five or six hours later.

And if I thought eating at home was hard, eating out was harder. I’d find myself wandering around an unfamiliar neighborhood before a work meeting desperately searching for something I thought was not only baby safe but baby nourishing. I landed on a hippie-ish coffee shop, thinking their hummus sandwich with veggies was a safe and healthy bet, no non-organic meat or anything weird, but when the sandwich came out it had sprouts on it. Weren’t sprouts one of those things that often had food-borne illnesses? I wouldn’t risk it.

At least there was a side of fruit. I could eat that. Shit, weren’t grapes on the dirty dozen list? There was no way these grapes were organic. Should I ask? I was too embarrassed to ask. Was it better to eat something covered in pesticides or nothing at all? I agonized over these decisions, wanting so badly to protect this vulnerable little being I couldn’t even be sure was still growing inside me.

That’s one weird part about the first trimester, the fact that the work my body was doing and the baby her/himself were both so invisible. I couldn’t feel any movement, my belly wasn’t expanding yet, and symptoms ebbed and flowed. Was there really a baby growing? I was scared a lot of the time. More than I wanted to be. Especially when I bled, which I did several times throughout the first trimester.

Bleeding in pregnancy, and in the first trimester especially, is fairly common, but that doesn’t make it any less scary. Having had a miscarriage, I knew what was at stake, I knew how precarious this pregnancy still was. More than that, I knew what it felt like to lose a baby, how unbearable it had been. I knew that loving someone that much, especially someone who wasn’t even yet really a someone, was the most dangerous thing I could do with my heart.

It was overwhelming. I consider myself a very rational person, calm in a crisis, not easily overtaken by anxiety. I was untethered from that ease, that sense of who I was, during those early months. I was so happy in the very earliest weeks when we first found out, but as the weeks went on, as the bleeding cropped up every once in a while, that happiness was often interrupted by near panic.

Every week there was more at stake as this baby and I grew more attached, both literally/physically and emotionally. I couldn’t quite believe that odds were good I would end up with a baby this time, and I also couldn’t stand the thought of the alternative. Simone held me as I cried many nights, assuring me that though she could not promise me that our baby would be okay, she could promise me that I would be. She promised me that she would be by my side, loving me, holding me up for as long as I needed, no matter the outcome. I am so grateful for her love.

That love, and journaling, and mindfulness, and every coping mechanism I could grasp, and a lot of support from my brilliant therapist, got me through those weeks. At 10 weeks and 3 days, a few hours after seeing a decidedly baby-looking baby bop around on the ultrasound and just after a very affirming therapy session, I decided I was tired of speaking in conditionals. I was going to pretend this pregnancy was real. It didn’t matter what I thought or that I didn’t believe. I was going to just pretend, as an experiment, that there would really be a baby at the end of this.

Fake it ’til you make it works, y’all. I knew at that point that I couldn’t really protect my heart by not having hope, so I let something go that day. I allowed myself to begin to enjoy the pregnancy again. To begin, even, to have fleeting glimpses of that future baby, something I’d been so scared to even imagine. The next day, Simone and I picked out a cute onesie at our local secondhand kid’s store. A week later, I joined our neighborhood parenting listserv (albeit with a new/fake email address) to keep an eye out for used gear.

I started settling in, day by day, as I finally rounded the corner into that hallowed second trimester.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHlBUKXfuaA&feature=youtu.be

If you haven’t yet, watch the video to hear me talk more about all those wacky first trimester symptoms. Oh and also to see me cry, again. One of these days I’ll make an episode where I don’t cry, I promise… And please share your first trimester experiences in the comments, it’s important for folks to hear about how different it is for everyone. And, as always, ask me questions. I’ll answer them here or in my next video! Until next time.

VIDEO: Queer Mama for Autostraddle Episode Three — Let’s Go Sperm Shopping!

A lot of things would have been so much simpler if Simone had sperm. We wouldn’t have had to do IVF, of course, but also we wouldn’t have had to choose a sperm donor. Oh my goodness was it hard for us. When people ask, which they often do, who he is and how we chose, it’s hard to know where to begin. How do I distill two years of conversations down into a column or a video, let alone a conversation over brunch?

You’ve probably noticed by now that I am a person who cares A LOT about things, especially this future baby of ours, and that I have passionate opinions. Simone, it turns out, does too. I believe that DNA matters, that our genes influence who we are and how we start in the world. I like to geek out on my 23andme results, read every article I can find on prenatal epigenetics, and trace genetic patterns in our large extended families.

When we were first considering our donor options, we looked at a few Bay Area sperm banks and it seemed like every other guy was a filmmaker (maybe because independent filmmakers, like lots of artists, could pretty much always use some extra cash). I kept having this ridiculous vision of, say, five years down the line being at a filmmaker meet up, looking across the room and recognizing my child in a stranger’s face, being like holy shit, I think that’s our donor. It’s a little absurd, I know, but San Francisco is a pretty small town!

I felt weirded out, on so many levels, about using a sperm bank donor. I also felt like we had to use a known donor. So we grabbed our phones, pulled up our social media “friends” lists and proceeded to evaluate pretty much every person we knew with sperm.

What about that cute gay guy I went to college with? Nope, he’s a nihilist who doesn’t believe in procreating. What about Simone’s brilliant old friend from New York? No, his mom is schizophrenic, and so is one of my close relatives. What about the charming anarchist I used to live near? Maybe not, because I also used to sleep with him…

There are so many criteria that can be used to select – or eliminate – a possible donor. Looks, interests, smarts, family medical history, do we want them in our lives FOREVER, are they proximate?

After more conversations than I could possibly recount, we eventually chose our donor. Smart, creative, attractive, emotionally intelligent, someone we would be delighted to have in our child’s life (and ours) forever. We approached him, discussing expectations, family history, process, all of it, and everything seemed to be going swimmingly.

Until he went to our fertility clinic to get his semen tested.

I sort of laugh at myself now because the one book I read about “lesbian conception” said, basically, “if you are going to use a known donor, get his sperm tested, right away, first thing, before you’ve committed or even fully decided.” I thought that was presumptuous, like “hey, dude, we’re not sure about you yet, but would you mind jerking off into a cup so we can see what we’re working with?” It also felt unnecessary. Our donor was young and fit and seemed plenty virile to me.

Turns out (duh) you can’t spot infertility by looking at someone. His semen analysis came back with low count, low morphology, and low motility, not good all around. If we’d been planning IUI we would’ve had to stop right there. But because we were doing IVF anyway, our clinic said we could just use a little process called Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) where a single sperm is injected into each egg to assist with fertilization.

What happened next (lots of additional tests and soul searching, mostly) is a story for another day, but to make a very long story oh so much shorter, we had our first IVF cycle, and then I had my miscarriage.

Simone and I could barely tend to our own feelings for a while after that, let alone try to attend to what this might mean for our friend, who we cared deeply about. Simone held onto most everything for a while, really, while I was pulled under by it all, under the covers, typically, hardly leaving our bed for months.

As we very slowly picked up the pieces of our hearts, we had to decide what to do about sperm the next time we tried.

In part because of the emotional turmoil we’d felt, in part because of the advice of a new fertility doctor, and in part to try to simplify things as much as we possibly could (a little ridiculous of an attempt, I realize, given that we were undertaking fucking IVF again…), we decided to try with an unknown sperm bank donor this second time — someone with proven pregnancies and impeccable sperm. Someone with tons of vials available for purchase, frozen and ready for our use, whenever and however we wanted to use them. For IVF or IUI, for this child, or any number of future children we might want to have. Nothing to do except pull out our credit cards.

And, of course, decide who this mysterious person would be. I wasn’t certain about this shift for some time, and I was still imagining the fictional filmmaker meet up I’d invented. I was thinking about how often people lie in their online dating profiles, about how you can’t really know someone without interacting with them through more than forms filled with text and written or even audio or video interviews.

I thought a lot about the child we were trying to create. This new way forward felt right and simple to us, but how would it be for them? We were doing something that felt so much easier in the short term, but would it be harder in the longterm for our family? I looked at every donor conception site I could find. I read studies and personal accounts. How did these kids turn out? Did they hate their parents?

I came to the conclusion that our kid might very well have some questions, but that they would also probably be just fine. They would, in all likelihood, consider the two of us their parents, being the people who not only raised them, but also chose to bring them into the world at all.

We did decide, however, to only look at “willing to be known” donors, so our kid would have the option of contacting their donor at age 18. I’m guessing by then they will have already found a mess of their half siblings online thanks to all the DNA testing services out there, but who knows.

Thus began, again, the question of how we would decide. I wanted someone who seemed like us, someone with a creative and intellectual seeming family and similar interests, someone I imagined would fit in with us culturally. This is such an abstract thing to figure out from a series of questions on a form, and it became more absurd the longer we looked.

Hours into looking at yet another bank, I actually suggested ruling someone out because his favorite food is spaghetti. (What’s wrong with someone’s favorite food being spaghetti? I really can’t recall.) I also refused to consider anyone with a police officer in their family. I really don’t like cops.

Simone gravitated towards someone a little less like us, someone she thought would balance us out, perhaps someone with a degree in business or more of an interest in athletics. She also just could not choose someone whose voice she found grating (incredibly auditory and musical person that she is). We both had our sticking points, and sometimes they were weird.

It’s a weird process, really, this hyper focus on the semi-random details of a person, those details being the only pieces of information you get to form a picture of who they are. It’s easy to nitpick in a way I don’t think most of us do when choosing a partner. It never once crossed my mind, for example, that Simone would somehow be a less suitable parent because she wears glasses. But if I had a choice between a donor with perfect vision and one without?

You should probably watch the video to get a sense for how it went, how ridiculous and exhausting it really was, but eventually we did it. We found someone we were both excited about, someone who ticked a lot of our boxes but, more importantly, someone we just felt good about. It was a huge relief.

We called the sperm bank, placed the order, and put another $7,400 on our credit card. As you might have guessed, I’m hoping Tiny Dancer isn’t our only child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC9NfxYZDOU

VIDEO: Queer Mama Episode Two — How We Got Knocked Up

I never crawled (too fat), but at ten and a half months I stood up and started walking, refusing to be pushed in a stroller ever after. At two I announced I didn’t want to wear diapers anymore and never wore another one, not once having an accident. I’ve always been the same – precocious, decisive, eager to get things going, and determined to do things my own way.

I thought I’d have my first kid by age 26 at the very latest. Simone was two days shy of 35 on our first date, and, even though her biological clock wasn’t exactly ticking (she never wanted to carry a child), she didn’t want to wait too long to become a parent either.

So one night we decided to stop using condoms and… boom! Well no, not really. Alas, we don’t have the right parts for that. Two uteruses and four ovaries but nary a sperm between us.

We had to decide how we were going to grow our family.

I could say that it’s frustrating that we didn’t just get to smash some body parts together and hope for the best, that we had to even think about it, because that would be a true thing to say. It was/is/can be frustrating, but it was also a gift. Because there was no obvious path, we had to talk about it, be intentional, think long and hard about what we wanted in a family and how we were going to make it happen.

To me this is one of the greatest gifts of queerness. We don’t get that same script that the majority of straight people do about our lives, our relationships, how we have sex or how we procreate. As many commenters noted on my last column, that lack of representation can be scary and lonely. But it also gives us the opportunity to write our own stories. And these stories can be the most wondrous, fantastic stories of our dreams.

Four months after Simone and I vowed to spend our lives together, I was crying on the streets of New Orleans, asking angrily why we hadn’t started trying to have kids yet. There was a sign that said “For Rent. Not Haunted.” on one of the apartments nearby, and our days had been filled with every manner of fried food, drinking wine on medians, and the sort of southern queer delights that made me ache for North Carolina.

There were good reasons we hadn’t started trying. We were in debt. We’d had a big (illegal) wedding and released our first feature documentary that past summer, two distracting and expensive endeavors that had derailed our paying work for a couple of months. We had taken too much time off, and we were only in the first full year of business together, still nervous about the sustainability of this fledgling dream.

But the bigger reason, which came out right there in a flood on cobblestones in the French Quarter, was that Simone wanted me to carry her baby, and that was maybe going to be impossible to achieve.

Simone had never wanted to be pregnant herself, but she had always envied the privilege that fertile straight people have. That chance to co-create a child, to know your partner is carrying a piece of you, that biologically together you are making this new life. (There have been so many days on this journey where I’ve envied this too, the alchemy and ease and free-ness of it all.)

But at some point Simone realized that, through the magic of IVF* and the science of surrogacy, that a female partner of hers could actually carry her baby, that that piece of her dream was possible, and from then on she had wanted that. In some ways it felt like the ultimate romance, her partner (me) carrying her child.

(*Note: In vitro fertilization is a process in which eggs are retrieved, fertilized by sperm in a lab, and then resulting embryo(s) are transferred into a uterus to hopefully implant and grow into a baby.)

Simone’s medications

We had discussed this previously, and I was keen on the idea – what I really wanted was the experience of being pregnant and the whole being a parent part – but we had eventually ruled it out because of cost. IVF is seriously fucking expensive. $20,000+ expensive, per round.

Under a lamp post, Simone admitted that she wasn’t actually ready to abandon the possibility and move on to other, less costly, ways of making a baby, and I, in part earnestness and part desperation, said, “Well let’s just do IVF and get on with it, then.”

Anyone who has ever gone through IVF can tell you I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Simone was two weeks away from her 38th birthday, so we knew if we wanted to have her biological child we had to get on it, ASAP. There was no time to try another way first and then see if it this dream still mattered to us once a baby came, and then do something different for our second child. It was now or never.

Our IVF calendar

We had talked about, and would again discuss many nights over bourbon on the rocks, every possible way we knew to make a baby – insemination of me at home by a known donor, IUI in a clinic with a sperm bank donor, IVF with her eggs and my uterus, adoption, etc.

I reckoned with how badly I wanted to have a child that shared her DNA. I couldn’t stop imagining the child’s face, who they could be. As our extended families grew around us, I saw family resemblances in nieces and nephews, the weird way genes combine to make a new face. I wished for that for us, too, in whatever way.

Some people argue that wanting to have a genetic child is a narcissistic desire, and I will admit that I felt that, so strongly, whatever the partner-focused version of that is. I wanted to make a mini-Simone. How could I not, when she is the most incredible person I have ever known? Doesn’t our world deserve a little more of that special Simone-ness floating around?

Baby Simone

I begged and cajoled her to get pregnant at several points, suggesting we could go live for six months on a farm, say somewhere by the Russian River, to shield her from some of the internal gender dysmorphia and external assumptions she’d experience carrying a baby, watching her body change. We could even run a farm for butch preggos, a little b&b, I’d do all the cooking! She thought long and hard, but she just didn’t want to do it. At all. She would rather not have a genetic child if it meant she would be the one carrying it.

For Simone it wasn’t simply about passing on her genes, it was also about me carrying her baby.

We wrestled with our privilege, and I had a lot of sleepless, guilty nights. If we could spend this many thousands to create a baby, shouldn’t we instead come up with the money and donate it to a prison abolitionist group? Was this the most selfish thing we’d ever done and, because maybe it was, were we okay with that? I’d had a full ride to college, and Simone had partial scholarships and parental assistance, so we had no student loans. I had basically zero credit (I didn’t get my first credit card until 25 because fuck capitalism), but Simone had nearly perfect credit and high limits.

At the IVF clinic

We tackled spreadsheets – how much would it cost, really? With the procedures, the drugs, the sperm? (Answer: an estimated $19,209 per round. Significantly more with a known donor.) And how would we come up with the cash? We researched medical loan programs and credit cards, shaved away at every category in our budget, reducing our personal discretionary income (the only money we spend outside of our budgeted categories) to $100 per month, and thought about all the sacrifices we’d be willing to make for this baby, this dream. We were so lucky, then, too, that our business was booming, and Simone’s parents offered to help pay as well.

Money is weird. $19,000 felt like both all the money in the world (I used to live off $5,000 per year!) and no money at all in the lifetime spending on a child. This child that I would grow inside my body and love and hopefully know for the rest of my life. This child of ours, this child we would co-create and raise together, with all the love and intention and complexity we approached his/her/their conception with, and so much more.

We ultimately threw our hands up and, in a burst of both foolishness and long-considered decision-making, said, “it’s just money, right?!” With the help of a 0% interest credit card, we decided to go for it.

We were going to do what some call “shared maternity” or “reciprocal” IVF, where you harvest the eggs of one partner, fertilize and grow them to embryos, and then transfer an embryo(s) to the hormonally prepared uterus of the other partner. If you are damn lucky, a baby results.

Our embryos

And thus began one of the hardest, most expensive undertakings of my entire life.

So go watch the video to learn a little more about the wild science of IVF and what it was like to actually do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDmk7Iayygw

If you’ve done IVF, or are considering it, or want to know more, let me know in the comments. Happy to share knowledge and resources.

And stay tuned for the next column: choosing a sperm donor!

VIDEO: Queer Mama Episode One — Meet Haley and Simone!

I’ve always wanted to get pregnant, have a baby, and be a mom. It’s one of the few things I’ve been certain of for as long as I can remember. I’ve always thought that growing a baby would be the coolest, most trippy, most transformative thing I could possibly do with my body. And I love kids — their absolute zest for life, their curiosity and silliness. That unadulterated fascination they have with the world, how everything is up for grabs. How easily they love. I adore make-believe and singing all the time, jokes and new adventures. I love constantly discovering, and the way kids remind us how much there is to teach and learn. I’ve always filled my life with children.

My family describes me as “capricious,” which I don’t think is exactly fair, though it’s true that I throw myself passionately into new things, and there have been quite a few new things.

When I was a kid, I thought I’d be a mathematician or an actress. Then I thought I’d work in post-conflict zones or be a professor. Then I wanted to be a writer. Or a professional activist, or a lawyer, maybe, just briefly. I wanted to live by the ocean, abroad, on a farm — no! — definitely in a city.

When I landed a full scholarship to college, I took the money I’d saved waiting tables during high school and flew to Cape Town. I spent the next 15 months in 25 countries spanning Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. I thought, then, that I might be a traveler forever.

Turkey!

In college I went to sit-ins, disrupted white supremacists, got arrested and became, for a moment, the poster child for everything wrong about radical left youth. (She’s queer! She’s been to Africa! She’s majoring in performance art!)  As a performance artist, I was booed off a stage at Mondohomo in Atlanta. As a gardener, I sorta accidentally grew hundreds of pounds of tomatoes and thus learned to can a lot earlier than I’d initially planned on. I’ve got a lot of passions that turn out to be whims. In 2010, I moved to San Francisco. I had a place to crash, but beyond that, my only plan was to meet some queer people I (or my exes) hadn’t already slept with.

So I understand why my loved ones sense they’ll never know where I’ll end up next, or if my next passionate whim will stick.

But no matter what, I’ve always, always, always known that I would be a parent. I’ve always wanted to have a baby. Actually babies, plural. Lots of them. One miscarriage, four embryos, dozens of pee sticks, 18 months, and approximately 132 injections later, I’m 18 weeks pregnant!

Even though I grew up without queer role models, I’ve been privileged enough to never feel the need to be closeted or worried that my queerness would conflict with my desire to be a Mom, and as a cisfemale femme, I didn’t grow up with the kind of gender policing that less gender-normative queers often experience (although I’ve certainly experienced other forms of gender policing!). I came equipped with the hardest-to-come-by parts of conception (uterus, eggs), as well as the desire to carry a child. So I was surprised when someone close to me responded to me coming out by saying, “but you’ve always wanted to have kids!”

At Slovenia Pride 2009

I know there are so many queers out there who’ve felt this external questioning, or an internal one, emotional or physical, about whether their queerness would prevent them from having children. Will I find a partner to start a family with? Will someone love me in my queer wholeness and brokenness? Do I/we have all the necessary ingredients to make a child? If not, how will we afford them? If not by procreation, will some authority let me take home a child? Will my partner and I be legally protected if we have a child together? Will our child be safe in the world, this child of queers?

I’m so fortunate that for me, the answers to those questions never led me to think a child couldn’t be part of my life story.

On my first date with my now-partner, Simone, I said, “I want to have kids young, and I want to have them on my own. I don’t think I’ll find a life partner until much later, maybe my fifties.” I also told her that I didn’t believe in monogamy and wasn’t looking for a serious relationship. Long-term relationships were not for me. I wasn’t necessarily charming first date material, but at least I was honest!

I’d moved to San Francisco only three months prior, and I was getting acquainted with every experience and person I could get my hands on, reveling in what still felt like a queer mecca. I was ready for only one kind of long-term thing: having kids. But I’d just emerged from a decade of variously devastating relationships and couldn’t imagine meeting a potential girlfriend I’d want to commit 18+ years to any time soon.

On that first date, Simone told me she was looking for something serious and wasn’t interested in anything casual. “I find you too attractive to just sleep with you,” she said. I told her I was disappointed when she said we shouldn’t date, but that I understood. I was hoping we could be friends, because I thought she was very cool and very fascinating.

Then, at 1:00pm on a Monday, before going back to work, she drank a chocolate martini and kissed me. Everything changed.

Nearly five years later we are expecting our baby. To be precise, I’m the one “expecting,” but the two of us are in it together. I’m every bit as thrilled as I imagined I’d be, even if it hasn’t been exactly the road I was expecting. It’s been so much harder, longer, stranger, more expensive, and more joyous, too, than I ever knew it could be.

So I’m doing this thing, this column and video blog, to share this journey with you, fellow queers! I’m excited to contribute to a growing conversation on queer parenthood — how we get there and what the fuck we do once we’re there.

I’m writing this all from the only perspective I can speak from, that of a white queer cis-female femme, living in San Francisco, partnered with a female-bodied masculine-identifying person who is the love of my life. I’m 28, and she’s 39, and we spend our days making movies and drinking lots of (decaf) coffee.

photo by Miriam Beach

There are so many other things I feel like I should tell you about me, about us, about who we are and how we got here, but instead I’ll let you watch this first video. In addition to getting to know me a little better, you’ll catch a glimpse of my hot butch sweetie and our cute dog.

This column is just beginning, and definitely still evolving, so give a shout in the comments if there are things you want me to address. I’d love to connect with other queer expecting parents as well!

Next column you’ll learn how I got knocked up (hint: not the old fashioned way).