A lesson I want to learn

When we meet other parents (straight), if it happens to come up in conversation that each of us carried one of our children, the relatively consistent response is approximately "What a great idea!" or "I wish we could do that!" Members of two-mom families, who understand the work and luck it takes to get pregnant as lesbians, and who have experienced some of the pitfalls and struggles of building our families, know it might not be all that rosy. But in general, I tend to agree with the positive assessment of surprised straight parents who sometimes seem to think we've invented something new and amazing by structuring our family this way. It is great. We got a deeper level understanding and empathy for each other by both experiencing both paths to motherhood. Residual tension around the donor's place in our family, that we hadn't even known we still had, has fallen away not least because he no longer poses as much of a threat (albeit hypothetical) to our family structure. Instead of moving onto parenting our second child with the previous relatively comfortable roles we'd developed, we were forced to question some of our assumptions and find some new ways to interact as a family. Parenting Ira has made me appreciate even more what I built with Leigh, and I'm loving watching Gail and Ira form a similar bond. I think Gail has experienced a similar shift, all for the good.

But among all the good, there's one thing I'm finding somewhat difficult about this arrangement. This isn't all about looks, but I'll start there. Our donor, bless him, seems to have a peculiar genetic quality of producing "mini-me's." If anyone were to look at our family portrait (that is, if you could get all four of us into a photo at one time), there would be absolutely no guesswork involved in figuring out who was genetically linked. Ira has my coloring to a T. Comparing pics of him as a baby to me as a baby, the resemblance is undeniable. Leigh looks like a mini-Gail, to every detail except her dimples (which I like to claim credit for…). But the similarities don't seem to stop at looks. From all the stories I've heard from my in-laws, Leigh is much like Gail as a child, extremely talkative and curious, thrilled to connect with people but a little shy around new ones, deeply compelled by stories of all sorts, intent on figuring out how people interact and why they do what they do. There are differences, and she certainly also has many of my speech patterns and mannerisms, but still, it's hard to deny the similarities. Now that Ira is getting older, we see pieces of my personality in him. He's a little more sensitive, and focuses intently on his little baby "projects," patiently trying to figure out how his sister's scooter works, or diligently and persistently undoing our various childproofing efforts.

But the thing I wonder about is how much of this is that we're perceiving our kids with too much of a framework of genetic determinism, particularly since the only genetic piece we see is our own contribution, and the donor is still anyone's guess. We've both birthed one of our kids, so I think we may end up missing the lesson that straight families learn easily, that kids are different, even with identical genetic contributions. I should know this. My sisters and I, all of us with the same genetic make-up, are different as night and day. We look around our neighborhood kids and see this, too, but it's a lesson we're not primed to learn in our own family, in it's current structure. During the fleeting moments when I wish for another child, it is this lesson that I'd love to learn. In the meantime, I'm looking for ways to remember more often that our kids are not us. They really are their "own people" -- as we frequently remind Leigh when she tries to treat Ira like an overgrown doll.

Old pain and new paths

As Gail mentioned, we went to a workshop on talking to kids about donor conception last weekend. It was organized by the Massachusetts RESOLVE chapter and was very well done. I highly recommend checking out such a workshop if it is available in your area, and for those in MA, this is a repeating event.

At one point in the workshop discussion, a mother of twins via gestational surrogacy and donor eggs talked about how when her children were babies, she knew she would need to talk to them about their conception, but her constant worry and rumination about how to do so started to take over her entire relationship with them. She couldn't stop thinking about their conception and birth, about how to help them understand it, and because she was so preoccupied, there was no room for her to parent them freely, even though they were too small to understand anything she might have said. She decided she needed to focus first on her own relationship with them, and developing a secure attachment with them. It turned out that a couple years down the line she was coming from a more secure place, and when they were at the ripe old age of two or three, she was better able to talk to them about how they came to be.

Her story struck me in particular because parts of it sounded familiar to my own experience during Leigh's infancy.

Just after Leigh's birth, I was actually doing well. I was getting to know my baby, finding my footing as a new mother. I particularly relished the time that I had alone with her, caring for her during the day, and the satisfaction and security that came from social validation of my role in her life. Gail and I were learning to parent together, and starting to have a sense of the kind of parents we were and the kind of family we were building. My worries about my place in our family as a non-bio-mom were quickly falling away.

But then, when Leigh was seven months old, that fledgling security was shaken to the core. We found out that at least two people knew our donor number and that one of those people was pregnant by the same donor. A door was opened to information that we thought we had kept securely private, and suddenly we had information about Leigh's genetic relationships that we hadn't wanted to know, and hadn't sought out. For another family, or another NGP, this might not have been a big deal. But for me, at that particular time, it was devastating.

When I look back, I see how I was so desperately in love with Leigh, but deep down, still had a fear that she wasn't really mine. I craved any and all possible connection with her, any kind of validation of her place in my life or mine in hers. Now, suddenly I was forced to acknowledge that there were other people out there in the world and even within my own social circle who were arguably more strongly connected to Leigh than I was.

I was absolutely gutted. That night I clung to my baby and sobbed.

What sounded familiar to me in the mom's story at the workshop was her description of knowing she was "supposed" to be doing something that it turned out she couldn't do, and that trying was hurting her relationship with her kids. After that disclosure when Leigh was a baby, I felt so many complicated things. One was was that I was being watched, that suddenly our entire community knew something about us, and about our daughter, and now they were going to watch how Gail and I handled it and pass judgment. I knew we were "supposed" to be open, and I felt there was an expectation out there that we were "supposed" to be connecting with donor siblings. I imagined that suddenly the protective bubble we'd built around our family both to protect our kids information, and to give me in particular space to nurture a relationship with our daughter, was being judged by "everyone" as wrong and backwards, that we were ruining our daughter by being too defensive. I felt that no matter what we chose to do with this information, we were doing it wrong and everyone knew, where mere days before we had been a happy and healthy family.

I got good advice at the time to set aside thoughts about the donor, siblings, or a possible pregnancy (one of my many reactions to the information was to want to have our second baby, via the same donor, ASAP) and to instead focus on my relationship with Leigh. If I could come from a place of strength, then it would become clear later on how to proceed. Even if people were watching, it was our family that mattered anyway.

I did just that, and my relationship with Leigh flourished. On about the same timescale as the woman who spoke at the workshop, things got better. Now, three years and another baby later, though I still remember vividly how I felt then, it is from a distance, and a place of security. We are in a much different place.

Before Ira was born, we wrote about a shift in how we thought and spoke about our donor within our family, towards more openness and frank discussion about his existence, and hopefully a real acknowledgment of that connection between our kids. Even that was a change, but now that Ira has been here for nearly eleven months, things have shifted again. The presence of donor siblings that once felt so threatening, now feels like an opening, and maybe even a resource. We're not sure where this is going, but the iron clad lock down that started when Leigh was 7 months old is lifting. We don't know how much we'll share here, but I do know that now that the possibility of connecting with people who have a genetic link to our kids is a choice that we can make ourselves, from a place of security and strength, it doesn't seem so scary. I don't feel those eyes on us anymore. I just see my wife, and our kids, and a new path opening before us.

A Fine Line

In our newly rested state, we managed to get all four of us to shabbat services last Saturday morning. Ira hasn't been to services in a while, and he spent time crawling around the prayer space, happily visiting with friends, pulling up, smiling and laughing. The last time he attended, he wasn't yet crawling well, and it was fun to see him explore, and to see our friend's faces light up as he pulled on their legs, asking to be picked up.

At some point, Ira tripped a bit, and bonked his head on the floor. At the ensuing wail, Gail, who was right nearby, whisked him into her arms and out of the prayer space. She took him to look out the window, and soon enough, he was smiling again. It was almost time for him to eat again, and I wondered if he might need to nurse to settle down, but he didn't.

I stayed in services, and when Gail came back in, I smiled to realize that what she had done was absolutely normal. Sure, she comforts him when she's home with him and I'm out, but she also comforts him sometimes when I'm around, and when that milk I make is so easily accessible. I know nursing can be such a fraught topic in any family, perhaps even more so in two-mom families where one mom is nursing and one isn't. Discomfort and sometimes pain or jealousy around nursing come up all the time in any writing or discussions about parenting as an NGP.

In our family, we try to walk a fine line between making sure nursing happens, because we value it for our kids (both nutritionally and emotionally) and because we've both enjoyed it as moms, and also trying to make sure it doesn't grow to take up too much space in our family or unintentionally undermine the parental relationship for the non-nursing mom. It's important to us that we both be able to soothe our babies after the inevitable bumps and slights. It's important that we both be able to care for our babies independently during the day and both be able to put them down to bed. I also want to be more to Ira than a food source, or the mom who only nurses him while Gail does everything else in an attempt to "keep up" (we were closer to that dynamic during Leigh's infancy).

I wondered, back before Ira was born, if this would feel different once I was the one nursing (or for the first 6 months, producing more milk). And it does. I love the connection I have with Ira through nursing, and am pleased as punch that after waiting all that time for my turn, I have gotten to have this experience, and actually enjoy it (I know not all moms are so lucky). But I have sometimes had to remind myself to put on the brakes and give Gail space to do things her way. Gail had to warn me away from hovering when Ira was fussy (but fed) one Sunday morning and I was supposed to be getting some extra sleep in the other room. But what I was happy to realize last Saturday, as Gail carried our laughing baby back into services after his fall, is that for right now, we're in a really good spot walking that fine line, and we're not even having to try.

Second-Parent Adoption

On Wednesday, I officially adopted Ira. Since we live in Massachusetts and are married, I have actually been a legal parent to Ira since his birth. We opted to go through a second-parent adoption process in order to provide me with legal protections outside of the state of Massachusetts. Because many states (as well as the federal government) do not recognize our marriage, they also may not recognize my legal claim to Ira in the absence of an adoption. This adoption protects me in case Lyn and I should ever break up. Without the adoption in hand, Lyn could choose to move to another state and fairly easily shut me out of Ira's life. Three years ago, Lyn similarly adopted Leigh. (Actually, as an interested aside, in reality we both adopted Ira on Wednesday -- that's how it works any time you do a step-parent or second-parent adoption. Of course that is really a legal fiction and we all know that I was the only parent whose status was really in question.)

Not all lesbian couples in Massachusetts do a second parent adoption. We know couples who have opted against it because of the substantial expense, deciding to rely on their status as a married couple for protection. We know of one couple who did the adoption but were very angry that they had to. Lyn and I haven't ever felt angry about jumping through the legal hoops (although I wouldn't mind it if the lawyer gave us back that fat stack of cash). So I wanted to say something about why we have chosen this route.

It comes down to something the judge said just before she signed our papers. "This adoption is a permanent decree. When this paper is signed and registered with the court it is permanent and irrevocable." Those words struck me very deeply, and I turned them over and over in my head for the rest of the day. At the end of the day I found that the word "irrevocable" had really impacted Lyn as well. It is the revocability of the relationship between a child and his non-biological mother that gets at the heart of the difficulty in establishing and maintaining a lesbian-headed family with two moms.

Without legal protections, a bio-mom can revoke the parenthood of a non-bio-mom any time she chooses. Non-biological mothers in most states don't have legal protections which leads to mothers losing their children and children losing their mothers. If I knew that Lyn could take Ira away from me it would change our whole relationship. It would change my relationship with Ira, setting up Lyn as the mediator of our relationship, even if neither of us intended that to be the case. That's what makes that word, irrevocable, mean so much. It normalizes my relationship with both Lyn and Ira. It means that my community cares enough about my family to invest each of our relationships with Ira with equal importance.

Too often, we don't take lesbian parenting relationships seriously enough. In most places lesbians are not allowed to marry; our relationships are not taken seriously by the larger community. In our hearts, too many of us believe that our relationships really are second rate and that the bio-mom is really is the "real" mom. I feel so blessed that the state has imbued my marriage with legal backing and my parenthood with serious and irrevocable status. It makes my marriage and my family stronger.

Nursing Nag

I was talking with a good friend about her upcoming baby, and she asked me for the dirt on what it was like last time when Gail was nursing and I wasn't. The short answer is that it was way better than I expected it to be. The combination of reading Rachel Pepper's book about lesbian pregnancy, which more or less makes it sound like if a non-bio-mom touches the baby, the baby will starve to death (only slight overstatement), too much Dr. Sears, and a few essays in the Other Mother Anthology by Harlyn Aizley had me convinced that I was (a) completely unnecessary and (b) would have to wait at least 2 (or 3 or 4 or ...) years until my child was done nursing before she would even bother to look at me. Yeah, I might have blown it a little out of proportion, but it's hard to know that ahead of time. And since then, I've met plenty of families (straight and queer) in which (a) and (b) are pretty much true for non-nursing parents, so I don't think I was completely making it up.

We already know that in terms of those particular worries, things turned out fine. But the conversation got me thinking about the ways in which things weren't fine. My friend and I were talking about the particular pressures on queer families, and how we seem to feel this collective pressure to "be perfect." I certainly did. I felt like I needed to do absolutely everything "the right" way in order to prove I wasn't messing up our kid, since, somewhere in there, a part of me believed I probably shouldn't have a kid at all. Pressure like that is never good, and for me, it manifested as an intense desire for Leigh to NEVER EVER EVER have even one teeny tiny drop of formula. I had completely internalized the idea that if nursing "failed," it would probably be my fault for not being "supportive" enough. After all, I did have mixed feelings about not personally nursing our hopefully breastfed baby, and surely, it would be my mixed feelings that led to "failure," maybe because I would do something awful like pressure Gail to pumps so I could give a bottle (this specific dire scenario is warned against very strongly in Pepper's book...those pesky non-bio-moms -- always trying to take care of the baby!).

So that put me in a position where (a) our baby had to have all-breastmilk-all-the-time so that I would have proof we were "doing it right," and so I wouldn't be blamed for feeding "wrong" (possibly mostly blamed by me, but still, we all know there's plenty of judgment to go around on the infant feeding front) and (b) I wasn't making any milk. While not quite a recipe for disaster, it is close, and this confluence of factors is a lot of why I pressured Gail way too much. about feeding. Not at first. At first I was the picture of the "supportive" partner. No. The problem started when she went back to work, and I turned into the pumping nag. I was home with Leigh, and thus very aware of our milk stash. My constant worry about how much milk we had made for way too many conversations about how much milk was in the fridge, how much milk was in the freezer, how many times Gail pumped, how many times she planned to pump the next day, whether or not she was drinking enough water, whether or not it was time for her to take fenugreek again, rinse and repeat. We were never even close to being out of milk. We kept a steady freezer stash (not the mountain we generate now, but enough) and Gail did a wonderful job finding time to pump at work. But I still worried about it. All the time. Because we had to do it right. I put way too much pumping pressure on Gail.

I am very sincerely sorry for this, and I've told her, and she accepted my apology. But I'm a little sad that it took me until now to realize how not nice that was, and to genuinely apologize.

Flying Solo

Lyn and I are both back at work part time this month and as a result I recently began spending significant amounts of daytime alone with Ira and a smaller amount of time alone with both kids. Even though I have been spending lots of time with Ira, the time alone still felt like a shift.

It's different to parent without a safety net. I realized how much I rely on Lyn to have the backup baby cure-all: nursing breasts that are always full. If I'm trying to nurse him but he's fussy, or I give him a bottle and he's fussy, or he's just fussy for an unknown reason, Lyn has previously always been there to take over and fix everything. But last week I had to do everything on my own with no "real mom" to take over if I stumbled. That was less challenging than I feared and more rewarding than I hoped.

For those of you who are curious, on a day alone with Ira I feed him about every two to three hours, usually right after he wakes up from a nap. I try to feed him with the supplemental nurser if we are at home. I can now put the supplementer on pretty fast and it keeps Ira from getting frustrated when I don't have enough milk to satisfy him. If we go out, I will usually give him a bottle or occasionally I will nurse him without using the supplementer. That usually doesn't work out as well as I might hope -- if I want to be able to feed him well without using the supplementer I generally need to have gone at least 4-6 hours without pumping or nursing and that's not usually possible on a day home alone.

Last Friday I went out with Ira to finally pick up his birth certificate from city hall and to run a few other errands. It was interesting to be out alone with him -- I found myself frustrated that I didn't look radical at all. I realized that being out with him alone I looked like any other mother, but I wanted to stand out. I really wanted people to be able to see that I was doing something outside of the norm, parenting with another woman, parenting a baby I had not given birth to. I didn't want everyone to assume that my experience as a mother was ordinary. But I guess, when I think about it, no one has an ordinary experience of motherhood (or fatherhood) -- it feels extraordinary to all of us.

Inducing Lactation: Pros and Cons

The lactation project has been going well. I spend every other night in the bedroom with Ira, while Lyn gets a good night's sleep in the living room. Most of the nights I am able to feed Ira all night without even using the supplemental nurser or a bottle. On the nights I'm going to be feeding him I don't pump or nurse him at all after 3pm so that I am full enough by night time to go the whole night. I worry a little that this will have a negative impact on my supply, but so far the situation is sustainable. We're also actively looking for more opportunities for me to nurse Ira during the day.

Things are going so well, in fact, that we've started calling the project a success. It's great that we're feeling so good about it, but we've paradoxically also been wondering if it is worth it at all. Let me sketch out the reasons to induce lactation and the reasons not to and you can decide for yourself.

Why Induce?

The three biggest benefits of induction are more time with the baby, more decision making responsibility over the baby, and more milk in the freezer.

• More time with the baby. As soon as I started nursing I began to spend more time with Ira and less time with the pump. However, note that I could have found ways to spend more time with the baby even if I wasn't lactating. Lyn and I might have agreed to do a certain number of bottles each day, I could have worn Ira more, or I could have prioritized spending every possible moment with our son. The real benefit of induction is that this additional time was simply built in. My nursing also frees up time for Lyn to spend with our toddler which has helped strengthen their relationship after the stresses of pregnancy and new-babyhood.
  
• More decision-making responsibility for the baby. In my mind, this is really the biggest benefit. I realized around the time I started nursing that I was deferring to Lyn around every aspect of feeding. I counted on Lyn to keep track his feeding needs, and everything else in a young baby's life revolves around the food. When I got involved, it was often because Lyn asked me to do something rather than because I decided something needed to be done. Even as I started to nurse, I treated her as the gatekeeper of Ira's needs. Now that I am nursing Ira -- particularly now that I feed him all night long half of the time -- I feel that I know what is going on with him, and Lyn often also looks to me for guidance. This started happening the morning after my first night feeding him, but it has since spread to a more equal sharing of daytime responsibilities as well. This was a benefit of the induction, but it could be replicated by couples who were committed to sharing nighttime care. However, needing to give bottles creates its own problems, and it would not necessarily be easy.
• More milk in the freezer. More milk in the freezer means never having to worry about giving the baby a bottle. We always have an oversupply of frozen milk since between Lyn and I we put about 10-15oz a day into the freezer (and at this point have never had to defrost milk to give a bottle). This makes going back to work easier. It would be an incredible help if we had any supply problems. We are also getting to donate some of our excess milk, which just makes us feel good.
  

Why Not Induce?

The main reasons you should not induce lactation are the excessive work involved, the potential for conflict in your family, the potential for feeling like a failure, and reduction in time available to bond as a family.

• Excessive work involved. How much work is it to induce lactation? Depending on the protocol, you'll be taking birth control pills for perhaps five months before the baby's birth. Then you'll be taking 6-8 pills four times a day and pumping at least five times a day for several weeks before the birth. That might seem like hard work, but it's nothing compared to doing all of that and taking care of a new baby, a recovering bio-mom, and an older child. The nights that I feed Ira represent half a year of work and probably around 60+ hours of accumulated pumping. There are far more efficient uses of all of that parenting energy, like trying to keep a toddler fed and clothed.
• Potential for family conflict. Navigating a second nursing relationship in your family is like trying to cross a landmine field. You never know when you are going to accidentally cause a major crisis. The bio-mom might get jealous -- after all, she is giving up something to allow the non-bio-mom to nurse. The non-bio-mom might get frustrated that she's not getting enough time to nurse. For a while at least, every nursing session by the nonbiomom will be a negotiation, and your family might not be prepared to handle that much negotiation. You've also got two nursing relationships to juggle, not just one, and remember that any nursing relationship means frustration for the baby and the mom as it gets started. And then there's the sticky issue of what happens if your baby likes to nurse with one of you more than the other. If the bio-mom had mixed feelings about her partner lactating, she may unintentionally sabotage the project. And I'm sure there's more potential conflict that I haven't thought of but might accidentally step into.
  
• Potential to feel like a failure. If you try to induce lactation, you might fail. You might never get more than an ounce from a pumping, or you might never be able to handle a feeding without a supplemental nurser. You should think before you induce about what your goals are and what you'll do if you can't meet them. I would suggest pumping for several weeks before the baby's arrival so that you can get a good idea of whether or not you are going to be successful before a new baby throws your house into chaos. If you aren't pumping a decent amount of milk (perhaps 1.5-2oz a session) by the time the baby arrives, put down the pump and decide that comfort nursing is a great alternative (it is!). But even if you are successful, you will probably always be the lesser of two nursers. You'll have less milk and you'll nurse less often. I tend to feel pretty good about what I pump, but the other day I went head to head with Lyn (not on purpose, we just both ended up pumping at the same time). She got three times the milk that I did in half the time and she had just fed the baby. It can be hard not to feel inferior. Sometimes I have to feed him and then hand him over to her for more, I have to feed him and then do a bottle, or I have to feed him using a supplemental nurser. The potential to feel inferior is a real risk. I'm not usually bothered, but this is in large part due to the fact that I have already nursed one baby and I feel confident in my abilities as a mother. I think this could be much harder for a first-time mother to deal with.
• Reduction in time to bond. This is really just a corrollary of the first point. Inducing lactation is hard work and it will take you away from your family. Time with the pump is not time with the baby. I spent hours during Ira's first few weeks pumping when I could have been holding him. And I still pump. Earlier today I was pumping while he was sitting in a chair looking at me. It makes a person feel a bit stupid. Then he started fussing so Lyn scooped him up and tied him on in the Ellaroo since I was busy pumping. That could have been me holding him or tying him on.
  

I know a lot of people have been reading our blog and wondering if they should induce lactation themselves. I'm glad that we did it, but if we had another baby, I doubt that either of us would do it again. It's been interesting and has had benefits, but inducing has risks and costs as well. If you are sure that you want to induce, think through those risks and costs before you start. Or decide that the costs are too great and spend some time thinking of all of the other ways that you can bond with your new baby and become a parent.

Non-Bio Mom Manifesto

In our meltdown last week, generously fueled by hormones and sleep deprivation, Gail said something that really hit home. As she wrote, she said that she is finding it hard that as an NGP, she has to choose to parent Ira. Her care for him isn't forced by the only truly essential need he has right now: his need to eat. Yes, she is nursing him, but she doesn't have to, since he could be getting plenty from me.

There are things about Gail's personality that make this particularly hard for her. She loves getting things done, checking things off lists, and moving forward in ways she can measure. Spending time with a little baby does not produce such tangible accomplishments. There's also an overwhelming amount of non-baby work that just needs to get done, and until the last couple weeks, I wasn't physically able to contribute much.

Now that she has noticed this struggle, she is consciously making sure to reach out to Ira. It's amazing what a difference a little insight, time and effort can make. Just a couple days ago she was moderately annoyed with me for not gazing at him quite lovingly enough, convinced I was not truly appreciating his beauty, while she was in what looked to me an awful lot like a new-parent-oxytocin-fueled love-fest.

Folks who know me know that I can get rather up in arms when advocating for non-bio-moms. I'm particularly bothered by an underlying assumption, even within the lesbian community, that a non-bio-mom is secondary, a nice perk, sure, but not an essential member of her family. This message comes through strongly in the small amount of writing on two-mom families, as I've complained about before. It comes through in one-on-one conversations with parents in two-mom families, especially in the deeper fears and hopes we sometimes have the courage to tell each other. If, as a lesbian community, we can't figure out that a family can contain two moms (as opposed to a mom and a back-up mom), then we should not be surprised when the straight world has trouble understanding us.

One of the ways I see this assumption reflected in our conversations is the insistence, usually expressed as reassurance to a non-bio-mom who voices any anxiety or struggle with her place in her family, that she is "different than the bio-mom, but that doesn't mean she is less important." This "Different but Equal" refrain really drives me crazy, especially when I look around at our families. Most non-bio-moms do take on a different role than the bio-mom, but you'd be hard pressed to call it equal in many cases. More non-bio-moms are primarily breadwinners, which, while certainly valuable to support the family, does usually result in less direct contact with their children. More non-bio-moms lose custody in case of separation or divorce. I am not saying this about all two-mom families; there are certainly families where non-bio-moms do plenty of parenting, even so-called primary parenting. But I'd venture that on average, non-bio-moms have less contact with their children than bio-moms. If time represents relationship (and I'd argue that it does to a first approximation), non-bio-moms are not on equal footing, even if you ignore the legal strikes against them (or rather, against us).

Even though I really hate the "Different but Equal" refrain, I'd be hard-pressed to say that my relationship with Leigh wasn't different than Gail's, at least during early infancy. So even though I get annoyed by such statements, I also sort of agree. But if I truly believe I do have a different and equal relationship to Leigh, even though she didn't grow inside me, even though I didn't nurse and nourish her as a baby, and even though she does not look a bit like me, there must be something else that I offered her. What is it? What is the "something extra" that I gave to her, that she wouldn't have gotten in a family with only Gail as her parent?

This has been eating at me for years. Sure, I can see my influence in her mannerisms, the clarity with which she expresses herself, her bull-in-a-china-shop quality, her overt enthusiasm, and her love of connecting with all kinds of people. But none of that seems quite like the answer. The other night, though, I realized Gail had finally figured it out. What I offered to her, that only I could offer her, was my choice. I chose to parent her, and chose to love her deeply, despite a multitude of pressures that said either that I shouldn't love her, or that I was unnecessary. Some of those pressures said explicitly that I'd damage her by my mere presence (those coming from, say, the religious right). Some of those pressures were more subtle, like the ones that said it wasn't important for me to take leave to spend time with my new infant, or the ones that said if I pushed too hard to feed her or spend too much time with her, I'd take away from her all-important "primary" bond to Gail, resulting in some sort of vague but longstanding psychological damage. It is precisely the central challenge of being a non-bio-mom, the need to choose to parent your child, that makes the bond special. To spin something precious out of what looks and feels like nothing at the outset -- no pregnancy, no genetic link, no nursing link, no overt need on the part of your child -- is truly a gift to your whole family, and it is a gift that only you can give them.

Choosing to parent

Last week, Lyn and I had a crisis of sorts. Really, it was just a late-night breakdown in which we grappled with the difficulties facing us as we deal with having a new baby. My big revelation came when we were talking about the long list of things I have on my plate and Lyn told me that she wanted me to put baby Ira at the top of the list. I realized that instead of being at the top, he was probably fourth, after taking care of Leigh, taking care of Lyn, and taking care of the house. Not good.

So I decided to put Ira first instead of fourth. But I also realized why and how he had dropped so far down on the list. Back when Leigh was a newborn and I was the gestational parent, I didn't have a choice. When Leigh was little, I got enough time during nursing (which Leigh wanted to do 24 hours a day) to solidify my bond with her. I never had to choose to spend time with her. In fact, it was best for our family if I left much of the non-nursing time available for Lyn to wear her and snuggle with her so that she could develop a bond.

As an non-gestational parent, I'm required to do exactly the opposite. I must choose to spend time with Ira in order to bond with him. This isn't actually something I'm good with. Time with a baby is too unproductive for my tastes. I'd rather be making some sort of progress around the house or feel useful to the family in some other way. Time with a baby is just time sitting around being useless. I felt this same way when Leigh was a little baby, but I didn't have a choice then. I had to be with her, and thus I came to love being with her. I am having trouble choosing to spend time with Ira.

This week has been much better. I've decided to put him first and it's making a difference. When he fusses, I go to him instead of assuming that Lyn will take care of him.  Once he's happy, I take time just to hold him, or sometimes feed him.  I'm hanging out with him more and falling in love with him more. As a result, I'm less available for our daughter Leigh, but Lyn is more available, which is helping their relationship, which did take a bit of a hit during late pregnancy and the first weeks of Ira's life.  A lot of the pressures that we anticipated dividing our family are very real. Being an NGP is harder than I expected, even with all of my advanced preparation. But this week I feel like I'm starting to hit my stride.

Nighttime Parenting

I have now been doing one feeding a day for Ira for a little over a week. Some of the feedings have been a little challenging, but overall the project is going well. I have a much better understanding on my son's feeding patterns. I am sometimes deciding when he is hungry and when he is done, and that makes me a more competent and confident parent.

I also get to spend a little more time with Ira. Since I'm doing one feeding a day there is a time built in every day just for me and Ira. I spend other time with him during the day, but it is good to have this guaranteed time. It's also good to have some time that I can just focus on Ira and not have my attention pulled by other things at the same time. And as Lyn mentioned in her post, she is able to get a little more sleep (which was one of my primary motivations for this project).

During one early morning feeding a few days ago, I realized that I could have let Lyn participate in the nighttime feedings more during our last go-round. Feeding a baby a bottle is a more of a hassle than nursing, but it's not that much more of a hassle, and it's considerably less hassle than strapping on a supplemental nurser (which I'm no longer having to do at night). It's also considerably less hassle than pumping five times a day and taking medications and herbs four times a day (note to self: you forgot to take not one, but two, doses today!).

What I'm saying is that last time I could have asked more of Lyn in terms of nighttime care; she did do some, but I could have moved over and shared more of the struggles with her. We shared in Leigh's care at night much less than either of us would have liked, and I thought the reason was that it would just have been more trouble than it was worth for Lyn to do lots of bottles at night. Instead it turns out that the reason for our nighttime inequity was not biology as I had assumed. It was my inability (or unwillingness) to think flexibly and creatively and to share some of the really tough work with Lyn.

Now you might be asking yourself why on earth I would be unwilling to share the really tough work. After all, Lyn was Leigh's primary caregiver for a number of months while I worked full time. I was obviously willing to share the mothering spotlight. Maybe in part that's why I was so hesitant to share the hard and lonely work of nighttime parenting. Perhaps doing that work was a way to prove to myself that I really was the mother and not just one of a pair. I think it was my way of hanging on to primacy. I thought that I was willing to share mothering, and in most ways I did. But maybe I was hanging onto my superior position as bio-mom without even realizing it.

Sharing Lactation, Part II

After Ira's birth, I was in rough shape. While Gail and I were admiring our brand new son, our doctor was assessing the damage. After several minutes, she said to me very gently that she was going to need to stitch me up in the operating room, under spinal anesthesia, "It will be about 20 minutes," she said "You enjoy your baby right now." It was actually a total of about 45 minutes before they rolled me out. I snuggled him close, we sang him a song, I was in awe that this whole baby had grown in my body and actually made it out, but he wasn't really interested in nursing.

When Gail picked Ira up before they took me out of the room, I said to her "Hold him. You nurse him if he wants to."

I know separations like that after birth can be really hard for lots of women. As I was laying there in the OR, I remember noticing that I really felt OK. I was so relieved that Ira was with his mom. I knew Gail was snuggling him, and it turned out that as she held him, he perked up, and started to nurse.

Since that first session, I've been nursing Ira. Even though Gail has milk since she has induced lactation, we wanted to make sure that my supply was well established before introducing a new variable, sort of like how you wait a few weeks to introduce a bottle. Now, at 3 1/2 weeks, that time has come, and today or tomorrow, Gail will nurse Ira, starting with one feeding a day.

Those first few days, when nursing was really hard (it went OK, but it was painful, and Ira was sluggish about learning to latch) and I was so exhausted, I sometimes wanted to just hand him over and say "You do it. You already know how." But we knew I needed to stick with it, and now Ira and I have worked things out. We've had some minor problems with over-supply but those are balancing out, too. He's growing wonderfully. I feel so proud that my body made this beautiful baby, and that now I am sustaining him.

On the eve of Gail's nursing debut, I find myself a bit reluctant to share.

There are lots of reasons that I will share anyway, not least of which is that I'm the one who nagged Gail until she agreed to induce lactation, and my reasons for wanting her to do so still stand. I also know that even though I find it satisfying to be Ira's sole source of nutrition, at some point, not too long from now, it will also be a burden. Even though I'm sticking with our plan, and am mostly happy to do so, my slight reluctance is interesting, and I want to know where it is coming from.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with another mom back when Leigh was a baby. She was saying how her husband was taking to parenthood more slowly than she had hoped, that he didn't seem interested in the baby. I asked if he got any time with the baby, maybe even time alone, and she said that no, that it was too hard for her to leave the baby with anyone else (even the father), and that she cried if anyone else ever fed the baby. I confess that though I said supportive things, what I thought was that she needed to suck it up and hand over the kid, at least every now and then, if she had any real desire for her husband to parent their child. Three years later, it appears I'm experiencing some version of that same reluctance. Oh, I'm more than happy for Gail to trot off to the park alone with Ira after he's fed and show him off to the neighbors. I have zero qualms about her providing lots of his care once we're back at work. I don't think I'd be feeling this way if we were planning standard bottle feeding of my milk (like we did for Leigh). But nursing? It stings a bit. Now, I don't think I'll cry when she feeds him, but I'm not at all sure, so I guess I need to apologize to the universe now for some of the mean things I thought about that other mom.

There's also some piece of my reluctance that has to do with how much darn attention Gail gets for inducing lactation. When people find out that we're doing this, conversation always gets sucked into a giant lactation vortex, from which no other conversation topic can escape. Yes, it is super-interesting, but I sometimes think snarky things like "But wait! I grew the kid! And she only makes 10 ounces a day! I make like 3 million!"

Along similar lines, I find I'm having some non-bio-mom insecurity. She's getting all of these kudos for being the most deluxe NGP ever, and I find myself craving more credit for the work I did the last time. It's like I was some sort of first run model of a non-bio-mom, that still needed some bugs worked out, and all that work I did to connect with Leigh and parent her without the benefit of a nursing relationship, still comes up short. I already grappled with feeling like I came up short next to Gail when we just had Leigh, but now I'm wondering if I come up short as a non-bio-mom, too.

But at the same time I'm feeling these not-so-nice things, I'm also feeling thrilled that Gail is now voicing a real desire to nurse Ira. Back when I was pestering her to seriously consider it, her reasons for doing so were primarily logistical, and also probably to get me to shut up about it. She was reluctant to nurse again, partially because of the complications she had while nursing Leigh, and also because we both understand that nursing does not make a mother. But now that our son is here, she really wants to nurse him for him, not for some ideal of sharing care or doing nights "better" than we did last time. I love that. It makes me truly happy that she's excited about this.

I also have been thinking back to those moments right after Ira was born, when I got to know that he was close and secure with his other mom, and I didn't have to panic that we were separated or that he hadn't nursed during the 45 minutes I was with him before being rolled away to the OR. That was such a gift. Just like right after he was born, I won't always be able to be with Ira. I feel better knowing that when I'm not there, his other mom is providing for him.

(See also Sharing Lactation, Part I)

Sharing Lactation, Part I

Either Sunday or Monday, I am finally going to take the plunge and begin nursing Ira. At this point, I'm pumping about 10-13 ounces a day, or a little over 2 ounces each time I pump (5x daily). This isn't enough to be the sole milk supplier, but it is enough to feed half of a baby perfectly well. My supply is still increasing, but it is likely that I will need to supplement with pumped milk during days that I am home with Ira alone in the fall.

We're going to start the ball rolling by having me nurse once a day; Lyn will pump to keep up her supply. We are thankful that supply isn't much of an issue for her -- if anything she has a little too much -- but we still need to safeguard her milk. My first nursing sessions will be during the day, but if that goes well, we'll probably quickly transition to having me take over the second nighttime feeding (around 4 or 5am). In this feeding he nurses a little less actively and it should be relatively easy for Lyn to hold off on pumping until she wakes up (so that she'll actually see a sleep benefit from having me nurse).

I'm feeling a combination of excitement and anxiety. As I pumped myself dry earlier today, I told Lyn, "I feel like I'm cramming for an exam!" Really, it feels a bit like going out on a first date with someone who has been a friend for a while but who you are hoping will be a little more. What if he doesn't like my milk? What if he won't latch on?

Nervousness aside, I can't wait to get my hands on him (or, rather, my boobs). I wonder if Lyn felt this same way as we got close to doing Leigh's first bottle feeding, or if this feeling is different because it involves my body. I suspect it is a very similar feeling. Lyn and Ira get to spend so much time together, and Lyn gets to provide for his most important physical need in a way that I have not been able to. I'm ready to start providing for my baby, and I'm hoping that both Lyn and Ira are ready as well.

(Interested in hearing Lyn's feelings as we move forward: Sharing Lactation, Part II)

Now I get it (being a non-bio mom is hard)

Earlier this week I was feeling like I had this whole two-kid thing locked up. Sure, I can take care of Lyn, keep the house clean, change poopy diapers, and deal with a toddler. No problem.

Yesterday I had to face up to the fact that it's actually hard. Sure, I can do everything needed to keep our household of four running, especially because I have the hands-on support of friends and family. But yesterday I realized that it's Lyn who does the lion's share of taking care of new baby Ira (yes! he has a name now!). I bring Ira to Lyn for a feeding and change his dirty diapers, but Lyn is the one who feeds him and who knows everything there is to know about his ears because she spends hours a day staring at them while nursing.

It turns out that being a non-biological mother is hard. I think it is especially hard for me right now because I remember being in Lyn's shoes, being the source of nourishment and having the close immediate bond that comes from nursing. I'm afraid I didn't realize at the time what a privileged position that was. I want Ira to need me and right now he doesn't. Yes, he will. Yes, I'm working to establish a bond that will be every bit as vital as Lyn's. But I want him to need me now.

Lyn and I were talking about these feelings this morning, and Lyn pointed out that Leigh needed much more active care-taking when she was a newborn. She demanded constant attention as a little baby (and, um, still does). Lyn had to learn to pacify Leigh very early; otherwise we would have gone crazy from all the crying and/or Leigh would have chewed my nipples right off. Ira (so far) just doesn't need as much, so there's less parenting for me to do.

I'll get over all of this. Ira will need more and more from me. Eventually I'll even get to nurse him. I'll grow more and more comfortable as an NGP. But before he was born I apparently believed that knowing all about the challenges of being a non-bio mom and already being comfortable with the role of mother meant that I would not have to feel any pain at all. Now I feel what I knew before in my head: that being a non-bio mom isn't easy. But it does come with a lot of benefits. I got to be with Lyn, supporting her in one of the most challenging things she'll ever do. I got to feel and hold Ira as he was being born. I even got to nurse him for a few minutes after Lyn was taken to the OR to get repair work done. And I get to fall in love with Lyn all over again because she's given such a precious gift.

Monday morning quarterback

It's really difficult to sit down and write about something as life-changing and intense as the birth of your son. I could write down a blow-by-blow of events from my point of view, but the more I talk about what happens the more ordinary the events seem and the further away the actual experience of them drifts. Instead I'll just try to get down a few rambling thoughts.

Over the last week or so I have come to appreciate Lyn's experiences three years ago. I appreciated her before, but labor, birth, and newborn time for a partner is very different that it is for a birthing mother (duh!). During labor, Lyn's only job was to focus on herself, but my
job, to a certain extent, was to manage the whole experience. I learned information from doctors that I didn't share with her because I judged it wouldn't be useful. I called family and decided what to share with them. I was instrumental in making decisions that potentially changed the course of labor, and it's really hard not to play the Monday-morning quarterback.

When I gave birth to Leigh a few years ago, I had a lot of clarity afterward. I knew that the birth went exactly how it needed to go, even though it was different than what we had planned. I had some regrets about not getting to birth Leigh at home, but mostly I felt the experience was wonderful and fundamentally right, both the parts at home and the parts at the hospital. Lyn had more doubts, and it took longer for her to come to terms with the birth.

I'm now in Lyn's position. I keep thinking about moments during the birth when I might have made a different decision and wondering if I was "right." In particular, I worry that I should have encouraged Lyn to have an epidural during the evening of the 27th. She was really struggling and I'm afraid that my decision about what to tell her and how to support her might have been based too much on my own experiences and not enough on what was happening with Lyn. For her part, Lyn says that everything happened just as it should have. She seems to see the birth as a series of events that went just right, including the bumps in the road. This is harder for me to do, just as it was harder for Lyn after my labor with Leigh.

Birth is a transformative experience for everyone involved. But I have learned over the course of two births that you don't get to pick the kind of transformation you have. Instead you have to be fully present and deal with each new twist in the road as it comes. It's great to plan ahead and imagine how you might deal with different alternatives, but things will most likely happen that you are completely unprepared for. That's the part that actually transforms you.

[By the way, all four of us are doing well. Lyn is recovering slowly but surely. I'm enjoying taking care of the family. Leigh loves nothing more than to kiss her baby brother and help with diaper changes. Our beautiful new baby boy is growing both in his body and in our hearts.]

I am grateful for the chance to be an NGP

In part because of Lyn's recent complications, I've been spending a lot of my time taking care of her. Some of that care is physical: massages are particularly soothing for her right now. Some of the care is emotional. Much of the care consists of doing the lion's share work needed to take care of Leigh and our increasingly filthy house. Lately I'm tired a lot and emotionally drained from all of the worrying. But I'm also grateful.

I've realized over the last few days what a gift it is to be the supportive partner to a woman who is giving birth. I get to be protective and nurturing in way that Lyn does not because she has to be focused on herself and getting her body through to the finish line. I remember from my own labor how completely self-absorbing the experience of labor is. I didn't think about the imminent arrival of Leigh during labor. Mostly I thought about getting myself through the next hurdle. I wasn't being selfish, it's just that labor is a pretty all-encompassing experience; there simply isn't room for anything or anyone else.

This time around I actually get to focus on my love for the people involved. I get to take good care of my wife and do everything in my power to help her have a positive and healthy experience. I get to take care of my baby-to-be, sending him positive energy he goes through the most difficult experience of his life so far. This is an experience unique to the non-gestational parent. You get to pull yourself out of your own head and really be there for two people you love. I didn't realize until there was great need how satisfying I would find that experience.

As for the update, things are looking pretty good. Lyn got back good labs today that leaves us feeling hopeful. Our induction date is somewhat later than we had thought it would be -- not until early in the last week of May. It still may get moved up, but the later date will allow us time to work on less invasive induction/preparation methods like acupuncture.

The milk project continues to go well. On Sunday I pumped 9mL, on Monday 15mL, and on Tuesday 30mL. We'll see what I get today. These amounts might seem tiny, but the pattern looks vaguely exponential to me (with an equation looking something like 5e^0.6). If this trend continues, then in a week I'll be pumping about 68 ounces a day and my breasts will explode.

Oh, and eagle eyed readers will note the use of the pronoun "he." Yes, dear readers and friends, we are having a boy. So there's another new experience we'll get to write about!

"Is this your first child?"

This isn't an easy question to answer. In a medical situation, the relevant answer is "Yes" since they need to know I've never been pregnant before, but I refuse not to claim my first daughter, and if I don't mention her, I miss out on all of the great bonding conversation over how cute and infuriating 2 1/2-year-olds are, or maybe some unsolicited advice on preparing the big sister (I actually like unsolicited advice of that sort, I'm kind of weird that way). So usually I say something like "This is my first pregnancy but our second child." If I feel like coming out, I'll clarify that "my wife gave birth to our first." If I don't, I'll leave it at that, and let whoever is asking puzzle out the situation. That all works great if I'm alone. But the last two days, as we've interacted more with the hospital and Gail has been with me, it's not working as well.

Prior to this whole liver thing, Gail was coming to all midwife appts but I was handling the OB appts on my own, since we considered them secondary. She hadn't actually even been to the hospital until our appointment on Monday. Our plan is now for her to come to pretty much everything, since she needs to get really comfortable at the hospital ASAP and it would be good for the various staff/nurses/OBs to see her around. We certainly have plenty of appointments so she should catch up quickly.

We've now had two slightly disturbing incidents where I was asked if this was my first child (once by the PA who does the initial BP check, and today by the very nice nurse who did the non-stress-test that the baby passed quickly with flying colors). I gave my standard answer and indicated that Gail had given birth to our first daughter. In both interactions, the person inquiring immediately turned to Gail and asked her how old the first is (one may have even said "how old is your daughter" to Gail, but I'm not certain), even though they had previously been talking directly to me. The first time, we thought maybe this was just a one-off thing. But the second time, we realized it is probably a pattern, at least in an institutional setting where you have lots of interactions with lots of people who don't necessarily know you very well (this was never an issue with our midwife, but she already knew us, so that makes sense).

In both cases, we did our standard thing where Gail tried to quickly punt questions back my direction, but it was kind of tricky and didn't go all that smoothly (we got in this habit when Leigh was a baby and we had the rule that "whoever isn't holding the baby answers the questions." It was a great trick to make sure we were perceived as a family). This automatic assumption that Gail would answer about Leigh, presumably since she had birthed Leigh almost three years ago, rankled both of us, and Gail proposed that she simply not answering at all next time. It will make for an awkward silence, but might get the point accross. I think we'll try that. Since we're at appointments about this baby, and she's the "note-taker" and "researcher" (she's reading up on all of this, not me) she is automatically doing great public parental interaction re: baby two, so I think we'll be covered on that front.

I also think that, particularly at the NST today, when we were booking about a million monitoring appointments, and quickly talking back and forth in shorthand about what to do for childcare for the various appointment times (certain days necessitate sending Leigh to a neighbor, some times necessitate a grandma daycare pick-up, it gets a little complicated), it probably became very clear that we are both parents to both kids. It is those kinds of interactions that help to break down some of the assumptions that rub us the wrong way, but it is interesting to be reminded, precisely because we are now interacting with so many people who don't know us as a family already, that the assumptions really are there.

Three Years Ago: Looking Forward to Being an Onlooker

The last time Lyn and I were having a baby, we started to keep a joint journal in order to record and remember our experiences. We sent the journal back and forth on the computer, each of us writing in it when inspiration struck. Today I opened up that file and rummaged around in the past, trying to reconstruct the pregnancy and reconcile my thoughts then with my feelings now. We’re going to be posting some findings from this journal from time to time over the next few weeks.

January 2006. (Background: When I was pregnant with Leigh, Lyn was a graduate student and I was a full-time instructor of mathematics at a big-name university. After Leigh was born, Lyn and I had a summer in which we were both on leave. In the fall, I returned to work and Lyn stayed home with Leigh. I was able to take a partial day at home each week while Lyn went into work.)

I've been reading a book about how mothers get the shaft economically, and today I came across a passage in the book that stated something to the effect of that mothers are economically penalized because they are unwilling to be benevolent onlookers while their children are growing up unlike men who don't seem to mind that role. A number of things happened to me all at the same time when I read this. First, I felt a sudden sympathy for men. Perhaps some men don't mind it, but I suspect that many are trapped in the role. This thought led immediately to the second thing that happened to me which was thinking, "Wait, she's talking about me. I'm the benevolent onlooker!" I don't want to be a benevolent onlooker, but how is my family going to thrive if I don't keep working to make sure that we have enough money to live (and even have the "perks" in life like health insurance)?

At the same time I was struck by something Lyn had said a few days earlier -- we're both going to be mothers, so we're both going to be economically disadvantaged by having children. And, I thought, we're also both going to be emotionally damaged by having to make choices that take us away from our children. Next year we are wrestling with the decision of what do to about child care. I'll be working full time and we both think that it is best if Lyn finishes her PhD. So we are likely going to get half-time child care at a daycare center [Note: We ended up choosing full-time care at home, mostly done by Lyn]. Resting on top of all of these thoughts was an anticipation of loss. Earlier this week I said to Lyn that while I thought we are making the best and most logical choice that we can, I don't think that we're going to be emotionally prepared for what it's going to be like to go to work and leave the child in daycare. I'm pretty sure that I thought meant that she wasn't going to be prepared. Because right now Lyn is sitting in the traditional woman's roll. She's the one with the "choice" of being at home with the baby or working outside of the home. This morning I realized that I really meant that I'm not prepared. I know that the only way we can really move forward is for me to go back to work. But while I might be in the traditional "male" roll of breadwinner here, the fact is that my writing right is peppered by the wiggling of a tiny baby inside of me and I will bring that baby into the world just three months before I go back to being the breadwinner.

Lesbians are lucky in many ways when it comes to having children. We have the "spare womb." We also have a spare mom. If I can't be the mom because I have to work, then Lyn can. How great! No one has to give up anything. Except that right now our spare womb, Lyn, is struggling to figure out how she can be a "real mom" when the child grew in my belly and will come out of my vagina and suck at my breast, while I am starting to realize that things might not be so rosy for me after I fall in love with our baby and then have to leave it with another mother for eight hours a day.

Do those hormones really make you hog the baby?

I have been thinking some about what oneofhismoms wrote about having more empathy for how hard it is to really back off and let one's partner get the time they really need to parent, now that she's been on both sides of the bio-vs-non-bio-mom fence. She writes:

"There are so many things about being a gestational mom that I overlooked before. Being the one who did not give birth was mostly awesome (and not in a valley girl way, in a full-of-awe way) but also difficult emotionally. Being the one who gave birth was difficult mostly physically. But because it is also hormonal and at least for the first year or so, so tied to my mammary glands, it was also emotional in a way over which I feel I have no control. Now I understand how hard it is to give your partner the time and space she needs with the baby. I do it. But I also see why some women have a hard time with it."

This word from the frontlines, from someone in shoes nearly identical to mine (even down to spacing of the kids, and the near-religious advocacy for non-bio-moms everywhere), has me wondering how I will feel about "sharing" this baby come birth time. I have long said that even though it was sort of an accident, given our personalities, it is a really good thing that Gail carried first, placing me on the less traveled parental path. Gail is generally less territorial than I am, and this really helped her to be comfortable supporting my relationship with Leigh early on, and I was also so strongly motivated to jump in and build that relationship right away, perhaps more motivated than Gail would have been since she's a little more "go-with-the-flow." But here we are, just a couple months from welcoming this next baby, and it is still true that I'm more territorial than Gail. So I find myself wondering, which will carry more weight, my enthusiasm for Gail to connect with our new baby, as informed by my experience the last time, or a possible (probable?) hormone driven possessiveness that leads me to be reluctant to share the parenting time and mothering turf?

I've heard of other families who alternated uteri, where the second time through the pregnant mom felt a little harangued by all of the pregnancy advice. In our family, I fear it is Gail who is harangued. I'm so damn proud of everything that we figured out the first time about how to get an NGP on solid footing ASAP, that I have to remind myself to back off, and that Gail will find her own relationship with this kiddo, and she may not find it by the same path that I did.

Gail and I really like the book Kidding Ourselves: Breadwinning, Babies and Bargaining Power by Rhona Mahoney. It's about straight families, and written mostly to straight women (and is, unfortunately, unnecessarily harsh on guys), but she gets a lot of stuff right about the unspoken bartering and bargaining that happens around parenthood, often even before there is a kid in the picture. One thing she writes about is how having some sort of "commitment mechanism" can help to make sure you don't slip into a place as a family you'd rather not be. In her book, this would be about making sure all parenting doesn't fall solely to mom in a straight family, but I think it applies here too. Lord knows I've spouted off about "selfish GPs" (of all stripes) not letting their partners actually, say, parent their kids, that I'd damn well better be willing to put my money where my mouth is this go round, and there you have it, a bit of a commitment mechanism to make sure I don't hog the baby too much. We've also structured our parenting time to make sure Gail has substantial uninterrupted time with the new kid (3 days home for her, 2 days home for me once we start work in the Fall, both of us home for the summer), so that's another commitment mechanism. But I also get that I've never had this particular experience before, and I need to be willing to be surprised by it, and not interpret any pang of territorial feelings on my part as some sort of failure. I'd be curious to hear any experiences along these lines from readers who've been down similar paths, from either side.

Donor thoughts

I've written a bit before about how we've chosen not to share information about our donor (such as it is) with folks outside our immediate family while our kids are still too small to understand. We feel that information belongs to Leigh (and to this next baby), not really to us, or to the community at large.

That sounds fine and all, but I know other perfectly wonderful parents come at this completely differently. They reach out to donor sibling families, feeling it is their obligation as parents to make those connections, so their kids don't have to. And to be clear, I'm talking about unknown frozen bank donors here, either ID release or not. Navigating a KD relationship is a whole separate ballgame, and I can't really claim to know anything about that.

I notice I'm often careful to phrase this approach so it sounds like we're solely protecting our kid(s) interests, and in many ways we are. We modeled our approach after adoptive parents we know and respect very much, and at it's core, I do think it's the right thing for our family. But it is a bit disingenuous to claim we're only thinking of our kid(s).

Lately, I've realized that some portion of my unwillingness to freely share what we know has to do with my own discomfort (and I think Gail has some similar, but not identical, issues here). With Leigh, the existence of a donor at all implied that there was someone, and probably many people, with an arguably stronger link to my daughter than I had, at least at first, before we a few years of real life together under our belts. I found that deeply threatening, and for a while, it made me rather frantic to conceive our second ASAP by the same donor. Once we had this little baby, that connection outside our family felt like a threat, and even though there was absolutely no one who would have tried to take her away and I had full legal parental rights, my relationship to Leigh felt insecure and fragile. At that time I got some advice to focus on building my relationship with her instead of worrying about the donor or moving forward immediately on a second pregnancy (it was proving hard to convince Gail that was a good idea anyway). The fact was, my relationship with Leigh was what mattered and it wasn't under threat. Adding more complications to our life (via an immediate jump back into TTC) wasn't going to fix anything. If I could just wait, and get my footing, I might realize nothing was broken.

That was excellent advice. Two years later, it's hard to even remember what I felt like back then. I don't feel resentful of our donor. I feel several complicated things, but foremost among them is gratitude. I'm more comfortable with the idea of donor siblings. I'm certainly not chomping at the bit to make real life connections there, but I am much more OK that they exist at all.

And this has brought me back to re-evaluate our approach to the donor information, but not in how we interact with the outside world. Rather, I'm thinking about how we hold the presence of the donor within our own family. While not blabbing at the park with whoever wanders by about details of Leigh's genetic origins seems quite reasonable for our family, I'm afraid that some of that silence has carried over to our own internal family dynamics. We shy away from almost all resemblance talk. Gail and I never discuss the donor in Leigh's company. At all. We talk lots about different kinds of families and other age appropriate kids-of-queers stuff, but nothing about the donor. The same source of the good advice to focus on Leigh before frantically running off to the sperm bank also gave advice that we can wait to have any conversations with Leigh about the donor until she brings it up. I've heard that as conventional advice from other sources, but I think I may be using that as an excuse. I worry that pieces of our own remaining discomfort at having needed her donor's help at all will transmit to Leigh via our relative silence. Sure, we say we'll answer whatever she asks, but if the topic isn't truly an open one, she'll pick up on it, and then she won't ask.

So with that, Gail and I are working on opening up talk of the donor between us, and in Leigh's presence. I'm not talking a nitty-gritty sit down with our toddler to explain how lesbian babies are made, but rather working to cultivate comfort and openness in us parents. Job number one on this front is that when this new baby comes, Gail and I are going to resist shutting down resemblance talk. We didn't explicitly shut it down before, but our discomfort with the topic, at least on my part, was surely palpable. I will work very hard to suppress my automatic bristle should anyone talk about how Leigh and the new baby look alike. Once I get that under control, I'll work on seeing that connection between our two kids, which was one we were willing to fork over a lot of cash for, as a really great thing, and one that it is OK to actually talk about.

Couvade: My Pregnancy Symptoms

Here's your new word of the day: Couvade, otherwise known as sympathetic pregnancy. All of the material around it calls it a condition of expectant fathers, ignoring those of us non-gestational parents who happen to be women. But whatever -- I think I may have it. Of course, in my case it's complicated by the fact that I am actually trying to trick my body into thinking I'm pregnant. Apparently it's working.

Aside from some breast swelling (which means that the lactation-induction project is on track so far), my biggest symptom is food cravings. I have intense round-the-clock craving for chocolate of any kind. If you have any, please send it to my house. Don't bother with small amounts of really good chocolate; send a 5 pound bag of M&Ms. Over the weekend I was settling down for a snack when Lyn asked me, in a somewhat accusatory tone: "What are you eating?" It was cheese dipped in kosher salt, which is quite good actually, but it had never occurred to me to try it before. Not having any chocolate at hand, I moved on to raisins after that, and that's when I got the great idea to melt cheese over a mixture of raisins and chocolate. Throw an olive or two on top and I'd be in heaven.

My other symptom is hip pain. I can no longer sleep without a pillow between my knees. What do you think happens when you complain about your hip pain to a pregnant lady? (Here's a hint: it involves laughter. Directed at you.)

So I throw it out to you other non-gestational parents. Do you have any pregnancy symptoms to share? Please, I don't want to be alone in my whining.