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.

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.

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 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.

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!

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.

Imagine Our Perfect Birth

In our hypnobirthing class we did an exercise called "fear release." In this technique, you imagine yourself in a safe space, visualize your fears around birth, and then destroy or dispose of those fears. For instance, you might imagine a book containing pictures of the things that worry you. You tear those pages out of a book and burn them. You then replace the frightening images with peaceful images of a birth going just the way you want.

I honestly don't have many fears around the birth. Leigh's birth was long and much more difficult than we expected, and we survived just fine. As a bonus, this time my vagina and uterus won't be involved at all, so I'll probably be able to walk afterward.

I went into the fear release hypnosis pretty confident. I imagined scary scenes, most of which just had to do with my confidence as a person, not specifically around birth. I burned all the fears up and felt free. Then the hypnobirthing instructor told us to imagine ourselves  in the moments after birth, having had exactly the birth experience we desired. I got stuck. I was supposed to imagine myself as happy and fulfilled as I could be, but I suddenly felt sad.

In the picture in my head, I wasn't holding my baby. In the moments just after birth, Lyn gets to hold the baby first and put it to breast. I will be right there touching those little fingers and toes and glowing with pride, but I will still be just a supporting player.

So there I was, imagining one of the greatest moments of my life and I wasn't really part of the action. I started to wilt, worrying that the baby wasn't going to love me or that I wasn't going to love the baby. Suddenly, I was facing my real fears and they were right in the stinking middle of my beautiful birth fantasy. I realized that I will miss being being  the center of the birth experience this time, and I do have some grief around my baby starting his or her life deeply connected to someone else, not to me.

So I did the only sensible thing with my beautiful birth picture -- I moved the baby into my arms. Yes, in reality I'll have to wait for just a few minutes longer than Lyn to hold my delicious baby. But it's my fantasy, dammit. In my fantasy Lyn and the new baby have an amazing labor, peaceful and joyous. I catch the baby, place it on Lyn's belly, and we both drink in this new person, bonding as a trio as the baby wriggles its way up to the breast. Then Lyn hands me the baby. We have our long-awaited moment to get to know each other, and my joy and wonder erase any sadness that we were separate for so long.

In which I probably stick my foot firmly in my mouth

Now that I've been moving into a healthier place (I'm damn near perky), I've been feeling extremely grateful, both because I'm doing better at realizing what a treat this pregnancy is, but also because from this new perspective, I'm finding a lot to be proud of in what I built with Leigh, and how Gail and I have handled these first few years of parenting together.

I've been doing lots of thinking about online friends who have worked very hard to get to the place that I am now, who have struggled (or are struggling) to get pregnant while they are already parenting a child that their partner birthed. I'm thinking of people like Bree (who just made her fabulously smart and snarky blog public, you really should go read her if you don't already) and Chicory, and others who haven't gotten to this lucky spot yet. This is going to be tricky to write because it's going to sound like I'm almost saying things you should never ever say. To be very clear, in what follows I am not saying something like "Oh, you should be grateful for what you have" (i.e. at least you have your first child).

Before this pregnancy, I knew that I'd done a good job with Leigh, and I knew that Gail and I had navigated some of the trickier parts of two-mom family building. I didn't doubt my parenting of Leigh or my place in our family, but also obviously wanted very much to carry a child. Now that I'm here, I'm finding that it is less of a change than I expected. In looking forward, and looking back, it seems much clearer from this vantage point, that even though I am absolutely gaining something I really wanted (an awful lot-- i.e. the experience of pregnancy), that gain, as delightful as it is, pales in comparison to what I already had.

This may be partly because, try as I might, I can only come up with two regrets about Leigh's early months, and one is just barely a regret. The first is that I wish we'd taken a picture of me giving her a bottle. I was always alone when giving her bottles, so we have about 3 million Gail nursing pictures, and no bottle pictures, even though those are some of my fondest memories of her first year. The second (this is the barely one) is that shadow of doubt about my role as Leigh's mom that kept me from seriously considering inducing lactation, but honestly, even without that doubt, I'm not sure it would have been a good idea, or significantly changed my relationship with Leigh. If I had more regrets, or if there were areas where I held my tongue (ha!) deferred to Gail, relying on more of a "tit for tat" with our then-very-theoretical second, I might not be feeling this way. But even though I'll be nursing (fingers crossed), am excited to birth, and hope to see something of my looks in this new baby (yes, as Gail said, I am secretly hoping for a red-head, but with Leigh's beautiful tanning skin, though genetic probability is unlikely to smile upon me in this regard), all of that feels like a bonus as opposed to something central, even though these were all things I was truly prepared to go to the mat for (Yes, despite my doctor avoidance, I would have done multiple IVF/FET rounds if necessary. Absolutely).

So again, to be clear, I'm not saying to folks trying to walk this bumpy road that they are so lucky to have their existing child that they should just count their blessings, give up and be quiet. Not at all. Instead, I hope this is more of a voice from the future, or perhaps a voice from a different path, saying that what you have really is precious, and that hopefully when/if you get your BFP, you'll see that you have a lot to be proud of, too. Hopefully you already know you have a lot to be proud of.

In the club?

I've always been a person who is most comfortable at the edge of an established group. For example, in many ways, I was much happier as a Jew before I actually converted last spring. Prior to converting I was pretty much the most deluxe non-Jew you could ask for. I'd been participating in Jewish holidays and rituals, learning a lot and enjoying them, for about 5 years. I was 100% on board with our family raising Jewish kids. I took a Hebrew class. I was fine giving up Christmas. What more could you ask for? I was outside the center of our community, but I was still an active participant. Anything I did was great. Now that I'm really a Jew, all I notice are the things that aren't up to snuff. I can barely keep up with services. I'm still dreadfully embarrassed whenever being called to the bimah, and I can't even muster the gumption to say the simplest blessing by myself, in front of anyone other than my immediate family. Now that I'm official, all I notice is what I do wrong. But this post wasn't supposed to be about that actually (as delightful an insight as that might be into my social hang-ups).

These ruminations started on Tues night, when I attended my first prenatal yoga class that contained other real life pregnant women (I did go once before, but I was the only one there). The class was lovely. I slept wonderfully afterwards. I'll absolutely be going back. But I didn't get the expected buzz from hanging out with other pregnant ladies. I've finally got the golden ticket. I have met pretty much the only requirement to be in this club (that being the pregnant club), and I still felt so out of place. Now, part of it might have been that the class was very much full of straight women. Part of it might have been that in my situation, it is just awkward to answer the question "is this your first?" (and for the record, my current answer is "It's our second child, but my first pregnancy. My wife gave birth to our toddler."-- which sometimes feels like too much information, but if I only give partial information my subsequent comments about either keeping up with a toddler or birth preparations don't make any sense). When we were going around the room, I identified so much more with the other women's husbands (especially the husband who can't sleep because his wife has a giant nest of pillows and can't get comfortable. I remember that well). All but one of my classmates are expecting their first. They seemed so starry eyed and innocent.

But this seems to be coming out wrong. I really wasn't bothered by my classmates. All of them were very pleasant. But I guess I expected to feel like I was in the club. I understood not feeling like I was in the club when we were expecting Leigh, because, well, I just wasn't. Or at least I wasn't before Leigh was born. In many ways, becoming Leigh's mom via Gail's uterus suited me well, since I had to start on the fringes of an established cultural group. Once Leigh was born, I saw working my way into new mom circles as a challenge and I took it on with gusto (I'm not sure if you can tell, but I take on most things with gusto). This time though, I thought I'd just fit in, after all this is my shot at doing this "like normal." And it is lovely, especially now that I feel better and hardly ever throw up, but I actually find myself ever so slightly pining for how it was the last time, which in reality may just be a craving for the familiar, but still, I never expected that to happen.

It's not a race

Gail and I got into one of our big discussions last week in which Gail was insisting that with two moms in a family (with children arriving via any means), you inevitably end up with some form of competition, whether it is spoken or not. Maybe it's competition around who is most skilled at parenting, who the kid comes to for comfort, who is the "real" mom, or if you are both trying for pregnancy (either at the same time or sequentially) who is more fertile. I was insisting that no, it isn't necessary to have competition, and that somehow we've avoided it for the most part, so if, as she claims it is unavoidable, what gives? Now, you might argue, this whole blog is about comparing the first time to the second time, about thinking our way through how switching uteri has impacted our family structure. But I stand firm that the bulk of this thinking and comparison is not competitive. Rather it reflects our ridiculously strong interest in the structures that underlie human interactions, and probably has something to do with being mathematicians. However, in the fertility arena, I think I'm wrong. Since that conversation, I've noticed that despite my insistence that we don't compete with each other, I do often compare this pregnancy to Gail's with Leigh, often with a competitive tone, and I think this has been going on for a while, without my noticing (and as you might note, I prefer to think I notice everything).

As I was wrestling my cycles into some semblance of order, I often thought (and talked) about how Gail had these beautiful clockwork cycles, and mine were crap (though Gail's weren't perfect either, she had a pretty crappy luteal phase--though that clearly didn't stop her). When I got my second BFN, I said to Gail (out loud) "Well, you won that one" (Leigh was conceived on the second try). When we started telling people about this pregnancy, they often asked how I was feeling, and then followed up asking how Gail felt first trimester with Leigh. My joking response was often "Well, I win the crappy first trimester prize." Sometimes people will ask more general questions about Gail's pregnancy and I'll say something like "Well, she was a pretty sparkly pregnant lady. It's a hard act to follow." I've already started comparing births, when we have ages to go before this birth. I'm already feeling caught between hoping and preparing for a birth that goes more smoothly than Leigh's, and worry that if it does, I will be invalidating what Gail experienced during Leigh's birth.

What's up with that? This pregnancy is what it is and will be what it will be. So no more fertility or pregnancy competition talk from me. I need to work on enjoying what is most likely my one shot at this, and quit measuring it against Gail's experience. The first way to do that is to stop "joking" about winning first trimester prizes.

Some things don't change

First of all: wow people. The comments on the switcheroo post are amazing. We haven't been doing this long, but it is wonderful to already have such thoughtful and clever readers. Gail and I had several discussions about the smart things you said, and have now started to refer to our (ongoing) debate over when/if to pass on our remaining vials as our "lesbian vasectomy" (thanks Lex!).

Amy wrote on the switcheroo thread that "#2 is certainly as important but won't define us the way the first did. With the first, we became moms." And you know, that's true for me too, even though I'm probably coming at it from a different direction than Amy. When I'm out there in blog land, or poring over queer parenting books (usually grumbling at their inadequacy), I am absolutely elated when I find a non-bio-mom writing (of any flavor, aspiring, TTC, expecting or parenting. Lately, I've been loving liberation theory, Olive at Insert Metaphor , J's posts at Two Hot Mamas, strawberry at 1 in Vermillion). I seek out the writing by folks who are thinking hard about, and maybe struggling with, how to build a place in their families as a lesbian NGP. There's nothing like a desperate post from an expecting or new NGP saying how she feels left out to get me going, writing about 3 books worth of comments. It doesn't take much to get those feelings flooding back, and the internet assvice exploding in unmanageable and inappropriate quantities. This is still true. Even now. Even though here I am pregnant. Even though I should be all over the pregnancy blogs and wanting to describe the intimate details of my nausea to any and all comers (which I suppose I do, but it's just not as exciting as a really good non-bio-mom thread).

When we started down this road for our second, at some point very early on, when I was just coming to grips with the fact that this might be hard, that my body might not be the kind where you just plunk a little sperm in there and you're good to go, I remember saying to Gail in a rather exasperated tone "I just want to do this regularly...I just want to get pregnant...and have people gush over my belly and talk to me about nausea and birth and nursing and all of it without always having to explain...I just want to have a kid like normal." And I am enjoying getting a chance to experience this, to share this with many mothers the world over. But a huge part of my identity as a parent was built as I walked the road to parenting Leigh, as I fought off the demons, real and imagined, internal, external, that could have kept me from truly mothering her. I don't think I'm ever going to lose that, and while I'm enjoying this whole pregnancy thing, and am perhaps unrealistically looking forward to birth, it somehow seems tame by comparison. I'll probably always bond with dads at the playground, especially dads who are home taking care of nursing babies (I gabbed about this with our neighbor just the other day on my way home from work, a father of 2-month twins who he'll be home with alone soon). I'll probably always bristle when hippie mommy groups go on and on about how there is absolutely nothing that can bond you with your baby as closely as nursing. I think I'll always fancy myself a bit of a revolutionary, even though I'm doing it "regular" this time.

The disappearing switcheroo

Gail and I often think about the different dynamics of TTC #1 vs. TTC #2. I wrote before about how somehow TTC this time had much more of a taint of selfishness, that somehow, when it is perfectly clear that I can fully love and parent a child whom I didn't birth, and yet feel dead set to carry our second come hell or high water, it lays bare the fact that the reasons I want this are kind of selfish. I suppose selfish is harsh, but as Gail says slightly more diplomatically, they are at least very personal, and are kind of self-centered. But here's the thing, Gail's desire for pregnancy was ALSO selfish, or personal, or kind of self-centered, but we didn't know it back then because we were both so excited to become parents together. It was the act of "switching up" for number 2 that exposed this, and I don't think we would have noticed if Gail had carried again. In that case, it would have just been more of the same, and if anything, she would have gotten extra points for being self-sacrificing and willing to put her body through the work of carrying again.

When I read all the stories of lesbian two-mom families, families that take so much work and love to build, I can't help but notice patterns that I'm not sure that we as a community really notice as a whole. One that I've noticed is that in families that may originally plan to "take turns," a planned second pregnancy often fails to materialize, or does, but it's a repeat for the mom who already gave birth. There are so many possible reasons for this, not least of which is the extreme cost, in money, time, emotional energy, and hard work it takes for us to get pregnant. But there are other factors, too, and they are impossible to see when making those early decisions about who will "go first."

In our case, Gail, who was just as insistent on a second kid as me, definitely started dragging her feet on TTC #2 after Leigh was born. We had originally thought to try for something like two-year spacing (as if you have very much control over such things) and she quickly started lobbying that we wait longer. There were all sorts of issues. Money, job and school transitions, the stress of TTC, and sure those were all factors, but the nasty jealous part of me was still thinking, "Sure, you can wait. You already gave birth; for all you care we could never have another." During the conversations over those months I demanded all different kinds of proof that she was on board for number two, some of them perhaps unreasonable, but I think my fear that she might bail on our plan was actually NOT unreasonable. It definitely happens. We had a different set of motivations, and mine were much stronger, whereas heading into number one, we were both 100% on the same boat.

Now it turned out that my body decided for us that we needed to wait. And to Gail's credit, she was the one who fussed at me to start charting when Leigh was only about six months old. I thought snarky things like, "well...you don't even want another one anyway, why should I wake up every day to take my damn temperature?" and really, that response was just masking my own desire not to face up to how bad my cycles really were. Once I charted for a while, and faced facts, it was important to me to give acupuncture a real chance before heading in for drugs; I was now on Gail's preferred schedule, but for my own reasons.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but maybe I'm saying that in a family where both moms plan to give birth, the one who goes first really does have a lot of power over how things progress (and this is assuming the best of legal circumstances). By the time you get to planning for number two, the mom who carried number one has proven fertility. At every slight bump in the TTC road, you both wonder, would this be easier if we just went back to the way we did it before? You also already have a child, a child whose needs you must prioritize. Money is tighter and you know how much childcare costs. Maybe you would have gone all the way to IVF in a heartbeat the first time, but the second time it seems too drastic, and too expensive considering you already have a child to support. And there are the donor issues that come up so often when trying for another kid. If you only have x vials, are you willing to risk them on unproven fertility? Will you move back to your original set-up if you run out, to ensure that your kids will have some genetic link? There's also the inevitable discomfort with taking on a new role, even if not for parenting, certainly during pregnancy. If things are working like they are, and you've finally negotiated your respective places in your family, perhaps in deference to or defiance of biology, it can be hard to face the prospect of finding your way down a new parenting path.

I know every family faces this stuff differently, and that only a small subset of two-mom families even contain two women that both want to give birth, and also manage to avoid the fertility nightmares that can make such a plan impossible. But I think the fact remains (albeit based unscientifically on broad generalizations from our own experience and meta-analysis of way too much blog reading), that once one mom has birthed a first child, she's probably more likely to birth a second, even if that wasn't originally in the plans. We felt many of these pressures, and we really had all of the cards stacked in our favor. I guess I may really mean stacked in my favor, since I'm writing about my own chances to achieve this pregnancy I wanted so much. I had ample donor supply, a relatively idyllic legal situation, enough money to keep trying, and a partner who shared my commitment to having another kid and wasn't chomping at the bit to get pregnant again herself. And even with all of that, we could have easily ended up with Gail pregnant again, despite our intentions at the outset. I am grateful that we got here....and will be even more grateful when I stop puking in the morning. (hello Universe! I'm pushing 15 weeks! Isn't this supposed to stop?)

Why I want Gail to induce lactation

It feels a little jinxy to write about this (when will writing about this pregnancy like it is real not feel jinxy?), but it's the sort of thing we actually need to make a decision about in the not too distant future (end of first trimester or so), and was a major topic of conversation at our house the last few days, so I'm throwing caution to the wind.

Nursing is such a huge subject, perhaps even more so in a two-mom family. It is certainly a major topic in two-mom-blog-land and came up as a sore spot in tons of the essays in the Aizley other mother anthology (not least in the essay by Aizley's then-partner Faith Solloway). With Leigh, we had all of the requisite conversations, angst, work and satisfaction associated with nursing, and all in all, it went well. Leigh was a champion nurser. Gail had pretty good supply. Leigh nursed until about 14 months when it was clear both she and Gail were ready to be done. I didn't struggle too much with those third wheel feelings that not nursing can inspire in mom #2 (I think largely because I spent so much time caring for Leigh).

I remember in our conversations before Leigh's birth, discussing the possibility of having me induce lactation, and ultimately deciding that no, it wouldn't be worth the effort. Back then I was still taking some medication that I was weaning off of, and I would have had to push the timeline for weaning faster than would have been prudent. We also felt like there would be enough work to go around and it might not be the best use of parental energy. In retrospect, those were perfectly good reasons not to induce, but there was also something deeper holding me back. In our own relationship parlance we refer to it as "you know, that thing about stealing the baby," which for us, conjures up a whole slew of heavily discussed and interesting issues, and somehow feels difficult to sum up in a little--or not so little--blog post, but I'll try.

During the pregnancy, I often felt like I was clinging to Gail, trying to get in on her spotlight and glow, to get a teeny bit of that pregnancy aura and attention by proximity. I worried (as if you guys can't tell by now I'm a worrywart) that people would think I was too enthusiastic, that I was getting too possessive of her baby, trying too hard to claim a child that wasn't really mine...and actually...there are signs I wasn't completely making that up. There was that friend who thought I shouldn't take leave, the midwife with whom I literally "got in trouble" for getting over-zealous about birth preparations (ask Gail, it's true). There were the frequent subtle and not-so-subtle references in queer parenting books that I've mentioned before. But that worry about other people were thinking actually exposed the worry I had in my own heart, that I was stealing Gail's baby, that I had no business claiming this child as my own.

Mostly, we worked through this stuff, and once we had the kid and figured out how our family does things, that worry faded fast. Now we are just Leigh's moms. It isn't complicated. But that decision not to induce was made before we knew how our family would work, and was in part influenced by that nagging worry that I was stealing Leigh. If I had prepared to nurse her, that just seemed to cross a line. It seemed like I would be too obviously honing in on Gail's turf.

But now we know that isn't a good reason. We know what it is like to be two moms, and we know what it is like to nurse. In fact, having two nursing moms in the house could be a total bonus (easier to trade off night feeding, it would relieve the pumping pressure, faster bonding for Gail, fewer bottles to wash). Back when I was deciding not to induce, I had very territorial feelings about what was then only a very hypothetical second pregancy (by me). When I thought about whether or not I would want Gail to nurse a child that I birthed, I had a visceral reaction of "HELL NO." It wasn't pretty. It was something like, "Well, if I can't nurse this one there is no way you are going to nurse the second one" and it came from that same ugly place of worry about stealing Leigh. I find now that we're here, barely into this next pregnancy, that instead I really want Gail to induce. I want to share both that work and that satisfaction with her, and I don't want her to feel like I did, that somehow she shouldn't.

All of that said, when all is said and done, she gets to choose. She has some pretty valid reasons not to want to. She had a horrible breast abscess that would encompass several posts in and of itself. She is rightfully scared of a repeat (so am I for that matter. It was really really bad). It is a lot of work when we already have a toddler to care for. And in some sense, she's already done her time. She enjoyed nursing Leigh, and did a bang up job, but she wasn't one of those for whom nursing is the be all and end all, so she may not be itching for a repeat.

I'll let Gail walk you through her end of the thinking about this, and she's been the one doing the legwork on figuring out what it would actually entail, but for my part, I just want to make it extra super clear, that if you decide not to induce Gail, don't let it be because you think you shouldn't. For my part, I would love it if you did.