Andrea Askowitz is the author of My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy, a funny, bawdy, unflinchingly honest memoir of her journey to motherhood as a single lesbian. (Here’s my review.) Askowitz has now kindly offered to share some of her misery with you, Mombian readers. Please enjoy the excerpts below from her book.

She has also embarked on her “Misery Loves Company World Tour 2008” and will be having readings around the country over the next few months. If she’s coming to a city near you, stop in and say hi.

From My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy
—Andrea Askowitz

Nine Months Pre-Pregnant

I made an appointment at the Kaiser Infertility Clinic because the nurse on the phone said they needed to assess what was wrong with me.

The nurse had me watch a mandatory video, “Infertility the New Solutions” featuring three heterosexual couples with a variety of fertility problems. One of the couples just wasn’t having sex enough.

I learned that if you have sex less than once a week you have a 17% chance of getting pregnant in six months. Sex once a week almost doubles your chances to 32%. Twice a week and you have a 46%, and three times a week gives you a 51% chance of getting pregnant within six months.

When the video was over I told the nurse I’d discovered my problem.

“What is it?”

“I’m a lesbian.” Read more »

Slate did a weekend review of “Super Books for Pretty Good Moms: Parenting guides that won’t make you even more anxious than you already are.” Whether you’re an anxious parent or a calm one, you’re most likely familiar with how the media plays up these anxieties (and then tries to sell us the solutions). This got me interested in running a little poll:

In the vlog this week, I discuss two new memoirs about the journey to single motherhood, including the cynical and funny My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy and Choosing You, (both of which I reviewed at length in text a few days ago—see links). I’m vlogging without Helen this week, but instead I have a very special guest: my mom.

Hear what a grandmother has to say about the differences between being a parent and being a grandparent, what she first thought when she found out her lesbian daughter was becoming a mother, and how she talks about our family with friends and colleagues.

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If the Veoh video above isn’t working (sometimes their server can be flaky), you can try it at Daily Motion.

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Choosing You: Deciding to Have a Baby on My Own by Alexandra Soiseth (Seal Press: May 2008), chronicles the author’s journey to becoming a single mom by choice. She is not a lesbian, but I wanted to review her book here because of the parallels between straight single moms by choice and lesbian moms, partnered and not. I think there are many places where our experiences overlap, and there is much we can learn from each other.

Soiseth writes with insight about her inability to find the right man before she reached 40 and her time for childbearing grew riskily short. She also tells of her struggle with significant weight loss, and how that fed into her insecurity about relationships. It is a reflective book that manages to be sensitive without being sentimental. Soiseth doesn’t gloss over her fears about the process nor the difficulties she had in getting her family to accept her decision to parent alone. Read more »

Andrea Askowitz is pregnant—and she’s grumpy. In My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy (Cleis: May 1, 2008) she shares her cantankerous journey to parenthood as a single mom, complete with weight gain, leg cramps, hormone-induced depression, and well-intentioned friends who never quite do the right thing. It’s the perfect antidote to the slew of cheery parenting books that make pregnancy seem like a blissful time of womanly glow and nursery decoration. “I wake up at 8 in the morning, nauseated,” Askowitz relates. “What a relief. I’m still pregnant.” She worries later, “I can’t even decide what to eat for dinner. I’m going to be a terrible mother.”

Askowitz balances her dry, acerbic humor with unexpected bursts of warmth: “My baby wakes me at 7 a.m. playing the drums . . . It’s weird and wonderful, this steady beat. I can’t wait to meet this brilliant musician.” She also offers insights into the particularities of lesbian motherhood. When her straight friends start sending her maternity clothes, she complains “This must be a plot to turn me into a straight, suburban mom. They want me to be just like them. Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I’m not still a lesbian.” Read more »

It’s Reader Appreciation Day, an event organized by Robin Reagler of The Other Mother. I thought it would be appropriate, therefore, to have another giveaway, this time of Abigail Garner’s must-read book, Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is. Abigail writes from her own experience of having a gay dad who came out to her when she was five years old, but includes the voices of many others. It was an eye-opening book for me and brought up a number of issues I had never considered, like the fact that children (LGBT or not) of LGBT parents must go through a “coming out” process similar to our own, as they decide how much to share, and with whom, about their families.

More on the giveaway in a moment. First, let me say that I do very much appreciate all of you who stop by Mombian, especially those of you who keep coming back. What started as a hobby while my son was napping has grown, like him, into something more than I could have imagined. I’m pleased to see the number of comments going up, too; I hope this site sparks conversations among us. We all have much to learn from each others’ perspectives and experiences.

The book will go to the first person who leaves a comment with the correct answer to the following question. Please note rules and restrictions below. Read more »

Authors Gina Daggett and Kathy Belge are the duo behind the long-running “Lipstick and Dipstick” advice column in Curve magazine, in which they offer their butch-femme take on lesbian relationships. Their first book, Lipstick’s and Dipstick’s Essential Guide to Lesbian Relationships, is a compilation of practical and witty advice on everything from dealing with a new girlfriend’s homophobic parents, to setting boundaries when you move in together, to whether you should keep sex toys from a previous relationship. The book is not primarily about parenting, but does explore some parenting topics and their impact on adult relationships. Kathy (who also writes the Lesbian Life column for About.com) was kind enough to send me a copy so I could review the parenting sections. Read more »

The Lambda Literary Foundation has announced its list of finalists for the 20th annual Lambda Literary Awards, to be held May 29. In the Children’s/Young Adult category, the finalists are:

• Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, Peter Cameron
  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Freak Show, James St. James (Dutton Children’s/Penguin)
• Hero, Perry Moore (Hyperion)
• Saints of Augustine, P.E. Ryan (HarperTeen)
• Parrotfish, Ellen Wittlinger (Simon & Schuster)

These are all young adult books, and it is gratifying to see such a quality selection of novels for this age range. While most of the books focus on a teen coming out as LGBT, Saints of Augustine includes a protagonist who also has a gay dad. I have to hope, however, that the number and quality of books for younger children goes up in the next year.

Yes, there are a number of good books out for the younger set, but when one compares them on purely on literary and artistic merits to those of, say, Caldecott and Newbery winners, it is clear there is room for improvement. One could say the same about most children’s books, of course; but I’d like to think that some books with LGBT themes could at least be in contention. This is not to say you shouldn’t have them on your bookshelf. They are invaluable because of the subject matter they cover, even if some are a bit rough around the edges. The soon-to-be-published Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Sarah Brannen, which we mentioned in our vlog last week (and about which I’ll have more), is a step in the right direction.

Be sure to browse the Lambda list for finalists in other categories, too. There’s lots of interest for those rare occasions when we have time for some grown-up reading.

First, Lawrence King, then Simmie Williams, Jr., gender-nonconforming teens shot to death in the last three weeks. Both shootings appear to be hate crimes. Yet Lawrence King was not the first, as the long list of names honored during the Transgender Day of Remembrance and in the Wikipedia entry for Violence Against LGBT People makes clear.

Gender variance of any sort still scares the bleep out of many, and is often a motivating factor in hate crimes, but we as a society still can’t get our heads around it enough to pass the legislation needed for effective deterrence. Instead, we worry that two loving penguin fathers will teach children the wrong lessons. I wonder if there have been more person-hours spent trying to ban Tango than figuring out effective ways to teach tolerance in schools. For our children’s sake, I hope not.

It is with all this in mind that I recommend Transparent, Cris Beam’s gripping book on transgender teens. It first came out last year, but is just now out in paperback. Part memoir, part investigative reporting, and part passionate advocacy, the work is a brilliant blend of all three. In it, Beam relates the stories of four homeless transgender teens she first met while teaching at a school for LGBT youth in LA. One of them, Christine, became her foster child.

Theirs are not happy stories. Living on the streets, dealing with authorities and parents who don’t understand them, while they struggle to understand themselves, these teens have seen the worst of our country’s fear of those who are different. At the same time, they display the usual teen anxieties about friends, relationships, and futures. Their courage and resourcefulness shine through, however. Although their lives are woven with tragedy, they have found ways to survive.

Beam is clear that she is only showing one small slice of the transgender community. It is an important one, however, for these are America’s children, as much as any others. Beam conveys the need for greater understanding and resources to help these teens and others like them, without ever preaching. She shows us, rather than berates us, but her call is stronger for it. At a time when the need for unity among L, G, B, and T is greater than ever, and when Lawrence King and Simmie Williams, Jr. paid the price for our societal ignorance of gender variance, Transparent is vital reading for parents, educators, advocates, and all those who care about equality, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

A publicist sent me a copy of the Happy Baby, Healthy Mom Pregnancy Journal by Robert A. Greene, M.D. and Laurie Tarkan. I was looking forward to reviewing it, and glad that a general pregnancy publication from a mainstream press (Clarkson Potter, part of Random House) was reaching out to lesbian moms.

The combination book and journal offers information and advice for all stages of pregnancy and the first few weeks postpartum. It describes what the embryo/fetus is doing at any given point, what physical changes a mother may experience, and offers suggestions for diet, exercise, and mental health. Those who find plowing through pregnancy tomes too much to handle may prefer the snack-size weekly information here. The advice is taken from Dr. Greene’s previous book, Dr. Robert Greene’s Perfect Hormone Balance for Pregnancy, but the journal version steers clear of being merely an advertisement for the previous book. It all seems like very sensible stuff, although my approach is always to take any book’s medical advice with a grain of salt and discuss serious concerns or changes in diet with my own healthcare professionals.

The book also has plenty of room for an expectant mother to note her own thoughts about her pregnancy. There is room for freeform expression, as well as suggestions for specific things to note, like your feelings about becoming a parent, thoughts on breast vs. bottle feeding, your physical symptoms, the results of medical checkups, etc. I’m a blank-book kind of writer myself, but those who want more structure or who want to keep a diary but have a hard time thinking of what to write, this could be helpful.

The catch is that this is still a book for non-LGBT mothers. Although it uses the term “partner” in many (but not all) cases in lieu of “husband,” it is clearly a male partner: Read more »