TV Alert: Quads with Two Moms Tonight

Thanks to Terrance at Republic of T for his serendipitous sighting of an ad for Quads with Two Moms, which will air tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on Discovery Health as part of their Baby Week coverage.

I wrote back in March about another lesbian couple who had quads. In that story, one woman carried all four at once. The couple portrayed on the show tonight went about it a little differently, implanting embryos in both women, who then each bore twins. They already had a ten-year-old daughter, whom one of them had from a previous opposite-sex marriage.

I’m not sure what would be more difficult: carrying quads or dealing with a partner when we were both hormonal from twins. Yes, I realize that’s a silly question; both ways are hard, and carrying a single baby is no walk in the park, either.

It’s great to see yet another way we create our families, though. Kudos to the Discovery Channel for including lesbian moms in their Baby Week. (And because the ultra-right is bound to criticize them for doing so, here is their Viewer Relations page so you can send them a note of support.)

UPDATE: I just realized that the filmmaker, Shannon O’Rourke, also made the documentary Maybe Baby, about single women choosing to become mothers. It’s not about lesbian moms per se, although one of the woman profiled is a lesbian, but it explores issues of “alternative” parenting and assisted reproduction that many of us will appreciate.

Lonely Lesbian to Tour May 2008

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 the rest of this post »

Book Review: Choosing You

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 the rest of this post »

Pregnant and Miserable

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 the rest of this post »

It’s Raining (Pregnant) Men

Thomas Beatie caused a minor sensation several weeks ago when he came out as a pregnant transgender man. I offered my own opinion about him, which boils down to “a loving family is all that matters.”

Annalee Newitz at AlterNet, however, reminded us that Beatie is not the first man to get pregnant. She knows of at least two others in the U.S., one of whom had a child almost ten years ago. Now, the U.K.’s Daily Express reports that a transgender man in Germany had a child over a decade ago. (Thanks, PageOneQ.) I’d venture a guess that we’ll hear of more in short order. Read the rest of this post »

So You Want to Get Pregnant . . .

(Originally published in Bay Windows, December 13, 2007.)

Louise Sloan’s new book, Knock Yourself Up: No Man? No Problem: A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom (Avery: 2007), is something of a novelty. It is perhaps the only parenting book by an out lesbian mom that is directed at a mixed audience, lesbian and not. While some books about single motherhood are inclusive of lesbian moms to varying degrees, and some books about lesbian parenting state they are also appropriate for single straight moms, Sloan goes beyond them and weaves the experiences of herself and other lesbians with those of straight women in an even-handed way that makes neither group feel like outsiders.

The book features her own perspective as a single mom by choice, as well as the voices of 43 other women whom she interviewed at length, representing a wide variety of backgrounds and choices on the path to parenthood. Sloan says she wanted her book to be “a lively support group in text form, offering a diversity of perspectives,” and in this she succeeds. Chatty, informal and at times laugh-out-loud funny, there is nevertheless much practical information in the women’s stories and Sloan’s asides.

Some people, of course, feel single moms by choice are selfish and view men as unnecessary, the same argument many throw at lesbian moms. Sloan, however, argues “What the straight women in this book rejected was not men or marriage—it was the idea of getting into a bad marriage, or the wrong marriage, just to have kids. . . . In fact, many have made the decision to bear a child out of wedlock because they respect marriage too much to enter into it lightly for reasons of social and procreational expedience.” For lesbians, the marriage situation is somewhat different, but the idea is the same: Don’t force yourself into the wrong relationship just to have a parenting partner. The de-linking of marriage and procreation, however, is one of the many reasons the book has already garnered a number of far-right detractors, who also seem to believe the lack of a dad means a troubled life for the child—an assertion disproven by credible research. Straight single moms by choice and lesbians, coupled or not, may find common cause here, an alliance that in my opinion has yet to be fully explored. Read the rest of this post »

Eat, Drink, and Be Worried

A few items of note:

• Drink milk. Overall, children in the U.S. are not consuming the recommended amount of dairy products, and the ones they do consume are too high in fat.
• Eat fish. New recommendations from 14 physicians and a number of leading professional and governmental groups say pregnant and breast-feeding women should eat at least 12 ounces of fish or other seafood a week, because “the benefits for infant brain development outweigh any worries about mercury contamination.” A seafood industry trade group gave the coalition $60,000, but the doctors defended the independence of their work. Others note the recommendation comes without an upper limit or a mention of the need to avoid mercury-contaminated fish.
• Don’t eat lead. Yep. More toy recalls. They include Baby Einstein Discover & Play Color Blocks, Pirates of the Caribbean medallion squeeze lights, certain water bottles, keychains, and a variety of bookmarks and journals (with designs for breast cancer awareness and Winnie the Pooh, among other things).

Mary Cheney Is Having a Boy

Mary Cheney will be having a boy when she gives birth next month, said her father, Vice President Dick Cheney. He also said he’s “delighted” to be a grandparent for the sixth time, but reiterated that he thought same-sex relationship recognition should remain a state matter. “I obviously think it’s important for us as a society to be tolerant and respectful of whatever arrangements people enter into,” he added.

Hmm. Hope he realizes that the Social Security payments his wife will enjoy after he dies (assuming he goes first) are a benefit Mary and partner Heather won’t share. That’s a federal benefit, not a state one. Yes, Mary’s Social Security will pass to her child, in the absence of a legal spouse, but Heather’s won’t, unless the State of Virginia surprises us and allows her to adopt her son. And that still leaves the surviving partner out of the loop. Let’s hope Baby Cheney is a generous and financially responsible soul, who will take care of his parents. No, scratch that. Mary and Heather won’t have to rely on Social Security for their retirement. The point applies to many of the other same-sex families out there who aren’t so lucky.

Still, I wish Mary and Heather the best in these final weeks of pre-parenthood. I won’t wish ill on any new parents, and I hope they have the peace to focus on their child, not the media, in his early days.

(The Washington Post via AMERICAblog.)

Back Up Your Birth Control Day

The only time in my life I was on birth control, it was in order to have a child. Specifically, it was to get my partner pregnant, using my egg. The birth control pills were to synch my cycle with hers so the doctors could do their reproductive magic.

I get almost as worked up about restrictions on birth control as I do about LGBT rights, however. Both are about personal freedoms, about controlling our own bodies and hearts. It is inevitably the same people who want to restrict knowledge about birth control who want to eliminate any mention of “homosexuality” from school curricula.

This week, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle rejected federal abstinence-education funds. To receive these funds, states must forbid teachers from discussing contraception and require them to say that sex within marriage is “the expected standard of sexual activity.” Since same-sex marriage is banned in most places, this standard by definition excludes LGBT relationships. Doyle’s move is a step in the right direction. Any message about abstinence needs to be part of a comprehensive sex-education program that talks about all reproductive choices and sexual orientations.

I’m blogging today in honor of Back Up Your Birth Control Day not because I have any immediate need for birth control, but because it is part of an interlocking group of freedoms that do impact me and my community. I’m blogging because as a mother, I am more aware than before of the needs of children in our society. Emergency contraception, or “back up” birth control, is available over-the-counter to adult women, but only by prescription to those younger than 18. We need to allow minors to choose this option without fearing reprisal and shame. Visit the Back Up Your Birth Control Web site to learn more.

Tomorrow Is “Back Up Your Birth Control Day”

Tomorrow, March 20, is Back Up Your Birth Control Day, and organizers are encouraging people to blog about it. A coalition of more than 100 women’s health and medical organizations established the event as part of an ongoing campaign “to help make emergency contraception (EC) more effective by making sure women know about it – and can get it in time.” According to them, “Widespread knowledge and use of this safe and effective back-up birth control method could prevent as many as half of the 3 million unintended pregnancies that occur each year in the U.S.”

This is an issue worthy of all women’s attention, including lesbians. Some of us choose to have sex with men on occasion; some of us may be victims of rape. Many of us have daughters, or nieces, or friends, for whom EC is a needed option.

The Back Up Your Birth Control Day activities are largely targeted at educating teens. The organizers state, “In the fall of 2006, the FDA approved over-the-counter (OTC) sales of EC for adult women, but kept the prescription requirement for teens younger than 18. The FDA’s decision is an incomplete victory for all Americans. Many women, due to the age restriction, are excluded from timely OTC access as a result of the FDA’s decision.”

I’ll have more tomorrow in honor of the actual day. In the meantime, you can visit the Back Up Your Birth Control site to learn more, and blog about it yourself tomorrow if you feel so inclined.

While I’m on the topic of choice, however, I’ll note that anti-abortion legislators in Florida are pushing for a bill (yet to be referred to a committee) that would require pediatricians, school nurses or other health providers who find out that a girl under 16 is pregnant to tell the police. “The confidentiality privilege that normally exists between doctor and patient would not apply in cases that fall under the bill,” reports the Naples Daily News. Abortion providers would also be required to collect DNA samples from girls under 16 who have abortions. The bill’s supporters say it’s meant to protect girls from sexual abusers, including family members. Makes me want to beat the legislators about the heads with a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale.