No, it wasn’t in the gift department.  Sassafras loved all her gifts.  And I don’t even consider the fact that she ate only jelly for breakfast, only gummy lifesavers for lunch, and had a less than 40 minute nap as messing up. Heck, even SuperParent has to concede to the rigors of the day.

No, I messed up in the last 2 hours of the day.

We took our sugar-fueled, nap-deprived toddler over to our good friends’ house for Christmas Dinner and Movie watching that evening.  My child was running on determination and inertia alone.  I figured that the magical sleepiness of turkey would overcome those forbidding obstacles and lull my child into dreamland for me.  As we tromped down the stairs to watch the final installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, I wasn’t worried about the inappropriateness of the show: the violence, the scariness.  No, I figured, as soon as we curled up in the giant beanbag she’d be out for the count. 

Oh how I misjudged the strength of her determination.  She didn’t fall asleep, and as I tried to coax her into dreamland, while selfishly watching the movie, I realized how badly I messed up when she looked up at a battle scene and began narrating, “he’s dead, and he’s dead, and he’s dead, and he’s dead.”  All four of us adults present began talking about how it was all pretend, and how silly it was really, as my 2 year old stared at the screen in captive horror, pointing at the “scary octopus” (Davy Jones) and talking about how the pirates were going to bite her foot.

We packed up and left, movie unfinished.

I read her stories that night and we talked about lots of different things trying to get the movie out of her head.  But still, at 3 am, Klove and I were woken by her screams of terror.  When I went into her room, flipped on her lights, she was huddled in her bed.  As I knelt by her she looked at me and said, “there’s too many babies, mom.  Too many babies.”  Tears streaming down her face.  I would never have thought that a well-loved and cherished 2 year old could know hopelessness and despair, but it was there in her voice and my heart broke because I had let this happen to her. 

The “too many babies” comes from her favorite movie, Shrek the Third, but she’s never been even a little bit afraid of the Shrek movies.  The scene where Shrek has the nightmare about babies is usually her favorite scene.  She shrieks “too many babies!” with glee as the babies pour through the window.  But in thinking about it, and the scenes she saw of pirates and monsters overwhelming ships and people in the first half hour or so of the Pirates movie, I can see the similarities and see how her dreaming mind could combine the two.  She didn’t ask to watch Shrek once yesterday.

I’d say that the next morning everything was fine, but she still talks about the Octopus she saw on our friend’s T.V. and she still talks of Pirates biting her foot.  With as imaginative as my daughter is, and as long a memory as she has, I think it’ll be quite a while before the threat of pirates and octopi fades.  And there’s nothing I can do about it, but reassure her of our love and the imaginariness of the monsters.

***

Too often, in our fight for equality and respect, we gild our parenting skills; we laud our wisdom and foresight in how we planned and researched and raised our children.  But we’re only human.  We mess up.  This does not make us less worthy parents.  True equality will be manifest when we can ‘fess up about our mistakes – the times when selfishness, laziness, ignorance, impotence, frustration, impatience trip us up.  I don’t know about you, but when I mess up, I feel paralyzed inside.  Too busy battling the internalized homophobia that says I’m inherently unworthy to parent a child (and that this mistake is a sign of that unworthiness) to really live in the present for a while.  My mistakes eat at me and wear me down.

So this is my confession, and my resolution: I am not a perfect parent, and I do not have to be.

Join me.  When have you messed up, and how?

“Let’s play ‘Family,’” says the lil’ monkey this afternoon. How can I say no? Also, how can I not use it as yet another opportunity to massage the concept, yet again? In situ? Under the guise of her initiative?

“When you play ‘Family,’ who is it that’s in the family?” I ask as coyly as I can manage.

“There’s two baby brothers, and two baby sisters.”

“Yes,” I say, “go on.”

“And a Mommy, and a Daddy.”

“So not two Mommies, or two Daddies, or a Mama and a Baba?”

“No, a Mommy and a Daddy.” She’s cheery, and of sound conviction.

I try to investigate just a weeee bit more. Without flooding the room with the stench of didacticism. Nothing spooks an unwitting brainwashing subject more than catching a flash of the propaganda in broad daylight.

“Why do you want there to be a Mommy and a Daddy?” I ask, with as cheery a tone as she’s had all along. Since I actually am cheery. And doing a good job of stuffing the worry down deep in my shorts pockets.

“Cause there are lots of people with Mommies and Daddies. Most people have Mommies and Daddies.” Can’t argue with that, especially when that’s what we’ve been telling her all along. Our line is, most people have a Mommy and a Daddy (we provide illustration from the copious supply of aunts and uncles around her). Some people have two Mommies or two Daddies (again, illustrations from friends she knows). And some people have a Mama and a Baba (e.g., her best chum across the street). From time to time, further elucidation is provided on what a Baba is, technically speaking: a kind of a parent part way between a Mama and a Papa. If you had to say it was more one thing or another, you’d go wtih a Baba being a kind of a Mama.

I know it can all sound convoluted, but god love me it’s the closest thing to the truth there is. Really. And we owe her the truth, period. All we can do is keep serving it up in bite-sized portions, every time she announces that she’s hungry for more again. And then stop serving when she’s obviously full. We take care to serve it up neither too spicy nor too rich, until she develops a more sophisticated palate. We do plenty of product-testing (picture us in the supermarket of her brain, with our sample portions on toothpicks, taking careful note of the wincing face or the smacked lip). Once, about a month or two ago, I even asked her: If she had to choose, what do I seem more like, a Mommy or a Daddy? Without deliberation, she chose the latter. How can I argue with her own perception? I winked as I said to her, “Yeah, I kinda think so too.”

This afternoon, our “Family” game is turning out to mostly be a thinly-veiled excuse for an interesting conversation, though I’m beginning to suspect it’s been she who has been steering it all along.

The lil’ monkey goes further. “Everybody that has a Baba wants their Babas to be Dads, right?” She looks at me very carefully following the question. I am the wily polygraph-cheater. I appear not to be just now stabbed in the heart with a crayon, or a little toy pony, or whatever. Though my pupils probably dialated.

“Well, not necessarily,” I manage. “Could be sometimes. But if you want me to pretend I’m a Dad, I’d be perfectly happy to.”

We’ve been doing gobs and gobs of family play lately. She’s just about three, and has been building up both curiosity and vocabulary about who’s in her family for at least half a year now, maybe more. She lists who’s who, upstairs (our nuclear unit) and downstairs (her cousins and aunt and uncle); she says our names and our relationship to her. In those recitations, she names me as her Baba, both a proper name and a generic. She’s also just about to go to preschool, where “Baba” isn’t generic for anything. Yet.

Just as literally millions* of LGBT families have before us, for months and months and months now we’ve been, as gracefully as possible, anticipating our daughter’s need to be able to articulate her family to new buddies. Or rather, little people whom we dearly hope will be her new buddies. Every time somebody refers to me as her mother in public (e.g., “Your mommy is so nice to have gotten you that nice Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds!”), I strike up a conversation about it. About how, in public, most people will see me and call me her mommy. Because Babas are rare. Like fairies. Kind of invisible, but not to everyone. Some people can pick them out. Otherwise, because they are female, they are going to be called mothers.

It seems a bit pretzel-y when you come at it from some angles. Also it all falls apart when the word count for any explanation to her exceeds, like, twenty-five. But from other angles, though, it’s really simple. Ultimately the proof is in our little pudding.

When I had managed to pull the crayon (or little toy pony, or whatever) out of my heart, I assayed one last question. “Now, if someone asked you what kind of family you had, what would you say?”

“I have a Mama and a Baba.” No equivocation.

“And what if they asked you what a Baba was?” I was expecting some kind of hesitation, but nope.

“A Baba is a kind of a Mommy and kind of a Daddy,” she pronounced. Then she paused. “Mostly it’s a kind of a Mama.” She looks up at me with a barely subdued beam of pride, a twinkle in her eye, and a smile.

Can’t argue with that.

* Between four and fourteen million children are being raised in LGBT households, according to the 2000 Census. This from the Family Pride Stats and Facts page. Comprehensive breakdown of the 2000 Census by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force here.

Julieta and her less-than-legal wife who are still in the planning stages over at http://willowsbrain.blogspot.com/.

Magui, Gabi, a three year relationship, a cat, a dog, and the desire to start a family in Argentina at http://quemarnaves.blogspot.com/

Florencia and Gabriela who are TTCing in Argentina at http://maternidadeslesbicas.blogspot.com/

Guza and Oruga waiting for their Juan in Argentina at http://saltorana.blogspot.com/

Tilvy and Andre have triplets Abril, Jazmin, and Santi who were born at 27 weeks and are still in the NICU, but doing well in Argentina at http://ellalostrillizosyyo.blogspot.com/

Ana and Paula with their 1 year old twins in Argentina at http://piedralibreparadosmamas.blogspot.com/

Cris and Ana with their twins Diego and Santi in Mexico at http://dosmamis.blogspot.com/

Roma, Triana, and their 4 year old son Tati in Argentina at http://mamispordos.blogspot.com/

But I’ve also been thinking a lot about which stories are unheard, which guideposts missing.  I write a lot about the plight of non-bio mothers losing rights and visitation to their children, but surely this is just the extreme end of the spectrum, right?

I’ve been nervous to put this call out because I don’t want people to think that my own relationship is in danger of falling apart and thus I’m in a search for personal guidance, but I really do think that there is a void when it comes to what happens when a lesbian couple with young children decides not to be together any more.  It’s as if we want to turn our eyes away and say that if we don’t speak about it, if we don’t look at it, then it won’t happen; it’s only the horror of the extreme examples that breaks our silence — and only, I suspect, because we think that terrible occurrance could never happen to us and thus it’s safe to speak about.

A few months ago my partner and I attended a seminar on how best to protect the legal rights of our family now and in the future.  All of the steps given (rights of attorney, estate planning, donor contract, parenting contract) we’ve done, except for one: it was advised that we formulate a contract specifying what is to happen should we dissolve our union — how would we handle custody?  child support?  the division of property?  The plan is designed in the first place to keep us out of the courtroom during and after our break up, as well as to give the judge a picture of what we had truly intended when planning our family should we end up in the courtroom anyway. 

This is the most difficult piece of the whole packet of paperwork — no one likes to think that they’re going to break up.  No one likes to think that the family they’ve worked so hard to create won’t stay the same as it was created.  Still, we’re working on it.  Thinking about it.  Planning even though we’re planning never to have to use the plan.  There’s no adoption here, so if a lesbian couple were to break up any division of child custody would have to be cooperative.

What I’m wondering is, does anyone know of cases where this has actually happened? Stories, examples?  Are there blogs out there of people successfully sharing custody where they weren’t forced to by adoption decree?  Or where the adoption decree doesn’t play that big a role?

These are stories that we need to hear.  Enough of the horror stories, enough of the heartbreak and loss.  Those stories are important, too.  But I feel like our stories and talk are out of balance.  Instances of cooperation must form the bulk of break-ups, correct?  Let’s hear them.

Many of you will have read Peggy Orenstein’s cover piece in this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, “Your Gamete, Myself.” For those who didn’t, or who just now linked to it and balked when you saw that it spans nine pages online, here’s a synopsis: Orenstein, an astute writer on matters feminist and maternal, looks at the medical and social evolution of egg donor conception. She interviews several families (mostly the mothers therein) who conceived their kids using donor eggs. She talks to doctors at fertility clinics, and weaves in anecdotal notes from her own journey to motherhood. Throughout, she explores the ethical and emotional ramifications (to parent and child) of donor egg conception. She muses about how, in ways both like and unlike sperm donor conception and adoption, donor egg conception blurs the “bright lines” that ordinary, “biogenetic” parenthood draws around parents’ “genetic, biological and social relationships to their children.” Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I have an answer, though you’ll have to wade through my own thicket of paragraphs to find out.

Those queer and queer-cognizant readers that do mosey through the entirety of Orenstein’s piece might find themselves nodding and murmuring in assent to this or that point, all the while waiting patiently for the moment when Orenstein would of course consider how queer family-making sheds a bright light from a fresh angle on the myriad emotional issues she’s examining. After all, we couldn’t be bigger boosters of alternative conception, both via egg- and sperm-donation. “Ah,” these readers might have said to themselves as they watched paragraph after paragraph slip by, “the sly dog! Orenstein’s holding her big guns ‘til the last section of the article!”

And many of these readers will have, like me, scratched their heads when they arrived at the end of the piece having never seen the word “lesbian” or “gay” in print. Well I have just one thing to say to that: lesbianlesbianlesbian!

Okay, maybe I have more than one thing to say.
[Read the rest of this post over at LesbianDad... ]

So sorry for your loss, friends, and I hope the next insem turns out to make your family a healthy baby.

It was bedtime, and I thought I was going to have to mount a lengthy campaign to extirpate the lil’ monkey from her downstairs cousins’ room (we live upstairs from my partner’s brother and his family). Daily she ransacks her cousins’ bedroom in a never-sated hunger to fiddle with (disassemble, rearrange, touch, or simply breath upon) their toys and books. Then the fairy goddesses arrived and extracted her for me, effortlessly.

We call our known donor’s daughters our kids’ special cousins, and they had come to visit toward the end of a day of mega-wide extendo family/community fun in our back yard. The two girls simply entered the house (gliding in on feet that I’m sure didn’t even move), slipped their magic fairly fingers into our daughter’s, and led her out. They then proceeded to glide as a nymph trio across the lawn toward us, swirly filaments of fairy dust wafting behind them. They were so beautiful playing together that we postponed putting the girlie to bed ’til the special cousins went home. The love they share is unique, and palpable.

I had no idea the fruits of our extended family-making would turn out to be this sweet. I remember a conversation with the very first friends I know who had a kid with a known donor, probably like eight or ten years ago, when I was living in Minnesota. I expressed the classic fear that there’d be this dangling connection out there, which could be used to burn back into our family in some terrible way, like a line of gunpowder.

“Aren’t you worried? Think of all the terrible things that could happen!” was my refrain. Because, after all, let’s admit it, it’s all too easy to think of those terrible things. Maybe even more so if you’re not the one giving birth, and therefore stand to be made somehow invisible or irrelevant to the whole process (one can think these things, when one lets one’s wildest fears run amok.) My friend — who was the non-birth mom, after having tried unsuccessfully to conceive for several years — said something to the effect of, “Yeah, you know, I was worried, too, at first. And then our daughter was born and I realized: That’s just more love for her in the world.” And in a moment, a line that looked like gunpowder became a cord through which love passed.

Things are not always this rosy. We in the extended lesbian family family are well aware of the horror stories about custody battles with donors who’ve reversed their initial intentions to relinquish legal custody. Or somehow their families go haywire. These are the stories that are well-telegraphed, I think both because they serve as cautionary tales, but also because it’s a well-worn fact that bad or scary news sells more papers/ magazines/ web ads/ what have you. Or something to this effect. The actors are clear, the threat is clear, etc.

The stories of love and harmony may draw less attention, but I have to believe they’re more the rule than the exception. (They may say I’m a dreamer, but I’d like to think I’m not the only one.) So now I ask the following questions not just to stir up dialog, but to help dig up some more folk wisdom for a friend in Vermont who just gave birth (Congrats again, M2!). Those of you who have made your family using known sperm donors: how has your connection evolved? If they have kids, have any of you actively woven your family into theirs? How do you name the connection between your kids, and his, and how do you talk with them about it? Are you in touch with other families for whom he’s been a donor (if he’s been a known donor for other families)? If so, how is that family connection going?

Sarah at Journey of a Co-Mom de-briefs us on their Easter visit with her partner’s parents, and how it felt to be dismissed as her son’s mother by her in-laws.

Charlotte at Dos Mamas describes how she feels lost now that her job of getting S pregnant is done.   She feels like she doesn’t really have a place right now, and that feeling has been reinforced by the people who seem to consider S the only expectant mother worthy of special congratulations.

and Lo of Family O takes up the subject as well, describing her feelings around her shifting roles and the ways she’s being viewed by the people surrounding her family as they move further into Co’s pregnancy.

Finally, Lesbian Dad has something to say about the connection and love of a Baba to her children.

That connection, while you’re looking deep into your child’s eyes, wipes all the hurful comments and ignorant slights away.

If I missed a blog post or three, please comment and I’ll go wrangle them in, weekends aren’t exactly the most to blog surfing for me…

The one she addresses is a big one: if one partner is biologically connected to the child, and the other isn’t, and more, if that connection is evident physically, then this physical link will be the subject of comment, to one degree or another. It will be unavoidable that someone, others, maybe, or even folks inside the family, will remark that the kid’s this that or the other thing (eyes, ears, nose, throat) “looks just like” the bio-mom’s, or even deeper, a member of the bio-mom’s family, way back.

Given that the normative family unit stems biologically from the two parents at the head of it (and do note: “normative,” not “normal”), the ritual of looking for and finding bodily traces of both parents is an ancient part of baby-bonding. It’s a way, even, to draw the baby into the family community. But for families like ours, these are moments that cut in two ways at the same time. Bonding for the bio-mom, potentially isolating for the NON bio-mom.

You bio-mom sisters out there: when such moments arise, I hope Trista’s advice rushes into your head. I am grateful to the heavens and earth that my partner is cut off the same bolt, in this regard. That is, she and Trista are reading off the same page of the bio-mom hymnal. It helps, perhaps, that my partner has an adopted sister? Of a different race than her? Interestingly, throughout their youth everyone thought they were blood sisters, anyway. The shared energy, the mannerisms, all ran so deep. They have spent their lifetimes forging family love across that blood divide, noticing and brushing off the deeply ingrained impulse in folks to understand family on those terms first and most authentically. Funny, my first sweetie and I were also often taken for sisters. I’m white, she’s Chicana. We’re separated in height by a good ten inches. But still, the love bond had to be explained by folks, in a time when Lesbian Love was far less visible than it is today.

How do you all negotiate this stuff in your families? Go read Trista’s piece and then chat it up there, or here. It strikes at a tender core, and reminds us how we can make our families loving and strong, amidst the external forces that might (innocuously, perhaps) trickle some discord and weakness into them. When both parents aren’t bio, the drama surely plays differently. Is it harder? Easier? Trickier? You tell us!

The case involves Keri Jones and Cheryl Barlow.  The two women conceived a child via a.i. and then when the child was 2, their relationship ended.  Barlow now claims that she is no longer gay and doesn’t want her child exposed to that “lifestyle”.  Despite the lower courts’ rulings that Jones be allowed visitation with her daughter, Barlow repeatedly denied visitation.  Jones had to continually return to the courts to get chances to see her daughter.  I’ve written in depth about this case here.

The case was argued before the Utah Supreme Court back in August of 2005.  The decision was handed down today.

We hold that the doctrine of in loco parentis, as recognized by the courts of this state, does not independently grant standing to seek visitation after the in loco parentis relationship has ended. Although this court recognized the right of stepparents to seek visitation in Gribble v. Gribble, 583 P.2d 64 (Utah 1978), standing in that case arose out of an interpretation of statutory law granting such rights, not from an independent common law source. We decline to extend the common law doctrine of in loco parentis to create standing where it does not arise out of statute. We accordingly overturn the trial court’s grant of visitation rights and hold that the common law doctrine of in loco parentis does not independently grant standing to seek visitation against the wishes of a fit legal parent.

  So.  It doesn’t matter that Jones and Barlow planned, together, to conceive this child.  It doesn’t matter that they created legal paperwork to protect Jones’ relationship to their child.  It doesn’t matter that the child considers Jones to be her mother.  None of this matters because Barlow no longer wants Jones to be the child’s parent, and Barlow’s wishes are the only ones that count. Reading the opinion, I can’t help but note that Barlow’s move to Texas (against a court order) actually helped Barlow’s case after all. 

  Because it is clear that Barlow effectively ended the in loco parentis relationship when she moved to another residence and refused to allow Jones to interact with the child

  Barlow stole that child away and has ultimately been rewarded for it.Another gem from the opinion:

 On the one hand, we recognize that mutual bonds of affection can be formed between a child and an adult who does not fit within the traditional definition of a parent and that such a relationship has the potential to enrich the lives of both the surrogate parent and the child. However, in carving out a permanent role in the child’s life for a surrogate parent, this court would necessarily subtract from the legal parent’s right to direct the upbringing of her child and expose the child to inevitable conflict between the surrogate and the natural parents. Such a doctrine raises concerns that a legal parent could be deprived of a portion of her parental rights on the basis of “elusive factual determinations” as to whether she intended to relinquish those rights to a third party.

All the documentation Jones and Barlow created when they were in love that they intended to form a family, that Barlow intended to give birth to a child that she wanted Jones to help parent for the rest of that child’s life, that Jones was considered a parent by Barlow; all those things that we all do to try and establish our families as families in the absence of equal marriage and adoption rights, in the end all of that means nothing to the courts.   No one expects that they will fall out of love with their partners.  No one expects that if they do fall out of love, their break-up will degenerate to horrifying lows of legal nastiness.  No one expects that their partner will turn into the kind of person who would do anything to keep you from the child you planned together, out of spite and anger.  And yet, it can happen.

And now, if you live in Utah, spite and anger will win.

My heart is breaking for Keri Jones and her daughter.  My heart is breaking for every non-bio mom here in Utah, including myself.

You can read the opinion and the dissent here.