“It’s funny. We have legal documents declaring our marriage valid in two different states. We’ve been together and in love for years. But it was the birth of our daughter this daredevil, this personality, that really made our home feel like family.”
“The moment I met my child for the first time was nothing like I imagined it would be.”
I hold on to those principles of starving artist days past and strive to integrate them into this new realm of diapers, strollers, and temper tantrums
They call a child born after a loss a rainbow baby. The storm left a devastating aftermath, but this rainbow is bringing us daily joy.
Congrats, Haley and Simone! Have a peek into Juniper Jude’s first few weeks on our big green earth with her mama and monie!
We’re almost there! The interminable countdown to actually having a real, live baby is almost over!
“Y’all, I managed not to cry in this third trimester video, but here I am now, writing, tears rolling down my face at my desk, just a few feet away from our new rocking chair where I plan to spend hours nursing my baby.”
So what will Tiny call Simone?
“I started looking at lists of what a baby “needs,” and, despite my supposed desire to raise my children with nothing more than a bearskin rug and my bare breasts, I started thinking maybe there were just a few things that might come in handy once the baby arrives…”
How do we both honor our child’s memory and prepare to open our hearts again to a new child?
No, seriously.
“It wasn’t until after I heard confirmation from the doctor that our baby did in fact look healthy and well, until after I wiped the gel off my stomach and pulled my shirt back down — until I got outside even, on the way to our car — that it really sunk in. I was having a ****. I am having a ****.”
“I actually felt like the earth mother goddess I had envisioned becoming. I decided I wanted to be pregnant forever.”
+one, a new integrated product and platform that helps lesbian couples conceive, is poised to fill a serious void for us in terms of resources, materials, and peer-to-peer support.
Ah, pregnant beginnings. Literally and figuratively. The first trimester of this rainbow pregnancy (yes, that’s actually the term for a pregnancy after a loss). Is it possible to grieve and hope simultaneously?
Fatigue, nausea, boobs like bowling balls, mood swings, the sweetest moments you keep to yourself, and so much more. It’s the first trimester and wow it’s a roller coaster!
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. After losing my first pregnancy at 24 weeks, how could we face the conception process again, with the added physical and emotional complications?
“I kept having this ridiculous vision of, say, five years down the line being at a filmmaker meet up, looking across the room and recognizing my child in a stranger’s face, being like holy shit, I think that’s our donor. It’s a little absurd, I know, but San Francisco is a pretty small town!”
Sometimes, even the best laid plans are, well, decimated. Even a type-A mega control freak like me couldn’t control my own body when I was pregnant — and I certainly couldn’t control what happened to my son after his premature birth.
“There were good reasons we hadn’t started trying. But the bigger reason, which came out right there in a flood on cobblestones in the French Quarter, was that Simone wanted me to carry her baby, and that was maybe going to be impossible to achieve.”
“But no matter what, I’ve always, always, always known that I would be a parent. I’ve always wanted to have a baby. Actually babies, plural. Lots of them. One miscarriage, four embryos, dozens of pee sticks, 18 months, and approximately 132 injections later, I’m 18 weeks pregnant!”
