We can't decide (mostly frustration)

[Wendy79]

Hi, everyone... just want to talk about something I'm sure a lot of you have gone through.

We're looking at "getting" a baby, somehow or other... and none of the options is perfect, so we just can't figure out where to focus our energies! Do we (potentially) spend a huge amount of money to get pregnant? Do we try adopting, another expensive option, and wait and wait for a baby who might never come? Do we go the foster/adopt route, where we'd have to rent or buy a new home (in order to show we have room) and live in it for a year before we start the process? How do you all make this decision?

I don't really know any lesbian parents, unless you count people you say hello to at concerts... Bette and Tina don't count We just feel sort of bewildered by this process... and can't help thinking how easy it is for most straight couples.

[lanamommyphd07]

If there's no fertility issue, I might suggest the "easy" route and buy some sperm online--it worked for me with one try--a total of 720 dollars. Pretty cheap when you examine all the other options. The more "advanced" options--i.e. egg harvesting, in vitro, even adoption and whatnot get pretty expensive, so that's something I'd save for the "what if" the others don't work out. Starting with the simplest option and then adding on ones that are more complicated as needed seems a good way to keep focused on getting the kid.
(If I had a partner, I would have wanted us both to do it at once and try for two--one each!)

[Diane B]

Well, to share our whole process would eat up most of the rest of the evening and too much space on this board...but I will offer a couple of things that were helpful to us. First of all, it really did help us to meet some lesbians with kids and have some models to see. I don't know where you live, but we have a large parent group here, and they do regular "prospective parents" events and panels, as well as have information sessions at their annual conference. It was very helpful to me to go to this conference and realize that hundreds of folks here had figured this out, so probably we could too! Perhaps there's a resource like that near to you - we are in Minneapolis.

Secondly, we thought and talked a lot about what was most important to us. I wanted to be a mom some way - any way - I was ok with adopting, even an older child. However, my partner decided that starting with as young a child as possible was very important to her because she really wanted to watch a child go through all of the developmental stages. Neither of us felt comfortable taking on a child that we knew had a lot of special needs, especially drug or alcohol exposure. Being clear on even these basic things really narrowed our options toward trying to get pregnant, and toward certain adoption options (for instance, we pretty much ruled out adoption from foster care because of the age of the children available in our area, and their special needs.) When we decided to pursue pregnancy, we also realized that we felt strongly about not doing very intensive interventions, and we decided to try for a limited time and then move on to adoption.

We ended up doing an international adoption (with me as the "single parent") and we couldn't be happier with our beautiful little girl. Good luck to you - you will find your way.

[mama2rey]

Originally we were going to adopt. Both my DP and I are Latina and we knew we wanted to raise a Latino/a child. I looked into adopting internationally from Colombia (where my family is from), and learned that I would have to pose as a single parent. We realized that to do an international adoption you basically have to do it as a single parent and I didn't want to go through all that and pay the huge amount of money that all that costs. We did think about foster care and we may do it in the future-however we also really want a baby that's ours. I'm afraid that I will get very attached to a child and then have to give him/her back to birthmom.

We have a friend who is willing to be a KD-that had offered this about a year ago. We realized that getting pregnant was going to be MUCH cheaper. We also then became attached to the idea of having a child genetically linked to us. So in about 3 weeks I will be inseminating for the first time.

[FtMPapa]

My process looked a little like this...

It started over four years ago. My partner and I were involved in coparenting a child - neither of us is a birthparent, but were close friends with her two birth parents.

As that relationship started to evolve - basically, around when she turned four and became more interested/involved in things outside the home, she just didn't have time for six coparents! I still see her, but very occasionally.

As that relationship changed, my partner and I looked into adoption. That seemed to be the only option for us - we're both FTM trans guys, by that point, we had both had chest surgery, and we were both on testosterone, and I actually thought that I was infertile because of that, and I was contemplating a hysterectomy.

Together, we hatched the now-infamous five-year plan to parenthood.

We quickly learned that adoption was not going to happen for us, not within the next five years. We're trans, we're young - at that time, we were both in our early to mid twenties - neither of us is independently wealthy, neither of us has a good family background. And we're poly, kinky, queer, etc, etc. In short, the last people that would be considered for public adoption, and private/international adoption was out of the question because of the cost.

The next step that I considered was re-evaluating the fertility issue. I consulted with two doctors, including a reproductive endocrinologist, and made the decision to go off testosterone. That was in the summer of 2004. The idea was maybe I would try being off hormones, and maybe my partner and I would look into the possibility of me getting pregnant in the future.

We were still on the five-year plan.

Time went by, my partner and I had some major issues, we moved into separate apartments. I finished by BA, moved to another city and started my master's degree. My partner and I broke up, about a year ago.

Now, I'm still on the five-year plan, and I'm almost four years in.

The new plan is that I will start inseminating next time I ovulate, about three weeks or a month from now.

I've set some serious limits. I considered known donors, I finally decided to go with frozen. I've talked to four or five different doctors and one fertility clinic. I've chosen my donors, chosen my insemination method, and it's all good to go. I'm going to try three cycles of IUI, up to two IUIs per cycle, for three cycles. If nothing happens by then, I'm going to abandon the pursuit for a little while, get settled in the degree program - I'm starting my PhD in September - and think seriously about how far I want to go with this.

I could potentially borrow the money for IVF (or it might be covered by insurance) but I'm not sure I'll go that far.

Ideally, I'll get pregnant nowish, and have a baby early next year. My plan then turns into being a single parent, and potentially adopting an older child - say a six year old, when my child is around 8 or so. I don't necessarily want to raise a single child, but neither do I relish the thought of being a single parent to two children while I am a graduate student. Also, there are a lot of kids out there who need homes, and a lot of them are older children.

Ok, that's a lot - but that's what it looks like from here.

I've gone from being on the five-year plan to now on the one-year to baby plan, and the ten year to adopt plan. It's working for me, at least so far.

Good luck!

[Wendy79]

Wow. I didn't realize how overwhelmed I was feeling until I started reading all these responses and found tears running down my face. You people really exist! Queer parents who got kids, not through previous marriages and relationships, but who set out to be queer parents! It feels great. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[girlie1125]

Well, we're both. We each have a child from a previous relationship, but are also on a journey to be queer parents together, to a child of our own.

A lot of people (read: straight family and friends) have given us flack for this when we told them a few years ago we were considering it. Things like "But why? You already have children?!" and "But you'll be having a *stranger's* baby..won't that be like having a stranger in your house?".

I KNOW though, that if neither of us was a mom already, NO ONE would think twice about this.

By the same token, if I'd married a man, and we decided to have one of our own, NO ONE would bat an eyelash. Even if that man had fertility issues and we had to use donor sperm, not a single soul would bring up having a "stranger's" baby. Ugh.

Sorry, I'm rambling off topic .

For us, there wasn't a lot to decide. I loved being pg with my first, physically, but it was a horrid experience emotionally (single pg 18 year old). I knew from that time that I wanted to be able to experience pregnancy and becoming a mom to a new little person in a more positive environment. DP was miserable pg, and even went through a m/c shortly when her DD was about 1. She has zero desire to be pg herself ever again. (Besides, she says, it would damage her "rep" ). We are going the pg route, trying to get me pg with frozen donor sperm. We've both dealt with custody issues regarding DDs and we don't want ANY chance of that. We also live in a state that is not very favorable to 2nd parent adoptions, so dealing with terminating parental rights of a known donor is a headache we don't want to go through.

We do have some fertility issues, and upon finding out the typical progression of steps involved, set a limit on how far we are willing to go before re-evaluating our plan. For us, we are fine with meds and possibly injections, but if it gets to the point of IVF, we will re-evaluate (our ins doesn't cover IVF).

I have no idea about adoption options, no idea what the cost is, but we've planned to spend up to about 4K, if necessary, in the stage we're in now. And that's a pretty high estimate. For several months of meds, IUI's, etc.

Dunno if that helps, but one queer parent's perspective on the matter. Good luck to you!!

[Diane B]

Originally Posted by girlie1125

"But you'll be having a *stranger's* baby..won't that be like having a stranger in your house?".

OK...you win some kind of award for receiving the all-time, most inappropriate comment about your family! Ick.

I can only imagine what they would say about adoption...

[gamitzer]

Welcome, Wendy! Yes, there are definitely lots of lesbian moms in the world! I first wanted to suggest some books to you: the New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy and Birth by Stephanie Brill, The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians by Rachel Pepper, the Lesbian Parenting Book by Clunis and Green. The first two are focused on pregnancy and the last discusses all types of families. You also can do a search on any book website for "lesbian parent" or "lesbian pregnancy" and find lots of stuff! It's hard to find these books in the library (at least where I live), but they do exist.
Another place where you can read about lesbian families is on lesbianfamily.org. There is no message board, but there are lots of blogs listed by type of parenting.
In our case, we chose pregnancy because my wife has always wanted to be pregnant and it was the cheapest option for us (but not cheap overall). We tried 3 times at home with frozen sperm, and after that didn't work, we chose to do 1 IUI with 1 vial of frozen sperm at a doctor's office. When we do it again someday, we will go right to the IUI technique. If you are worried about expenses, you definitely need to map out a plan for kids. We saved for about 2 years before starting the process just to make sure we 1) could save and 2) had enough for the insemination, even if it took a year or more.
We went back and forth on adoption, but we determined that it would be a huge hassle, being lesbians living in a small apartment in Virginia. I think I would like to adopt someday or be a foster parent, but it will have to wait until we move to a more progressive state.
Good luck and keep us posted!
Meredith

[kands]

We did what a lot of pp's have said: talked about what was most important to each of us in the creation of a family and then let that make the decision for us. For me, being pregnant and nursing and all of that physical stuff was most important. For DW, having a genetic link to the babies was most important. (This is a simplified version, but it's basically the way it went, plus a whole lot more emotion/discussion/etc.) So we did IVF using DW's eggs and then I carried the pregnancy. Not the best decision is money is a factor (cost us about 14k), though money is a factor for us an we did it anyway The major problems with this method is that it won't be covered by insurance unless you have major, documented fertility issues (as it turns out, DW has minor fertility issues, but insurance still wouldn't pay unless we did 12 rounds of doctor-supervised IUI for her first), and there is no guarantee that you will get a baby, so you could be out tens of thousands of dollars and still not be pregnant.

We used frozen sperm for a few reasons: 1. we could not find any guys who wanted to be KDs. All of the guys we would have wanted to donate decided they didn't want to NOT be a part of the baby's life, and we definitely did not want to share parenting responsibilities or anything like that. Which, I suppose, is part of the reason we would have chosen these guys--they are wonderful and compassionate and sweet and responsible. Backfires when you are trying to get no-strings-attached sperm from them, though! And 2. we didn't want to have to deal with the legal hassle of a KD potentially not signing over paternal rights.

[Phoenix_Rising]

my wife and i were very blessed to have her brother be a known donor. we have a really good relationship with him and he loves DS - and DS loves his Uncle Randy. When DS is older we will talk with him about how he came to be - we aren't hiding anything, we just think that 16 months is a bit young to understand "uncle" much less "known donor"
i guess, really all this is to say do you have someone who would consent to be a known donor? we heard that fresh sperm has a much better chance than frozen - guess we will never REALLY know but we got pregnant with DS on our second cycle of trying. good luck

[Authentic_Mother]

[QUOTE=girlie1125;7560987]
A lot of people (read: straight family and friends) have given us flack for this when we told them a few years ago we were considering it. Things like "But why? You already have children?!" and "But you'll be having a *stranger's* baby..won't that be like having a stranger in your house?".
QUOTE]

Hope you dont mind my responding on this topic since Im not part of this topic on the board, but I found that statement kinda funny...I mean, aren't all babies "strangers" when they are first born? I mean, really, its not like your child is going to be your donor in tiny form or something! LOL!
People say the silliest things!
Im straight and married with a child, and I say, any woman has the right to become a mother! Its still a child born out of love, so whats the big deal?
My Aunt is lesbian, and her partner and herself were going to try and get pregnant several years ago. They were planning on using one each's eggs, and then their friend who was gay was going to be the donor. That way, everyone got the child they wouldnt have had otherwise!
I hope it happens for you!