Ben Has Two Moms

By Deb Kinder
Issue 98, January - February 2000

Our family journey began almost five years ago, when I was reunited with the woman who is now my life partner and co-mother of our son. We had been friends for seven years, but had been separated geographically for most of that time. A year after our reunion, we took our first conscious step toward creating a family. On a brilliant early morning of the autumn equinox, Rose and I made our way down to the banks of a nearby river where we read our letters of commitment to each other, and exchanged rings among the cattails and the Canadian geese. Our ceremony and the celebration that followed was our way of acknowledging our commitment and asking friends and family to stand by us should we falter. We keep our commitment letters on file, and should there ever be a law passed that recognizes our partnership, we will have "proof" of how long we have been together.

Soon after our commitment ceremony we started talking about having children. We undertook much research and heart searching, and two years later, chose a name together to symbolize our commitment to each other and demonstrate to our child(ren) that we were a family. We wrote down the letters in both of our last names and started pronouncing reasonable (and some unreasonable) sounding combinations to create a family name. The name we created was "Kinder," and only after agreeing that we liked the sound of it that we remembered that it was a German word for "child." That confirmed our choice, and we have been Kinders ever since. Our birth names were kept as our middle names because our new names were not only our creation, but a part of our history, too.

We began the process of legalizing our new name next, choosing a lawyer who we knew would welcome working with us. She drew up the documents and submitted them to the court separately in hopes that the two different judges would review the petitions—thereby lessening the chance that a judge would notice that two women at the same address wanted the same last name, which could have jeopardized our request.

Throughout all of our legal proceedings, we have seen firsthand how arbitrary the legal system in Virginia can be regarding issues involving lesbians and gay men. Our partnership is not legally sanctioned in our home state, and a significant portion of the populace actively works against laws and institutions that would recognize our family.Around the time Rose and I began planning our family, A Virginia woman successfully sued her lesbian daughter for custody of the grandson. This decision, so hostile to gay and lesbian parents, made us feel the need to cover all bases. Often, it's a little more than luck that determines who one encounters as a lawyer, judge, or court official—all of whom have the potential to make life-altering decisions on our behalf. After a few months of anxious waiting, though, we received the wonderful news that we had succeeded in our second step of creating a family: our name was Kinder.

From a Couple to a Family
Now we were ready to take the next step of actually creating a child! We were committed to engaging in the process as a couple. We never want to be dishonest with our children about who we are, and we believed that engaging in lies (or cover-ups or omissions) from the beginning would only start us off on the wrong track. We found a fertility clinic in our town that had experience working with lesbian couples, and we received two years of excellent support from the staff there. After more than a year of related surgery and unsuccessful attempts for Rose to become pregnant though, we decided that I would try to conceive. I opened myself to the soul that would first find a home in my womb and then in our arms, welcoming our child before he was even known to me in any form. Once that incredible event happened, I was in constant communion. I knew that our baby would be a boy, and my incessant and insatiable desire to be out doors while I was pregnant told me that he would love nature.

My pregnancy was one of the first times in our process of creating a family that could have been private. Somewhat ironically, we wanted to shout with happiness, instead! We received joyful and consistent support from many different people in our lives. Our families rejoiced with us, encouraging us through the phone calls and notes, and even hosted a baby shower. Our colleagues celebrated with us—despite the fact that both Rose and I work in fairly conservative fields. Our spiritual community (a Unitarian Universalist church) has been endlessly supportive.

During my pregnancy, Rose and I spent many evenings at a local bookstore café pouring over books on every conceivable detail of pregnancy and birth. Like many expectant parents, we spent hours wondering what our baby would look like and be like. Each morning, Rose would talk to our baby as she rubbed my growing abdomen with cocoa butter. We attended a birth class together to cover the intellectual aspects of birth, and joined a pregnancy yoga class to nurture our spirits and commune with other mothers.

Even though we knew there is no such thing as "planning a birth," our son's arrival was quite different than what we'd anticipated. From the beginning we had worked with a midwife and were looking forward to a homebirth. Partway through the pregnancy, however, I developed placenta previa and my pregnancy became high risk.

Our son was born on April 14, 1997 by cesarean section. On that joyous day we became the new parents of Benjamin Russell, in all his glorious 5 pounds and 15 ounces!

We did have trepidation about how the hospital staff would treat Rose, but I believe we gave clear verbal and non-verbal messages that we were both Ben's mothers, and the staff was overwhelmingly respectful and supportive. During the birth, the doctor called Rose into the operating room as soon as I was under anesthesia, which was virtually unheard of for this kind of birth. As it turned out, not only was I unconsious for the birth, but I was separated from Ben for nearly three hours. Rose, who was there for the entire birth, and who held our soon soon after he was born, has become my link to what otherwise would have been a gap in my birthing memory.