the making of a mommy

The irony of a barren and childless gay woman setting out to produce a mommy blog is not lost on me. But we do not always get to choose our calling — often, the calling chooses us.



I'm not even sure if I knew her last name when she'd asked me, "how do you feel about kids?"

I checked the clock—we'd known each other for less than an hour and here she was, asking me about children.

My partner and I discussed having a family the first night we spoke — before we were even dating, let alone "girlfriends" or partners. We didn't discuss having a family together, but more so about our goals and desires for our lives, relationships, and futures. Both of us had been in what were supposed to be "forever" relationships that ended, and what drew me to her was that she was not apologetic about wanting a lifelong spouse, a marriage, and a family. After a year of rebuilding herself from the end of her relationship, she was not dating to just "have fun," but to find someone with which she wanted to share the rest of life — I was only a couple of months into my own healing process and was definitely not looking for any kind of relationship.

Which of course means I had absolutely no chance of not falling madly in love with her.

Over the course of the next year, we continued to get to know each other, and fall even more in love. As a true realist, I can happily assure you it was not perfect, which instead meant that it was amazingly authentic. It was during a freak hiking accident in Feb. 2011 where I ended up with a compound type IIA fracture of the fibula (complete with soft tissue damage and internal bleeding), a spiral fracture of the tibia, and a completely destroyed ankle that I truly realized how comfortable I was putting my life in her hands, and how amazing she'd be raising children — my children.

We talked, we discussed, we researched, we looked into our (separate) finances. We discussed jobs, my possible relocation, education, parenting philosophies, child rearing, discipline (I had a busted up leg, I had nothing but time and a fast Internet connection). Eventually, we discovered that since, separately, we'd both wanted children so badly, together we would be a great team in offering our children a life of love.

Now, had we been a "properly functioning" male-female couple, we could light some candles, open some wine, and throw caution to the wayside. In fact, many couples end up with a child without meaning to at all (and with much less preparation) — for us, we knew it was going to be far more complicated. Our foreplay included consulting health insurance policies, calling FSA hotlines, researching state laws...

It almost doesn't seem fair that millions of undesiring couples (or couples-at-that-moment) can haphazardly create life, yet I have to ask permission from medical and government agencies to even try. But, that's a different post all together.

What we found through our research was nothing less than a metaphorical marathon of obstacles. But with each obstacle, we discovered that we wanted this even more.