Pregnant lesbians and other non sequiturs…

“It was an accident,” says no pregnant lesbian ever. The lesbian mother does not coo into her baby’s ear, “Honey, you were mama’s little surprise.” While getting pregnant may not have much to do with mothering, the act IS a necessary pre-requisite for someone in the having-a-baby equation. In my previous heterosexual world, it was simple. If I had sex without using contraception, there was a strong probability I’d get knocked up.

A Queer Perspective on Getting Pregnant

I don’t pretend to speak for everyone in the queer community, but pregnancy is definitely NOT a risk when lesbian couples have sex. And as obvious as that sounds, thirty years ago I had to wrap my mind around this new view of getting pregnant. I needed a queer way of looking at it.

Opening my mind required that I turn my own sequitur assumptions into non sequiturs.

My new vision of pregnancy was the choice to bring a new person into the world as an act of love between people who are passionate about each other and want—together and with intention—to love and nurture a child. The means and the method, however, were not foregone conclusions.

But… WHY, at that particular point in my young life, did I decide—again—that I wanted a baby? And this time with a woman as the other parent?

A Bit of Backstory, Texas Style

My new partner, like me, had an ex-husband and a child from a former life. My daughter lived with me; her son lived with his father. My Texas love was an aspiring rancher, deeply exploring her inner cowboy.

(An aside) Texas women added a whole new category to my growing list of possible lesbian identities—they were all about horseback-riding, tight Wrangler jeans, Roper boots, cowboy hats, country-western music, and two-stepping with one hand gripping their girlfriend’s back, while the other hand held a Corona. Sexy as hell.

From chicken farming to just chickens!

I was so madly in love, when my new girlfriend announced she wanted to be a chicken farmer, I was ready to pull up stakes, move to East Texas, and start gathering eggs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instead of the chicken farm (thank-you-baby-Jesus), we ended up in Cedar Creek, Texas on a 10-acre property with a dumpy little house and a 6-stall horse barn that was actually nicer than the house. Soon we had three horses, four chickens, three kittens, three dogs, and one rabbit.

 

 

 

We turned from Thelma & Louise into Laura & Manly in the all-girl Little House on the Prairie.

 

While my partner was exploring her cowboy self, I must have been exploring my inner farm-wife (after all, Olivia Walton was my fantasy of the perfect mother). I was suddenly hell bent for leather to “get pregnant.” Cue The Waltons theme song.

Pioneers with Turkey Basters

In retrospect, it does seem like the intense desire for another child came on like a virus. This was the early nineties. Women were deciding to have children with or without a man. And lesbian women were starting to have babies together. Pioneers with turkey basters. Women I knew used lots of strategies to get sperm. Having a close male friend agree to jack-off in a cup was a popular approach. Everything from the beloved turkey baster to a spoon was used to get the sperm in. Yes, I said spoon.

Me? I wanted an anonymous donor, not a man we knew, who might later decide he had fathering instincts after all. Back in those days, you ordered from a sperm donor mail-order catalog released by the California Cryobank, Inc. The descriptive categories in the 8-double-sided-page booklet were: race/ethnic origin, hair, eyes, height, weight, blood type, skin tone, years of college, occupation/major, and special skills/interest. A very objective way to create another human being—sort of.

The Big Choice

And so, the process of choosing a donor began. We pored over the catalog, making list after list independently and then comparing our picks.

The Nordic blonde neuroscientist to the Irish/Italian brunette musically-inclined English major. Finally, we settled on a well-rounded donor with hair and eyes like my partner. The magic number was chosen. The sperm order was placed. I started taking my temperature.

Keep Frozen, Spring 1993

The nurse reaches into the neckline of her scrub top and coaxes the three-inch, white-capped plastic container from its warm nest in her bra. She gently rotates the milky contents. I smile, all maternal woo-woo energy and say, “Oh look! Already being loved.”

“This is the way we warm it up,” she replies with a grin.

I lie on the exam table ready and waiting. Between my legs, not a penis, but a woman—this time, my doctor—in soft blue scrubs, long hair pushed back, glasses adjusted to see clearly as she caps my cervix with a small plastic funnel, to which is attached a thin tube leading out of my vagina. At the end of the tube is a twisty connector for a syringe.

“Ready,” calls the nurse from across the room. The doctor moves across the short distance to peer through a microscope at a tiny splash of the now-warm semen. “Thirty-two million mobile sperm per vial” the catalog had advertised. As the doctor stares into the lens, we wait to hear what the sperm are up to. We smile proudly at her report of their liveliness—as if by choosing our particular donor, we are responsible for their vigor. We acknowledge the maleness of them, and are pleased to get the required sperm without “direct deposit.” A lot less effort (remember, lesbian) and no jizz running down somebody’s leg. Just a quiet exam room, a table with a paper cover, and the soft hum of female voices. Oh, and there were stirrups. Always the damn stirrups.

The doctor grasps a syringe and withdraws the contents from the container. For this particular 3 milliliters of sperm, the catalogue advertised “English, Irish, Italian,” and “interested in music, math, and writing.” These sperm are smart, creative little fellows soon to encounter the egg I know is waiting in my uterus, basking in her fullness. These are the crazy, motherly thoughts I am having.

The tube lies between my legs like a flaccid dick. The doctor firmly attaches the syringe full of microscopic swimmers, pulls the tube erect, and slowly squirts in three hundred dollars-worth of the little buggers. Good luck boys! She then firmly caps the tube, trapping them inside me. No turning back now.

Women move around me as if I am a fertility goddess participating in some secret female ritual. The nurse tucks a pillow under my butt. “Keep your hips elevated for about twenty minutes—just to give them a good chance,” she says. While we wait, my partner and I chit-chat about nothing—probably something to do with our mini-ranch. The magical 20 minutes finally ends and I learn that I am expected to leave the nifty little insemination device in place for 12 hours. Twelve hours with a tube dangling inside my panties like a plastic tampon holder that I somehow forgot to remove. This is a little different from my heterosexual experience to say the least. Clinical, but yet, intimate. And because I am emotionally high on what is happening in my uterus, I am feeling particularly sexy. How we manage to make love when we get back home to the ranch, with a piece of plastic dangling from my body, I don’t know. But we do. And, of course, I later will come to believe all of that juicy love is what sealed the deal on the fertilization.

And the Winners are…

Three weeks later, my period doesn’t come, the little test stick turns pink, and “getting pregnant” turns to “being pregnant.” Before I have time to fully comprehend what I have done, we get the news that my partner’s thirteen-year-old son is coming to live with us–full-time. Mothering while queer, once again, gets a bit more complicated.