My Firstborn

As a lesbian, I know firsthand how difficult it can be for same-sex couples to have a baby. When my wife and I decided to have a child, so many variables had to be considered. We could not just stop using contraceptives or taking a pill, we simply did not possess one key ingredient needed for the manufacturing of life. Even then, when we had our sperm, we needed the financial element to afford the process of going through a fertility clinic for conception. While you could say that I got pregnant “the old fashioned way” with my first pregnancy, through an Intrauterine Insemination (IUI), it was still no walk in the park.

After introducing my wife to the young gay man I grew up with, who had been my prom date in high school, and held an illustrious resume of having attended both MIT and Cal Tech, she was determined that he be the father of our future child. She courted him, literally wined and dined him, and then just popped the question. He surprised even himself by agreeing to fatherhood so readily. With the help of a generous inheritance from my grandmother’s passing less than a year prior, we moved forward with making our dreams a reality.

The sperm sample was given one day, and I was in stirrups the next. My wife and our fertility doctor (along with a vile of pink goo) were the only ones present at the time of our son’s conception. A couple of weeks later, I woke my wife up at dawn to show her the positive pregnancy test. Despite the hoops we had to jump through to have a child of our own, I felt extremely fortunate to have gotten pregnant on the first try.

My first pregnancy was a wonderful experience (why else would I want to do it again and again). I had no morning sickness, minimal cravings, and only one complication (a placenta previa) that corrected itself after only a brief bedrest. I went into labor naturally at 10am on a Saturday. While reading in bed, I felt a contraction and my bag of waters ruptured. I held my legs together for dear life and called for my wife to grab a towel. Our good friend and our son’s soon-to-be-Aunt was staying at our house that night, and was beyond excited to be a part of the action.

Based on my own mother’s birth experience when she had me, it was reasonable to think that I was in for a lengthy labor and delivery. My midwife had encouraged me to labor at home until the contractions were fairly close together. I showered, packed my bag (he was a couple of weeks early, which is why I hadn’t packed yet), and enjoyed the eerie calm that settled in as my body was flooded with Oxytocin. This was the last day of September, and we thought it was a good omen that when we turned on the television to watch something to pass the time, that Zombieland had just started. I paced the room and tried to breathe through each contraction. About halfway through the movie, which we had already seen, I told my wife that it was time to go as I could not longer stay on top of my contractions.

Upon checking in at the hospital, and settling in to my labor and delivery suite, we braced ourselves to meet our son. While my friend diligently massaged my feet and my wife assured me that I could do this, we had an onslaught of visitors. Family and friends kept appearing. My family as well as our son’s father’s family were in attendance. The majority of my wife’s family is not supportive of her lifestyle, but they were hardly missed with how many kept turning up. Everyone kept taking turns rubbing my feet and waking with me down the halls of the hospital. After about 14 hours, my midwife decided that I was not progressing fast enough. I was on a 24 hour deadline because I had tested positive for Group B Strep and was being given antibiotics intravenously. My midwife made the call to push Pitocin to accelerate my contractions. I was not aware that this would also magnify the pain that I was feeling. My wife and I had discussed my birth plan at great length: to have an unmedicated birth. So when I found myself screaming with every contraction and shaking between them, I looked for my wife so that we could agree together that it was time for an epidural. Surprisingly, she was nowhere to be found. She had locked herself in the bathroom. My friend found her sitting on the floor of the bathroom crying her eyes out because she couldn’t handle seeing me in so much pain. She of course was happy for whatever relief drugs could afford me and stayed with me while the epidural was administered.

At this point it was the middle of the night and the next day. The epidural offered me blessed relief and I was able to take a nap. There were about six of us in the room at this point and I remember all of us taking a collective nap together. I woke up a couple of hours later and asked my nurse when I would know that I was ready to push. She explained that I would have the sensation of needing to have a bowel movement, to which I replied that I had been having that feeling for the past five minutes. She checked me and immediately called for my midwife as she proceeded to hold my son’s head in place because he was finally on his way! When my midwife arrived, so did our son after only a couple of pushes. There were so many people there to witness my son come into the world. I was only mildly mortified that my father was videotaping the entire birth from between my legs. I’ve often said that I could have given birth in a crowded stadium for all I cared, I really had no problem with how many or whomever saw my vagina at that point.

Our son made his way into the world ten years ago, and I remember it as if it just happened. My wife and I became mothers that day, his father became a daddy, and both sets of grandparents (on my side and his father’s) became grandparents for the first time. As I looked into my son’s perfect face, I felt like I had accomplished something that I had been born to do. Neither he nor I knew it at the time, but he had just set in motion everything that has transpired since. If it was not for him, and the way he came into this world, I would never have become a surrogate. He made me a mother, and I turned around and repaid the favor.