Month: March 2018

When My Son Sleeps With Our Wedding Picture…
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When My Son Sleeps With Our Wedding Picture…

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Last week my son grabbed a wedding picture of my wife and I that has been sitting in a 4×6 black metal frame in our bathroom since we moved in last June. Our bathroom is obnoxiously large so yes there’s room for pictures. He was sitting on the counter while I put on make-up and he leaned back, swiped it, and has literally been walking around with it ever since. He brings it in the car to daycare. I put it in the diaper bag for the day when we get inside. He brings it home, sets it up next to him while he eats dinner at the table. He also sleeps with it every night. As we shut the door and say a quiet good night we can hear him whispering in baby talk to this picture taken on December 17th, 2011 on a bitter cold night in Connecticut during one of the best nights of my life. We both look younger, happy, and full of hope.

My wife wore a feminine black suit with a white silk shirt. I wore my dream come true princess wedding gown.

I’ve written before about kids of lesbian mom’s. There are studies showing there is no long term damage to kids of gay parents, I have friends who are kids of gay parents and gay parents of kids who have all turned out fine. But there is always a doubt in the back of my head because of our hetero-based society and homophobic administration that I am doing my son’s wrong.

But as he babbles peacefully while completely enthralled with an old photo of his two parents, Mama and Mommy, those doubts go out the window. Because instead of his soft doggies and his big blankies he chooses to fall asleep and wake up every morning cradling the images of his lesbian Mom’s. I try and put myself in his head and realize that he doesn’t think of us as “lesbian” Mama or Lesbian Mommy. We are just Mama and Mommy. He doesn’t know he’s missing anything, because he’s not. He is so loved and cherished, and that’s all he knows as he drifts off to sleep hugging a cold metal frame carrying the image of his two smiling Mommy’s.

I proudly identify as a lesbian Mama loudly, because I live in a place where I can and there are so many who live in places that can’t. But to my son, I won’t be his lesbian Mom, I’m just his Mama.

He doesn’t know that even having a wedding in 2011 was groundbreaking and new. He doesn’t know our wedding was not just a wedding but also a political statement as all gay weddings were when it first passed. He doesn’t know the location where we had the wedding had never had a gay wedding, but was completely open to it and had a couple gay waiters request to work that night, unbeknownst to us until they came and shook our hands during the reception. He doesn’t know that night was a night of hope and love and unity and acceptance. He just knows he loves his Mama.

 

 

p.s. Yes I wore a tiara. It was my damn wedding and I was a Disney Princess for one day. Through some twist of fate my Prince Charming came with the wrong parts and no horse. Love you babe.

When I made my therapist cry…bullying and my Cat.
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When I made my therapist cry…bullying and my Cat.

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When I was in nursing school I went to therapy for the first time. I had recently broken up with a long term boyfriend and was feeling very isolated and depressed. The therapist was at my school, he was clearly very experienced and had been doing individual therapy with college students for decades. I felt very comfortable with him and felt nothing I could say would ruffle him. About three sessions in he asked when in my life I felt true grief.

I didn’t really understand the question, and he rephrased and said “When have you cried? I mean true gut-wrenching cry?” We had been working on the wall that I kept around my emotions, as I was and still am to a degree, able to compartmentalize my emotions. I remember thinking about it and then I said only twice that I could remember. Once when my Grandfather died, and once when my cat died. Then I started to move forward with the conversation thinking this was a dead end. I remember he sorta waved his arms, and was like “Wait, one of the two times you’ve ever cried down to your soul was when you cat died? Tell me more about that.”

So I did. My cat came into our home when my mom was pregnant with me. He slept in my bed every night after I was born until I was seventeen. We put him to sleep on December 23rd, 2002. He was 21.

Through fifth grade when I was bullied for an entire school year by a group of girls he was literally my only friend. He would sit next to me on my bed while I cried every day after school. He was a big cat, bigger than some small dogs, and very intuitive. He would follow me around the neighborhood if I was out playing with other kids. He would wait at the road if I went into a neighbor’s home. He waited at the fence for me to get off the bus every day. He saw me through middle school hell and was there for me when I started dating and growing up in high school. He was a constant in my life for seventeen years. He at times was my only reason for being.

It seems so silly looking back on it. It seems ridiculous that though I was surrounded by a family and eventually some good friends, all it took was chronic bullying in fifth grade to devolve me into a soul who felt totally alone. Kids take this crazy unspoken oath of silence. I couldn’t tell anyone about the bullying. My teacher knew, but didn’t intervene. I never told my parents. I suffered silently and Cookie was the only one I let in. He was also the only one who comforted me. He truly showed me unconditional love. His entire existence seemed devoted to my existence, and it was incredibly powerful. He was there for my first broken heart, he was there for so many happy and also painful times in my life.

When I talk to kids now in my practice who are bullied my heart just aches for them. I know the pain that builds over time as day after day you have to face the same people with the same insults. I know the isolation, the fear, and the feeling that you can’t tell anyone because adults only make things worse.

I explored all those memories with my therapist and I remember the day we had to put Cookie to sleep. He was in pain, he had tumors, and he came and laid on my lap on the couch as I cried because I knew it would be the last time he would lay his big furry head on my knee. He looked so peaceful. I remember he closed his eyes and purred and it was like he was telling me it was going to be okay, that his job was done because I had made it through high school and I had this big future ahead of me already having been accepted to my top choice university.

I held him as our veterinarian gave him the injections. He let out a small meow, and then was gone. He looked peaceful in death and I was glad his suffering was over. I remember telling my therapist about his last meow and I was sobbing at that point, and I looked up and he had tears streaming down his face. I remember I stopped crying because I didn’t think therapists were allowed to cry.

He looked at me and said, “It’s just so profound that your one friend, your one true friend, was a cat. He sounds remarkable.”

And he was. Cookie dying marked the end of my childhood. I graduated high school that Spring, and moved on to college never looking back. I think back and I hate that he died, but I think it was for the best because it would have been incredibly hard for me to go to college knowing he was at home.

When clients tell me about pets I take them very seriously and I never put down anyone’s reason for being whether it be a cat, a snake, a friend they’ve  only talked to online, etc. Everyone in middle school needs a lifeline. I was lucky to have Cookie as mine.

Some years later I was in a shelter in upstate New York looking for a cat. They sat me in a meet and greet room and brought in a few nice looking cats. I wasn’t feeling a connection with any of them. Then the girl brought in this ratty little thing (I learned after three baths she’s white, I thought she was brown) with double eye infections, a ratty tail, and she set her down on the floor. The cat walked over to me and crawled right into my lap and laid her little head on my knee and purred. I told the girl I would take her.

She follows me everywhere, sleeps with me every night, drives me batshit crazy, takes showers with me, and is trying to crawl onto my lap over the laptop as I type this, and I just can’t help but think it’s my Cookie back to life in the form of Rajha. Rajha has seen me date men and then has been here from the start of my relationship with my wife. She was with me through the horrible fertility journey and pregnancy. Now she knows my sons, sort of hates them, but knows them. My sons yell “Rawa Rawa” as they chase her through the house. Pets at their core provide unconditional love. Cookie and Rajha never gave two shits about my sexual orientation. They existed to solely bring love into my life. That is a gift to be treasured and mourned when it is lost.

To those people who have lost a pet, I know your pain. It’s profound, and it’s okay to mourn the loss. To those people who identify your pet as your reason for going on, been there. To those kids out there facing the daily grind of bullies. Hang in there.

Why People Shouldn’t Ask if a Woman Will Get Pregnant Again.
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Why People Shouldn’t Ask if a Woman Will Get Pregnant Again.

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There are many layers to this blog post as I write it. I write it not only as a woman who has struggled with fertility but as a lesbian mom. I also write it as my two darling boys are screaming outside because they don’t want to come inside from playing in the snow. They would honestly let their fingers freeze and fall off. The screaming ambiance makes it easier to write this.

For those of you who haven’t read my previous posts you can look here and here for posts regarding my struggles with fertility, pregnancy, and birthing of twin boys. Suffice it to say it was a long hard journey initially more challenging because we are lesbians made more challenging by underlying endometriosis. Once I got pregnant I puked every day for 36 weeks and two days. That’s right. There was not one day I didn’t puke. I puked at work, I puked at 2 A.M., I’d literally open my eyes in the middle of the night puking already. I puked on almost every single doctor in my OB-GYN practice. I also had horrible insomnia and didn’t sleep for more than 2 hours at a time for the second and third trimester. Pregnancy sucked. I never felt good until three days after they came out. I had pre-eclampsia the day I delivered and spent the first 24 hours on a magnesium drip, still puking with a fresh incision. In the midst of my puke laden pre-eclampsia nightmare I lost vision in my eyes (which I got back), and I had people sticking two newborns on my boobs. So there was that.

It was ultimately successful and worth it in so many ways but when I tell you I was traumatized by my pregnancy I am not lying. The thought of being pregnant again could bring me to tears if I thought about it.

I remember returning to work after an 18 week maternity leave. At that point I had not been at work for four months since having the boys and not at work without being pregnant or undergoing fertility treatments for over a year. I felt like I was returning as a different, calmer, more sleep deprived, happier individual. I was still breastfeeding and had to adjust to pumping multiple times a day and picking up and dropping off at daycare. I remember the first week back one of my co-workers asked me when I’d have “the next one.” My sleep addled brain could not quite comprehend what she was asking. When I politely responded, “Funny,” and tried to move the conversation onto another topic she didn’t let it go. I had to get somewhat defensive and say, “I’m not having another one.” Then I was told how wrong I was and that in a year or two I’d change my mind and have more. As if I couldn’t possibly make judgements about my body and my future in that moment.

It felt very wrong to me for many reasons. First off, I am very private, and I did not feel that was any one’s business. Second, that particular person knew the horrible journey through infertility and pregnancy I endured. To casually suggest I go through that all over again made me want to vomit. Third, once I said a very overt No, I should not have been pushed or pressured or shamed to feel that was the incorrect response.

Since that day multiple people have asked me if I will have another child. Friends, family, strangers, clients, and co-workers have all asked me. When I have emphatically said No I have been told on multiple occasions that I am wrong and will change my mind. I’ve been told by straight women who do not know I’m married to a woman, “That’s what I said after the first, and whoops!” I haven’t quite had the heart to say “Actually I’m a lesbian so I’d need a lot of whoops’ including a man shooting sperm that somehow accidentally lands in my vagina. Then that sperm would need to make it through my endometriosis filled tubes to my potential eggs which by the way required IVF previously to bypass the tubes. That would be one of hell of a whoops.” But I think it. Every time.

If I was married to a man and all it required was a “whoops” then who knows maybe I would get pregnant again? Most likely not intentionally as twins did a number on my body and I hated having a C-section and would not care to repeat the entire experience. But I’m married to a woman. So being pigeonholed by heterosexual women into a female who can’t possibly feel fulfilled with one pregnancy (which by the way yielded two kids) kind of pisses me off.

It makes me feel mad because perhaps I would have more perhaps I wouldn’t but don’t presume to know my past and my future just because you had multiple pregnancies. Underneath my initial defensive response is pain and uncertainty. I feel like I’m being scraped a little raw during these exchanges.

I also feel for every other woman who struggled to have one pregnancy because I’ve been there. To poke and prod at those wounds by telling them they should have a second pregnancy, when perhaps they do want more than anything to have that, but they can’t, I find that just plain mean.

There are women who have emergency hysterectomies during their first delivery due to complications with bleeding and so while they may want more than anything to have a second pregnancy they physically can’t. They could be lesbians. Finding sperm can be challenging and expensive and then simple at home inseminations don’t always work, turning into expensive fertility treatments.

Then there are people who are completely fulfilled with one pregnancy, one child (or two), and simply don’t want more kids. Yes we exist. Stop telling me we don’t. It’s annoying.

I’ve never had much of a filter. But I was raised to be polite. I would never ask a woman if she’s wanting anymore children unless it’s professionally related as a health care provider and need to know if she’s planning a pregnancy because that would change the medication choice I make if prescribing for her. I would never pass judgement on someone for wanting or not wanting another pregnancy. It may seem like a casual friendly inquiry, but for many women it’s anything but casual and can bring up many painful emotions.

My advice is to operate on a need to know basis. Do you really need to know if this woman is planning a second pregnancy? If the answer is No, then don’t ask. If the answer is Yes then ask but then stop talking. Let them answer, respect their answer, and move on. And straight people…not everyone is straight. Some women sleep with other women. They can’t get pregnant by accident.