Posts by author:

Lyn

About Lyn

Lyn is "Mama" to Leigh (born 6/06, via Gail) and Ira (born 5/09, via Lyn) and wife to Gail. In addition to parenting, knitting, biking and ruminating on the ins and outs of two-mom parenting, she is a mathematician and neuroscientist.

Leigh’s birth, the NGP version, part II, The Hospital

by Lyn January 20, 2012

[Continued from Part I] Our midwife came to the hospital with us (she and I carrying about a thousand useless tote bags of utter crap), and advised us to let her do the talking about how Gail’s labor was progressing. We got the most amazing labor and delivery nurse ever in the whole wide world, [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Leigh’s birth, the NGP version, part I, Labor at Home

by Lyn January 18, 2012

An introductory note: This story has been a long time coming. We weren’t writing here when Leigh was born five and a half years ago. But even when Ira was born and we’d been writing here for some time, we stopped short of a full birth story. This blog is quite public, and the experiences [...]

9 comments Read the full article →

Mom titles, the kindergarten edition

by Lyn January 6, 2012

Leigh started kindergarten this fall. She’s doing great and we are slowly adjusting to being parents of a “school-age” kid. Our district is extremely supportive of GLBT-headed families. They have a family-liason specifically for GLBT issues, who is a resource for teachers, students and families. We’ve always been certain that the school and the district [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

A call for birth stories from non-birthing parents

by Lyn December 19, 2011

If you haven’t already, go read this post at Breaking into Blossom. RLG does a very thoughtful analysis of how the ways in which we advocate for natural birth options can cause unintentional harm, to all parents, both those doing the birthing and not. She makes lots of smart points, but the theme that stands out [...]

10 comments Read the full article →

New site for aspiring queer parents

by Lyn November 27, 2011
Thumbnail image for New site for aspiring queer parents

We were recently interviewed for a new-ish site, It’s Conceivable, that seeks to be a one-stop shop for good information on family building for queers. So far, it looks like they’re doing a great job, particularly at including information and stories from adoptive families, and dads, in addition to the usual glut of lesbian moms [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

How should straight parents explain queer families?

by Lyn November 17, 2011

It’s happened a few times lately, that upon finding out that I’m one of two moms in our family, I’m asked by another parent how to explain two-mom families to their kids (lately this has been in adult contexts, not with my kids in tow). Most recently, a dad I was talking to mentioned that [...]

12 comments Read the full article →

A weekend off

by Lyn October 18, 2011

When Leigh was a baby, I loved going out with her by myself. I’d take her to new parent groups or to run errands as the only mom in evidence. I loved the freedom and confidence I felt. I soaked up every last compliment about my fabulous baby, and every assumption that I was a [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

Surprising connections might not be so surprising

by Lyn October 3, 2011

As we’ve written about before, a big shift for our family over the last two years or so (about a year of that was thinking) has been connecting with families containing kids via the same donor as our kids. As Gail mentioned in her last post, when Leigh was a baby, we found out (though [...]

1 comment Read the full article →

Mother or Father?

by Lyn September 15, 2011

I’m enjoying the writing prompts on queer parenting at Regular Midwesterners, so I took a go at their second question. Josh and Gretchen ask: “Do you think of yourself as a “mother”? A “father”? Something in between? Why?” Five and a half years ago, my wife was pregnant with Leigh and I was in my [...]

11 comments Read the full article →

Do you love them differently?

by Lyn August 28, 2011

On Gail’s post a while back about what we call ourselves as parents (and in what contexts), Chris, whose partner is perhaps soon trying to conceive another child for their family, asked “I am very worried I will not (love) this child as much as mine. I worry I won’t treat them equally. Hetero women [...]

16 comments Read the full article →

Stereotype Breakers

by Lyn August 14, 2011

We’re friends with a family with a somewhat gender-variant son, Q, who likes pink and wears his hair long (and identifies as a boy, you can read their smart thoughts at labels are for jars). Leigh has played with Q a few times, and thinks he’s fabulous, and specifically asks if we can play with [...]

6 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries