From the category archives:

Pregnancy and birth

Ira’s birth, the NGP version

by Gail April 17, 2012

At long last, this is my contribution in response to our call for NGP birth stories, about the birth of our second child: In the last couple of months of pregnancy, we found out that Lyn had a dangerous complication called cholestasis of pregnancy. This was a difficult time for both of us, but there [...]

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Reading about Leigh’s birth, my thoughts as the birthing mom

by Gail January 25, 2012

I know that Lyn has heard a lot of great feedback on the birth story that she wrote from the NGP perspective (see part I and part II). I was also excited to read the story, but I didn’t really expect to learn anything I didn’t already know. I was there, after all, and Lyn [...]

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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, [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Who should birth the baby?

by Lyn October 1, 2010

Since many lesbian couples contain two working uteri, and possibly two women willing to conceive, choosing who will try to get pregnant is a place where lesbian couples have options that a straight families don’t.  In what follows, I’m making the assumption that both partners are open to pregnancy (though perhaps with a discrepancy in [...]

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Sudden memories

by Lyn May 26, 2010

By this point, almost a year out, I’ve constructed a pretty whitewashed story of the birth.  The story is compressed in time, and all the hard stuff pales in comparison to the feelings I had right after he was born, of giving and being surrounded by amazing love, and that feeling that if I could [...]

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Sharing Lactation, Part II

by Lyn June 21, 2009

After Ira’s birth, I was in rough shape. While Gail and I were admiring our brand new son, our doctor was assessing the damage. After several minutes, she said to me very gently that she was going to need to stitch me up in the operating room, under spinal anesthesia, “It will be about 20 [...]

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As close as you’ll get to a birth story

by Lyn June 8, 2009

Instead of telling the birth story, I will do what I love most: give unsolicited advice. You already know we didn’t want to be at the hospital for Ira’s birth, but it turned out being at the hospital really did go OK. I still wouldn’t have chosen it, but we managed not only to avoid [...]

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Monday morning quarterback

by Gail June 3, 2009

It’s really difficult to sit down and write about something as life-changing and intense as the birth of your son. I could write down a blow-by-blow of events from my point of view, but the more I talk about what happens the more ordinary the events seem and the further away the actual experience of [...]

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He’s here!

by Gail May 30, 2009

Our son arrived very late on Wed night (May 27th). He’s a healthy 7 lbs 4 oz with a full head of reddish blond hair. We have lots of recovering to do around here, so details and pictures may be slow to appear, but know we are all doing well. His name (both on the [...]

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