From the category archives:

NGP (non-bio mom and dad) issues

How do we refer to parents in two-mom families?

by Gail April 5, 2011

I was recently reading an article about queer parents, “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter” by Stacey and Biblarz, and hit up against a not uncommon academic term for a lesbian non-biological mother — “social mother.” The whole time I was reading the paper (which is really good, by the way) I kept [...]

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Under the Bus

by Lyn February 28, 2011

Several months ago, I was home with Leigh and Ira, and they were roughhousing. There are a few more glimpses these days of them actually playing together for real, but at that point, any “play” involved one of them tackling the other. They were going at it, Leigh fell back on top of Ira, and [...]

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An old scar, revisited

by Gail January 30, 2011

When Lyn was pregnant with Ira, I wrote about how talk about the donor, and about Leigh’s resemblance to me, was a little painful. Things have changed quite a lot in this area since Ira was born. For one thing, both Lyn and I are more comfortable with donor issues. We’ve talked to Leigh about [...]

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The Nursing Triad

by Lyn October 13, 2010

Lex made a beautiful post a while back about her experiences as an non-gestational parent (NGP) once her 13-month-old was night weaned. Lex nursed her first three kids, boys that she gave birth to, for multiple years each, and has been supportive of her wife nursing their fourth kid in a similar way, in addition [...]

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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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Family Week: Support, Advocacy, and Difficult Conversations

by Gail August 12, 2010
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We recently came back from a terrific trip to Provincetown for Family Week. We had a great time and will likely be attending the gathering again many times. It’s wonderful to look around town and realize that most of the families you see are headed by queer people. Everywhere you look there are two moms [...]

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Baby Cuddling and (not) Nursing

by Gail July 6, 2010

I’ve realized lately that I am enjoying much more snuggling and physical affection with Ira than I did with Leigh at the same age. There might be lots of reasons for this including my flawed memory and the differences between the two kids. But it also occurred to me yesterday that it might be due [...]

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Creating Stability to Protect Our Families

by Gail June 25, 2010

When parents break up, everyone suffers. Some people suffer economically when their household loses income. Other people suffer when they don’t get to see their children as much as they used to (or in the ways they want to). In lesbian-headed families, NGPs (non-bio-moms) often have a legal disadvantage when it comes to custody. We [...]

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Thoughts upon reading “She Looks Just Like You”

by Lyn June 16, 2010
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I just finished reading the new book by Amie Klemnauer Miller:  “She Looks Just Like You:  A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood.” Now, to be clear, we don’t buy books.  We live as a family of four in a 650 square foot condo and we do not consider any but the most important reference books [...]

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A lesson I want to learn

by Lyn April 29, 2010

When we meet other parents (straight), if it happens to come up in conversation that each of us carried one of our children, the relatively consistent response is approximately “What a great idea!” or “I wish we could do that!” Members of two-mom families, who understand the work and luck it takes to get pregnant [...]

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Old pain and new paths

by Lyn April 20, 2010

As Gail mentioned, we went to a workshop on talking to kids about donor conception last weekend. It was organized by the Massachusetts RESOLVE chapter and was very well done. I highly recommend checking out such a workshop if it is available in your area, and for those in MA, this is a repeating event. [...]

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