My wife and I are expecting our first baby boy in March!! She has always been the one that wanted to carry and she is carrying our first child. I have never been one to want to carry for pretty much my entire adult life and the last eight years that we have been together. But watching her go through pregnancy and how amazing it truly is I feel like my thoughts and previous conceptions of carrying have changed. I feel like I might want to carry our second child. Has anyone else gone through this same thing and had those same thoughts and feelings? And how did you navigate that change? All the love 🫶

F34 and F39 with 2 stepkids and 1 kid together. I F34 have health insurance coverage for all the kiddos no additional verification paperwork necessary however, my wife is jumping through hurdles trying to get the youngest (our kid) verified with the insurance. We have the birth certificate with her on it and have the marriage certificate showing we were married prior to her conception. However they’re asking for more documentation like court documents and stuff, like WTF. Can anyone advise? We were married in FL and conceived in FL, we did not see any laws that required additional documentation was necessary other than my wife signing the birth certificate that says father/parent and mother/parent.

My son just turned two, and our home environment is quite peaceful. However, I've noticed an issue at daycare. When I pick him up, he consistently receives positive feedback from his teachers, who all adore him. Unfortunately, he has developed a habit of throwing whatever he’s holding at nearby classmates during pickup time. This behavior has been happening for the past week and a half, whether I’m picking him up alone or with his other dad. Just today, he hit two kids. Aside from encouraging him to apologize to the children he hits, how should I address this behavior? I’m curious as to why it only seems to happen during pickup.

When Chevon Cleveland came out to her estranged father six years ago, she did not receive a warm welcome. After being invited to New Jersey for a large family get together, he got drunk and complained about his daughter’s sexuality to any family member within earshot. Though Chevon put up with his incessant harassment throughout that day, she finally put her foot down when her dad cornered her children - one of whom is gay.

“My kids are everything and what you won’t do… you won’t disrespect them. So literally I had to stand in between them and tell him that’s enough, calm my son down, like, ‘Listen, you know, I’ll handle this.’ Telling my daughter, ‘There’s absolutely nothing of truth or of value of what your grandfather is saying.’ And at that point, when I saw their faces and how it was affecting them, I said, ‘This has got to stop. It’s definitely got to stop.’”

In that moment, she had had enough. Chevon physically separated her father from her children, booked him the next flight home, and sent him packing all the way back to Louisiana.

“He still to this day hates my lifestyle, but I’m still me and I’m still very gay, and he does come around now, and clearly I’m married to my wife. The funny part… my wife is a corrections officer and she, you know, they have to go in with their whole uniform and the boots, shined and everything. And so, since my dad is an ex-Marine, he knows about shining boots and stuff. So he actually, I have it on video too, of him helping her shine her boots. So in my mind, I’m like, you’re shining my gay wife’s boots. How ‘bout that!”

Hear Chevon’s full story ➡️ https://youtu.be/iMvmZsE9kXY

Experience more inspirational first-person LGBTQ stories 🏳️‍🌈 http://imfromdriftwood.com/

I'm From Driftwood on Instagram 📸 @imfromdriftwood 

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Looking for advice in dealing with my shame

I am 26F gay. I have a beautiful amazing girlfriend who is 28F, we own a house together, both have good jobs, played division 1 sports—just trying to paint the picture we have good lives and are very fortunate. Both have amazing amazing parents who we love so much. Like I said very fortunate, but we both have this crippling shame when it comes to getting married and starting a family. First in terms of getting married, I think we each have a part of ourselves who would love to have a big wedding with all of our friends and family and thinks it would be so fun but then we both have a big part of ourselves that would feel so ashamed putting our relationship on display to all of those people—when I try to articulate why we would feel ashamed it honestly hard to even put into words—but it’s such a powerful debilitating shame. Just that it would look weird and two girls getting married etc. it sounds stupid to even type out or say outloud and I think we’re both smart enough to understand how stupid that thinking is but it’s such a powerful shame! It’s the same thing when we think about starting a family just the idea of navigating that whole process and explaining it to my parents makes me sick to my stomach. Even though my parents are so accepting and I have no reason to feel that way I do. It’s like a part of my wishes we could have a family on an island away from our families—sounds horrible to say but that’s the only thought that alleviates my anxiety. I really want to go to therapy but haven’t looked into it with my new job, I’m also in grad school so don’t really want to spend any more money right now. I know my gf will never go to therapy so I kind of feel like it’s on me to get over this shame so I can help her. Does anyone have experience with this and getting over it?

They could be related to anything, not necessarily related to the process. They can be things you did or you wish you did

For context: I'm hoping to have kids in the future, but I'm not quite ready currently

Thanks!

Edit: thanks very much for your responses. I've saved them all and am keen to put them into action

Hello,

My husband and I are interested in enrolling our son into a highly recommended private Lutheran school. I was wondering if anyone has had any past experience with enrolling their child into any religion private school as a same-sex family.

TIA!

Are there other same-sex parents out there (besides my husband and myself) who are terrified for our future as parents. We adopted our daughter as a fertilized embryo (we're not biologically connected to her). So we're listed as her parents on her birth certificate. Then our surrogate gave birth to her. That said, Trump has more than hate; he has the Supreme Court as well. So we're so worried they will come for our daughter at some point. Trump is close to Viktor Orban and Orban believes LGBTQ people should be nowhere near children. Do any other parents worry about them coming after our children at some point? We can't decide if we should move to a bluer state or leave the country altogether. What are others thinking and doing?

Most books I've found about adoption seem to be for children of heterosexual adoptive parents, and conversely most books I've found that are about having two dads are more focused on family diversity than about adoption itself. These obviously have value as well, but do you have any book suggestions for babies/infants that are about adoption by two dads?

Is anyone else afraid of what’s going to happen? Re: marriage equality, being non bio parent? I’ve done the second parent adoption thing for my child. Does anyone really think this can all be nullified?

i think it's important for them to have a mother/maternal relationship or figure in their life, whether it be the surrogate or egg donnor or if they happen to be both through ivf... do your kids know their moms? is this important to you? have you ever thought about it?

My girlfriend has recently took a pregnancy test after doing ai which was about 10-11 days ago and when she takes them it shows really dark on the negative side but on the positive side it shows a faint faint faint line that you can only see with a flash light to the back does it mean she’s pregnant or is it an evap line

Edit: I’m from Spain and here sperm banks are fully anonymous so Open ID donation is not an option. The only way of knowing who’s the donor would be choosing it yourself among your friends.

My girlfriend and I are starting to think about having kids and weighting the pros and cons of using an anonymous sperm donor vs a friend's sperm. On the one hand, my dad passed when I was a baby, and even though I didn’t miss him specifically since I have never met him, I do love learning things about him and seeing how much we have in common. I feel like that is a very universal experience, and I would love my kids to be able to explore that aspect of their identities too.

 On the other hand, using an anonymous donor guarantees you won’t have any issues, disappointments, or problems in the future if the bio dad changes his mind about the role he would like to have in the kids lives, but somehow I feel like that is making it easier for the moms but harder on the kid since they will never know where they come from. We have a couple of good friends who have offered to donate their sperm but don’t want to be involved in the raising. They are cool with being the ‘fun uncle’ and appearing from time to time, which is fine for us, although we would probably be open to them being more involved. 

Because of this, I would love to hear about the different experiences people have had with knowing or not knowing who their biological dad is and what they would have preferred if they could have chosen for themselves.

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im fourteen a girl and i grew up with two moms and three cats

So our kids are still very young (1 and 1.5) but we’ve already had a few awkward moments that highlighted how we are clearly not a normal family. Here are a couple of them:

We are on an international 12-hour flight with our 11 month old and 17 month old as lap babies. The 17 month old is giving us some serious grief and crying. I attempted to breastfeed him to calm him down but he wasn’t really into it. He’s upset at how my shirt is getting in the way and how I won’t let him squirm and kick the person next to me. We’re already unfortunately causing some other passengers to turn around and look at us in annoyance…and then my 17 month old crawls over to my partner, who had just finished nursing our 11 month old, pulls at the edge of her shirt, says “Oppai!” (Boob!) goes under the shirt, and goes for it. Silence. I just smile awkwardly at the people staring.

We invited my coworker and her husband to our house the other day and they were both playing with our kids on the floor of our living room. After playing for a bit, my younger son suddenly got really excited and went up to my friend’s husband and exclaimed, “pa … pa …pai …PAI OPAI!” and tugged on his shirt. And I swear that was like his third word he’s ever said, lol. Fortunately, my friend’s husband was cool about it and laughed and said he felt honored but sorry he didn’t have any boobs to offer. (I guess our children just think anyone is fair game at this point…oh dear!)

Anyhow, I know this is just the beginning and there are going to be plenty of these kinds of incidents to come. Help me prepare for it. What are your best stories?

As much as google is helpful sometimes, it doesn’t always have the insight we’re looking for when it comes to navigating raising our son (3 y/o) as two moms (myself, 28, and my partner, 24). Today our son wanted to draw a picture of his little alien toy (from Toy Story) and decided to draw it a mom and a dad. This is the first time he has ever done something like this and it took us both a little by surprise. Well shock really. This is the first time we’ve been confronted with the fact that there is difference between our family and the typical family portrayed in the world (in his cartoons, and in his life - we don’t really have queer friends unfortunately and we each obviously have our own fathers, his grandfathers, that we visit along with grandmas and such). So I get that there isn’t a lot of/really any external representation of what our normal is which is “two moms and child make a family”. I guess I’m just looking for advice on how to proceed with stuff like this, and maybe just worried about whether there was a deeper feeling to the drawing on his part. It’s not like we asked him to draw a family and that’s what he produced, it just so happened that the alien in his picture, he decided, had a mom and a dad. I followed this up with, (something along the lines of) “that’s right, some kids have a mom and a dad, some have two moms, some have two dads” (along with the many other variations not mentioned, of course). He didn’t seem sad or upset or anything about it, and I’m probably overthinking it in terms of the drawing, but I do think it’s time to get comfortable with the fact that there will be some stuff he’ll have to process - we just want to make it as easy as possible for him. I’m sorry for the long af post - any advice or media recommendations (toddler appropriate tv shows and books with some representation) would be fantastic. Thank you in advance, Lori

So my partner and I have been together for almost 10 years. We’re both approaching 40 and decided we should start a family. We had always agreed that I would try first since I was a year older. I got a positive on my third attempt. Unfortunately, this pregnancy ended at the 3 month mark, days before hearing the heartbeat and telling our family. This was obviously very devastating for us, but we decided to keep trying. I continued to try for many months with no success. We agreed after a year of me trying, she would try. Well, during my last attempt before switching, my ovulation came on rapidly and we missed the mark. We decided since she was ovulating in a week, she could have a go at it, and I’d just have my last attempt after her cycle. Both of us obviously not thinking it would work on her first try, but for some reason we both agreed on this. Here we are and she’s now pregnant… after her first attempt. I’m struggling a lot with this news and feel so guilty for feeling the way I do. I feel like I was robbed of my last attempt, and robbed of the baby I was carrying. For the record, I don’t feel like she’s the one who robbed me as we both agreed she would try that month. I’m really struggling with the idea of having to sit by and watch her experience everything that was taken from me. First appointment, hearing the heartbeat, first kick, labour, all of it. How do I muster up the ability to have to watch her experience all of that when I feel like those opportunities were taken from me? I have struggled seeing friends and acquaintances announcing their pregnancies on Facebook, how will I manage to live with someone who’s pregnant? I feel so guilty for feeling this way and don’t want to ruin her experience, but I just don’t know if I have it in me to be joyful about any of this, the pain is still too raw from my loss. I’m obviously excited to be a mom regardless, but with her being pregnant, and me getting close to 40, I feel like my chances are over. I don’t want to have a child years down the road, and my egg supply is likely depleting. How do I cope with this? I feel that it should have happened by now if I was fertile, so I’m worried that I’ve waited too long to try. The goal for me wasn’t just to have a child, it was to carry a child. I’ve dreamed of that since I was a little girl, and now I feel like that dream has been shattered. I’ve expressed all of this to her and she’s very supportive (I’m so lucky), but I just don’t feel like she or anyone else will ever really understand the pain inside of me, how hard this journey will be for me, and that’s a very isolating feeling. The loss has caused such a huge hole inside of me, and I feel the only thing that will fix it is to carry a child. So how do I survive this? How can I accept that this dream of mine is gone forever? Pease, no comments about “oh, you’ll still get to be a mom, you still get to have a child”, because that doesn’t help at all. It’s not about being a mom, it’s about carrying and giving birth to a child. That was the dream. Im really struggling with this and hate feeling this way.

So I’m a lesbian and i want kids one day. I’m 24 and i just started a promising career last year. I’m 24 saving for retirement but I’m about to start saving for a baby as well because i want to have kids one day. How much did it cost to get pregnant?? I’m specifically interested in Reciprocal IVF. I just need a ball park amount so i know how to budget this in my expenses

Hey all- I’m a nurse and my wife who had our son is an NP. I take care of him when she works and I work part time, but she is gone 0500-2000 so 15hr days. He and I have really good days together and some off days but for the most part good days. When my wife is off 4/7 days he ONLY wants her and is extremely whiney and cranky when she is home. She rarely puts him down. I should mention she suffers from post partum depression and I have bipolar disorder but both of us medicated. I am just having a really hard time because the other day she said “I am the comforter because I’m the birthing mom”. Man that struck a chord in me. I was like wth. I am the main caretaker. Sorry for the ramble but need some advice or what you would do?

I am currently 19 weeks pregnant with my wife’s embryo via reciprocal IVF. she has a few more embryos frozen and we also bought additional vials of sperm in the event we chose to do IUI instead that I would carry with my own egg.

While I am happy to keep carrying with my wife’s embryos for future children, a piece of me would love to bring a child into our family that was genetically mine too. We agreed prior to beginning this process that we would try for one from each of us genetically.

We recently got in a bit of an upsetting argument when she closed the door on the option of me carrying via IUI. She said that she either wanted me to carry another embryo of hers, or do reciprocal IVF all over again and she will carry with my egg because “she could never imagine having a baby that she didn’t have some type of connection to” (either genetically or gestationally)

I am saddened that she sees it this way. I have heard from other non gestational/ non genetic parents that once the baby is born none of the genetics even matters anymore and it becomes such a small detail in the fabric of the family.

I don’t know how to get my wife to see this perspective and become more open minded. She is now stating she wants to carry even though she originally did not and would be at a higher risk if she did. If this decision she has made to carry next wasnt charged by this argument, I’d feel supportive- but it feels like she is only saying this because she can’t accept the alternative (me carrying with my own egg via IUI)

I am at a loss and the pregnancy hormones are a lot right now. Any wisdom or advice is welcome. 😔

My husband (30M) and I (42M) are new parents to triplets! They’re currently 4 days old and we have all three of them home with us now. Triplet A & C were able to come home right away. B had to stay a couple extra days, but is home with us now as of this morning. They are beautiful and healthy and we couldn’t be happier.

Anyone else here a parent of multiples? What has your experience been like?

My wife (25f) and I (24f) were supposed to have our first appointment at a Fertility clinic tomorrow, and I got a call today that they had to reschedule due to a provider having an emergency and being unable to come in. I feel like we've been having to wait so long for this anyways and now we just have to wait even longer. The soonest reschedule is June. We were both trying so hard to avoid getting our hopes up for whatever the outcome of the appointment would be, but we didn't even consider not getting our hopes up about the appointment itself lol. My heart hurts, were both so sad and almost numb. So many people get pregnant on accident all the time but there are so many road blocks to us getting pregnant on purpose. I struggle with PCOS so doing it at home isn't really a good option, I hate relying on so many external factors for something so personal. I need advice, how do you stop feeling so let down? I know this probably won't be the last hurdle either.

"Not all the stares we get as a family are always from friendly eyes." I wonder who else has thought or said something similar to this.

I've been there myself. And I'm going to start an online talk group with others who have been or might be going through it; maybe there's a lot more to talk about.

If you're interested, here's a google signup form to let me know you want to be kept in the loop: https://forms.gle/KpzXbhdAw2do9iuu6

We'll meet regularly on a video call - to talk about life. I know a few folks who might be interested and am looking to add a couple more.

There is no cost to this and also, no strings, no catch!

Note: I host groups on Pace and think it's a great platform for this (reminders, live video experience, chat), so I'm going to host the group there since I want conversations there that feel the most relevant to my experience.

Btw, if you think you know someone who's a good fit - queer parents looking for deeper conversations about their experience - can you share this with them?

Hi everyone! My partner and I are planning to start trying for a baby next year. As growing our family comes closer, I want to make sure we don't feel like we missed out on anything pre-babe. Any advice on things you wish you did before starting a family? I want to make this Valentine's day special. (I can't express how excited I am to start a family with them! Please don't take this as a worry of regret!)

Im looking for some advice/opinions especially from any lgbt parents who have conceved children from anonymous sperm donation or a friend?

Me (35f) and my girlfriend (28f) have been talking about children for the last year and due to some fertility issues that have arisen it looks like our journey to parenthood may be starting in the next year which is really exciting!

My gf wants to be the person who carries which is fantastic as ive never wanted to have that role myself though I do very much want to be a parent. However, we are at a cross-roads when talking about sperm doners.

She wants the process to be as natural as possible and wants the doner to be someone we know, specifically her best friend Alex (not real name) while Im much more keen on an sperm bank donation.

I have nothing against Alex and i get on well with him, though ive only met him properly a couple of times, however I have some concerns.

Firstly, he and my gf have know each other for years and he was in love with her when they were teenagers. She never liked him back like that and he is not anymore so now they are just very close friends which I 100% belive but still makes me feel a little wierd.

Secondly, He looks absolutly nothing like me. We share absolutly no physical traits. I have olive skin and really curly hair but both my gf and alex are very pale and have very straight hair. I personally would have liked a doner that looks at least a little me rather than being the complete opposite.

Finally, Im starting to feel a bit left out of the process and right now she is very set on having Alex as a doner and oftern jokes about. im starting to feel a bit distant from the whole process, and selfish for having concerns when i should love any child that we have together. Also i understand its her body and i dont want to be an asshole and tell her what to do with her body

I just feel if it was an anonymous sperm doner i feel like we could have a choice together about who to chose.

We've talked and though she says she understands my conerns and is open to an anonymous doner person she still mentions Alex everytime we talk and i know she is very set on him.

Im not sure if im being unreasonable or not by not wanting Alex and Im just wondering if and how any other parents navigated this?

I want to put on audiobooks for those late night feeds. Any book recommendations about queer parents? It could be fiction where the parents are gay, or non-fiction where our stories are told or parenting advice.

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My husband and I have been married for 8 years. We have been together for 13 years now. After I proposed everything was great and we started planning on our future. One weekend we were out at a winery where there was a special event going on. Well after about 4 bottles of wine between 3 of us, a friend was with us we had a discussion about kids. I came out and told him I wanted to have kids. I had a big family that were really close and my brother already had a son. I just wanted one but after talking for a while about it he says we need three. I told him I wanted a boy, then he said we needed two. He also said he wanted a girl. Well the next few months we started getting rooms ready started taking our DCFS Pride classes and getting everything ready to start fostering.

I can tell you that we have now been fostering for almost 8 years and we have had about over 25 kids past through our doors. M

Yesterday my (28f) SIL told my wife (33f) that their mum was pestering her about having babies. SIL’s boyfriend doesn’t even want children & it’s been difficult for her to reckon with, so the comments were particularly insensitive.

Obviously I know it’s intrusive and annoying when parents do this. But part of me felt sad when I realized my MIL had never brought up the subject with my wife. We’ve been together for 2.5 years, married for a couple months. We’re in stable housing with room for a baby, and we’ve both been progressing in careers/education lately. I grew up in a religion that was intensely family-focused, and I’ve never been able to shake the desire to have kids. It’s incredibly important to me, and fwiw I think my wife and I would be good parents.

It occurred to me that if we weren’t a same-sex couple, we’d probably consider trying for a baby soon. If there wasn’t so much planning, donor searching, potential clinic costs, etc. involved, we could just throw caution to the wind and go for it. And I think I’m feeling grief over the fact that having a baby will never be that straightforward for us. That people in our lives don’t even expect us to want it.

I’m not looking for advice. Just hoping to find others who’ve been there and can relate. I feel like I should have been prepared for these feelings but they’re hitting especially hard right now.