Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood

by Eric Rosswood

  If there was a heartbeat, that meant more appointments and more ultrasounds to track the baby’s progress until I could be released from the fertility clinic fish tank and into the vast ocean of regular pregnant women getting prenatal care.

  I felt sick. I hoped that it was morning sickness, but I had never had morning sickness before, so I might have just been sick with worry. I tried to relax. I wasn’t forty yet. There was still time to have more babies if we really, really, really wanted them.

  The days passed and I went to the lab for the test. The nurses were kind and hopeful. They were also encouraging. And the next day, in the middle of a sunny Colorado afternoon, my cell phone rang. I stepped outside and sat down at a picnic table to answer it. I thought I might pass out.

  “This is Sarah.”

  “You’re pregnant,” said the nurse. She said some other stuff first, like her name, but I didn’t hear it.

  “I’m so glad,” I said, the sense of relief noticeable in my voice. “Because I feel terrible. And if I’m not pregnant, I need to go to the hospital to see what’s wrong with my stomach.”

  She laughed and said, “We need to make an appointment for you to come in for an ultrasound, so we can see what’s in there.”

  “Well, I hope it’s either a baby or thirty thousand dollars,” I said, because I didn’t really want anything else.

  A few days later, my spouse and I went with Wynn, still in her car seat, to the clinic. I sat uncomfortably in a hospital gown on the paper-covered table. The nurse put the ultrasound wand in the correct and very personal spot from which we could see my uterus.

  There was a single blinking light. The last viable egg from a batch of seven had implanted and was growing and winking at us.

  We all stared at it.

  That blinking light was Wynn’s sister.

  She was born in March and we named her Marlo.

  We had won the lottery.

  Again.

  Rudene and Anna-Marie du Preez

  PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA

  Our journey started in 2004, when Anna-Marie and I met on a local dating site. I was seventeen then and Anna-Marie had just turned twenty-one. We communicated for three months before meeting for the first time. We had an instant connection and could talk for hours on the phone and face-to-face. I told Anna-Marie from the start that I loved children and wanted kids of my own one day. It was my life’s dream. We moved in together in early 2005 and also got engaged, even though gay marriage was not legal here in South Africa. However, that all changed in 2006 when the Civil Union bill was passed in our country.

  The same year I moved in with Anna-Marie, I also met someone who had gone through artificial insemination. Her son was already four years old. Before that, having children of our own was only a dream and seemed like a very expensive and improbable prospect for us. I became good friends with this woman and received a lot of information about the process and its legal aspects.

  Anna-Marie and I got married in August 2008. As a young married couple, we enjoyed travelling South Africa and taking regular vacations together. We were always a low-key couple, enjoying jobs in and around the house. We also did not really care for going to clubs or pubs. We preferred having friends over to our home for a barbeque or dinner party.

  Towards the latter half of 2009, we met more gay and lesbian couples with children and gathered even more information—specifically speaking with teenage children of the couples to hear what their challenges were in school and how they felt about having an “alternative” family. After gaining this perspective, Anna-Marie and I started talking about having children of our own. We continued investigating how to do the insemination ourselves. We felt it was a more comfortable and relaxed setting than a doctor’s office. It also meant that we could both be actively involved in the process.

  So we started tracking my menstrual cycle in October of 2009 to get an indication of how long my cycle was and where in my cycle I was ovulating. I was luckily regular and we pinpointed that my ovulation took place on my CD (cycle day) 18 and 19.

  We kept monitoring my cycle and in January 2010 I contacted a cryobank to get donor information and to find out if they could ship the sperm to us. They gave us the contact details for a laboratory in Pretoria. It wasn’t too far from where we lived, so I contacted the laboratory and scheduled a consultation. Anna-Marie couldn’t get any leave from work, so I went on my own.

  The woman I consulted with assumed I was heterosexual. She made condescending remarks about homosexual couples who had come in for consultations in the past. I immediately started acting more straight. The lady asked questions about my “husband.” What colour hair did he have? What colour eyes? How tall was he? What kind of career did he have? What hobbies did he enjoy? I gave her Anna-Marie’s descriptions as my answers. Then the consultant gave me the number of the donor she thought most fit my description. As I was leaving, she asked me to please bring my husband with me the next day to confirm the donor profile was a fit.

  I was so gobsmacked that I didn’t know what to do. We wanted a child, but now here was this obstacle. I thought that it might be best to find someone who could act as my husband, just so we could get the sperm. I got into my car and phoned three of our male friends, asking each of them to be my fake husband. All of them said they didn’t mind helping out. The third one asked why we were using a sperm bank and why we didn’t just ask him to donate. We had a long discussion with him, especially about the involvement and rights of the donor. He agreed that this was a gift from him to us and that he didn’t want to be involved in the child’s life. We had a donor contract drawn up with an attorney while we were still doing our research.

  On February 18, 2010, I tested positive for ovulation, so we phoned our friend and asked him to make the first donation for us. He came to our house, made his donation and then left. We had the apparatus ready and did the insemination ourselves. It was very funny—Anna-Marie was so nervous that she shook the whole time and spilled some of the sperm. She tried re-inserting it a couple of times. After the insemination, I was lying on the bed, feet and bum in the air, thinking “What if we did it wrong?”

  We performed another insemination the next day. After the two-week waiting period, I took a pregnancy test. It was negative, but this was still a couple of days before the start of my menstruation, so I waited two more days and did another test. Once again, it showed negative. It was now the day before I was due to start menstruation. I waited another couple of days and tested once more. Initially the test showed negative.

  My sister’s son was visiting us that afternoon and noticed the test stick on the counter and asked what it was. I explained it to him and then he asked what it meant if there were two stripes. I told him that one stripe meant “not pregnant” and two stripes meant “pregnant.” He got all excited and congratulated me on being pregnant, but I told him that the test had shown negative after the indicated waiting period and that it was probably just a false positive.

  The second stripe made me a bit excited, but also very uncertain. So I decided to take another pregnancy test and this time it showed a positive right away. We then went for a blood test, just to confirm I was indeed pregnant. The blood test also had a positive result and determined that I was already about five weeks pregnant. I then started searching for a gay-friendly gynecologist, which turned out to be a mission as well. But our very first sonar was an amazing experience and hearing our baby’s first heartbeat brought tears to my eyes. How lucky can a person get? Anna-Marie and I spoke to so many people who had tried to conceive for years with no luck. We both believed we had been given the most incredible gift ever. It was the gift of new life, but little did we know just how much this gift was going to change our own lives.

  At nine weeks, I had bad morning sickness and the only food I could keep in was basmati rice. My queasiness lasted throughout the day and drained my energy. I felt okay in the evenings, though, and could enjoy a good night’s rest.

  We s
tarted early with buying nappies, wipes and clothes and getting the baby’s room ready. We did everything ourselves: We painted all the walls of our house, took out the carpets and installed laminated floors. I remember we did one room when I was four months pregnant and I could help without getting tired or uncomfortable. But when we started on the next room, I was five months along and struggled with the task, because my tummy had grown quite a lot and was now getting in the way. We bought all of the big things like the stroller, car seat, feeding chair, camping cot and a compactum [changing table] by the time I was five months pregnant. We were two hens getting the nest ready for our little chick.

  At twenty-one weeks, I changed to a different gynecologist. The one I had been seeing wanted to put me on medication I was allergic to. I was scared that while I was in labour, she might give me medication that caused adverse effects. Later on in our prenatal classes, I heard others say that this gynecologist tended to forget things very easily.

  When I moved to the new gynecologist, we found out that our miracle baby was a little boy. My family thought I was having a girl, so I had dreams of playing with dolls and having tea parties with our daughter. When the gynecologist told us it was actually a boy, I had to rebuild the puzzle. There and then, I realised this was how heterosexual parents must feel when their gay children come out of the closet.

  So the hunt began for a boy’s name. Anna-Marie and I wanted something English that was a combination of both our names and had a beautiful meaning. We spent a whole day searching and looking at names. In the end, we decided on Aden (“A” from Anna-Marie and “den” from Rudene). Aden also means Little Fire. We also picked Declan as a second name, which means “full of goodness.”

  Our little boy was born in November 2010, by way of a C-section at thirty-nine weeks and one day. I was not very emotional due to the calming medication they gave me before the caesarean, but Anna-Marie was booming with pride and had the biggest smile on her face. After we were moved into our hospital room, a lactation nurse came and assisted us with the baby’s latching. He latched like a professional and drank for twenty minutes until the nurses came around to help me clean. While the nurses were busy with me, Anna-Marie held Aden in her arms and he started sucking his little hand. It was such a special moment and very encouraging to see how strong his sucking reflex was.

  Right after the C-section, I wanted to stand up and change his nappy, but I had to lie down the whole day. That was very difficult for me, but Anna-Marie was an amazing mother. She stepped in and changed nappies, bathed Aden and even helped him to latch correctly onto my breast. This little person was completely dependent on us for everything. Feed him, bathe him and burp him—love and care for him.

  We were discharged two days after Aden’s birth. On day three, we went to see the pediatrician, who told us the baby had jaundice. I remember standing in the hospital holding him and realising that we were responsible for his well-being. I felt helpless. Anna-Marie told me not to worry, that she was going to sort this out, and she did. We got a blue-light bed for Aden and a nurse to come check on him every day. It was a difficult time. We could hardly hold him, because he had to be on the blue light as much as possible to cure the jaundice. Luckily, we could do this at home and did not have to leave him in the hospital.

  Aden was very happy breastfeeding. He did not want to suck on a bottle. He was a real mommy’s boy and didn’t like strangers. It was amazing to see how this little person grew and developed almost every day.

  Aden changed our lives completely; his presence changed our way of thinking. He motivates us to do things differently and knowing he is here gives us hope each and every morning. Sometimes it feels like he was at our wedding day or that he was there when we first met each other.

  A few months after Aden was born, Anna-Marie had a project with a client in Cape Town and we went along with her. Aden flew on a plane at a very young age. He got to feel sea sand before he was six months old. He loved being outside and he liked animals. He touched a black Rhino calf when he was seven months old and had a close encounter with a lion when he was eleven months old.

  We were building so many new memories with our little boy and couldn’t imagine our lives without him. By the time Aden turned one, we started discussing having another child, but decided to wait and enjoy our time alone with him a bit longer first. We wanted to spend as much time as possible with him. He was our pride and joy.

  Before Aden turned two, we decided to start trying for our second child. Anna-Marie wanted to get pregnant this time around. That posed a new challenge for us, because Anna-Marie’s period was irregular, which meant she had to use fertility drugs.

  We consulted with our doctor, who prescribed medication for Anna-Marie over a three-month period. She started taking it in November, just after Aden’s second birthday. It was a difficult time, because the medication caused Anna-Marie to experience hot flashes and terrible mood swings. It did, however, help to get her cycle regular. We inseminated in November, December and January without any success. Before we inseminated in February, we went to a gynecologist to see if anything was wrong. On the sonar, the doctor could see three eggs that were ready to be released from Anna-Marie’s ovary.

  We were very excited and proceeded to inseminate for seven consecutive days, the most we’ve ever done. Two weeks later, Anna-Marie tested herself and two of the tests showed a positive result. We went for a blood test about a week later, but this showed a negative result and Anna-Marie started menstruating two days afterwards. We were shattered. Anna-Marie had what’s known as a chemical pregnancy, a very early miscarriage. She bled profusely for seven days.

  After the chemical pregnancy, we decided to discontinue the fertility treatment for Anna-Marie. Then I stopped breastfeeding completely and we inseminated me in March, April, May and June. In early July 2012, I got a positive pregnancy test. We were once again excited, but a couple of days later I started with my period, which meant I also had an early miscarriage. Once again, we were shaken to our cores and decided not to inseminate again.

  The next couple of months were very difficult for us, as we worked through the miscarriages. I got depressed after I stopped breastfeeding and felt I was no longer needed by Aden. Anna-Marie also had a lot of work stress, which made things more challenging.

  By October, we had worked through these trials and found things slowly getting back to normal. We talked about trying again. Anna-Marie ovulated on October 28th, but we couldn’t find a donor.

  On November 4th, I tested to see if I was ovulating and got a positive result. I called our donor, who said he was available and willing to donate. He made the donation and, as I was putting it into a syringe, I decided that we should both inseminate. I proceeded to split the sperm into two syringes and told Anna-Marie to lie down. I inseminated her and she inseminated me. The next day I tested positive for ovulation again and Anna-Marie inseminated me, but she didn’t want to split the sperm this time, because she was scared of not getting pregnant and wasting the sperm.

  Twelve days later, Anna-Marie tested and got a faint second line on her pregnancy test. However, we didn’t want to get too excited, given our previous experiences. Two days later, Anna-Marie woke up with a terrible neck spasm and went to our general practitioner. The doctor wanted to send Anna-Marie for X-rays, but we told him that we suspected she might be pregnant. He performed a test right there in his office and it also showed positive. We couldn’t believe our eyes. I sat for hours, staring at the test, thinking this baby was a miracle. One thing I learned from all the difficult moments is that if the time is right, it will happen. No matter what you do or how hard you try to do things “right,” it will work out the way it was meant to work out.

  Anna-Marie’s pregnancy was very uneventful. She did not experience any morning sickness or have many complaints or cravings. However, she did have some back pain the last couple of weeks leading up to her due date.

  Anna-Marie woke up around 2:30 A.M. on the morning of the 2
8th, feeling that she had to go to the bathroom. She went, but nothing happened and then the feeling went away. She got back in bed, but the feeling returned a few minutes later. She got up a second time, but the same thing occurred. She started to suspect that she might be in labour. When it happened the third time, Anna-Marie woke me and we started monitoring the contractions. She was certainly in labour, but the contractions were very irregular. We contacted our midwife and she advised that Anna-Marie should sit in a lukewarm bath for at least thirty to forty-five minutes while we kept monitoring the contractions.

  About forty-five minutes later, we called the midwife again with our results. The contractions were now more regular and about four to five minutes apart. The midwife advised Anna-Marie to stay in the bath for another thirty minutes and then try to get some sleep. Anna-Marie attempted to go to sleep, but the contractions had gotten closer together and they were lasting longer. She walked around the house and used the coping methods we had learned in our prenatal classes to get through each contraction.

  By 6:00 A.M., Anna-Marie was really struggling with the pain as the contractions were even closer together. Our midwife had not yet come to our home to inspect how far Anna-Marie was dilated, because she was called to assist another mother who had been in labour for two days already.

  At 6:30 A.M., Anna-Marie told me to pack everything in the car. The midwife contacted me and said she believed Anna-Marie was further than everyone had thought. I phoned our mothers so they could also be part of the birth experience.