Legal questions for families with sperm donors
The background of the case is so similar to the way many of my lesbian couples have chosen to grow their families. Partners Jennifer Schreiner and Angela Bauer wanted to have a baby together, but chose not to use a sperm bank. Instead, they opted to find their donor, William Marotta, on Craigslist. The mothers ended their relationship and Angela, the gestational mother, needed to apply for state welfare benefits. The parents in this case all believed they had made a valid written agreement before their daughter was born, stating that William would have no parental rights or responsibilities. The mothers want no child support, and are testifying in his defense.
I am the parent of a weird kid, and I know I’m not alone
Life with a weird kid is isolating. You spend a lot of time tamping down that parental anxiety when your kid is freaking out and it seems like all the other kids are sitting nicely and cooperating. You explain over and over that your kid just doesn’t like circle time or story time or most organized activities. I’ve learned over time to respect my son and the way he functions, and there are a lot of activities we simply cannot do because he can’t handle them. I’ve learned that the reason it seems like all the other kids can cope is that the parents with the weird kids are staying home. I’ve felt completely and utterly alone as seemingly everyone else went around with their perfectly normal, average kid.
Ambivalence: in which I pay $270 a year to avoid making a decision about our leftover embryos
The aforementioned pregnancy with the thousands of dollars and drugs started in a lab, with the creation of five embryos, made from donor sperm and eggs collected from my wonderful wife. Two embryos had 8-cells (the ideal), and were squirted into my uterus, and one of those grew and grew and was born a day before her due date but the day after the Pixies show we had tickets for (thanks kid! It was a good show!). The remaining three were put in the deep freeze in case the first try didn’t work. And there they remain. Three embryos, conceived the same day as my daughter, frozen in time.
Taking a vacation in our city helped get my marriage and parenting focus back on track
Parenthood came with all of its work and exhaustion and then postpartum depression hit and we haven’t been managing those new challenges well. We went from being each other’s warm, safe, place to fall into at the end of the day to adversaries who yell and scream and take out all of our frustrations on the other person. It’s not like this every day, of course, but the grumpy, angry, days are creeping in more and more frequently.
Our family: two gay dads raising a foster son
This is a tale about the lives of two men and their (highly opinionated) son. I do think it’s worth telling, but it’s a simple one about our little family. I hope that by telling this side to our story, more people will become motivated to become foster carers as well.
Did you choose a Cesarean section for a non-medical reason?
My wife and I are beginning the prep work for our anonymous donor assisted baby-making plans. I will be carrying our baby, but I am petrified of labor and vaginal birth. I’ve read all of the C-section posts on Offbeat Families so far, and they’ve been very helpful and gorgeous.
How to make a baby: sperm donors, IVF, and mad science experiments
Choosing a sperm donor is a little bit like setting up an Xbox avatar. You begin by deciding on the ethnicity, hair color, and eye color of the fellow whose sperm you’d like to combine with your egg to make your baby. Then you enter that criteria into a sperm-bank search engine, which returns a list of matching anonymous males who passed rigorous genetic tests and filled out detailed questionnaires. Finally, you pore through each donor profile, considering things like his height, weight, build, SAT scores, family medical history, sexual orientation, whether or not he has moles, the shape of his nose and mouth, and in some cases, his baby photo or voice sample.
My wife and I didn’t pick names for our son to call us — and now I’m “Other Mommy”
After hearing his whole life us saying versions of, “This mommy is cooking — ask other mommy to put your shoes on,” or, “This mommy will read you one more book, and then your other mommy will take you upstairs for bed,” he now calls us — quite sensibly — “This Mommy” and “Other Mommy.”