How to Choose the Bio-Mom and Other-Mother as a Lesbian Couple

While being bisexual may—as Woody Allen suggested—double your chance of a date for Saturday night, being part of a lesbian couple can mean twice the potential for making a baby. Unless parallel pregnancies are ideal (or one partner lacks the necessary equipment), making a baby means a choice about who becomes the bio-mom and who becomes the other-mother. Making this choice together can be the beginning of a lifelong partnership in which both roles are respected, reveled in and rewarded. Consider these steps when you choose the bio-mom and other-mother as a lesbian couple.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Discuss the roles. Unless it is drop-dead obvious who should bear any offspring (being post-hysterectomy, post-menopause and going postal on a regular basis preclude pregnancy), you and your spouse will have to decide who will be pregnant and who won’t, at least initially.
2. Be honest—if you are dying to make a baby in the privacy of your very own womb, say so. Equally, if the hassle of heaving on a daily basis doesn’t seem worth the end product—but you really do want a baby—share this emotion. You’re planning on parenting together! This is a great time for the truth.
3. Consider the practical aspects if you both want to bear a child, but not at the same time: Who currently has a desk job with benefits, a genetically healthy body capable of ovulation and a psyche that can bear the hardships of pregnancy without tearing her partner limb from limb?
4. Consider the emotional aspects of childbearing: would you both feel equally a parent even if not biologically linked with the child, or would either feel a nagging worry about being questioned as a parent or cheated of the social status given to pregnant women?
5. Think long-term: Pregnancy is nine months (plus the time spent getting pregnant), and is only as important as you make it. Nursing lengthens the special role pregnancy grants a bio-mom (though that can be shared through bottle feeding). Time spent rapidly becomes more important to baby than any shared genes.
6. Who will care for baby when he or she arrives? Alternating pregnancy and caregiver roles can even out any advantage a bio-mom seems to have at birth. If both moms will be working full time, differences in roles will be based on personality, not biology or proximity.
7. Be open to a change in plans. If the original bio-mom becomes unable to conceive, the other can step in. Bio-mom and other-mother are only as narrowly defined as we make them. Planning a family together makes you both parents, no matter the biology. Cement your mutual maternal status by beginning a co-parent adoption before the baby’s birth, emphasizing the “we” in your family planning, and refusing to buy into the biology-is-destiny mindset wherever you encounter it—even at the in-laws'.

Tips & Warnings

• Play your strengths; is one of you more analytical, the other more nurturing? Use your differing talents to optimize your parenting potential, with one mom kissing skinned knees and the other helping with homework. The same applies to pregnancy; one of you may have childbearing hips and a high pain threshold, while the other faints at the first sign of blood and can’t bear monthly cramps without a day off work.
• Consider the shallower aspect of genetic selection: who will make a prettier baby, and someday, adult? While genes are a crap shoot, you’ve chosen one half, the donor, and you can choose the other half between you two. Weed out bad hair, weak chins, sallow skin, knock knees or whatever unattractive traits one of you may carry among other, more appealing aspects.
• With birth often comes nursing, and with nursing comes rejection of the non-nursing parent. During this period, the other-mother can feel more like the “chopped liver mom” or “dog meat mom” than an equal parent. Husbands have felt the same rejection for centuries, but are parents nevertheless. A suckling child doesn’t care about your feelings, but will warm up when past nursing and ready to accept the nurturing you have to offer.
• Some lesbian couples alternate the biological job, while other couples have solid assignments—“she’s the breeder in the family.” What works for one couple might not work for you; do what’s right for your family.
• This issue can be hard for many couples. While laws are changing to bring greater equality to the other-mother at the birth of her baby, that role still faces challenges from others and raises internal questions about what motherhood means. Talk about the issue honestly and with compassion. Equality begins at home.