LOVE COMES FIRST: Creating LGBTQ Families

By Bradford Kolb, Melinda Maerker and David Miller

Ready to start (or even thinking of starting) your family? Love Comes First: Creating LGBTQ Families has everything you need in a complete three-in-one format:

• Language: English
• Publisher: Love Comes First
• Release date: Apr 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736628508

Book preview

FAMILY STORIES

LGBTQ families come together in the most creative ways—from adoption to sperm/egg donation to surrogacy. But of course, each family has their unique story to tell.

Here, families of all configurations share with us their own special paths to parenting that are not always obvious or easy but, in the end, have brought them closer together and excited for whatever their futures may hold.

Lesbian Parents

Kristi and Theresa

Linda and Kirsten

Tess and Nikina

Karina and Christina

Gay Parents

Anthony and Byron

Ron and Greg

Perez

Gabriel and Dylan

John and Anthony

Ryan and David

Gay Dad and Surrogate

Charles and Jennifer

Bisexual Mom

Ellen

Transgender/Queer Parents

Sam and Lissa

Lesbian/Gay Co-Parents

Claudia, Rosie, Sergio and Bobby

LESBIAN PARENTS

KRISTI and THERESA

Kristi and Theresa were both on the job as law enforcement officers—Kristi with the Los Angeles Police Department and Theresa with the Sheriff’s Department—when they met on a camping trip with mutual friends. It was love at first sight, says Theresa. And Kristi felt the same way.

But there was a small catch—two, in fact. In the campsite stood a playpen with Kristi’s twin babies, Eric and Danika. Theresa was moved by how Kristi would interact with them, and yet, she had never so much as changed a diaper herself. Despite her initial hesitation, when the two women met again, this time at a conference for LGBTQ police officers, their attraction overcame Theresa’s fear. ’They’re not china dolls,’ she recalls Kristi telling her. ’Go ahead and pick them up.’

In contrast, Kristi had always wanted children. Her decision to become a police officer in her early thirties was in part motivated by the stability it would provide should she need to care for them as a single parent. But the conception process, using her own eggs with donor sperm, proved to be more difficult than expected. After one disappointing try following another, her doctor suggested that she leave the patrol squad for a while and take a less stressful desk job. She agreed, and yet, every month it was a heartbreak when the process still failed to work. Finally, Kristi decided to take a break because it was just consuming me. When she did go back to the doctor a year later, she was ready to try again, this time with even more resolve to do whatever it took to make it happen.

The only solution, according to her doctor, was to use donor eggs. And that’s when her community stepped in. One of her close friends invited her over for dinner and introduced her to four young women. These are your egg donors, she told her. Why don’t you sit down and have a discussion with them and find out which one you would like? Kristi was overwhelmed by their generosity. She selected the youngest woman, assuming her egg quality would be the best, and began the process of getting pregnant once again.

This time, at the age of 42, it took. She was driving her squad car around the Hollywood Hills when the call came. And I just rolled down the windows of the police car and I screamed, ‘I’m pregnant!’

A few weeks later she discovered that not only was she pregnant, but she was carrying twins. Kristi was delighted to hear the news, and loved being pregnant. Her colleagues at work were also very supportive of her. The Chief of Police even attended her baby shower. And not too many people can say that Chief Bratton was at their baby shower.

But while Kristi was enjoying her pregnancy, her friend Pat and her wife were still trying to conceive. As Kristi says, I knew what that felt like, and I knew what heartache that brought. So one day she showed up in Pat’s office and told her that she had an extra embryo that she would like them to have. And while the odds of Pat, who was also in her early forties, conceiving with one embryo were low, a year after Danika and Eric were born, Pat gave birth to their full sibling, Maya.

In the meantime, Kristi was back on the job, juggling work with single motherhood. So when she and Theresa finally got together, there was no time for formal dating. But as Theresa says, I just fell in love with Kristi and the kids. Not that it was always easy. I’m not going to lie to anybody…it was a rollercoaster ride a little bit at first. I had to change my whole way of thinking.

And yet, while the children would always be the priority, they decided to mold their lives around the activities they enjoyed doing as a family. These include riding actual roller coasters. The kids were indoctrinated the minute they were tall enough, says Kristi. Other high-adrenalin activities they share include jet skiing and riding dirt bikes. Theresa belongs to a racing club, and they often go to the track as a family. And while Eric still prefers to ride along with Kristi, Danika has her own miniature motorbike and wants to one day race just like Mama T.

It’s important to both mothers that their children never be limited by gender-imposed restrictions. With Danika, says Kristi, There’s no part of her brain that says, oh, only boys can do that. I’ve just never heard that come out of her mouth. In general, says Theresa, Danika wants to absorb everything, to try out everything new, even if she’s a little bit afraid. Eric is also very outgoing, but having been diagnosed as mildly autistic, says Kristi, He sees things are very, very real, so he tells it like it is. Right now, she and Eric enjoy building elaborate models with Legos. That’s something we do a lot together.

They also frequently gather as a family with their friend Pat and her daughter, Maya. The kids know they are sisters and brothers. And they know they have a dad who lives in Denmark. Given her Danish heritage, Kristi chose to use a sperm bank specializing in donors from that part of the world. She also chose a donor who would be willing to be known once the children turn 18. Says Kristi, The older they get, the more bits of information we start to give them as far as how this whole thing came about. But the bottom line with them is, I want them to know that they are very wanted, this was no accident, this was very much planned and they are my little miracles.

And while their family has continued to evolve, so have their jobs in law enforcement. Theresa now works at a courthouse lockup, and is no longer on patrol, while Kristi, as she says, is still doing the real cop thing.

What does that look like? One time, it meant staring at the working end of an AK-47. As Kristi tells it, she was newly on patrol and stationed in the Southeast Division of Los Angeles, when she and her partner witnessed a drive-by shooting. It was at night, and they could see the flash of a muzzle followed by two victims hitting the ground. As Kristi called in for help, her driver sped off in pursuit of the shooter. And that’s when she turned to see a gun pointing right at her outside the passenger window. I thought, Oh, my gosh, this is not happening!

After avoiding 30 rounds of shots, most of them hitting the officers’ car, they wound up running into a brick wall. I was able to get a couple rounds back at the suspect, says Kristi, but they were in a residential neighborhood, so she had to be particularly careful. Eventually, the perpetrator was caught by a police helicopter, and Kristi and her partner avoided serious injury.

Asked if she thought about leaving the force after that, especially knowing she wanted children, she points out that most male officers have children. And besides, she is particularly drawn to what she calls the nurturing end of police work. When I first became an officer, she says, everybody said, I just don’t picture you as a police officer. But really, a lot of police work, we’re just paid therapists. Theresa echoes this sentiment in terms of her own work: It’s like I want to help people who can’t help themselves. And that’s what I liked about the job.

Now, Kristi’s job is to investigate reports of suspected child abuse. It used to be the animal calls that bothered me, she says. And now it’s every little child I see is Danika and Eric, and that makes it very hard.

And while they have not encountered prejudice within their respective departments, people often judge them based on their perceived gender roles. Says Theresa: They look at Kristi, and they say, she’s the butch, she should be the father role. They look at me, because I put on a little bit of lipstick or something like that, and they think I’m supposed to be the mother and the more feminine. They always assume that she carried, of course, adds Kristi. Our roles confuse people, says Theresa, that’s the best way to say it.

This lack of stereotypical gender roles also affects how they raise their children. In fact, one of the benefits of being an LGBTQ family, says Kristi, is that they have more open minds in general and a less sheltered view of the real world. And short of being a criminal, she jokes, Whatever they want to be in their lives, we’ll be very supportive of it. Theresa sums it up: We’ll just have a more entertaining story, I think, at the end of the day.

LINDA and KIRSTEN

It’s autumn in Los Angeles and, despite the lingering heat, Linda, Kirsten and their ten-year-old daughter, Olive, are busy making seasonal pies for a party that afternoon. Masiah, who’s five, watches TV, nursing a cold. Luna the dog hovers nearby. There’s a feeling of always being in motion, and when asked to describe their favorite family activities, Kirsten rightly says, Multitasking.

She and Linda just celebrated their twenty-year anniversary as a couple. They don’t believe in marriage per se except as a legal means to protect their family, should it be necessary. Instead, as Kirsten says, Everybody should be domestic partners. And then if you want to have a religious ceremony, you can have that. Logistics such as healthcare shouldn’t have to depend on marriage status. Regardless she adds, love guides all, right? It starts from there.

Ironically, given their particularly close-knit family dynamic, it’s hard to believe that Linda was initially ambivalent about having children. Things began to shift when her brother, James, had children and she got clean. This was not an easy process, and she credits part of her long-term recovery to Kirsten’s support.

By the time they were ready to embrace building their family, Linda was 42 and Kirsten was 36, so they needed to move quickly. As Linda says, Kirsten always wanted to go to the baby store—meaning adoption. But when they met with social workers who were not familiar with LGBTQ would-be parents, they decided to go another route.

Linda, who identifies as butch, was not comfortable carrying the pregnancy. Which meant that Kirsten could become pregnant with Linda’s brother’s sperm so that they could both be biologically related to a child. In fact, several years earlier, they had casually asked James if he might ever consider being a donor. He gave them a definite no way, so when the would-be moms were ready to move forward, they began to look at donor possibilities. In the interim, James had gotten married, and it was his wife who then pushed for him to be the donor.

That’s when the real journey began. Sperm needed to be shipped from Boston, where Linda’s brother lived, to Los Angeles. And since reproduction services for lesbians were scarce at that time, they eventually found a nurse practitioner in a kind of underground network who performed intrauterine insemination (IUI) procedures whereby the sperm was inserted close to Kirsten’s uterus. The women also tried on their own at home.

While they’re not sure which method eventually worked, when they found out Kirsten was pregnant, they were absolutely over the moon. Since they had used Kirsten’s own eggs, they were initially concerned that Linda might not feel an equally strong connection to the baby—that turned out not to be a problem at all. The minute Olive was born, says Linda, I instantly fell in love with her.

It was decided that Olive, who Kirsten describes as one of the kindest kids around, would always know that Linda’s brother, James, was her biological father. There would be no family secrets. So when Olive was about seven, Linda let her know that her donor was in fact her Uncle James. Olive’s response was simple: I knew it already.

She’s super perceptive, says Kirsten. Linda and Kirsten were also clear with Olive that, while James is her biological father, he would always be Uncle James. This is a constructed family, says Linda, and not solely based on biology.

When Olive was five, Linda and Kirsten decided they would like another child. Once again, they used James as the donor, but after a year of not getting pregnant, they revisited the possibility of adoption. By then, several friends they knew were adopting with the help of an LGBTQ-friendly agency called Extraordinary Families. They went to orientation and started classes in preparation for a baby. Other than wanting a baby, they were completely open. But the process stalled when several life events happened, including the passing of both their fathers within the year.

Then suddenly the head of adoption at Extraordinary Families, Sarah, called. She said, Let’s get this done. There were still a number of things to finalize, including a home study; plus, Kirsten had just started a new job as the Executive Director of the organization, Women In Film. Linda wanted at least a week to prepare, but Sarah told her they already had the perfect baby for them. The home study could be done that very night.

We had ten minutes to decide, says Linda. Ten minutes because they have to move on the list of waiting families. The baby was at the offices of the Department of Children and Family Services, and they need to have her placed by 5:00 pm. Linda immediately called Kirsten only to get her voicemail. But she kept calling her back until Kirsten finally answered the phone. Is this an emergency? she asked. I’m in a meeting. Yes, it is! said Linda. They have a baby for us tonight.

So Kirsten did what every mother should be able to do; she told everyone in the meeting that, despite the fact that she’d only been at her job for two weeks, there was a baby on hold. Take the baby, everyone said. At that time, all they knew was that the baby was a six-month-old African-American girl who’d been taken by Child Protective Services, and her mother was ready to give her up for adoption.

Linda waited anxiously while Kirsten raced home as quickly as she could in Los Angeles traffic. A brand new social worker soon arrived at their house. He had never held a baby in his life, says Linda, and they could hear her screaming from the back of his car. Linda immediately went to unlock the baby from her car seat, and as soon as she held her, the baby stopped crying. I fell in love with that baby the moment I put her in my arms, says Linda. When she walked back in the house, Kirsten was already cooking sweet potatoes in the oven for the baby’s dinner. The fire was lit in the living room. It was so magical.

Olive had been picked up from school by friends, and by the time she got home, her cousins and next door neighbors were already there, excited to see the newest addition. Later that night, when things had quieted down, her mothers asked her what she thought of the new baby. Olive’s response? She’s perfect.

Olive’s an amazing older sister, says Linda. And they have an incredible relationship.

The baby’s birth mother had already name her Masiah. At first, Linda says, we thought that name was too big and not in our world. But they also wanted to respect how Masiah came to be and whom they call her tummy mama. Now, they see her name as beautiful and powerful—though sometimes they call her Masi for short.

In the same spirit, while the moms do not have contact with Masiah’s birth mother, they do talk about her and want Masiah to know that she was loved and that her birth mother could not care for her. They also do their best to address their daughter’s questions about why her skin color is different from the other members of her family. Part of that is making sure that Masiah is around other people who are African American. It’s her identity, says Linda. And if it’s not something that’s important, then it’s a hole.

The moms are also open, to an age-appropriate degree, about Linda’s recovery from drugs. Olive is already curious about the support program that Linda attends. And in a few years, they plan to explain to her more about what that means. Part of the program, says Linda, is giving, being of service. And that’s just an incredible skill to have. In fact, it has helped prepare her to be a good parent.

Fortunately, Linda works from home programming music for stores and businesses, making it easier to care for two children with very different schedules. And as the girls are getting older, it’s clear they share many of the same traits. They are both extremely kind and very smart. Masi is sunshine, says Kirsten. She just radiates happiness.

But the biggest joy the moms get is seeing them be so in love with each other, as Linda puts it. Family activities include going to the beach locally and every year travelling to an island in Maine where the kids can explore on their own for hours at a time. They’re just riding their bikes, going down to the beach, going to a little store, says Linda. We make efforts not to make the kids be too scheduled.

They also attend protests, such as those promoting LGBTQ rights, as a family. When asked how the children feel in general about having two moms, how that has impacted their lives, Olive simply told them, It’s no big deal.

Even so, sometimes Linda does feel that her more masculine appearance stands out in ways that can make her feel uncomfortable—what Kirsten calls being the recipient of micro-aggression. But when their children tell Linda that, You look like a boy, her response is simply: Isn’t that cool? That I’m different? Masiah sometimes even calls her mom handsome.

In the end, Linda says, We’re a super supportive family. Generous with our love. And, Kirsten adds, I think we have a lot of fun.

TESS and NIKINA

All they wanted was a baby. Tess and her partner, Nikki, didn’t care about gender, race or biological conception. So they simultaneously contacted adoption agencies while going through artificial insemination.

Since Tess had previously had a hysterectomy, they wanted Nikina to be the gestational mother, using one of Tess’s eggs. Unfortunately, Tess did not have a viable follicle, so they moved forward with Nikina’s own eggs. But after three failed attempts at IUI and two at IVF (which is what they had previously determined would be their stopping point), they were pleased to hear from an agency with a new caseworker who was eager to help them adopt.

Yolanda came at the perfect time, says Nikki. And they were thrilled when she called to tell them they had an African-American baby boy who had been withdrawing from drugs in the hospital for the last month, and was now in need of placement. Given that Tess is a doctor, they also felt confident they could handle any possible medical ramifications.

They rushed to the hospital to meet Kevin. He was gorgeous, says Tess.

Oh, he was so cute,