It took 10 years of an active “process” for my partner and I to become parents. First we talked about doing it, and then talked some more for about 2 years until we were both “ready.” We attended a 6 month long “Lesbians Considering Parenting Group” making pie charts of how we anticipated our lives changing with a facilitator whose last name happened to be Pies.

From there we attempted to choose a known donor. After nerve-racking interviews where we discussed everything from what exactly constituted “really safe sex” to our feelings about circumcision (who knew we even had these feelings), we ended up at the sperm bank. We tried to inseminate (the regular way, the IUI way) and after 18 months (and by choice, no fertility drugs) moved on.

Next stop was the San Francisco Foster/Adopt Program (which suspended our scheduled mandatory course for about 8 months while their program went through “modifications.”) After we completed the training we looked at potential kids who broke our hearts (but who required parents who were willing to go the “special needs” route – not us).

Then our work lives took over, and more time passed.  We swore that if we didn’t have a child within the next year, we would never utter the word “parent” again. We were on the verge of beginning a foreign adoption process, when my partner announced that she needed to postpone that for a year because of new job responsibilities.

Then one day out the blue, in the car ride home (we had even bought a Volvo wagon, which we drove empty around Marin), after attending the birth of my sister’s son, I pleaded to my partner and to the universe, “We  just really need to have a baby.”

Behold, and I say that in the most miraculous sense of the word,  there was a message waiting on our phone machine from a lesbian friend who had a lesbian friend at work who had a niece in a small mid-western town who was coming to California to give birth and needed to find parents, and were we interested?

WHERE WE INTERESTED?!!!  (That’s the subject of another post --.the open adoption process).

Our daughter is almost 10 years old. So, I figure that’s about 20 years that we have been intimately involved in this lesbian parenting business.  Does this make me an expert? I dare say NOT, but I do have lots of stories, information, and resources to share, and look forward to your comments and interaction.

Until next post, here’s a couple of good general links to check out:

http://www.familieslikeours.org/
a non-profit organization providing information and support to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adoptive and pre-adoptive families.

http://www.familypride.org/
Family Pride is the national non-profit organization committed to securing family equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer parents, guardians and allies. Their work consists of strategically linked initiatives—broad in scope, but simple in vision—love, justice, family, equality.

http://adoption.about.com/od/gaylesbian/
Gay adoption information. Gay adoption FAQ's, statistics, and parenting for gay families. Resources for Lesbian and Gay adoption.