Five years ago, I was pregnant with our first daughter. Initially, my wife didn’t want to carry a child, but I guess I did such a stellar job she thought she’d give it a try (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). Fast forward 35 weeks into her pregnancy and I am not sure she’s convinced she made the right decision. As easy as my pregnancy was, hers has been the complete opposite. Throughout mine and my wife’s pregnancies, we’ve gone through things a lot of parents of opposite sexes do not.
We are both fully aware that to each of our children one of us is considered the non-biological parent. With the scientific ability to create a family came choices, choices of a donor, choices of an unknown versus other ID options, and choosing the same donor to create the lives of both of our children or different. We did all these things, we researched, we spoke it out, we voiced our opinions and while we realize we are making decisions for a child that has not yet been created, we were able to come to an agreement on these pressing topics, in a way we felt would be best for our future family.
Both of our daughters have the same donor. They will be biologically related to one another, and this was very important to us. We were blessed with the ability to make that happen.
Then there’s adoption – yes adoption. After the birth of our first child, we couldn’t even put both of our names on the birth certificate, in fact, our lawyer insisted we didn’t.
Prior to same sex marriage being legal, we HAD to pursue a ‘second parent’ adoption in order for my wife to have any rights to our daughter should something happen to me. Add to that the fact that I wasn’t a citizen at the time, and with no family in the United States, we had to have additional paperwork and legal protections should something happen to me prior to the adoption being finalized.
However, before the adoption hearing can take place, the State of Minnesota has a fathers’ adoption registry which states that in order for an adoption to be finalized there has to be a search of said registry. The ‘father’ has 30 days to add their name to this registry, which results in a delay of our ability to move forward with our adoption.
Please don’t get me wrong, I completely understand the need for this, but I also believe that in cases such as ours, where there is 100% no ‘father’ to consider, where donor semen is used and proof of such can easily be provided, an exception should be granted so as to not delay this process any further.
Now that marriage is legal for all, the process has changed somewhat. We can and will be putting both of our names on our daughter’s birth certificate application, but due to the current political climate, we will also still be pursuing the second parent adoption. Again, we will file our paperwork, we’ll go through the background checks, we’ll wait for the father search time to expire and we’ll all file into a courtroom again to tell a judge that we swear to do what is best for our child, that we will BOTH be responsible for our child and raise her in a loving home environment.
We’ll do this in order to protect our family. To have the legal backing to ensure us protections that no one has any right to take away from us. We’ll pay the court fees and the lawyer fees because at the end of the day those amounts are nothing if they mean protecting what we have created, our family, our life, us!
After all these things are said and done, our family will function just like yours. We’ll battle to keep the house clean as little feet run around and play, we’ll sign our kids up for softball and swimming lessons, we’ll choose a school for them to go to, we’ll volunteer at said school. You’ll likely run into families like ours here and there, and while there are glaring differences in family structure, that really is all that is different. Each day you and I fight the same parenting fights, like telling a three-year old they have to put on pants before they leave the house.
{Photo credit: Jami Karow}
Our differences are what make the world interesting, our similarities are what make us humble, neither one of us is right nor wrong. We’re the same and different all at once.
