Tagged: #gayparenting
Jumping Hoops
It’s endless, it seems, the hoops that we continually have to jump through as a gay couple. Adding children to that mix it gets even more treacherous.
In some places it’s relatively simple for same sex couples to have kids together. I’d have a baby, Virginia would adopt the baby. We’d both share parental rights.
In some places, like the one where we live, this is illegal for same sex couples. In order for Virginia to go through the second parent adoption process I would have to legally give up my rights to our kids. Instead we get to draw up a series of documents, that are all at the liberty of some Baptist judge to honor.
A Co-Parenting Agreement.
A Domestic Partnership Agreement.
Hospital Visitation Authorization. Continue reading
And, It Was Valentine’s Day
There’s a lot of information out there for lesbians who want to have babies. It is 2013, there is information about, just about, everything, on the internet. Unfortunately, most of the information, on this subject, is about the equivalent of a yahoo chat room. Laws vary state to state and insurance company to insurance company and employer to employer. Nothing’s cut and dry. Being that we live in Virginia, conservative, behind the times, republican Virginia it’s not as if you can go to a government supported page and find out how to go about putting a baby in me.
Being intelligent, resourceful adults we bought a few books on Amazon that had good ratings. We read a lot of blogs. We joined the RVA Gay Parents Meetup Group. We scoured the web searching for gay friendly doctors. We contacted the sperm bank we’re using for recommendations.
We called and made an appointment, outlining the reason for our visit and our expectations for what we wanted to get out of the consultation. We requested the day off from work so we could both go. We told people how excited we were to stop talking about family planning and actually plan our first baby. We filled out the five page form they sent in the mail.
Put Your Damn Pants On! 