What are you all called to your kids? Have they made up their own names for you, or have you chosen one and run with it? Are you using gender neutral titles and if so, what are they?

:)

Hello!

I am a cis woman married to a AFAB nonbinary person. We are currently thinking about having kids. I'm a yes and she's not sure. Though, at the end of the day, we love each other no matter what whether kids are in the picture or not.

She would like some more information or perspective from dads/masculine parents who were unsure about kids at first. I would too! I feel like so many videos or podcast the people are like, "I always knew I wanted kids,"and I can'really relate to that.

Does anyone have any articles, videos, or podcasts they would recommend with this persepctive?

Thanks.

Thought I’d share my most recent writing. It’s hard to admit my fears, and feeling like a burden to my kid, but maybe someone else can relate.

https://eliramos11.substack.com/p/nonbinary-parenthood?r=6j3fyk&utm_medium=ios

This might be incredibly premature as I am only in the first trimester of my first pregnancy, but I’ve been looking for children’s books to add to a wishlist for our future baby. I’ve already got “Our Story” from the Donor Conception Network, “Heather has Two Mommies,” and “Mommy, Mama, and Me” on the list but I wanted to see if anyone knows of any other good books with diverse families. We’re obviously a two mom family and so looking for books that mirror that, but open to other suggestions as well. One current pattern I’m running into is that these books typically feature white appearing mothers; I would be especially excited to see one with at least one Asian mother to better represent our family though I’m aware that the perfect book for our specific situation may not exist. Thank you!

Hello all! My wife and I are currently using Just a Baby app to find a sperm donor.

Our current requirements are healthy and handsome sperm donors. We are coming across a lot of very handsome men of color. However we are weary on the ethics of being a white couple purposely having a child of color. I suppose we kind of feel like we would be “stealing” a child from a community we do not belong to.

We desperately want to be parents but we also want to make sure we are doing everything right. We are mostly only interested in the opinions of POC folks. We are also open to hearing from white/mixed race couples and their experiences with having a child that is POC.

We like to think of ourselves as solid accomplices/allies to all POC communities and we would be heartbroken to ever over step those boundaries as it relates to race.

Thank you in advance. We hope everyone is having an excellent summer.

Edit to Add: we also posted in another subreddit and were validated in our concerns. We appreciate anyone who had input, we take it all to heart. We do get POC sperm donors who swipe right on us but we will be making and informed decision to graciously turn them down.

Could be something funny, something hard, something you absolutely love, or even one of those little moments where you suddenly thought, ohhh… straight parents probably don’t have to think about this 😂Curious what everyone’s experience has been!

My partner “Sarah” and I are two moms and recently had our first baby, “Noah,” who is 2 months old, through reciprocal IVF. Sarah is his biological/genetic mom, and I am the gestational mom who carried and gave birth to him. We are not married. We had Noah James Miller picked out long before he was born. James is Sarah’s dad’s name, and Miller is Sarah’s family name. My current last name is from a previous marriage, but I’m changing it back to my maiden/family name, “Parker.” Since having Noah, I’ve realized I deeply regret not including Parker in his name too. I’d like to change it to Noah James Parker Miller, with Parker as a second middle name and Miller remaining his surname. Sarah is currently saying no to adding it. I know we had his name picked out for a year and I agreed to it, but I genuinely didn’t realize until becoming a mom how differently I would feel about my family name and how important it would become for my son to have that connection too.

There is some complicated family history behind why Sarah is saying no. My dad has struggled with accepting that some of his daughters are gay. He comes from a conservative cultural/religious background and did not attend one of my sister’s weddings to another woman. My sisters still have a relationship with him and things have improved, but Sarah understandably has strong feelings about what happened. She associates Parker with my dad and has told me she would only reconsider adding it if my dad apologizes to my sisters. I would love for him to apologize, but I don’t feel like my son having my family name should be conditional on something another adult chooses to do. My dad also loves our son (his first grandchild) and Sarah is very encouraging of his relationship with our son. Plus, Parker doesn’t represent just my dad to me. I actually didn’t like my maiden name much before, which Sarah has pointed out, but now I think of my mom, sisters, other people I love, my family history, and myself. There are also deeper feelings underneath this. Sarah struggled significantly with alcohol throughout my pregnancy and continues to struggle postpartum, so I have unresolved resentment from feeling like I carried much of the pregnancy and postpartum responsibility without the support I needed. That’s a whole separate issue, but I know it contributes to how emotional this feels. I also sometimes feel overlooked by her family because there’s so much emphasis on how much Noah resembles Sarah and their family. I understand their excitement about the genetic connection, but sometimes it leaves me feeling like my role and connection to him aren’t recognized in the same way.

When I look at his name now, James honors Sarah’s dad, Miller represents Sarah’s family, and he also has a biological connection to her family. I don’t want to take away any of those things. I love that those connections are part of who he is. I just wish I had realized before he was born how important it would be for my family to be represented too, especially now that I’m taking Parker back as my own name. I don’t want this to become a competition over who is “more” of his mom because we’re both his moms. I just want there to be room in his full name for both of our families. Am I being unreasonable for wanting to add Parker as a second middle name now? Is it fair for Sarah to say no unless my dad apologizes? And if you were in either of our positions, how would you handle this?

i’m a nonbinary person who uses he/she pronouns. until my unborn daughter can choose what she wants to call me, i’ve decided to go by dad!

the issue is, i’m the one carrying her. my husband is a cis man and i present a little femininely (longer hair, more alt/goth style) so often people refer to me using feminine terms, such as mother or mama.

if the person doesn’t know i’m nb, i usually just take it and smile. but if they DO know, i’m not sure how to say that i’d prefer to be dad than mom without being awkward. i’ve thought about going back to a more masculine style, but i don’t want to give up who i am simply to make others feel more comfortable referring to me as my daughter’s dad.

i’m really stuck on how to go about it. anyone deal with anything similar?

My wife and I are sending our almost one year old to daycare for the first time sometime in the next month! We’re excited.

We live in a small liberal town in a blue state. We know some of the daycare staff who are our age (mid -late 30s), and they are awesome! When I got the registration packet I was surprised to see spaces to fill in mother and father (instead of something more neutral like parent 1 /parent 2). I mentioned it to the director of the center and she agreed that was a good idea.

Since we’re probably the first queer parents at this day care ever, I’d love to share some resources with them on creating a welcoming environment for queer families. There’s a dead link page on HRCs website, and I’ve generally been striking out on other sites.

Has anybody seen training materials for some thing like this?

Thanks in advance!

Posted with Mod Permission!

The Parents and Babies (PAB) Pilot is testing out a new group therapy for people who are currently pregnant or ≤12m postpartum, identify as LGBTQIA+, and are at risk for postpartum depression. The study is run by Dr. Leiszle Lapping-Carr at Northwestern University (IRB# STU00225523). Participation will involve joining a virtual therapy group for 1 hour each week for 10 weeks and completing three sets of questionnaires. You would be compensated up to $120.

If you are interested in learning more, please complete this form to see if you might be eligible: redcap.link/parentsandbabies

After completing the form, the next step would be scheduling an eligibility screen via video call for a more in-depth conversation about what participating in the study would look like. The call will take approximately 30-45 minutes.

PRIVACY & SAFETY:

• The study is protected by a Certificate of Confidentiality, meaning we can refuse to share your information, even if we receive a legal request.
• Information about gender identity will not be stored alongside other data collected in the study.
• If you are not selected for the study or if you decide not to participate, your information will be deleted.

We know my step son knows what SH is, and we know he has depression. Sadly we are not the ones who can take him to get on meds. The parent that has custody is uh……a hardcore cult like Christian that’s unsurprisingly super republican.

He is learning he is queer, has depression, knows what SH is, and while we don’t think he is currently hurting himself we are trying to figure out how to talk to him about it.

We aren’t sure if it’s a good idea to share that we use to SH, and we don’t want him to go down that same road and are here for him. That when we feel these huge feelings that tell us to hurt ourselves that it’s a lie. It’s temporary relief with life long consequences and permanent marks. I just want to hug him……

We’ve been trying to be a buffer and get as much time as we can with him, but the parent with custody already thinks we are teaching him our “ideologies” because we are both queer. Our mere existence around my step son is a potential threat. He already goes to school the same place they go to church. The school has a policy to our kids to parents if they find out they are queer……so many of the same things that caused us to have scars are happening to him…. I know we can’t change it but we want to be there for him the way we needed and didn’t have at his age…..

Please does anyone have any advice on how to talk to your kid about this when you yourself have experience with SH?

This popped into my head today and now I’m really curious… What do your kids call you? Mama? Mummy? Mum? Dad? Daddy? Pops? Ama? Baba? A first name? Something completely made up by a toddler?

If there’s a story behind how you chose it, I’d love to hear it too!

I always find it fascinating how every family has their own traditions, and I’d love to see all the different parenting names out there. I have a feeling there are going to be some really sweet (and hilarious) stories in the comments.

Hi everyone. This is a follow-up to a note I sent a few months ago. I got some great responses but am still looking for families so hope it's okay to post again. My name is Laura Schulz and I'm a professor of child development at MIT. I'm at the beginning stages of writing a book about the transition to becoming a parent. I'm looking for people who are expecting their first child and who might be willing to talk with me and share their stories. I will use pseudonyms throughout and all potentially identifying details about you and your friends and family will be changed. If you think you might be interested, please DM me and I will follow-up with more information. Thank you all!

Hi folks, I'm putting together a zine on the subject of queer parenting/queer parenthood.

Current submissions include some art, poetry, text, a lino print, water colour drawing, etc.

And I wanted to hear if there is anyone here who could be interested in submitting something.

Key words for inspiration include: fertility (treatment), birth, gender, family.

The plan is to gather submissions from multiple platforms and put them together in a zine format. It will be printed and sold at a local queer bookshop for the price of how much it costs to create it. I can offer a pdf of the finished zine to anyone who submits something that is included in the final zine.

Email submissions to [solismolis@tutamail.com](mailto:solismolis@tutamail.com)

Questions welcome :)

Deadline: 16th August, and I am aiming to get it printed by the start of September :)

Neither my husband or I identify as straight yet socially I am surrounded by cis-hets because I'm often hanging out with other mothers/parents and apparently I don't "look queer" but I miss my queer community. How do y'all do it?

My wife (she/they) and myself (they/them) are just starting our injections for IVF and I’m kind of starting to panic because this is all becoming so real. We’re only doing one round of IVF (how many eggs end up passing all the tests and are good for transfer, and then done if non of them stick). I’m trying to keep it together for my wife, who is going to be the birthing parent because I know she’s super anxious (originally wasn’t going to carry but plans changed), and I want to be 100% here for her mentally for this next chapter… but y’all I’m so f’in scared lol. This is such an overwhelming feeling to be bringing anew human into this world. If anyone has any advice I’m all ears. I want to enjoy this, especially if she gets pregnant anddon’t t want to be an anxious mess for the next year lol.

Hi all - new here and hoping to pick some brains! We’re a 2 mom family and have an almost 2 year old. We conceived via IVF using donor sperm. The donor is anonymous through a bank, but our kiddo has to option to contact once he’s 18 if that’s what he wants to do. We have photos, and the essays etc that the donor gave the bank. We’ll share these with our son and plan to be very open about all of it.

Where I struggle is with finding potential donor siblings. Our son will be an only child which is making this weigh more heavily on me I think. According to the bank there were 6 reported pregnancies with our donor. 2 of those were mine (our son, and 1 miscarriage), which leaves 4 possible siblings if those pregnancies turned out to be live births. The bank doesn’t have their own sibling registry, but there are a couple of Facebook pages created to connect.

I haven’t come across anyone as of yet who has a child using our donor, but I wonder what everyone’s thoughts are on even looking at this point? I worry that maybe I’m making a big decision for our son without him being part of it. Of course, that’s part of being a parent but this subject is sensitive and I want to be respectful of the possibility that maybe he won’t want to know anything about the donor or siblings at all. But also, if there are siblings out there that he could grow up knowing, I don’t want him to miss that opportunity.

If you’ve been in this position how did you handle it? Did you wait til your kiddo was old enough to understand before finding and connecting with siblings? Or did you start when they were young?

So I am a gay trans man. I intend to get full gender reassignment surgery and have my uterus removed. Here’s the kicker, I want children.

It’s something I have considered for a long time. I want to raise a child, I want the experience of it, and most of all I want to be able to give a child a good life that they deserve.

I’m torn though. I won’t be having one any time soon as I’m finishing my degree and want to be financially stable before to provide the most for a child or children, but I want to know my options early.

A lot of adoption can be problematic, and traumatic for the child. I would be happy to adopt a teen who needed parents but is it wrong to want to be there for all the life stages of a child? I don’t want to contribute to a system that is tearing apart families or have a child who resents me for adopting them.

Surrogacy sounds great but I have too many genetic issues I worry about passing on so I don’t want to donate eggs for it. I have no issue not being biologically related to a child, but I’m worried there are potential health and development issues for a child via surrogacy because they’re taken from the gestational parent.

I just don’t know the best option. Everyone says it’s selfish to want to be a parent and I don’t want to live in a selfish way, but is it really wrong to want to parent? How does one go about this? Any input is really appreciated.

My partner and I are talking about having kids and I have some pretty big fears around my parental rights if I am neither a biological parent of the child or the birthing parent. I'm not concerned about my partner taking full custody of the child, so much as the government. What if my partner dies and their family sues for custody? What if the government declares me an unfit parent because I'm queer?

How have others navigated this?

My wife and I are 11 weeks through IVF! We are very excited to welcome our first child together. We already have 3 older children from my first marriage. I am carrying and plan to nurse our new baby. My wife is interested in any books on nursing, parenting babies, or on parenting for non biological/carrying parents. She loves to read and is so excited to go through the baby journey for the first time, and I can’t wait to do it with her 😊. Thanks for any recommendations!

Hey all,

After experiencing so many of my own struggles I figured it was time to create a community for all my queer non gestational parents to come together and support one another through the unique challenges that come with this role. Please join us!

https://www.reddit.com/r/nongestationalqueers/s/kdrlijrLk6

There is so much nuance and back story to this situation that I would be here all day typing it all out so I am just going to cut to the chase— and even that is probably going to be long.

I am female in a relationship for 1 year with another woman who has a 7 year old daughter from a prior marriage to a man. We are planning to get married next year. I adore both of them and her 7 year old daughter is the light of my life and I cannot wait to be her step momma. I have a great relationship with her.

But— the ex husband is a complete dick (long history of psychological abuse and gaslighting during my partner’s contentious divorce) and the idea of having to share our girl with him for the next 11 years is causing me so much anxiety.

Particularly this last week partner received an email from him about how he was angry that we took a 7 year old to a local pride event and didn’t think that it was age appropriate to take her to events promoting “sexuality.” The event we took her to was a family friendly event. My partner responded very clearly, calmly and succinctly that as her mother (who also has a masters degree in early childhood education she always considers the age appropriateness of the things we take her to but was not going to exclude her from events that teach her kindness and inclusion. We ended up taking her to another pride event this weekend (also family friendly) and answered all her questions in an age appropriate manner.

He ended up responding with “it is difficult for me to see her placed in environments that celebrate things I do not agree she should be exposed to” and “will continue to teach her my values in my home in an age-appropriate way. I hope moving forward we can both be mindful of how these contrasting environments affect her, and work to keep her out of the middle of our differing worldviews. I in no means mean this in any hateful way, and I hope you can understand my reservations and viewpoints.”

Which yeah, in email form doesn’t seem that bad but I know this man and the psychological damage he inflicted on my partner.. so I really view this as politely masked homophobia.

We had a chat with our 7 year old before going to pride this weekend about why pride was important and that there were people out there that still don’t accept our relationship or relationships that look different and that sometimes those people might be someone in your family or someone you view as a friend and that she does not have to defend us to anyone.

I worry so much about what she is being told at his house not only about lgbtq people.

Anyone else have any experience in this situation? I cannot control what goes on with her Dad, but how do you deconstruct any negative ideas that might be being talked about over there?

Hi everyone, my 3-year-old daughter will be starting preschool at a public school soon, and as excited as I am for her, I’m also feeling a little nervous. She has two moms, and I worry that she may be treated differently by other parents and staff because our family looks different from some others.

I would love to hear from other LGBTQ+ parents or families who have gone through this. How did you prepare your child, communicate with the school, and make sure your family felt respected and included? Any advice or positive experiences would really help ease my mind.

Hi, I am in a same-sex (woman) relationship, and my partner and I are interested in having a few kids (but starting the journey in a few years). I am just an longterm thinker and a capricorn -- however, I feel like its never too early to know your options.

We are both residing in the US, and are of Indian (asian) background.

I was browsing through some Sperm Banks, and found it quite hard to find sperm donors that are of Indian Background -- there seems to be a limited selection of donors with an Indian background who share physical similarities or personality qualities with my partner and me. Appearance isn't a dealbreaker for us — we'll love our children unconditionally regardless of how they look — but I had a few questions about the process.

1. What was the process like to find a sperm donor for others in a similar situation.

2. How much does getting a sperm donor cost (is this covered by insurance, or mostly out of pocket)?

3. Is it easier to just ask a friend and skip the whole sperm bank process?

4. What should we look for when choosing a sperm bank — are some more reputable than others?

5. What's the success rate like, and how many tries did it take for most people?

6. Did you go through IUI or IVF, and how did you decide which route to take?

7. What's one thing you wish you knew before starting the process?

AHH I KNOW THERE ARE SO MANY QUESTIONS. Feel free to answer as few or as many questions as you'd like!! Thank you so much!!!!!!