M. D. Jenkins - Three Dads and a Baby: Adventures in Modern Parenting

CHAPTER 1

NEONATE LIFE DESTRUCTION SYNDROME

W ed heard crazy stories from all sorts of friends and relatives about how a baby would explode our lives. You think youre tired at work? one said. Wait till baby. Another told us he couldnt possibly bother with canvas grocery bags: Its just way too much to think about after a baby. One couple didnt eat at a restaurant for a full year after their baby was born, despite living fifteen minutes from their parents, who had successfully raised three children to adulthood. We had friends who never flushed a toilet after 8:00 p.m. to avoid waking their kids. But Neonate Life Destruction Syndrome was not going to happen to us.

Even when she was just six days old, everything had come together. No one was exhausted. We had her routines sorted out; baby was kicking ass and taking milk. She wasnt quite ready for a STEM career or the United States Senate, but she did seem ready for college (drinking, sleeping all day, partying all night). Wed had twenty visitors. Wed watched two movies at home. And wed posted all her adventures on social media, from her first moments to napping with our dogs. Id already gotten a dozen very serious replies to my toileting post: Any reason I cant dangle a poopy baby over a bidet? Asking for a friend. I hadnt taken leave from my career as a hospital doctor. Id even polished off several work presentations, hosted a webinar on hospital safety, and chaired two hospital committee meetings.

So we felt ready to take her out into the world. Why not shopping? We needed both staples and treats, as every healthy family runs on a mixture of organic vegetables and chocolate. In our first humbling parenting experience, wed lost track of what day it was and arrived at Costco midday on Saturday. But baby slept through it all, snuggled to my partner Jeremys chest with a baby-porting gadget called a ring sling. One admiring shopper went out of her way to thank my partner for doing his part. Used to be the men made the women do all the work. More and more men are contributing. The times sure are a-changing!

Jeremy, ever the gracious pastors son, smiled and thanked her. After she walked on, he said, Lady, you dont know the half of it! The woman hadnt realized it, but shed just met a true modern family. Three fathers had accompanied our bundle of joy to the store that day. Alan and I had been partnered for fourteen years, and Jeremy had joined us five years ago, making us a polyamorous triad, or throuple. Our babys genetic mom had come with us to the store and smiled watching people try to guess at the relationships that bound the four of us. And earlier that day, wed fed baby some colostrum from her amazing surrogate, whod been pumping precious breast milk for us since the birth. Shed done all the hard work for us, and we were having an amazing week precisely because none of us had to go through the trials of childbirth or breastfeeding.

All told, it took three fathers and two women to make our beloved little one. We know, right there, some people have some strong opinions about our decision to raise children despite knowing nothing else about us. According to the American Library Associations records of book suppression, the childrens book Heather Has Two Mommies was the ninth most challenged book in the 1990s. America has changed a lot since then, but imagine what the reception would be for Heather Has Three Polyamorous Daddies and Two Mommies!

Were not an ordinary family. But do we have crazy lives, wild parties, unstable relationships, lots of drama, and concerned families? No, not even remotely. We work, we clean the house, we ask each other what we should have for dinner, we pay taxes, we Netflix. Nothing to see here.

But was becoming poly parents an adventure?

Oh yes.

CHAPTER 2

THE OFFER

Twenty-seven months earlier ...

I downed a carefully selected appetizer with my two boyfriends at a Memorial Day party. I had to save calories for the cake Jeremy had assembled out of red, white, and blue layers so the slices looked like American flags. Hed wandered away for a margarita refill, and when he returned, he leaned in and whispered, Hey... do we want to have kids?

His friends Stephanie and Julie had offered him embryos to adopt. Theyd done two cycles of IVF with a sperm donor, and now they had three beautiful kidsplus two frozen embryos left over. They didnt have room for any more children in their family, but they didnt want to discard the embryos. Would we be interested?

We would. We needed to think long and hard about it, but we were intrigued. We agreed to drink more margaritas and discuss it at home.

In our eight pre-Jeremy years, Alan brought up having kids a dozen times. Once he said hed be a great father, and I could be, too, with supervision. We knew he was right, but we never took the first step. Then Jeremy entered the picture: a zookeeper and nurturer by trade. With a third voice at the table, our conversations about parenting began to change. It says quite a lot about my second partner that Julie picked him to raise two of her children.

But Julie wasnt the first to tell us we should have kids. For years, our good friend Neha had been nudging us toward parenthood. Wed known her and her husband, Fred, since we moved to San Diego. Alan and Neha had worked together as psychiatrists on a childrens unit, and Fred had rotated through the hospital medicine unit where I worked. Neha had impeccable taste and a knack for telling us that wed disappointed her in way that felt like a compliment because she knew we were capable of much more. Our two biggest crimes: (1) hosting parties inside rather than using our deck with views of sparkly San Diego and Tijuana, and (2) failing to get on the baby train.

Im worried, she once said over hors doeuvres at her place, that youre going to put it off until its too late. Which would be a most regrettable error.

Then we talked about the barriers. It may sound odd, but in our day-to-day lives, being in a gay throuple felt entirely normal. We lived in California. All of our friends and coworkers embraced us, so we didnt think of it as a barrier. Our problem was biological: none of us had a uterus. When Neha would ask why we hadnt had kids, Id joke that wed been trying desperately but seemed to be infertile.

Wed heard mixed things about adoption, the obvious solution, from our next-door neighbors. Theyd had home interviews to get listed as adoptive parents. To make their home kid safe, theyd installed a retractable, heavy-duty pool cover, one an adult could walk across. They were lovely people, but they still got turned down. What would happen when our interviewer saw our uncovered death trap of a poolco-owned by three unmarried gay guys? We didnt think we had a snowballs chance in hell of being accepted and didnt like the idea of some agency coming to our house to pass judgment on our fitness as parents in the first place.

At this point, Fred and Nehas two youngest kids burst out of their room in tears accusing each other of stealing toys and other crimes that seem unforgivable to children and meaningless to adults.

Hush! Stop this nonsense and apologize to each other. Now shoo! said Neha. Dont make any decisions on the basis of our childrens current behavior, she added after theyd exchanged insincere apologies. Im told this disgraceful behavior will eventually come to an end.

When theyre twenty? Fred asked.

Do not frighten them, she replied, as if we couldnt hear. This is a delicate situation. Fred laughed and asked about IVF.

Alan said it sounded terrible. Hed heard figures of $8,000 each for the egg donor and agency, plus legal fees, test costs, and other hassles, Other sites said to expect between $165,000 and $240,000. Thats righta quarter of a million dollars to make