Maybe Baby?

It was time for us to grow up. I mean it isn't like we haven't made tough or important decisions before in our life. After all, we were two men.....who got married....or was it committed....not the involuntary kind of committed, but the happily-ever-after-or-as-much-happiness-as-the-state-of-MN-would-allow kind of committed. We had always mentioned a baby in passing, but we never really forced ourselves to make a decision. And then one day, everything changed.

We were driving home from Jon's parent's condo in IA and my sister called and broke the news, she was pregnant. After congratulating her and hanging up......BAM!!! It was like I ran full-force into a brick wall! My sister was grown-up and made a grown-up decision to be a mother, meanwhile it seemed like Jon and I were just playing house waiting to be grown-ups. And then it hit me, it was like the Fertility Gods were working overtime and it wasn't just my sister who had grown-up.....everyone was growing up. Suddenly I realized, the past 3 months could be summarized as babies, babies, babies! When I really thought about it, EVERYONE I knew was having babies. 
And amongst all of the joy and pure elation, Jon and I could both feel an incredible sense of sadness swirling around inside of us. It felt so wrong and so selfish to be jealous at such a significant crossroads of our closest friend's and family's lives. But we couldn't shake the feeling no matter where we went. I blame my inability to shake the blues on the baby at Ruby Tuesday's who kept peek-a-booing with me, or the dad wiping the ice cream off his son's chin at Dairy Queen, or the JIF peanut butter commercial that made me cry (which I thankfully was able to conceal from Jon) where the little girl surprises her dad with a sandwich.

And then we talked and talked and then talked some more. And amongst all the talking came the questions. Would Jon and I ever experience the joys of parenthood? Even if we could navigate the laws and limitations of gay adoption, could we handle the stigma of being two men with a baby? Could we handle watching our child stigmatized as the boy or girl with "the two dads?" This decision would forever impact all three of our lives. No trip to Applebee's, plane ride, or parent teacher conference would go unnoticed by somebody in our immediate vicinity ever again. When Jon and I want to "blend," for the most part we can. But if we have a baby in tow, we would need to master a tactful answer to the inevitable question asked by every stranger we would encounter as they coo and ogle our baby....."where's mommy?" These are things most people don't ever have to think about, but they are thoughts that consumed us......or maybe just consumed me.

And then we answered those questions and came to a decision, which surprised us both. At the end of the day, giving a child a great life who might of otherwise had a terrible life, experiencing the joys of parenthood, having love and support from family and friends, and proving our skeptics wrong (that two loving people, despite their situation, CAN be phenomenal parents) pointed us towards the path to becoming parents.

So, let the journey begin. The process is being documented not to see how many hits we can receive or to gain notoriety, but to give our child, may we be lucky enough to get one, a journal to show them how hard we fought to get them. So that when that moment arises where the stigma of being the kid with "the two dads" catches up to them and they question why they couldn't have gotten more "normal" parents, they know our decision to bring them into our life was not light-hearted, but the most important decision we ever made and came from a place of undying love.