There always seems to be an excuse to shamming Moms, and Moms-to-be.
In six weeks summer break will be up and my students will be returning to my classroom for a new school year full of quadratic equations, calculators, graph paper, and surprise! Your beloved math teacher is sporting a baby bump. My biggest hope is that I will stop throwing up by then and my students won’t have to watch me literally vomit mid math lecture.
Students, of all ages, including my lovely teenagers are curious. They will wonder, they will speculate, and they will ask about my future baby. Most of my students already know that I am divorced, I’ve mentioned my exhusband in funny classroom antedotes. They may ask me if I have remarried. If I have a boyfriend, who fathered my child, ect.
I do have a partner though, who is happy to coparent! I’m happy to say I won’t be doing this all alone. A lovely woman has entered my life and is excited to be a Mom with me. I’m moving in with her in a couple weeks. We’re a happy lesbian couple and I am filled to the brim with joy about my new family. My girlfriend, me, and my hopeful baby.
Can I tell my students I am in a relationship with a woman? That he is a she?Not really, best not to bring it up. If I were in Texas, Florida, or Idaho, I could literally be fired for it. It doesn’t matter at least four of my male collegues mention their wives and children in class. My students know that my straight collegues are married and have children. I can’t really talk about my girlfriend though. How we live together, will be parents together, make Dad jokes together and eat dinner. It’s not considered school appropriate. It’s considered sexual. Married, dating, living with the opposite sex, totally normal, that’s just a family. Living with a same-sex partner, that’s sexual. Scandalous. Parents will wonder if I trying to ‘groom’ their children into being LBGTQ. Perhaps I am a pedophile, the question will be asked. Not all parents will go there, many are gay themselves. But most likely there will be some, at least one. Better not go there just to be safe. Even if they don’t think I’m a pedophile, it will be considered highly “unprofessional” if I mention I am dating a woman. Its fine to talk about an exhusband, but not my current girlfriend, my homosexual life is “unprofessional.”
So I guess I’m a single mom then. That’s fine. Or I cam ambigiously refer to her as my “romantic partner” or just “partner.” That will work too. They can fill in the blanks if they really want to.
Recently an old friend got in contact with me and I told her my happy news, that I’m pregnant. She had an interesting response, which I can expect more of.
“Was it planned?”
Yes, it was very planned. I paid close to $1600 for sperm and a professional midwife to stick a tube up my uterus and inject said sperm into me. I repeatedly peed on paper strips to moniter my LH serge, looked at my own cervix with a speculumn and a mirror to see if it was open, analyzed my mucus, took my temperature, learned to recognize subtle ovulation cramps, counted each day of my cycle and freaked out to my poor midwife about if we had the timming down. I repeated this three times, once each a month, and I’m so happy it only took three months. Yes, it was very, very, very planned.
I just told her “Yes it was.”
If my students ask, and they will, who is the father of my child, I can’t tell them it’s a sperm donor, that’s considered taboo. Somehow this is also innapropriate and above all else should not be disclosed. My plan, is to say my baby has no father, it’s just me. Then they will probably assume I was knocked up after a one-night stand. Sex is more appropriate than not having sex, that’s considered professional.
Pregnancy is often considered shameful, because it involves sex. A woman is pregnant because she (shudders) had sex. If she is young, she is taboo because she must have had sex young. If she is unmarried, she must of had premartial sex. Hester in the scarlet letter never would never have been called out if it weren’t for the fact that she became pregnant, thus unable to hide the fact she had (shudder) sex. People outlaw abortions, stating if women didn’t want to become pregnant, they shouldn’t have had sex. Many christians believe sex is wrong and any woman who engages in it, is just asking to become pregnant.
Let’s just analyze something here. My child was not concieved in “carnal lust.” I recieved no sexual pleasure from my Inter-uterinen Insemination (IUI). There was no sex involved in my baby making. My child was not called into existence through some week moment sexual pleasure, as it will be assumed. There was no adultry, no pre-martial sex, no sex what so ever. You’d think that wold be a good thing, but instead, it’s “artificial insemination.”
So why is it, what I did considered “artificial insemination?” I’m really not fond of this term at all. My pregnancy is no more artificial than anyone else’s. The morning sickenss is pretty darn real, the heartbeat is real, the fatigue is real. I mean sex is considered a bad thing, pregnancy because it comes from sex, but not mine, so therefore it’s “artificial.”
Okay, I have a better term for my child’s conception, one many christians have heard of. How about, immaculate conception? You know, conception, like getting pregnant, immaculate as in it didn’t involve sex. That’s me allright. I have concieved a child, sans any sex at all. The virgin Mary, she gets pregnant without having sex and she’s freaking worshiped for it. I’m “artificial.”
So, my no-sex immaculate conception is not school appropriate, and sexual pregnancies are, because sex is appropriate? Backwards logic present here. Perhaps, because I am in lesbian relationship, not a straight one, and this is the way lesbians have babies, without sex, and sex is bad, so my pregnancy is bad? It kind of feels like my immaculate conception is being shamed for not involving sex, sex is unprofessional, so I must not talk all about it.
Or perhaps, the real controversy here, is that I am making a child, without a man. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the sperm donor, I owe him some gratitude. But, I have become a mother without being tied to a man. How dare I not rely on a man for my motherhood? How dare I have a child with no strings attached to a man? Isn’t that wrong? If women like me start going after their dreams without being tied to a man, then what purpose will men serve in our society? What if we just do away with all men and only keep a few select around for sperm production?
No, we’re not going to do that. Feminists like myself, believe everyone should have rights regardless of gender. Contrary to what patriarchy says, we’re not here to put down men and exploit them. There are plenty of women who love men and want to be attached to them forever. Also, I’m not into discriminating against men, I don’t hate men, I just don’t want to have sex with one, thank you very much. Don’t worry boys, you probably don’t want to have sex with me either, I’m pregnant, 40 years old, and well, fat. It will be okay, we don’t want to replace you.
Anyway, I’m super happy to be with child. I’m proud of my immaculate conception, even if I have to keep it to myself and let others wonder if this was some sort of mistake on my part. I guess children that came from lust and sex and more professional that immaculate, uh I mean artificial insemination.
