There’s nothing routine about pregnancy anyway, but most people can fall into a pregnancy “routine.” Not my bride. No sir. Before this pregnancy was over, Beth would emerge as the Medical Marvel. That’s what I called her. That’s what her health care providers called her. Of course, we laughed the whole time we were doing so. Dr. Weiss, who had turned out to be a great infertility specialist, recommended an ob/gyn he did his residency with. Her name was Dr. Susan Hellerstein and she was at Beth Israel.

Susan Hellerstein comes from an impressive medical family. Her dad was a cardiologist, and five generations have produced 14 doctors. The Hellerstein family is also the subject of a book written by David Hellerstein, who is a research psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The  most important thing for us, however, was that Susan was sensitive and caring and had a great sense of humor. I wouldn’t give you a dime for BI now, but at the time we were seeing Dr. Hellerstein, it boasted one hell of an Ob/Gyn Department. We knew that, even if there was an emergency and Dr. Hellerstein was not immediately available, the other doctors there were just as capable. We signed on with Susan immediately. Prior to moving down this road, we were sure to set up a safety net for Beth on the psychiatric side. We knew it would be touch and go.

That being said, I don’t think either of us appreciated just how much havoc pregnancy hormones would wreak on her panic disorder prior to the pregnancy. There would be days when she was perfectly calm. Not many, but some. The rest of the time, she was busy fighting off panic attacks — which became worrisome for me because of the physical toll it took on her if they got out of control. We had to learn a whole new way to distract her when panic set in. Pregnancy meant that medication had to be either cut back or changed to new medication that was safe for pregnancy. Both Dr. Fames and Dr. Emory carried pagers, and you can bet your life they both got a workout during this nine-month span.

Let me give you a little example of what we were dealing with here. I came home from work one night and everything seemed to be perfectly normal. We had decided on amniocentesis, mostly because Beth decided she was older and did not want to take a chance. I honestly do not think Beth could have handled a child with problems like birth defects. Not with her emotional situation being so  raw. (I also confess that I’m not sure what I would have done had we been confronted with the possibility of abortion. I think either situation would have or could have been emotionally disastrous for Beth.)

At any rate, she made a comment about the upcoming amniocentesis and I commented back that I believed that there would be nothing to worry about. Of course, Beth interpreted this as placating her and trivializing the process of amniocentesis. Of course, I knew that amnio can cause miscarriages. However, I wasn’t trying to trivialize. I simply saw no reason to dwell on it because she gets into trouble when she dwells on negatives. I was trying to be supportive, but it was not received that way because she was uptight about the upcoming amnio. Whatever it was, it was certainly enough to generate great strength in my bride because with one flick of the wrist, she managed to flip over on it’s top the solid teak dining room table. I remember my reaction. It was definitely, “W-T-F is your problem, woman?” She was mortified, and became totally frightened of her own strength thereafter.

The amnio was to be the least of Beth’s pregnancy problems.

The physical conditions mount

Migraine headaches are common in the first trimester. Therefore, Beth’s first pregnancy problem was migraines. What we would learn on this excursion was that Beth was in the 1% of people who would develop every complication and would suffer every drug side-effect. After her morning sickness passed, nausea from her migraines would take over. They were brutal. She could lay for hours in the dark, but it would not alleviate the problem. She was prescribed Tylenol with codeine. The first time she took them, she went into respiratory depression and we had to call 911. I remember, we were in the living room in Beverly and Beth was laying on the sofa. The EMTs were helping her there. After that episode, we went in to see Dr. Hellerstein. It was determined that she had an allergy to codeine and they would have to find another medication safe for pregnancy to help with her migraines. I know they did find an alternative and it worked. I’m not sure what medication it was, however. All I know is that the migranes stopped sometime in the second trimester.

The amnio, however, was definitely a bright spot. It came at about fifteen weeks and went just fine with Dr. Hellerstein performing the procedure. There was no miscarriage, although there was some scary moments with spotting after. The wait for the results was excruciating, but it was worth the wait: The baby was going to be fine. We hesitated when they asked us if we wanted to know what we were having, but then we finally gave in. It was going to be a girl. And that may have been the last bright spot we had. It would be hairy to the end.

Beth was carrying huge, despite the fact that she really was taking care to eat properly. We found out why when she went for her diabetes test. She was borderline gestational diabetes, but strongly leaning in that direction. That meant even more of a change in diet for the rest of the pregnancy. Again, compared to what was coming, this too would be a minor blip on the radar screen. Beth was saving the best for later in the pregnancy.

The plot thickens

Sometime around week 28, Beth developed pre-eclampsia, or pregnancy-induced hypertension. This condition is dangerous not only for the mother, but the baby. There was no big event surrounding it. No ambulance to the hospital. It was discovered on a routine check up with her primary care doctor, who then called Dr. Hellerstein. In no time, we were on our way to the BI pre-natal emergency room. Beth not only had an elevated blood pressure, but she also had the protein in her urine. She had rapid weight gain as well, but this could also have been attributed to the gestational diabetes. This would be a scene we’d repeat over and over. We’d make the drive from Beverly and they’d be waiting for us. Beth would be put on a monitor and the baby would be put on a monitor. It was tough enough worrying about Beth, but listening to Thalia’s little heartbeat was maddening. Any little blip made me jump through the ceiling.

The original goal was to get Beth to week 40. Realistically speaking, the desire was to get Beth as close to week 40 as possible. She went on complete bed rest with three months left in the pregnancy, with daily monitoring by visiting nurses to check her blood pressure. If her blood pressure went above 140, we were instructed to drive in to the ER. They would be waiting for us when we arrived. The routine would be the same. Beth and Thalia would be hooked up to monitors, and they would go about bringing down Beth’s blood pressure and the protein level in her urine. After a short stint in the hospital, she’d be released to complete bed rest.

Somewhere in the process, Beth was given steroids to help Thalia’s lungs develop more quickly. This would be crucial if Thalia were to be born prematurely. And that’s just what would happen. One night we made our routine run into BI. We expected that we would be back home a bit later that evening, but it would not turn out that way. Beth’s blood pressure was not subsiding, and the protein level in her urine was climbing, if anything. This was not a good sign. Susan Hellerstein was not on call that night, but we had a terrific doctor there anyway with Susan on the phone.

We thought they were coming in to send us home, but they announced that they thought it would be a good idea to take the baby right away. I’m sure that was Susan’s decision, and Beth was disappointed that Susan wouldn’t be handling the delivery. Beth was also disappointed that it would have to be a C-section. However, Thalia was going to be a big baby and they could not let Beth deliver naturally with her blood pressure where it was. She was in immediate danger.

Everything seemed to move in fast motion. There was no delay. The anesthesiologist was already there, so we met with him for a few minutes. Then, we met the ob/gyn that would do the C-section. I wish I could remember her name, but I cannot. Beth is generally very uptight about residents handling things like this, but this woman had made her a believer by the end of the procedure. Beth was betting that I was going to pass out when they opened her up, but I was fine. [Frankly, blood I can handle. Vomit is another story.] It went smoothly and fairly quickly. The resident held Thalia up for everyone to see and said, “Hey guys, here’s your daughter. She’s ready for college!” Thalia Francesca was born four weeks premature at 8:33 p.m. on November 27, 1996, weighing 9 lbs./6 oz. Her nickname in Neonatal Intensive Care was “Bruiser.”

I made sure Thali was okay and then ran back to Beth. Her blood pressure was in the danger zone. They put Beth in a private room in the maternity ward and gave her magnesium sulfate in an attempt to lower her blood pressure. It took a few hours, but it finally came down and the protein in her urine also worked its way down. She had dodged a bullet. By the time she woke up, little Thalia was already in the room with us. She hadn’t needed more than four hours in neonatal ICU. The next morning, Dr. Hellerstein stopped in to check on Beth and to see Thalia. She picked Thalia up and said, “Jeez, Beth, I haven’t held a newborn this big since I volunteered in Samoa.”

I had taken family leave and was not due back in work for a while. I spent my days and nights at the hospital to help Beth out.  Then, we brought Thalia to her new home in Beverly. We thought everything would be just picture perfect from here, but the plot was about to get even thicker.

Beth’s backward slide and panic attacks caused us to shelve our baby plans for a while, but she was determined to forge ahead once she felt we had found the right combination of medications and was stable enough. We were hunting around for reproductive endocrinologists, and someone recommended Dan Tulchinsky who was working out of the Malden Hospital. This guy was no lightweight. He was pretty accomplished. He was also an incredible homophobe who clearly had a problem with same-sex couples having children. I cannot recall exactly what his comment was, but it had something to do with refusing to help unless we had counseling first. While I don’t remember the exact conversation, I do remember two unspoken words that kept running through my head as he spoke. I believe they were, “Fuck you.” In spite of his credentials, Dan Tulchinsky was a totally negative experience (something that Beth did not need at this time). I brush assholes like that off, but Beth does not. It turned her off to the process for quite a while, like maybe two years.

By the way, I suppose this as good a place as any to relate the family response to our decision. There were really no issues on my side of the family, other than how some of the elders would take it once they found out. By elders, we meant good old Auntie Buddy and her sister, Auntie Muff (don’t ask, don’t tell on this one — for now). My sisters told me to do it and not worry about it. When we told Beth’s mother, her only response was, “Gay people shouldn’t have children.” Actually, she pretty much felt that gay people shouldn’t even draw a breath, so we just shrugged that one off and moved forward.

Going it alone

Our post-Tulchinsky foray back into baby making started at The Fenway Community Health Center, which has always been a great resource for the GLBT community. We were readers of Bay Windows and there was an ad there about an information session being given by a woman named Jennifer Firestone, who runs an organization called Alternative Family Matters. She was nothing like Dan Tulchinsky. She was positive and upbeat, and taught us how to deal with the negativity we’d come up against down the road. We have fallen out of touch with Jennifer now and I have been unable to find her organization on the web, but we were in touch with her for many years after.

After our visit to the Fenway, we were definitely ready to go. We left with all our ovulation charts and instructions for taking basal temperatures. All we needed was a physical and a letter from Beth’s primary care doctor stating that she was healthy enough to move forward. We had no problem getting that. Then, it was a question of deciding where to order the sperm and what kind of donor we would choose. There are many more sperm donor sources now, but back then there were just two reputable sources — the California Cryobank and one other somewhere in Virginia. We decided to go with the California Cryobank.

One other important decision we had to make was whether or not we wanted a donor who wanted to be involved, or one that wanted to remain totally anonymous. We chose the latter. What is right for each couple is different. We knew we wanted to build a family together and that we did not want to have to consult a third party for every decision. We also did not want the headache of dealing with the biological father should we disagree on certain issues. (By the way, Jennifer had chosen differently. She and her partner knew the donor and he was involved in the child’s life.) Now all we had to do was look for Mr. Right. Because we are both 100% Italian, we decided that we wanted a donor of Mediterranean descent — preferably Italian or Greek.

We had access to short bios online. If someone looked good to us, we could pay $25 to get a very detailed, multi-page report that would tell us everything about the donor: physical characteristics, education level, work history, ancestry, genetic diseases — the whole nine yards. We chose a Greek donor. Hey, what could be better — Greek and Italian. Can’t beat it. We registered with California Cryobank and sent in the required paperwork, including the letter from Beth’s doctor. We were all set and ready to go. All we had to do now was chart, order dad and break out the old turkey baster.

I do not know how it works now, but we literally had to make three attempts on our own before Beth could qualify as infertile and a candidate for artificial insemination. That meant $1,500 worth of “dad” right off the top, one of the expenses in the equation not covered by insurance. We would have no problem getting there. From the first attempt, Beth’s temps were all over the place. We couldn’t figure out if she was actually ovulating or not, but we pressed on. We’d take the temp. We’d order from California Cryobank and it would arrive via FedEx. [The first order had to go to the doctor's office as a confirmation that it was a legitimate approval. The rest were shipped to our condo in Beverly*.] Then we’d try the insemination at home and Beth would stand on her head for a while. The next step was the inevitably disappointing ept pregnancy test result.

Time to choose a new doctor

By the time our third attempt had taken place, Beth had moved on from her therapist in Cambridge to a new therapist in Newton. We’ll call her Laura Fames, even though I’d prefer to call her something quite different. In spite of my opinion of her as a therapist, she did turn us on to a great infertility specialist — Robert Weiss at Boston Medical Center. We made an appointment and brought all of our charts and bits of information with us. Beth and I both liked him immediately. He had no issues with lesbians having babies. Dr. Weiss had helped others. After looking at the charts, he determined that Beth had not been ovulating. He prescribed a round of clomid, an oral drug that induces ovulation.

The statistics we saw at the time showed that clomid was pretty successful, with pregnancy occurring within the first six cycles. We tracked temperatures again and when the time was right we went in to Boston Medical for artificial insemination. The one thing we didn’t want to do was hang around just…waiting. Then, inevitably, you start looking for signs…evening imagining them. We had a trip to Washington, D.C. planned and we stuck with it. It was one of our favorite places. We were going to drive down and hang out for a week, so we did. It kept our minds off what was hopefully going on in Beth’s body.

We stayed at the Omni in DuPont Circle because it has a large GLBT population. We did the Smithsonian in its entirety; my favorite at the time was the Air & Space Museum. We visited the Lincoln Monument and walked around the mall. We went by the White House several times, but never went on the tour. We could live without that. We visited some coffee shops. Yes, that included Starbucks. There was one right there in DuPont Circle. We ate dinner one night at Trumpets, a gay restaurant on Q Street. I remember we also ate at Nathan’s in Georgetown (now gone), but I really don’t remember any of the other restaurants we visited. We kept busy and kept our minds occupied. Because I was the Massachusetts 6th Congressional District coordinator (a fancy term for gay rights lobbyist) for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), we paid a visit to our contact at their D.C. office. Before we knew it, it was time to drive home!

A triumphant return

On the ride home, Beth wasn’t feeling that well. To be honest with you, we didn’t put much stock in that because we figured it was way too early. Before we left on vacation, we had set up a time to go back to Boston Medical Center for a blood test. It was at least a week away so, again, we tried to put it out of our minds. Over the remaining waiting time, Beth complained about her back hurting and some nausea. We chalked it up to the fact that she was a chiropractor’s dream anyway and nausea was a way of life with someone who had ulcer issues in the past and who was presently saddled with panic disorder.

Our routine continued, and we went back for a blood test. The next day, we received a call from Dr. Weiss himself with the great news: Beth was indeed pregnant! So much for routine. Nothing was going to be routine anymore. Beth’s reputation as the Medical Marvel was about to be born. The fun was just beginning.

*Here’s a funny little story about one of our sperm shipments. One Saturday morning, we waited for the delivery to arrive. It didn’t show up at the door. We waived FedEx signature requirements and it had always been there just about the same time every time. We decided to track the shipment, and the records showed that it had been delivered. I was just about to call the toll-free number when our bell rang. The little old lady in the end condo was standing there with her son, who was holding the FedEx box from the California Cryobank. She said, “I don’t think this belongs to me.” We all just started laughing.