Stuck in the Middle With You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders (34 page)

CM:
It’s so George Costanza.

JFB:
Exactly. It’s the transgender equivalent of George Costanza.

CM:
“I’m an architect!”

JFB:
So what did Lisa do when you finally spilled the beans?

CM:
I said, “I have to tell you something.” She’s like, “What?” And I said, “Well, you know, when I said I was married?” I don’t remember exactly how I said it, but I said something like, “I wasn’t the woman in the marriage.” [
Laughs
] I was trying not to have to say it.

And this is when I fell in love with her. She just said, “I’m attracted to you. You don’t have to go into all that right now. I just want to sit here and have dinner and get to know you. That doesn’t matter to me.” Which, at that moment, was pretty cool.

JFB:
As the relationship deepened, did you have to negotiate your former male identity in any way? Did she have to get her mind around it, or did she essentially say, “Okay, I’m with you, I’ll follow you,” from that moment onward?

CM:
She was, like, an A-student in gender studies. Being a feminist and a lesbian, I—well, that doesn’t qualify her, because there are a lot of feminists and lesbians that do not get the transgender thing at all.

JFB:
Not to mention gay men. I’ve seen that. What’s the phrase about, “To someone who only has a hammer, everything looks like a nail?”

CM:
I agree. But she got it.

JFB:
How long after—how long into the relationship did you start talking about kids?

CM:
I kind of wanted to get this done by the time I was forty. And yet—this is the kind of thing you don’t push somebody into.

JFB:
It was a biological clock for you, in a way.

CMG: Yeah, more than one, because I was scared that my sperm wouldn’t work the longer they sat.

JFB:
Was there a moment when she finally agreed? When she said, “Okay, let’s do this”?

CM:
It was her idea. She said, “Let’s start doing this.”

JFB:
What was that like?

CM:
It took us years to get pregnant. We tried, and then stopped for a while, because it was really emotionally hard to go through that and not get pregnant. The difference with in vitro is that when somebody gets pregnant naturally, you either are or you aren’t. When you
do in vitro there’s, like, ten different steps where you have to sweat it out for each pregnancy. It is tormenting. It is really just gut wrenching. We had a miscarriage.

I felt like I was in Las Vegas. Like, keep rolling the dice.

JFB:
Tell me about the birth of your twins.

CM:
The day Lisa gave birth, I had been putting furniture together, which, there you go, there’s a manly thing. That was my job.

JFB:
I did that, too.

CM:
I got stuck with that gender role. But then, I wasn’t the one that was pregnant.

JFB:
I find that there are certain things that still fall to me, that are the man’s job, simply because they’re not things that Deedie knows how to do. And I keep doing them out of habit, I guess. Like mowing the lawn.

CM:
I really think that that’s love. Because that really is annoying for you, probably. But you put that aside and realize that it’s just easier for you. That’s a very loving, selfless thing.

JFB:
And also, I guess my transition took away enough from Deedie that—

CM:
So there’s guilt involved? [
Laughs
]

JFB:
I feel like, in addition to everything else that she may have lost, she shouldn’t have to mow the lawn, too.

CM:
When my kids were born, it all happened so fast. One of the twins became distressed in the womb. They had that baby out in, like, three minutes. And I never felt so helpless in my life. Here I am, a surgeon, and I can’t do anything except hold Lisa’s hand.

I’ve never had so much emotion in my life, ever. It was just a flood.

JFB:
You had to induce a false pregnancy in order to breast-feed? Tell me how you did that.

CM:
As a doctor, I knew that it was possible. I followed the protocol that involves simulating pregnancy with hormones. It’s estrogen and progesterone. My simulation pregnancy was over a month before Lisa delivered—with twins, we were expecting them to be born earlier. That entire month I was just pumping nonstop, every two hours. We had a whole freezer full of milk. And you know, the first couple of
weeks of it was no good, because it had all of the hormones in it. So we only saved, like, the last week or so. But still, it was a freezer full of milk.

Lisa had no idea about the way breast-feeding takes over your life, because this was her first. It was kind of funny that I went through that on my own, first, weeks before she did. And then it took her a couple of days to actually—for her milk to let down.

The children were so small when they were born. They were only five pounds. At first we had to feed them with a syringe. They were breast-feeding as well, but they weren’t latching that great on either of us.

JFB:
What was it like when they finally muckled on to you?

CM:
Oh, I can’t even put it in words. I really cannot put it in words. It was—I was just—oh.

JFB:
Were you amazed? Were you afraid?

CM:
It was heaven. I was afraid. I don’t know, it was uncharted territory. Like, I knew the milk was good. Lisa was a little concerned that it would be like skimmed milk, or something, you know. [
Laughs
] Like—she’s like, “Is it the same stuff?”

JFB:
Is it the same milk?

CM:
And she was a little dubious about, like, is this really all right? I think that’s totally natural for a mother, to be concerned.

I will just say that there are things nobody thinks about when two women are both breast-feeding. Like, technical stuff that you don’t think about. When you have a mother and a father, the mother decides when the kids get fed. Right? The father doesn’t, really. Right?

But you know, when you have two women who are filled with pregnancy hormones and have that, like, mother-bear attitude about how things should be done … It was really crazy.

JFB:
So did that cause serious conflict between you and Lisa?

CM:
Totally not serious conflict, because the most important thing are the babies.

Eden finally latched—I breast-fed her more than Luke. Luke was never really good. Lisa hated breast-feeding. Eventually we decided to stop.

I’m putting on my science hat again—when you decide to stop,
there are hormonal issues. The strongest emotion a person can feel in their life comes from oxytocin, which is the love drug.

JFB:
Oxytocin?

CM:
That’s what’s responsible for babies’ bonding during breast-feeding. So the baby latches on, breast-feeds, your brain just [
makes oozing sound
], just, like, oozes this gooey love substance, oxytocin. Fathers are proven to have higher oxytocin before the delivery, and just stroking your child’s head. You know, when the baby—when you smell a newborn’s head, it really—that smell, it’s like—

JFB:
I just saw a friend’s newborn on Friday, and I was like, [
makes sniffing sound
]—

CM:
My niece said it the best. She came in and smelled them, and she was five years old at the time, and she’s like, “They smell like cupcakes.” [
Laughs
] And it’s universal. When you ask me what that’s like, I can’t describe it, you know, and I’m a huge fan of food and cupcakes and chocolate, and so that’s the closest I can come to it—it’s like chocolate. [
Laughs
]

JFB:
So when you stopped breast-feeding, was it a kind of a mourning, a loss?

CM:
Yes. Lisa wanted to stop before I did. The problem is, once a baby gets a nipple, a plastic nipple, it gives more milk. And so they don’t have to work as hard.

It’s a unique situation that two breast-feeders in a relationship would experience, but a mother and father would not.

JFB:
So did one of you stop breast-feeding before the other?

CM:
Yes, Lisa did.

JFB:
Lisa stopped. And how much longer did you keep it up?

CM:
Not long, because they got the nipple.

They were both so small. We weren’t all that successful at it. We were so worried about their birth weight, and making sure they got enough with the syringes. There were definitely times where, you know, we both would breast-feed and, man, I will never forget that. Like, three o’clock in the morning, four o’clock in the morning, in the little cocoon, nursing.

The heat of their body, their naked body on your chest. The
amazing thing is, it really does kind of hurt when they really get going, you know. And you just … I don’t know how else to describe it. You feel like the life force is just coming out through you. It’s so powerful. It relieves that pain that you have in your breast. It releases that oxytocin, and it’s just—it’s heaven.

JFB:
Did you ever do that thing where you would fall asleep with the children in the bed, and wake up with the children in the bed beside you?

CM:
Yeah.

JFB:
I loved that. It’s one of my strongest memories of being a father. Having gotten up in the middle of the night. And they are so small, but such an incredibly powerful feeling, the two of you together surrounding the child. With us, we also had a dog at the bottom of the bed. [
Laughs
]

CM:
And we have two, and that was also very important to me, too. We have miniature pinschers.

JFB:
So how many months along did you stop breast-feeding?

CM:
Three months. It was really emotionally painful, and I cried a lot. I was really sad.

I was pretty sure we were not going to have any more kids. So I’m like, “This is it.” It was very sad.

JFB:
Is there a moment from the last year and two months where you think, This is what it’s like to be a mother, this is it?

CM:
Yes, immediately. It was hot as Hades outside. It was, like, a million degrees. We had just had the kids. It was, like, May or June, and my mom was over, and it was, like, we had all this help, initially, because Lisa and I were just not getting any sleep and it was, like, round-the-clock feedings and the kids were small, and Lucas had an apnea monitor that he had to wear all the time, and it was just really hard. And there was a big thunderstorm, and the power went out.

And so, at this point, they weren’t really latching very well, so we both had to pump, and then feed them with the syringes. So Lisa and I are totally, like, engorged with milk. And the power’s out, and the pumps are electric. Right?

JFB:
Right.

CM:
So there’s no electricity, it’s hot as hell, we’re worried for the kids. Lisa and I are in pain. We’re both leaking. And it was the weirdest, funniest situation. And my mom’s there. She runs out to the store to get batteries, and you know, she’s just being a mom. She’s getting everything, running around like an angel. And Lisa and I are in pain, we’re miserable. When she finally came back, the batteries wouldn’t work on the pumps—something else was wrong. Lisa and I are dying.

And so, here’s the guy part of me.… I get the pump that has the backup battery power and the backup car charger. Like, I got all tech on it. [
Laughs
] I’m out in the car trying to get the car charger to work on the pump in the pouring rain. And it’s ninety-five degrees out. It’s all wet inside, like, the humidity on the windows.

I’m just trying to get some kind of relief.

And this stupid pump didn’t work that way, either. We come back in and my mom has candles lit.

And then the electricity comes back on. And we all just laugh and pump and breast-feed. And every one of us is in heaven.

ANN BEATTIE

©
Ann Beattie

I’ve got the cherry bomb, what else am I going to do with it?

Ann Beattie
is the author of seven novels, including
Chilly Scenes of Winter
and
Picturing Will
, as well as nine collections of short stories, most of which appeared in the
New Yorker
. We sat on her screened porch in York, Maine, on September 3, 2011, to drink iced tea and to talk about mothers and daughters and imagination.