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\n Illustration: Palesa Monareng\n <\/p>\n
Because no two paths to parenthood look the same, \u201cHow I Got This Baby<\/a>\u201d is a series that invites parents to share their stories.<\/p>\n Jordan can barely remember a time when she didn\u2019t feel like an adult. She grew up as the eldest child in an evangelical Christian family<\/a> with a mother who was often bed-bound due to health problems and a father who worked long hours outside of the house. Jordan took on child care, laundry, and other parental duties starting at age 7. She also served as her parents\u2019 confidante, constantly kept abreast of their financial and marital woes<\/a>. By the time she was a teenager, she had lost all interest in ever becoming a parent<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019d seen what that responsibility looks like and how it could consume your whole identity,\u201d the 39-year-old says. She envisioned her adult life as child free.<\/p>\n But when she started dating Blake, whom she met during a college study-abroad program, she began to reconsider. Blake had grown up with a career-driven mom, and hearing about his childhood, Jordan started to envision a different model of motherhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAll the men I had grown up with had very limited views of what women\u2019s roles were supposed to be, and here was this guy who had grown up admiring a mom who was at the top of her field,\u201d says Jordan, who has two graduate degrees and works for a startup in Boston. \u201cI had this sense of, I\u2019m going to be supported for who I am, who I want to be, and I how I want to grow with this guy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The couple married in 2015 after six years of dating. Several years later, after copious journaling, reading, therapy sessions, and consultations with friends, Jordan decided she was ready to start trying. \u201cI decided I didn\u2019t want fear to hold me back from something that could open up my life,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n But first, she told Blake, there was one item left on her pre-kids bucket list: She wanted to open up their marriage<\/a>. She and Blake had long been candid about their sexual fantasies about other people, so Jordan said, \u201cWhat if we actually tried this for real?\u201d Blake was \u201cimmediately game,\u201d Jordan remembers. They started seeing other people together \u2014 going to sex parties where they\u2019d swing or have a threesome<\/a> with a woman or nonbinary person.<\/p>\n \u201cInitially, it was a total rocket boost for our sex life. It was really hot and we were both really into it,\u201d Jordan says. \u201cWe even framed it as: This is our last hurrah before we have kids. Let\u2019s go wild and crazy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what happened next.\u00a0<\/p>\n At first, I thought I liked threesomes with women due to the male gaze; that it was hot to be in a situation with another woman and be observed. But it shifted for me when I realized, I\u2019m interested in women separate and apart from my relationship with my husband.<\/p>\n There was one woman in particular I had a strong attraction to. With men, I\u2019d always needed to feel smaller to feel sexy, but with her, I was taller and I was attracted to that dynamic. That was a lightbulb moment. I thought, I would want to hook up with her regardless, not just because we\u2019re in this sexy circumstance.<\/p>\n When I told Blake I was bi, I thought I was taking this awareness in one area of my life and integrating it \u2014 making it more meaningful and giving it more texture. I thought I was strengthening our relationship by being vulnerable with him. But he was immediately fearful. He even said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to get divorced over this.\u201d That was really hard to hear. I felt betrayed. I had tried to be honest, but was met with fear and anger. I left for the weekend to stay with a friend.<\/p>\n When I came back, we worked it out. He apologized and framed his response as an initial reaction that he wasn\u2019t standing by. He said he was very supportive. So we resumed going to these parties and working through my sexuality as something that was going to be part of our lives that we\u2019d figure out together.<\/p>\n About a year after I came out to Blake, I told him I was interested in dating other people \u2014 but now without him involved. He said he was as well. So we set boundaries: We could see people multiple times, but it was supposed to be casual \u2014 we weren\u2019t supposed to be falling in love with other people or developing emotional attachments.<\/p>\n On my first date with a woman, Nora, I remember feeling nervous and hyperaware of my body. I felt very locked in with her in terms of our eye contact and easy conversation. I walked her to the train afterwards and I was like, How do I say good-bye? We had a quick kiss. It was the beginning of the summer. Soon we had that new-relationship energy and I wanted to see her all of the time. I started falling in love.<\/p>\n But that fall, Blake and I also started to try to conceive. We thought: We\u2019re both done with grad school, we both have good jobs, and we\u2019re both in our mid-30s. We also both wanted two kids, so timing-wise, I felt like, I need to get pregnant tomorrow.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n I knew our sex life was in a tricky stage, but we had figured out hard things before. We\u2019d been through moves and a parent\u2019s death and had a good track record of managing all of that. After a few months of failed attempts, I felt my conviction to become a mother intensify. Getting my period made me really sad. I realized there had been an energetic shift within me \u2014 I\u2019d moved away from ambivalence about parenthood.<\/p>\n I was in a Pilates class when I heard a little voice within me say, \u201cIt\u2019s time to go on an adventure.\u201d So on some level I wasn\u2019t surprised when, later that day, I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. I had this sense that This is right where I want to be.<\/p>\n Blake was over the moon. He insisted on coming with me to the first appointment to confirm the pregnancy. The doctor said, \u201cOh, there\u2019s two little people in there.\u201d<\/p>\n I was shocked but also not shocked. One of my big fears around pregnancy had been feeling like I was in Invasion of the Body Snatchers \u2014 the body-horror aspect. Blake had always joked that he hoped I would get pregnant with twins because he wasn\u2019t sure he\u2019d be able to convince me to get pregnant a second time. So my first reaction was, \u201cYou manifested this.\u201d<\/p>\n Blake and I closed our relationship during the pregnancy. I had been very honest with Nora that I was going to try to get pregnant in the fall and that Blake wasn\u2019t supportive of how emotional our relationship had become, so she wasn\u2019t surprised when I ended things. I didn\u2019t let myself feel too upset about it. I just put it in the this-is-how-it-was-always-supposed-to-be box.<\/p>\n I had a dream pregnancy. I had a little nausea, but not bad. I got tired more easily, but also had an ideal work-from-home situation, so it wasn\u2019t a problem. And even though the pregnancy was high risk because of the twins and my age, it never felt stressful because I had amazing medical care through my tech job. I\u2019d been worried I was going to feel invaded by the pregnancy, but instead I felt connected to the babies.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Blake and I started trying to understand and digest what my relationship with Nora had meant and how we were going to move on and figure out the rules post-pregnancy. He\u2019d told me about a few of the women he\u2019d enjoyed dating, but he hadn\u2019t fallen in love like I had.<\/p>\n I also wasn\u2019t feeling very sexual, so sex wasn\u2019t an aspect of our relationship at that point. We thought, Let\u2019s just focus on the pregnancy and the nesting and the excitement. Our relationship was good, but there was an elephant in the room.<\/p>\n During a doctor\u2019s appointment at 34 weeks, the doctors found that one of the twins wasn\u2019t growing anymore, and sent me to the hospital to receive the first of two steroid shots. The next day I returned for the second shot and they found I was showing signs of preeclampsia \u2014 and they wouldn\u2019t\u00a0let me go home. So all of a sudden it was like, \u201cYou\u2019re having the babies tomorrow.\u201d When Blake and I woke up the next morning in my hospital room (he slept on a pull-out chair bed), we sang to the babies together so they could hear our voices. It was sweet.<\/p>\n The doctor pronounced my C-section \u201ctextbook.\u201d Giving birth was very surreal.\u00a0Everything was super-smooth and the babies were healthy but very small, so they were whisked away immediately for tests before I could even hold them.\u00a0An hour or so later, before I\u2019d even had a meal, the clinicians wheeled a breast pump into my hospital room. I felt like, Oh, I\u2019m just a mammal.\u00a0I didn\u2019t even get to hold both of them the first night because they needed to be in an incubator. It felt like I wasn\u2019t in charge \u2014 it was the NICU nurses who were calling the shots, and I didn\u2019t mind that so much, but in retrospect, I was a little bit sad about it. But I was sad about everything for a while because one baby came home a couple of days before the other baby. When one was in the NICU and one was home, I was just a mess.<\/p>\n In the initial weeks after they were born, it was all hands on deck \u2014 figuring out sleep and feeding schedules and getting help. It was very hard for me to bond with the twins, because I was tied to a very grueling schedule: pumping and then feeding one (with a mix of breast milk and formula, as suggested by our pediatrician) and then feeding the other (with that same mix) and then pumping again. I\u2019d put them down to sleep and start all over. It was a blur and felt very mechanical. Plus, about six weeks into my leave, I got laid off. I had guessed that it was coming \u2014 my company had recently been acquired \u2014 and in a way, it was a good thing, because I had been itching to leave this job for a while and had only stayed because I had great health insurance. I was worried about finding a new job as a mom, but I\u2019m also accustomed to this kind of thing. I\u2019m an elder millennial who entered the workforce in a recession. And most importantly, I was able to negotiate a good severance package: an additional four months of pay on top of my maternity leave.<\/p>\n Blake was incredibly supportive through that whole process, encouraging me to find a new job that I\u2019d like better than the old one that I\u2019d outgrown. Our strength as a couple was figuring out all of these logistics. It was easy for us to do that and not really emotionally connect.<\/p>\n About three months after the twins were born, Blake returned to work and I stopped pumping. That\u2019s when my schedule finally opened up and I was able to spend more relaxed time with the twins. I started taking them on long walks and meeting up with other moms. That felt really good, and it boosted my confidence. I was starting to bond with the twins at that point \u2014 just by being able to hold them and snuggle them more.<\/p>\n Blake and I also stayed very focused on seeing friends and family. One of my favorite memories is hosting Thanksgiving that first year with longtime friends. It was the first time we had hosted that holiday rather than being guests. It felt like we were establishing our own family traditions.<\/p>\n When the twins were 8 or 9 months old, we visited my parents. Blake and I had always agreed that I was never going to come out to my family or his family. He also had a Christian upbringing. But during this particular visit, I was struck by the fact that being closeted with my family meant I couldn\u2019t truly be out to my kids. And if I was closeted to them, what would that mean if they ever wanted to come out themselves? I felt like a hypocrite \u2014 hiding myself but expecting my children to be comfortable with whomever they turned out to be. Simultaneously, I had the realization that I couldn\u2019t be honest with Blake about how I was feeling since he\u2019d always been adamant that my sexuality should be a secret.<\/p>\n I really started feeling this alarm in my head going off all the time. Whenever I had a moment where I wasn\u2019t taking care of my kids or trying to find a job or actively busy, my inner self was a five-alarm fire.<\/p>\n I tried to have conversations with Blake, but he resisted acknowledging that we were in a crisis. After a couple months, I said, \u201cI don\u2019t quite know what to do here. I feel like I have to start to consider divorce.\u201d That got his attention. We both started doing individual therapy and couples therapy.<\/p>\n Our biggest issue was my bisexuality: Blake didn\u2019t think it was possible for me to come out to our families without also outing us as nonmonogamous. He knew they viewed that as very taboo, and he wasn\u2019t willing to have that confrontation. That felt invalidating to me. Our inability to be vulnerable and emotionally connect in this one area kind of spread throughout the whole relationship.<\/p>\n We found we were in a reinforcing loop that locked us into miscommunication and disconnection, and each of our bids to break out of that cycle failed to land with the other person. It was heartbreaking, but we finally decided that we weren\u2019t going to be able to figure it out. We needed to get divorced.<\/p>\n About six months after I started a new job, when the twins were almost 18 months old, I told my parents about the divorce and then went to visit them a few weeks later. They didn\u2019t acknowledge the divorce. I felt isolated and unsupported.<\/p>\n When I came home, I wrote them an email. I came out to them as bisexual and said I needed a break from talking to them so they could digest the news. Three months later, I got on a video call with my parents and siblings. They said they love me even though they don\u2019t agree with my \u201clifestyle.\u201d In other words, they still think I\u2019m going to hell.<\/p>\n I told them I couldn\u2019t remain in a relationship with them like that \u2014 that\u2019s not my definition of love. Since then, my parents haven\u2019t tried to reach out to me at all.<\/p>\n About three months after deciding to divorce, Blake and I found a second apartment. We started bird-nesting right away, which is a way of co-parenting where the kids stay in the same home all the time and the parents switch back and forth between the two homes they share. It was really disorienting at first. I would jerk awake not sure where I was, thinking I was hearing my kids crying even when they weren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n I never got back with Nora because she had moved to another city. But I did reach out to another woman I\u2019d dated around the same time. We are now in an open relationship, and I\u2019m deeply in love with her. I\u2019m not dating other people right now because there\u2019s a lot on my plate, but I don\u2019t necessarily see myself being in a monogamous relationship ever again.<\/p>\n It might sound weird for someone to say they were in their 30s before they realized who they were attracted to. I had always had these emotionally rich, intimate relationships with women. And I also always thought that everyone just acknowledged that women were more beautiful than men. In retrospect, maybe I should have put those two pieces together earlier. But because of how I was raised and how early I got together with Blake, I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The twins turned 3 this summer. I haven\u2019t introduced them to my girlfriend, who I\u2019ve been with for a little over a year,\u00a0because I want to take things slow on that front.<\/p>\n I\u2019m proud of Blake and me. It hasn\u2019t always been easy, but we\u2019ve put our ability to handle difficult situations and be on the same team to use. Our bird-nesting arrangement is still going strong. We\u2019re embedded in each other\u2019s day-to-day lives in terms of groceries and laundry and rent pay. Our custody is 50-50 too. He is a wonderful dad and a really good co-parent, even though we parent differently. I really hope he\u2019s happy romantically, but he keeps that information to himself.<\/p>\n Becoming a parent has made my parents\u2019 choices more unfathomable to me. I was spanked regularly as a child<\/a>, and I\u2019m definitely not doing any physical correction with my kids.<\/p>\n Beyond that, I\u2019m doing gentle parenting \u2014 not in terms of permissiveness, but in terms of acknowledging feelings. When I was growing up, I felt I couldn\u2019t reveal anything I was struggling with. And when I did, it became a running joke in the family. I got a lot of messages very early on that my emotional interior state was not something that there was space for. So I\u2019m really trying to give space for what my kids feel. Toddlers have a lot of big feelings. My mantra with them is: Be brave, be curious, and be kind. When I see that behavior in them, I try to point it out.<\/p>\n I\u2019m thinking a lot about how I\u2019ll introduce my bisexuality to my children in the future. I want them to know they can be exactly who they are. I also have gratitude for them. Coming out to my family was something I did for my kids \u2014 I never would have done it for myself.<\/p>\n Before I had kids, I had very low expectations for the infant and toddler phase \u2014 I was more interested in what it would be like once they could communicate. But it\u2019s surprising and humbling how much you can communicate with a little nonverbal creature. The bond that I was afraid wouldn\u2019t develop actually did without me having to force it.<\/p>\n And my kids are so much fun. You can see their brains putting ideas together. I love doing things with them out in the world, even if it\u2019s just taking a picnic to a free jazz festival in the park.<\/p>\n Now that they\u2019re here, if my twins were taken away, it would be devastating. But if I hadn\u2019t had them, I still would have had a lovely life.<\/p>\n The names of the subjects have been changed to protect their identities. <\/p>\n Want to submit your own story about having a child? Email thisbaby@nymag.com<\/a>\u00a0and tell us a little about how you became a parent (and read our submission terms\u00a0here<\/a>).<\/p>\n Stay in touch.<\/p>\n Get the Cut newsletter delivered daily<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n