Q & A with Andrea Askowitz, author of My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy

 

Q:  After years of planning to have a child with your partner, you wound up single at 34 and baby hungry. What did deciding to bear a child on your own feel like?

 

A:  I always imagined I’d have a partner and create a family.  But because I’m a lesbian I think I was already used to the idea of creating a family in a different way.  So at first, deciding to have a child on my own felt like a necessary decision.  I was approaching 35 and I didn’t want to lose the chance.  I was scared, but I felt strong.  I never expected to be so depressed and lonely the way I was when I actually got pregnant. 

 

Q:  Becoming a mother was something you had dreamed of since being a kid yourself.  How did you go about getting pregnant?  

 

A:  When I reached 30 and I didn’t have a husband and two kids, I realized I had to do a little more planning.  At first, when Kate and I were still together, her brother offered to donate sperm.  But Kate didn’t want me to be entangled with her brother and she didn’t know how we’d explain his relationship to the kid, so she nixed that idea.  I really wanted to know the donor so I resisted going to a sperm bank idea until I exhausted all other options.  I asked this wonderful man named Erik who said he would help me and then he ended up having no sperm.  Suddenly I was a lesbian with male fertility problems.

 

One surprising thing I learned is that when a lesbian makes it known that she wants to get pregnant, lots of guys say they want to have sex with her.  And I don’t think it’s just me.  I wasn’t about to do that for lots of reasons, mostly legal.  And also emotional.  I realized with Erik, what a profound and complicated commitment having a baby with someone is.  So I went online and picked my sperm, much like Internet dating.  I’m so glad, in the end, that I did it that way.  

 

Q:  About three-quarters of the way through your pregnancy, you declare that your mission is now to tell everyone just how terrible pregnancy can feel.  You spare none of the details:  24-7 nausea, ex-girlfriend drama, depression, and flaky friends. Did you ever question how much to reveal? 

 

A:  No way.  Women need to know the truth—pregnancy is not all earth-momma and pregnancy glow.  Pregnancy sucks.  Well, it did for me.  And no one’s talking about it.  Maybe if I had heard of that possibility before I got into it, I wouldn’t have been so shocked by reality.  I would still have done it, don’t get me wrong; I just might have been a little more mentally prepared.

 

Q.  You get very personal in this memoir.  Did you ever question how much of yourself to reveal?  Did you question how much of someone else’s story to reveal?

 

A:  I think I have a different sense, than most people, for what is private and what is public.  And I don’t really care if someone knows something about me that might be embarrassing.  I also think that real details make for a much more interesting story.  So, while I’ve been accused of being an exhibitionist, I like to think that I’m just generous with details.

 

The hard part though, even for me, was knowing how much of someone else’s story to reveal, because all of my stories involve other people.  Like with Kate.  I hope she knows that I wrote what I wrote out of love.  If not, I’m sure I’ll hear about it.  But with Robin, that was even harder because she can’t call me up and say, “Wait a second, you got that all wrong.”  Robin’s mom is angry about some of the ways I portrayed her.  And I feel terrible that I’m hurting my friend’s mom, who I love, and who lost her daughter.  So I struggled a lot with what to write about Robin (who’s name I changed).  Ultimately, after talking to all of my writing mentors, I decided that I had to tell this story the way I felt it.  And thank God I have the family I have.  My dad, for instance, said, “That’s your story, I can always tell mine.”

 

Q:  Did having a child make you closer to your family?  

 

A:  Growing up, I thought I had the best family.  Then at 23, I came out and everyone freaked, even my dad, who’s totally mellow.  My brother tried to set me up with his fraternity brothers.  My mom suddenly got concerned with how much makeup I was wearing and if I had armpit hair, even though she’s a total feminist.  I think her biggest fear was that her baby was not going to have a baby.  So when Tashi was born, everything changed.  My mom is back to being my biggest fan and my brother stopped trying to set me up with frat boys. 

 

Since having a child, I realized that maybe much of the distance with my family was coming from me.  I felt like an outsider for years.  I saw myself as the crazy, alternative, bike-riding, hippie kid, living alone in California while my brother was a home-owner and a father of three.  Maybe my emotional exile had nothing to do with them.  That realization was both sad and liberating.

 

Q:  Some of the most touching parts of the book describe your friend Robin, who died of cancer shortly after giving birth. Was your friendship an inspiration to you?  

 

I think Robin was the first woman I was in love with.  She was my best friend in high school.  By the time she died, we weren’t friends like we had been and I was angry at both of us for not repairing our friendship before it was too late. 

 

Depression is terrible because it can really distort your entire perception.  While I was pregnant and depressed, I was pissed at the world, and no one was spared, not even my dead friend.  I saw Robin as a coward.  I was mad at her for not being more emotive, mostly because she didn’t talk to me about how afraid she was before she died.

 

Then, once I had the baby and I wasn’t depressed anymore, I started to think of her differently.  I sort of woke up and realized, Hey, Robin was an adult.  She was a loving wife and mother who dealt with the worst thing possible; her own death, and she left two small children.  I can’t think of many things sadder.  And she was poised and elegant the whole time.  To put it ridiculously mildly, she had real problems.  Who knows how I would deal in that situation?  Probably like a huge baby.  I’m inspired by her now, that’s for sure.

 

Q:  You say that having Tashi made you the best you that you have ever been. Has having a child affected your faith? 

 

This is such a hard question and I love it.  If you are asking, did becoming a parent bring me closer to God, I don’t know.  Because I still don’t quite know what God is.  But if God is love, then something divine did happen to me.  As corny as this sounds, since having Tashi, my capacity for love is more enormous than I ever thought possible. 

 

If you’re asking about faith in terms of religion, then having a child has definitely affected my faith.  My mom would say that I’m a total pagan, but since having Tashi, I care more about Judaism than I ever did before.  Sometimes I even light candles on Shabbat.  And this year I got really into Chanukah, which I usually regard as the bastard child of Christmas.  I’m realizing that I want my daughter to be Jewish, if she wants to be.  She doesn’t need to have a Bat-Mitzvah or to go to synagogue, I just want her to feel she’s Jewish.  For me, it’s about identity.    

 

Q:  Late in your pregnancy you try to have sex with a man.  Even your friend Ravi says, “But you’re a lesbian.”  What do you think this means in terms of your sexual identity?

 

A:  I think sex can be just sex, although I prefer sex with love.  But I have always enjoyed sex with men.  So if I’m made to label myself, I’d say I’m a bisexual lesbian.  I can have sex with a man and like it, but I can only love and have only been in love with a woman.  That has been my experience.

 

Q:  You held on tight to the idea of Kate for all of your pregnancy, even though you two had broken up months before you got pregnant.  Would you characterize your feelings and actions as romanticism or fantasy?

 

A:  I wasn’t exactly Florentino Ariza from Love in the Time of Cholera who held a spark for 50 years for the woman he loved.  Or maybe I was.  I see now, much more clearly that my relationship with Kate had lots of problems.  And she always said I was living in fantasy, when I said I wanted to be with her.  But I loved her and I wanted her back.  I don’t know.  Is there a difference between fantasy and romanticism?

 

Q:  Would you get pregnant again? 

 

A:  No.  Next time I want to be the daddy.

 

Q:  Are you still single? 

 

A:  I’m totally in love. 

 

I have one bit of advice or insight for women contemplating having a baby alone.  Do it.  Especially if you have good friends and family around you.  And a little money helps too.  Women and I suspect men, will still be attracted to you with a baby on your hip.