A moving memoir in mixed verse and prose by U.K. writer Claire Lynch about her and her spouse’s journey to parenthood. After years of infertility treatments to try and start a family via reciprocal IVF (RIVF), using Lynch’s egg, her spouse’s womb, and donor sperm, they finally had twins, born prematurely. These smallest humans had to wear scale-model oxygen masks in their incubators just to stay alive. “Small is not good for babies,” they were told. “It is not whimsical or cute or the cause of admiration. It is the first time it occurs to us that they might not survive. Babies die from smallness.”
Lynch writes of finding their way through a system not structured to include two-mom families and of her own feelings as the often-overlooked nongestational mother. She moves on to explore the early days of parenthood and the later addition of a third child to their family.
While their experience is perhaps not so different from that of some other queer families, it is her telling, a blend of poem and prose that feels appropriate rather than affected, which elevates this book above many other memoirs. She looks unflinchingly at the ups and downs of becoming a parent and parenting, managing to both elucidate the details of her family’s life and to tease out the universal aspects of their experiences. There are struggles here, but there is also joy, and insights about the experience of motherhood that should resonate with many of us who also hold the title.
