Times Two: Two Women in Love and the Making of a Happy Family

Prologue \ From the beginning of our relationship, we knew we wanted children. Each of us had moved up the ladder with relative ease in our chosen career fields, so we naïvely thought the most difficult thing about getting pregnant would be making the decision to do it. We were wrong. First one of us tried, then the other, with no success. And then, all at once, we were both pregnant: on the same day, with the same donor, and with due dates that fell three days apart. Immediately, every single person we knew had one question: “How are the two of you going to do this?” Easy, we thought—there are two of us. One of us would run errands. The other would offer foot rubs. We’d rotate the late-night dog walks and order every meal in. Since we’d conquered the music business and the publishing industry, a little morning sickness would be a piece of cake, right? We pictured a sort of pregnancy fire brigade, each of us pitching in to help the other until we got too big, at which point we would … well, we hadn’t thought that far. “Let’s just celebrate!” we told our friends and family.\ And thank God for our friends and family! It’s like they knew when asking us the fateful question of how we were going to do this, the real answer was “You’ll be helping us, sillies!” By the time we were in our ninth month, our home had a revolving door on it—with mothers delivering meals, siblings lugging baby shower loot, fathers assembling things they never knew existed, and friends dog-sitting and driving us to appointments.\ Our grand delusions about the joys of pregnancy were squelched by the second trimester. Between the two of us, we experienced every pregnancy-related ailment listed on www.Babycenter.com., from numb hands to swollen ankles to inappropriately timed laughter. “I knew this was going to be fun,” one of us would mumble sarcastically in bed, and the other would mutter, “I just had no idea how much fun,” finishing the sentiment. Then we would roll over and snuggle with our individual body pillows.\ But with our unlikely twins growing inside of us, every moment of those nine months taught us more about life—and our relationship—than any baby book, therapy session, or birth doula could. We learned, for example, that our mothers are always right. We learned that God has not come up with a better way to get a baby out than to have the body turn itself inside out like a tight-fitting pair of your favorite Jordache jeans from 1984. And that homeopathic remedies like moxibustion and traditional therapies like Pitocin and epidurals all work—depending on your definition of the word “work.”\ This book is our family’s personal story. But in many ways, it’s a story for anyone who has ever taken a pregnancy test and felt the heart-wrenching disappointment of a negative result. It’s for families who would go to any lengths to conceive a child. It’s for anyone who has ever been told their way of life is not acceptable. But mostly, it’s for any woman who has fervently wished that her partner could just understand what it was like to be pregnant. Let this book be your empathetic partner, because our story redefines what it means to walk in another person’s shoes. Trust us, we’ve been there … Times Two.\ © 2011 Kristen Henderson and Sarah Kate Ellis

Prologue xi\ Chapter 1 She's Leaving Home 1\ Chapter 2 The Rising 16\ Chapter 3 Love Walks In 29\ Chapter 4 Like a Rolling Stone 40\ Chapter 5 Long Ride Home 55\ Chapter 6 This Is How a Heart Breaks 73\ Chapter 7 The Power of Two 85\ Chapter 8 Talk of the Town 103\ Chapter 9 She Said, She Said 115\ Chapter 10 A Whole New You 128\ Chapter 11 Natural Woman 136\ Chapter 12 Beautiful Child 151\ Chapter 13 Anticipation 164\ Chapter 14 One Small Year 175\ Epilogue 203\ Acknowledgments 205

\ Publishers WeeklyEllis and Henderson, respectively the VP of Marketing for Real Simple and a founding member of the female rock band Antigone Rising, detail how they met, fell in love, and felt, for the most part, content with life, but for one thing: they wanted children. While the experiences of their peers leads them to think that it will be easy, they discover that the process is actually much more difficult than they would have thought. When they try to double their odds by both attempting to get pregnant, the unthinkable happens-they do, within days of each other. Despite the ensuing chaos of simultaneous pregnancies, the end result is extremely rewarding. Henderson and Ellis play off of each other well in the book; their differing perspectives makes for an enjoyable read. While their focus is clearly on the pregnancies-and that narrative is solid-they could have spent more time establishing themselves and their relationship outside of their desire to have babies. But readers who share their enthusiasm for building a family will find a lot to like. \ (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.\ \ \ \ \ From the PublisherThis is a tender and touching story of two talented women falling in love and forming a beautifully unconventional family. Readers will be fascinated by their simultaneous pregnancies and dual journeys into motherhood. Times Two offers wonderful perspectives on the joys and challenges of contemporary lesbian life. \ —Nanette Gartrell, MD, author of My Answer is NO…if that's okay with you: How Women Can Say No With Confidence\ Principal Investigator, US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study\ “Kristen Henderson and Sarah Kate Ellis have written a book so disarmingly funny, touching and readable, that you almost forget it is about all the important issues of our time—women's rights, civil rights, and family rights. The journey of Kristen and her partner, Sarah, in their quest to have a child, seems like Nora Ephron's idea of a script—hilarious at times, frustrating, maddening and, finally, a Hollywood style happy ending. This book captures the political zeitgeist of all the modern families in the country, and shows that, whatever your beliefs and affiliations, the most important component in the make-up of a family is love.” —Cherie Currie, Lead singer of The Runaways and author of Neon Angel\ "What was it Tolstoy said? Happy families are all alike? This book proves the great Russian writer was absolutely wrong. Happy families come in all varieties. This funny and touching book is Exhibit A." — A.J. Jacobs, bestselling author of My Life as an Experiment and The Year of Living Biblically\ “Kristen and Sarah somehow make a "slice of life" story of love, career and family into an entertaining page turner… This book helps to carry a movement, a shift in paradigm, that has been a long time coming. I hope Times Two reaches a wide and varied audience of readers so that this truth becomes our new norm: society needs healthy, loving, functioning families regardless of how they are made or how they look.” —Kathy Valentine, bass player and member of The Go-Go's\ "A spirited portrait of an unconventional family." —Kirkus Reviews\ "Henderson and Ellis present, without breaking a sweat, a compelling case that the kids are alright, and so are the moms. " —Library Journal\ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsAn unexpected double pregnancy surprises and challenges a publishing executive and her rock-guitarist girlfriend.\ The importance of starting a family became paramount for Ellis, vice president of marketing for Real Simple, and her girlfriend Henderson shortly after the New York couple met at a Manhattan lesbian bar in the mid '90s and began a relationship after reuniting there years later. Ellis recalls growing up business-minded at a young age, eager and determined to leave her Staten Island roots. Once her career took off, however, she struggled with the constant cloaking of her sexuality. Henderson was drawn to music early and enjoyed forming girl bands in high school. She experienced a Lilith Fair performance in college and, together with all-girl rock band Antigone Rising, was signed by a major label in 2003. Both writers braved a series of unsound lesbian relationships before embarking on their own together. Soon committed to each other and carefully contemplating their future—Ellis in New York nurturing her publishing career, Henderson on the road with her band—talk of children surfaced as both yearned for a child. The authors describe their misadventures in ovulation cycles, sperm donors and the clinical insemination process, which was decidedly unromantic and highly stressful as false positives and a heartbreaking miscarriage crushed their hopes. With determination and the aid of medical science, both conceived simultaneously. After the births, they faced complex legalities regarding adoption and religion. Ellis warns: "When you're a gay woman contemplating motherhood, youwillbe affected by politics—whether you like it or not." Undaunted, Ellis and Henderson remain bright, engaging narrators, each evoking separate histories and private sentiments in alternating chapters that differentiate and complement each other. The book is dedicated to their children Thomas and Kate, "our perfect storm."\ A spirited portrait of an unconventional family.\ \ \