My Lesbian Experience

I have a client who doesn’t have a lot of support surrounding her for her upcoming birth.  So she asked me to attend her childbirth education class, and I agreed.  I’m fairly well versed in what goes on during a birth.  My client (let’s call her Cee, just so she’s got a name) was as well, but felt she should see if the childbirth education class held anything she had missed in her self-education about all things birth.  I figured it would be a breeze, little did I know what I was in for.

We’re about the same age, and get along really well.  We probably could have been friends if we had met in different circumstances, and so Cee doesn’t always elicit professionalism from me.  Hard to imagine, right?  We also have had a fairly prolonged doula/client relationship and have gotten fairly comfortable with each other.  She also happens to be not the same skin colour than I am.

So Saturday at 8am, I inadvertently found myself part of a interracial lesbian couple.  At least according to the twenty-some odd couples and the CBE educator; it was a bit of a wild experience.

The only way that I was aware of this perception that the educator happened to hold was because she seemed to be flustered by the whole thing.  She apparently had pretty heteronormative language built into her class, making reference to husband or boyfriend, referring to the pregnant woman’s partner as the “father”.  When she happened to look at us, she would quickly correct herself with a huffy sort of “and partner, I guess”.  There was also a portion where a woman asked about how to handle the birth certificate stuff when the father was overseas and unable to present himself to “claim the baby as his own”.  The educator told the woman to contact the hospital and they would get her in touch with the person who could answer that question.  She then looked directly and Cee and me and said “You two probably should just talk to a lawyer.  I doubt the hospital will know how to handle the situation where there IS no father”.

At this point, I was absolutely livid.  It took almost all of my restraint to not call that woman out on her bigotry.  We managed to get out of the class without me making an ass out of myself, but it really got me thinking.  I actually apologized to Cee, both for this woman’s horrific behaviour and my inability to find a constructive way to address it within the class.

Is THIS what gay and lesbian couples go through, when they attempt to access these classes we promote as part of a “good” parenting experience?  Is THIS what single mothers get when they reach out for help and support?  I am sincerely sorry for anyone building their family if this is the type of help they get.  Please know that there are people out there that want to support you in the best way possible.