Being Pregnant With Three Spouses...

Almost 7 kids! I mentioned that right? In my tummy as I write this is our new little baby boy! I am 30 weeks pregnant and growing. But there is something very unusual about this pregnancy... this baby has four parents. He has had four parents from the moment we planned his conception together.

What's it like to have that many people involved in his pre-birth?
Our doctor has known about all of us from day one. Even though she doesn't understand our dynamic yet, she has always let all four of us go back for each appointment. She has also never singled out any of my spouses as my primary partner (we prefer it that way). You really could say that we are lucky, because we expected a lot more discrimination.

Living in Tennessee and being openly poly has been a lot less dramatic than we would have expected. People usually just keep their opinions to themselves and are nice to us anyway.

Setting up the nursery was super fast because two men who work well together can get twice as much done. (They won't let me do it :p but I would.)

Not everything has been perfect. My girlfriend and I have had quite a few fights trying to compromise on what kind of car-seat is safest and how the furniture should be arranged.

On top of that, I have it the easiest. For my girlfriend connecting with the baby was difficult. Men are expecting to be protective but what does an extra mother do when the baby is not in her belly? Complicate that more by the fact that we really wanted to be pregnant together. I got pregnant and she didn't and the emotions... well there were too many to keep track of. We kept trying for that second baby. She even started seeing a doctor about it (the same doctor as my OB) and we would just go to the doctor's office for appointments on the same day. It was hard on me when she would cry after the appointment because I was growing our baby.

It was a long time before she and I talked about our honest emotions surrounding the pregnancy and non-pregnancy. But when we finally let all of it out we both realized that the baby in my belly was both of ours and that we both still wanted her to get pregnant. Our perception changed. She got a lot closer to the baby after that. I think our talk made her comfortable loving the new baby without having to think about whether or not she was pregnant too. The two concepts became separate.

That same separation allowed us to de-stress about needing her to be pregnant now and focus on the reasons she wasn't getting pregnant. It allowed us the space to care about her future pregnancy in its own light without linking it to the new baby as failure to get pregnant. So, now we are taking temperatures and buying ovulation tests and trying the good old fashioned way (which is always fun). We're both excited about trying and both connected to the baby and the two things are no longer linked to one another. That was by far the biggest hurdle of our pregnancy.

For those of you that are not as lucky as me:
Polyamory on Purpose wrote an awesome blog on what to do if you find yourself poly with an unplanned pregnancy and need help dealing with the situation.