Live and Let Love

Double Pregnant

Two Lesbians Make a Family

by Natalie Meisner  

“If something is truly important to you… you can’t afford to let anything stop you,” wrote Natalie Meisner in her refreshing memoir, Double Pregnant: Two Lesbians Make a Family.

Meisner’s story, written in sporadic segments much like a diary, takes turns pulling at your heartstrings and making you laugh.

Double Pregnant chronicles Meisner’s remembering of hers and her wife, Vivien’s, desperate attempts to get buns in their respective ovens; a task made rather difficult in Calgary, Alberta where cows seemed to outnumber semen donors by at least 100 to one.

The couple didn’t want to go the anonymous donor route since Vivien was adopted and always wished she’d known her birth parents.

So instead, they set out on a slew of blind dates with possible “biodads,” as Meisner calls them, hoping to find the perfect father figure.

They’re looking for someone who will want to know his surrogate children, but not be all that involved in his kids’ lives (a.k.a. the dream negligent dad).

They’d prefer someone who’s a little bit taller too, that way their kids might have a better shot at growing up to be pro athletes.

As you can imagine, expectations trump reality and the women struggle to find the elusive biodad.

Still, their unwavering persistence and good humour in the face of adversity have the reader rooting for them throughout the book’s 180 pages.

Reading about Meisner’s struggles to not just get pregnant, but to get pregnant at the same time as her wife, was a tad surreal and very rewarding.

Double Pregnant can help shift life’s petty problems into perspective. Because unless you’re urgently trying to get artificially inseminated at the same time as your partner, then you really don’t have it that bad.

All things considered, Double Pregnant epitomizes what a modern summer read should be: a smart, hilarious escape.

— Jessica Botelho-Urbanski, Outwords Magazine, July 2014

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