10 Questions With Authors Jaimie Kelton and Robin Hopkins
Robin Hopkins (left), Jaimie Kelton (right). Photo: Anna Ty Bergman Photography.
10 Questions With Authors Jaimie Kelton and Robin Hopkins
If These Ovaries Could Talk: The Things We’ve Learned About Making An LGBTQ Family
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Jaimie Kelton and Robin Hopkins, the creators and hosts of the popular podcast If These Ovaries Could Talk, realized the world needed to know there was more than one way to make an LGBTQ family. Each of their families came about in different ways, so how many other stories were out there? Turns out, lots. Inspired, the two friends launched their podcast asking LGTBQ families every question imaginable about their journeys to parenthood. Now the two hosts have written a book, If These Ovaries Could Talk: The Things We’ve Learned About Making An LGBTQ Family, based on dozens of interviews with stories from over 40 LGTBQ families featured from their Podcast. We sat down with Jaimie and Robin to talk about their book and their podcast.
Excerpted from the Introduction
We cover some serious ground in this book. We talk about the decision to make a nontraditional family, all the different ways LGBTQ folks can make a family, from the medical process to adoption or foster care. We cover how much it costs, and hold on to your hats, it costs a lot. And we dip our toes into the legal protections that nontraditional families need to consider and put in place.
But this isn’t just a how-to or a why-to book. We also talk about what life is like for nontraditional families once that baby arrives. What it’s like to navigate parenting roles with two moms or two dads or a trans parent? What it’s like to navigate insensitive questions like, “Who’s the real dad?” We tackle being out as a family, teaching your kids about their nontraditional family, and what life is like as the nonbiological parent. And we touch on religion, intersectionality, and gender fluidity. Like we said, we cover a lot of ground.
We think the most exciting part of this book is that you will not just hear from the authors. This isn’t a biology textbook that you found at a garage sale. Those books are fine, but this one is a lot more, how do you say, unprofessional. We don’t take positions and try to woo you toward a conclusion about what our families are like because there is no one-size-fits-all LGBTQ family. Pardon the cliché this early in the book, but our families are a veritable rainbow, made up of different experiences and different stories. You’ll be hearing straight from the mouths of LGBTQ families about their journey, and we’re here to guide you along in that process.
(Kelton, Jaimie, and Hopkins, Robin. If These Ovaries Could Talk: The Things We’ve Learned About Making an LGBTQ Family. Lit Riot Press, 2020)
1. Why an If These Ovaries Could Talk book?
Jaimie
We want to get these stories out to even more people than we were reaching with the podcast. And it basically piggybacks off of why we started the podcast. Our stories weren't out there, and we kind of couldn't believe that. So we realized that we needed to create a podcast about our families. Do you have anything to add to that, Robin?
Robin
One of the themes that we came across in the podcast regularly is that we are just like everyone else, but yet we're different. And so we wanted to get our stories out there to normalize them, to highlight our families because like we always say, representation matters. And we hear from a lot of listeners. We get emails saying, "We didn't know how to make a family and you have been such a resource for us." We thought it was really, really important to reach more people.
Jaimie
We just got the most beautiful and loving email from a young lady who doesn't have kids, not thinking of having kids yet, recently came out. And she said that our podcast helped her with her coming out process and helped her realize that she doesn't have to give up on the idea of being a mom just because she's gay, and our podcast helped her see that. She was thanking us profusely for bringing these podcasts out into the world. And that's why, right there. That's why.
Jaimie Kelton (left). Robin Hopkins (right). Photo: Anna Ty Bergman.
2. What was one of the most surprising things you learned in writing this book?
Robin
There are so many stories and there are so many ways we make our families and so many journies that people have gone on. Even though there might be 25 people who used IUI to make a baby, their journies were completely different. And I think that’s so interesting. How making our families is so different and varied.
Jaimie
Yeah, I think we knew that to a certain extent when we started this podcast. That's why we started the book, but it was really, really magnified once we put all these stories together and saw that there's not a single story that is similar. But I think for me, the thing that was most heartening when we sat down to write the book was that I had so much to say.
3. The book has two sections, making a baby when you're an LGBT or Q, and your LGBTQ family has a baby now what? Why these two sections?
Robin
These are the themes that have come up during the podcast and as we were writing the book. We realized we need to talk about that people don't know how to make an LGBTQ family. Even people in our community are like, "I didn't know how to go about it." I asked my friends. So that felt really important to talk about. But then we were also like, there's more. There are more themes that came up, and they were around these areas —Do I need second-parent adoption? What's it like to have a family and be out as a family. Whereas you can hide when you're just an LGBTQ person on your own. So there are all these other themes that came up, like how the kids turn out, and we knew we had to address those too. And it really all fit really nicely in these two sections.
Jaimie
And it also just piggybacks off the podcast as well, like when we started the podcast out, it really just started as a "how do you make your baby" podcast and we were going to delve into each couple's process, and how many IUI's you did and how many IVF's and the fertility process. Then we realized quickly that this podcast is not just about fertility, it was about all the different families.
4. You cover a broad spectrum of issues and topics throughout the book. Could you highlight one or two topics?
Robin
Jamie's making big eyes. So I'll go first. One of my favorite topics is being out as a family.
Jaimie
Oh my god, Robin. I just opened the book and look at the page. As you were saying it, I was thinking of being out of the family.
Robin
Synchronicity. That's one of my favorite chapters because it deals with I think something that's sort of unexpected for us, in that you don't realize how out you have to be because your kids are watching. Because you can't hide that you're two moms walking into a school or into a daycare. But you also can't hide because your children are watching and the importance of being out and proud as a family and teaching your kids about that. I thought that was a really, really fantastic theme. That's one of my favorite chapters.
Jaimie
I love that chapter because you can't hide. It's so true. And also the chapter about talking to your kids about your family. That one sticks with me too. It sticks with me just now because I'm still in this parenting role of talking to my kids about our LGBTQ family and I have younger kids. So it's a chapter that is an ongoing truth in my life, that I'm still explaining our family to my six-year-old and my two-year-old and I don't know if that will ever stop. Robin has older kids, so she can probably speak to that, but it's this ongoing thing. And so I love the entire part two of the book because it's, I'm going to use a word here that Robin loves, it's evergreen.
Robin
Yes. And I agree. My kids are 9 and 11. And we still talk about it, about what it's like to be an LGBTQ family and what it means for them. And as they're out in the world, and they're different, and you just keep aging the conversation up. So it was nice to hear from kids in LGBTQ families.
Jaimie
Yeah, my daughter has just started to understand what the word gay means. Because it means that Mommy chose a girl sweetheart, and so she's gay. Now her new thing is when she's talking about her friend's parents, she says, "Oh, yeah, but they're not gay. They have a dad."
Robin Hopkins (left), Jaimie Kelton (right). Photo: Anna Ty Bergman.
5. There are so many distinct voices in the book over 40. How challenging was it to work with the material from your podcasts and guest interviews to make this book?
Jaimie
It was a lot of work.
Robin
Well, I would say it was a lot of work to put it together to make sure that we were choosing the right material to highlight their fantastic stories. But the people's voices are so distinct. Their stories are so intentional and separate and different, that that part was easy. It was that we had a wealth of material to choose from it was culling it down and being like, "Oh, I want to put this in, but we already have too much." So that was hard for me, saying "when." The book could have been 1000 pages.
Jaimie
Yes, yeah. We had a lot to choose from, but I think what you said, Robin, the choosing of which clips and which quotes to use from people kind of jumped out of this right away. When we had narrowed down to what we wanted to talk about, we were quick to realize, "Oh, we've got to go back to this episode because I remember that person saying something really good on this theme." But I think the hardest part was we had so much footage to cull through and clean up, it was a lot.
Robin
I wish you could see Jamie's face as she's talking about the editing process because it was cumbersome.
6. Introducing each chapter you each share your own personal journeys captured in these wonderfully written author narrative vignettes. Is there one narrative story in particular that stayed with you?
Jaimie
I love it. I love that they said wonderfully written.
Robin
Thank you. Thank you.
Jaimie
I think for me, the one that sticks with me is from talking to your kids about your family. There's a story that sticks with me I think about all the time is when I was walking to school with my daughter who was four or five at the time, and a little girl teased her a little bit about not having a dad You have to read the story to hear the full thing but that sticks with me. That story was one of the easiest ones to write because it's something that I think about a lot, about how she's gonna have to go into the world differently, and how I am going to navigate that until she's an adult and has her own ways of dealing with it.
Robin
The one that sticks with me the most is the one about my wife Mary as the non-bio mom. She was talking about being worried about if she was connected to the kids because she wasn't genetically tied to them. And my daughter asking would she be the same kid if I had never gotten together with Mary but I had used the same sperm donor to make her and me realizing as I was writing it that no, she wouldn't be the same kid because she has all of these influences that come from Mary, my wife, even though she doesn't have the genetics. She is made from both of us. That one really stayed with me.
7. Is there a funny moment from the book you'd like to share?
Robin
I love the moment in Jana and Linda's story. Linda is talking about when she was trying to find a known donor. She kept having problems with one ovary. And then she was having problems getting pregnant. And she started off being like, I need a black man, I need a black man donor. And then by the end, she was like I need to really think about my hotness as a lesbian and that she had to be less picky in her donor choice if she was gonna find somebody. I love that story.
Jaimie
That's a good story. I think mine is Patricia and Kellen's story of when they were trying to use a known donor and they were going to pick up the sperm from a friend and he would leave it on the window sill and they drive over on their Vespas, pick up the sperm and bring it home.
Robin
They were worried that the Vespa was gonna ruin the sperm. Oh, I love that story.
Jaimie
It's such a lesbian story. That's a funny story.
8. Is there a heartwarming moment from the book you'd like to share?
Jaimie
I think there are many heartwarming moments in this book. It's hard to pick just one. I would say that Tiq Milan. I think he has so many things he says that are so heartwarming and so powerful. Reading through all of his quotes warms my heart. You know sometimes when you're in an interview you don't realize how prolific they're being and how powerful the things they're saying are, and then when you look back at it in written form, it's, "Wow, that person had really some strong thoughts about it and has really thought deeply about a lot of these topics." And that was really resonant to me.
Robin
I would say there was a quote from Gary and Tony where they talk about being out as a family and they were in a Burger King in Pennsylvania on a road trip. And they were very aware of being two dads with a young kid and they were afraid they were being judged that they were doing something wrong with the child, and some older woman came up and said something like, "My daughter's gay and it's just so nice to see your family." And he said something to the effect of, "If you want to get to know us, come say hi. We're right here." I have goosebumps just thinking about that one. I loved it.
9. From the subtitle, the things we've learned, could you share one to two things you've learned through your own experience producing and hosting your podcast and or writing the book about making an LGBTQ family?
Robin
I did not know how much money people using surrogacy have to spend. That was a big eye-opening moment.
Jaimie
I agree with you on that. I learned a lot about two men making babies because I didn't know that much about them at all. Also, I knew there were so many ways we make our families. I knew that, but I really didn't understand the vastness of how many ways there really are when you think about surrogacy and egg donors and adoption and fostering and fostering to adopt and IVF and I UI and reciprocal IVF. There are so many ways, and we've all tried them. I think that's what was really eye-opening just that I knew it was going to be a lot of stories and a lot of paths, I just didn't realize how many and how different they all would be.
Robin
Yeah. I also didn't realize how many people were trying outside of the medical pipeline. We're doing innovative things with friends, creating non-traditional families, or trying at home with what we call the turkey baster method. I didn't realize how much of that was going on. I think we all just think the path we took is how every two-mom family is created and then you realize, no, we're doing all kinds of different cool stuff.
Jaimie
Right because your circle of friends is the ones you know the most about who've done it. And Robin, we're in the same circle of friends, and we all kind of went about making our families pretty much the same way. So when we opened up the circle to all these other people throughout the world, we learned, oh God, people are doing this in all kinds of ways. That was eye-opening.
10. We're not going to give away the end of the book, but it's a wonderful tribute to LGBTQ families. What's one aspect from that chapter you'd like to share with your readers.
Jaimie
We want you to know, it's important to note that one thing that's the same, but also different about our families is that none of our families are accidents. And I think it's important to note that when it comes to LGBTQ families and people who might think that folks like us shouldn't have children, none of these families are accidents, every single family in this book took a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money.
Robin
And intentionality. We have to be very intentional with our families.
Jaimie
Yes. And that is an important theme that runs throughout this book. It takes work to make our families and we're committed to it. I think it's important to know that none of these families were accidents.
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Product Details
Category: Nonfiction (LGBTQ, LGBTQ Family, LGBTQ Parents)
348 Pages | 6 x 9 | 1.2 lb
ISBN: 978-0999294390 | Paperback $18.95
ASIN: B08LK4SV8W | AudioBook $17.50
We asked Jaimie and Robin about one piece of advice they would give people just discovering the If These Ovaries Could Talk podcast and their book. Where should people start with If These Ovaries Could Talk?
Jaimie
Start at the beginning. Start at the very first episode.
Robin
Yes, start at the beginning of the podcast because we have so many people who say they discover the podcast, and then they go back to the beginning. And then they binge all of them to get caught up. Because the stories are so unique and interesting and different. And then I would say, get involved in our social. Jamie and I like to have a lot of fun with videos. What we like to say about ourselves is that we're absolute idiots, but in a good way. We think there's some very good, funny content on there that helps brighten up your day as well as talk about parenting and being an L, G, B, T, or a Q. Yeah, having pride in our families and we like to be really silly.