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Thirteen years ago, shortly after Andy Miller and his partner welcomed their newborn son into the world, a homophobic nurse approached the birth mother in an attempt to make her second-guess her decision. Though Andy and his partner ultimately brought their newborn home, the experience with the nurse was an early taste of what being same-sex parents might entail. We recently caught up with Andy, who updated us on his life as the father of a teenager during quarantine, the places where he finds support, and how there isn’t just one type of family.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:05
Welcome to this week’s Story Update. Today, we’re going to be speaking with Andy Miller, who shared
00:09
his story with us about five years ago. But before we chat with Andy, let’s take a look at his story.
00:15
I’m Andy Miller and I’m from South Houston, Texas.
00:21
My partner and I decided that we wanted to be parents. So after a lot of planning,
00:26
a lot of research, and frankly just a lot of blind faith, we started on an adoption journey.
00:37
We started working with an agency in Austin, Texas, where we live.
00:40
It actually happened really fast for us. We matched to our son’s birth mother within probably
00:46
a month of being with the agency. It was a bit of a whirlwind. We got a call on a Monday and said
00:55
that someone wanted to speak with us and she was going to call us on Tuesday, she happened to just
01:01
live in San Antonio, just down the street from where we lived, and we talked to her on Tuesday.
01:08
On Wednesday we made a plan to drive down to San Antonio to meet her for dinner, meet her and
01:13
her family. It went very well. By the time we got back to Austin we were told that she had picked us
01:20
and then on Thursday we were invited to come back down because she was having a sonogram
01:26
to figure out the sex of the child. So we said, “Yes, sure, of course we’ll come
01:31
down.” And we drove down to San Antonio again and we found out we were having a little boy.
01:38
We also found out she was very pregnant and in fact her doctor was saying they were going to
01:45
perform a c-section on the following Thursday. So we had all of one week
01:50
after finding out the sex of the child that we were going to be bringing a baby home.
01:56
The following Thursday, we drove down to San Antonio, checked into a hotel, went to
02:01
the hospital, our birth mother was wheeled into surgery, c-section was performed, our beautiful
02:07
son was born. We went into our birth mother’s room after she was wheeled out of surgery,
02:14
she was recovering. When they brought our son in, it was amazing to hold him for the first time to
02:22
get to see her interact with him the first time. We went out to eat, went to grab something
02:30
out of the hospital, and went over to a local mall that was near the hospital.
02:36
And the strange thing was, there was just no cell service there so we were completely isolated.
02:43
We ate, we talked, just decompressed a little bit.
02:47
When we got back in range of cell service when we were walking back to the hotel,
02:53
there were all these messages that popped up on our phone, and it was our son’s birth mother.
02:57
And she was crying, and she said, “Where are you? I need to talk to you.” And we rushed
03:01
back to the hospital and she starts telling us that one of the nurses that was assigned to her
03:09
to come in and check all of her sutures started asking her a lot of questions, starting with,
03:16
“Aren’t you the girl that’s giving your baby up for adoption?” which is a huge red flag for
03:22
us. We went through adoption class and anyone who uses that term like “giving up a baby” is already
03:28
coming to that conversation with some judgment. And she said, “Yeah,
03:32
I’m having a baby and he’s going to be adopted.” “And you’re giving him to those two boys?”
03:39
She said, “Yes.” And she said,
03:41
“I don’t know how you’re going to do that. Aren’t you afraid he’s going to hate you for doing that?”
03:48
And she said, “Well, that’s not really any of your business.”
03:52
And the nurse just kept going on and on asking questions about, “Aren’t you afraid those boys
03:58
are going to hurt that baby, aren’t you afraid that he’s not going to grow up and be normal?”
04:04
And she got really upset so she just kind of shut down. We were very scared that we were going
04:12
to fail to place, which is a common adoption term when the birth mother
04:17
chooses not to place a child for adoption. Fortunately, everything else seemed to go okay.
04:23
We did have a fairly smooth experience where our social worker came in, talked to our birth mother,
04:30
and she asked her many times, “Are you sure you want to do this? You can back out at any time”
04:35
giving her plenty of opportunities to evaluate her situation to make sure she was of a clear mind.
04:41
We were not allowed to be in the room during that process. We were downstairs in the lobby
04:47
talking about our hopes of what was going to happen, but trying to be very
04:55
practical and steel ourselves for our social worker coming off the elevator and telling us
05:00
she changed her mind. So we were sitting down there with my mother
05:06
and being very calm, trying our best, and when our social worker came off the elevator and just kind
05:14
of flashed us a thumbs up, all three of us just kind of broke down in tears at that point. We
05:22
left the hospital completely freaked out because they just gave these two boys a baby,
05:27
we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. But one of the best pieces of advice my mother gave me
05:34
before she left was, “Just pay attention. Listen to the baby. He will tell you what he needs.
05:43
If he’s hungry, he’ll tell you. If he needs to be changed, he’ll tell you. Not in words, but if
05:48
you’re paying attention you’ll figure it out.” No one’s given an easy ride when a child
05:53
enters the world. There’s always two things that happen: Money exchanges hands and there is pain.
05:59
It’s just a question of how those two things happen. And for the LGBT community,
06:05
a lot of times the way it happens for us is, money exchanges hands between the adoption agency and
06:11
prospective parents. And the pain is oftentimes emotional. It’s not physical pain that comes with
06:15
the birth. But we’re all kind of more alike than different in that regard.
06:27
Okay. That was an amazing, powerful story, just as I remember it. Andy, welcome to I’m From
06:34
Driftwood Story Update. How are you doing? I’m good. Thanks, Nathan. Good to see you.
06:38
Yeah, you too. So, I have a lot of questions about your story. But the first one that I
06:46
want to ask is how are – this was five or six years ago. How is being a dad five or
06:51
six years later? How’s fatherhood treating you? It’s good. It’s different. As most parents will
06:57
tell you, everything’s a phase. So we are in… at the beginning of the teenage years. So our
07:05
son is in middle school and turned 13 this year, in the middle of a pandemic, which was weird.
07:14
But things are good. Things are good. We’re spending a lot of time together right now.
07:18
You know, both me and my husband are working from home. Clark is doing school from home.
07:23
So we’re always together. That’s good. That’s, you know, brings a family
07:31
closer together than ever, I’m sure. Yeah. I’m not sure how great it is for
07:35
a teenager. You know, I’m remembering my teenage years and I’m not sure I’d want
07:39
to spend all day every day with my parents. but you know, we’re making the best of it.
07:45
I’m sure. I’m sure y’all are doing great. So, about the content of your story,
07:51
I was wondering if since that time, you know, that was, I think you said your son is 13 now. So
07:56
13 years ago when he was first being born and you know, y’all were going through the adoption
08:00
process and you went through that homophobic experience with a nurse. Have you experienced
08:05
anything like that since? Whether it’s in school or from other doctors or neighbors or anything at
08:12
all, where there was any sort of homophobia directed at you because you’re gay parents?
08:19
You know, I really feel fortunate, you know, with the fact that we live in Austin, Texas, which is
08:26
pretty progressive. We have really accepting families. We’ve really been surrounded by a
08:33
community of folks who have been very supportive of us being parents. So, you know, other than
08:39
kind of, you know, a random – and I wouldn’t even say it’s ill-intended – but just kind of
08:49
intrusive question that someone may have had. And that was really early, early days.
08:55
As we’ve gotten older and I don’t know if I just don’t pay attention to it anymore or,
09:01
you know, times have just changed, but we really don’t get a whole lot of
09:06
weird looks. People take, our son having two gay dads as, you know, just a matter of course.
09:15
And you know, we’re seeing our story represented more and more every day, whether it be in media,
09:20
in books, on film. I mean, it’s really been cool to see how frequent, you know, parenting
09:30
by the LGBTQ community is being shown. You know, when we started 13 years ago, there weren’t a
09:37
whole lot of examples. And when there were, they were treated as these really rare occurrences.
09:44
But I will say in the last 13 years, we have met so many people who chose to become parents. And
09:49
then, people who we’ve met who said that they, you know, didn’t see that for themselves ever,
09:56
they’re parents. So I think that we’re really seeing a shift in our culture,
10:02
where, you know, people from the LGBTQ community being parents, it’s just not a big deal.
10:10
That’s true. I mean, I think it’s… a lot of it is representation and,
10:13
you know, seeing people like you and understanding that you’re not the only ones
10:17
going through that. Were there any resources that y’all used that you would recommend to any other,
10:22
you know, LGBTQ parents who were considering adoption or becoming parents?
10:28
Yeah, we… we spend a lot of time on social media, looking at groups
10:32
and looking at resources that people were sharing on those platforms. So there were obviously books,
10:40
and there were, you know, Facebook groups and others, and, you know, the work that we did,
10:47
with The Handsome Father really connected us to a lot of other gay dads across the country.
10:52
People that we still connect with today. You know, we decided to sunset The Handsome Father
10:58
probably about four years ago because we were just finding that, you know, it wasn’t needed anymore.
11:05
You know, people were connecting with one another locally and I always used to joke, you know, the
11:10
odds of you moving, you know, on to a block with that also had, you know, like some gay parents
11:18
on it was pretty rare. And then what I found that it wasn’t that rare anymore. People were finding
11:23
connections in their local communities for other gay parents. So they weren’t going online as much.
11:29
I’ll say personally, we’ve created a network of people here in Austin that we are close friends
11:34
with and almost all of our friends have kids. We do… we do an annual family vacation to Mexico
11:43
and invite friends and their kids. And one year we had nine families join us, all gay dads…
11:49
Oh wow. …with kids, which was awesome because not only
11:52
did the dads get to spend time together and, you know, share, you know, their common experiences,
11:57
but also the kids were able to hang out with one another and they didn’t really,
12:02
you know, it wasn’t a big deal. You know, they didn’t have to explain why they had two dads.
12:06
That’s so great to hear. And I can only imagine how great that is for all those
12:11
families to have each other too. And also for the kids to have, you know,
12:17
friends who were… who were in the same scenario. So that’s… that’s great all around.
12:22
Another question I had is, you know, it seems like y’all had a really good rapport with the birth
12:25
mother. And I was wondering if you all kept in touch or if your son is in touch with her or how
12:32
that has worked? Or, you know, or was it like, you know, maybe they prefer just like a clean
12:39
break? What’s that? What’s that been like? Well, we were fortunate in that, you know,
12:45
the terms of our open adoption were that, you know, we would exchange contact information and
12:51
agree to stay in touch. And what that resulted in was we would get together,
12:56
once a year, typically around the holidays. So either Thanksgiving or Christmas.
13:02
And she and her family don’t live that far from us. So, you know, probably about an hour and a
13:07
half. So we were able to either travel there or they traveled here and we would have a meal
13:13
together, talk about what’s been going on for the last year. Our son was able to see, you know,
13:20
his birth mother and his siblings and, and we’ve always treated it really, just upfront and clear,
13:29
you know, with him as to who they were and the circumstances around his adoption.
13:35
And we’ve also said, you know, family is family and everybody’s family looks different. You know,
13:41
some families consists of a mom and dad. Some consists of two dads. Some consists of a single
13:47
parent. Some kids live with their grandparents. Some kids live in the same city with all of their
13:53
extended relatives and some live far away and only see their… their relatives on special occasions.
14:00
So, you know, his birth family happens to live an hour away. We see them once a year,
14:05
they’re still a part of his family. And hopefully as he grows, he’ll decide for himself, like,
14:10
what type of relationship he wants to have with them, you know, as an adult. But right now,
14:16
you know, we’re just happy that he has access and there’s no mystery and he doesn’t have,
14:24
you know, unanswered questions about where he came from or the circumstances around his adoption
14:29
or who he’s related to. He has access to all that. And quite frankly, you know, as a teenager, he
14:35
seems pretty unfazed by it. You know, he’s like, Okay. You know, it doesn’t… doesn’t… doesn’t
14:40
really express a lot of concern or anxiety around issues that I think he just takes
14:46
as a matter of fact about his family. That’s amazing. So it really seems as though
14:53
just open, honest communication is the way to go and it’s no big deal. And yeah, that’s great. He’s
15:00
very lucky to be in such a great family is as y’all are to have him in your family.
15:05
Is there anything else going on in your life that you wanted to share before we sign off?
15:10
You know, things are going well. I mean, there’s really… it’s amazing how fast time goes by. It’s
15:16
hard to believe it’s been five years since we spoke and certainly hard to believe it’s been
15:21
13 years since we brought our son home from the hospital. So I’ve heard that from other
15:26
parents. It goes by fast, you know, try to… try to hold onto the moments that you’ve got,
15:30
but at the same time, you know, you try to… you try to do what you need to do, you know, when
15:37
you’re called to do it. And you know, parenting is hard and there’s no instruction manual to it.
15:43
So, yeah, but I’m amazed. That’s… that’s the biggest thing is how fast time goes by. And it’s
15:49
hard to think that, you know, at 13 we could only have him for another five years before,
15:53
you know, he could go off to college. So that’s really kind of sobering to think about.
15:58
Yeah. Well, I wish you all the… even, well,
16:01
you wanted more time before he runs off and you’re certainly getting it now.
16:05
I should’ve been more specific. Maybe not this much time together.
16:10
I’m sure you’ll all look back on this time with great memories and experiences. So,
16:15
Andy, it was so good to see you again, you for taking the time to chat with us and catch us up
16:20
on… on you and your family. So all the best to you and them and, for everyone else, check
16:24
back next week for our next Story Update. And if you have any questions for Andy,
16:29
or about adoption in general, leave them in the comments and maybe Andy can check back
16:33
periodically to answer some of them, but until then see you all next week. Thanks for watching.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video