Tara Clancy - Lesbian Babymaking 101

 

All right. Are you ready? Lesbian baby making 101, here it comes. [chuckles] So, for my first son, it was super easy. My wife and I went to a sperm bank. We got sperm, she got inseminated and nine months later, we had a baby. But my second son, things get a lot more interesting. So, we go back to our same doctor when we're ready to have the second kid. 

 

And at this point, my wife is 10 years older than me, so she was 42 and I was 32. We sit down, you know, down at his desk, and he just says right away, he just says, "Listen, medically speaking, Tara, you should have this baby." [audience chuckle] And right away, I say, “No.” [audience laughter] Just like that. “Nope. Have you seen me? No, no. I don't do those sorts of things.” [audience chuckle]

 

Really, really, I want to be pregnant, like, about as much as that guy, right? [audience laughter] Actually, that guy wants to be pregnant a little more than me, all right? [audience laughter] That's how little I want to be pregnant. But he convinces me that I have to go home and I have to think about it. Okay, fine. I decide that I'm going to at least give it one night. He says, "Give it one night." And I said, "Okay." I go back to my apartment and my wife gives me some space, and I'm just like-- I'm pacing around the apartment and I'm trying to, like, hype myself into it-- I'm trying to convince myself to do it.

 

And the way that I'm doing that is the same, I think, as the way, the night before my varsity softball tryout, Like I'm just walking around the apartment. I'm going, "Come on, Clancy, you're coming in the clutch. [audience chuckle] Come on, we're going to take one for the team. Come on, let's go. You could do this." I go over to the mirror in my apartment, and I'm just looking at myself in the mirror, and I turn and I puff out my shirt. I'm imagining myself pregnant. But more than that, I'm imagining somebody else seeing me pregnant. I don't realize what I'm doing in the moment, but I'm going, "You talking to me? [audience laughter] You talking to a pregnant lady? You talking to me, right?"

 

Like, other women, they go home, they knit booties, I'm De Niro in Taxi Driver. [audience laughter] But it works. I don't know why or how, but it works. I decide that I am going to go through with it. And so, I go back to the doctor. I had this preliminary blood work done, and I go back to the doctor, and I sit back down, and he takes a look at me and he just goes, "Okay." He goes, "Tara, you have a fertility problem." I said, "Yes, I know. It's called being a lesbian. [audience laughter] What am I paying you for?" Now, he said, "You have another one." I said, "Oh, really?" 

 

And he said, "But look, it's not the end of the world. Just instead of doing insemination like we did with your wife, this time around, we have to do an in vitro fertilization. So, they go in and they remove your eggs surgically and they put them in a little dish and they fertilize them and they put the whole mess back in. It's super common these days, really, statistically speaking, 99% of the time, absolutely nothing goes wrong. And 1% of the time, you are me.” [audience chuckle] I had the one and only life-threatening response to in vitro. I'm not going to bore you with all the medical details. I'll just put it like this. 

 

It was as if when they removed the eggs from my body, that first part of the surgery, when they removed the eggs from my body, it was as if like unbeknownst to me, my uterus had low jack, right? [audience chuckle] Like, the second they came out, my uterus was like [imitates police siren] [audience laughter] or the police arrived at my uterus. It was terrible. I almost died, but I didn't. Here I am. [audience laughter]

 

They couldn't go through the second half of the surgery, and I had to recap. All right. A month later, I'm recovered, we go back into the doctor and he goes, "Look, all right, at this point, we can continue on. We can do the second part of the in vitro." That's about to be that. And then he says, "But actually, medically speaking, there's a better option at this point, and that is that Shawna, my wife, that you carry this baby." He starts to go into all the sciencey stuff about why this is better. But I'm not listening to any of it, because I'm too busy doing the fucking jig. [audience laughter] I'm like, “Diddly diddy. Sign her up. Da da la. Here she is.” Saved by the bell. This is amazing. Yes. Yes, she will. [audience laughter] 

 

And we do it. Let me just not undercut the beauty of that for a second. My wife got pregnant with my biological baby, the baby that I could not have pretty much. It was amazing. And all goes well. Nine months go by. I get that familiar shake in the middle of the night. We've done this once before. I know what that means. I hop out of bed. I don't even look at her. I pull up my pants. I grab the hospital bag. But when I turn back around to face her, it's not good. It's like she has gone 0 to 60 in a second. I don't know if this is normal or not, but of course, for a second, I have that panic of, I'm like, "Oh, my God, this is all my fault. It was too good to be true. But there's no time for that.”

 

I just go over to her, throw her arm over my shoulder, help her down the stairs. We flag a cab. We get into the cab and she is going bonkers. She's got her feet out the window. I'm leaning into the driver, "You got to go through the lights. You got to go through the lights. She's going to have the baby in the cab, go through the lights." The cab goes flying uptown. We get to the hospital. She can't get out of the car. I get a wheelchair, put her in it. I go flying up into the maternity wards. 

 

We get into the triage area. I take one second, I take my eyes off her, I turn to the receptionist and say, "I don't have time to fill out any paperwork. Just point me to an OR and just point to really fast." When I turn back, my wife has gotten up out of the wheelchair. She's got her hands on the armrest, she has got her shirt up, her pants down, her butt is up. [audience chuckle] She is pissing, moaning, screaming. [screams] Other ladies in the waiting room are texting their moms, "I just started labor." [screams] [audience laughter] 

 

She's screaming, she's going bonkers. Finally, this nurse comes in, and she's from the islands and she’s like, "She going to have that baby on the floor. Get her up in the gurney." [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] 

 

"She going to have that baby on the floor. Get her up in the gurney!" And in my accent, I'm like, "She's going to have the baby on the floor, on the floor, on the floor. She's going to have the baby on the floor." She's going back and forth. [audience laughter] They put her up on a gurney, they wheel her into a room, and 10 seconds later, we have a perfectly healthy second little boy. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

Thank you. Thank you. We love him. But I think we named him in vengeance. My firstborn son is named Ray Clancy. He will punch you in the nuts. [audience laughter] This second guy, [chuckles] we named him Harry. [audience laughter] Harry Clancy. He will sell you a used Honda. [audience laughter]