Baby Making for Everybody: Family Building and Fertility for LGBTQ+ and Solo Parents

This inclusive, straightforward guide to fertility is What to Expect Before You're Expecting for families outside the heterosexual nuclear family model--perfect for LGBTQ+ and solo parents who want to have kids but don't know where to start.

In Baby Making for Everybody, queer millennial midwives Ray Rachlin and Marea Goodman use their professional expertise to demystify the dizzying process of pursuing parenthood as queer and solo people, offering detailed, gender-affirming, body-positive advice on topics including:

• Fertility tracking for people with uteruses
• Choosing a sperm donor, egg donor, or surrogate
• Legal considerations for LGBTQ+ families
• Navigating pregnancy and gender identity
• IUI, ICI, and IVF procedures
• Foster parenting and adoption
• Miscarriage and infertility

The result is a much-needed compassionate step-by-step guide for every aspect of the complicated, messy, and glorious process of building a family. Combining practical information with personal narratives and first-person community wisdom, this book provides prospective parents with the information they need to grow their families.



About the Author

Ray Rachlin, LM, CPM (they/she) is a midwife and founder of Refuge Midwifery, licensed in the state of New Jersey since 2017. Ray earned their BS in Midwifery at Birthingway College of Midwifery in 2016, and is a member of the Queer and Transgender Midwives Association.

Marea Goodman, LM, CPM (she/her) is a midwife, writer, and founder of Restore Midwifery. She earned her midwifery degree from the National Midwifery Institute, and has been licensed by the California Medical Board since 2015. She lives in Santa Cruz, California with her three children and her wife, who is also a midwife.