Dedicated partners Kristen Henderson and Sarah Kate Ellis wanted nothing more than to have children together. Sarah, being the younger of the pair, decided to try her hand at fertility first … without any luck. Henderson, taking a break from her successful band, Antigone Rising, made the next attempt. Little did the ladies know both of them would become pregnant … at the same exact time.
Their funny and heartwarming path to parenthood is documented in TIMES TWO: Two Women in Love and the Happy Family They Made ( Free Press ) . Written as a she said/she said story, TIMES TWO follows their double dose of hormones, morning sickness, weight gain, birth plans, and excitement. At the same time, it explores the legal and social challenges they faced as a gay couple that no parent should have to endure.
Sarah Toce: Tell me in your own words what happened here.
Kristen Henderson: What exactly happened here? Basically, what happened was, Sarah and I decided that we wanted to start a family, and she seemed like the more viable option at the time. She was actually a little bit younger than me, but my band [ Antigone Rising ] was really busy at the time, we were touring, and I think we were actually going to… We were just entering the studio to start a new record at the time. Certainly, when you do something like that—a typical record cycle lasts for about a year and a half, from start to finish—so we had this idea in mind that Sarah would just start trying to get pregnant as soon as I went into my album cycle, and by the time my album cycle was done, we would already have a baby, and then I would be able to start trying. That was the ideal plan.
Basically, what happened was Sarah ended up having a lot of trouble getting pregnant. She went through all sorts of things, infertility treatment, and ended up having a miscarriage. Ultimately, by the time my album cycle was done and it was time for me to start trying, she still hadn't even gotten pregnant. So I had been to the doctor at that point, because I'm actually a little bit older than Sarah, and the doctor ran some tests on me, and they concluded that I was likely to have issues because my numbers were elevated, and so they thought that I should get started right away. So Sarah and I just sort of had a team meeting and figured, well, since, Sarah's obviously having trouble and I'm probably going to have trouble, let's just both try and then hopefully we'll get one baby out of this. One of us will get pregnant.
ST: Something unexpected happened next, didn't it?
KH: Of course going into that, I kind of knew… Once you make the decision to do that, you know that the gods are going to come together, although Sarah doesn't necessarily think the way I do. But as soon as I knew, as soon as we were both on board, I'm like, "Here we go. … This going to happen at the same time"—and sure enough…
It didn't happen right away; it did take several more months before we both ended up pregnant at the same exact time, but it did happen, and it happened on the exact same day. We got pregnant. …Yeah it's crazy. I mean, even I'm like, "Is that really how it happened?" It's so crazy to think that we have a book about it, too. It's unreal. The paths that life ends up taking you down!
ST: What was your initial reaction when you found out on the same day that you were both pregnant?
KH: We didn't actually find out we were pregnant on the same day. We got pregnant on the same day, but Sarah had done a procedure called IVF [ in vitro fertilization ] . When you're doing an IVF procedure, the doctors are very closely monitoring you, so they knew within about four or five days after Sarah's procedure that she was pregnant. I had done it a different way through a procedure called IUI [ intrauterine insemination ] , which is a little less invasive, and just to be totally crude, it's more like … turkey baster with a doctor. They just let you wait out your two weeks to see if you get your period, and then you find out if you're pregnant. It's not nearly as intense as Sarah's procedure. So Sarah knew she was pregnant, and then I still had a whole other week to go before I was like, "Oh, I'm late. I need to pee on a stick"—all of that.
At that point, it was such a relief that she was pregnant that I kind of forgot [ about my situation ] . You know, I just put it out of my head. I was like, "Mission accomplished! You're pregnant! You're really who needs to be pregnant, because you've been through so much, and your procedure was so intense."
ST: Wow! So you forgot about the possibility of being pregnant yourself because you were so overjoyed that Sarah was pregnant? When did you realize that you might be as well?
KH: You know, I spent the next week just dismissing that I could even be pregnant. So a week later, I didn't realize that I was late for my period, and I actually got a phone call from the doctor's office, which is, it kind of is a testament to how ridiculous I am—I mean, this is how I live my life. I just kind of forgot that I might be pregnant. So the doctor's office called me, and they were like, "Kristen, according to our records, you should have gotten your period yesterday." And I was like, "Oh. I didn't even think of it." They were like, "Well…" And Sarah, the whole time, was kind of nagging at me; she would say, "Have you taken a test?," and I'd say "No. I don't even think I'm late yet." She was like, "You're late. You should be late." I was like, "I'm not late. I'll be late tomorrow."
Then when the doctor called and they were like, "Kristen." They have you pinpointed—they know everything that's going on with your cycle. "You're late," they said. "You need to come up for a blood test." The doctor's office is all the way on the Upper East Side, and we live in the West Village, and that is way too far to go unless you really know you need to go. I was like, "I don't want to have to go up there at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning for a blood test. I know I'm not pregnant." I think I said, "I feel so pre-menstrual." So I went down to the drugstore and I just bought a pregnancy test so that I wouldn't have to go. I thought I'd pee on a stick, it's going to be negative, and then I don't have to trek up there.
ST: How did that work out for you?
KH: I peed on the stick and I didn't even look at it—I just handed it to Sarah and said, "I told you I'm not pregnant." She looked at it and she basically had a heart attack. It was like a neon sign; it was practically flashing. She's like, "Kristen, you jackass, you are pregnant!" I mean, I swear to God, even when I was in the drugstore to buy that pregnancy test, I thought I got my period in the aisle of the drugstore, so I actually bought one pregnancy test and a box of tampons. That's what I bought. I figured, when I get up to the bathroom to pee on the stick, I'm going to have my period anyway. I was positive. I was so shocked. I was surprised, like as if I wasn't even trying and it happened.
ST: Some things you just cannot plan.
KH: Yeah, you can't … you can try to micromanage, and if you think that you're going to [ be able to do it ] especially when it comes to getting pregnant and having children, then you're just so wrong. It does not happen. It's going to happen the way it's meant to happen. You know, as far as Sarah was concerned, she was young enough, she'd been tested, and she was totally healthy, and she should have been pregnant … especially when you're doing it the way.
We were going to fertility specialists who are the best in the country. These guys pretty much pinpoint your ovulation, they know exactly what size your eggs are, they are inseminating you with the most high-tech stuff, and they are literally, like, leading the sperm directly to the egg. You're going to get pregnant. You've got to work to not get pregnant that way. Meanwhile, Sarah went months and months and months without getting pregnant.
It's just because it was not time. You've got to just let go of all of the shit that you think you've got under control, and roll with it—and let it unfold the way it's going to unfold.
ST: I'm curious what your pregnancies were like if we were to compare the two of them. Were they different? Were they pretty similar? Did either of you experience symptoms or cravings that were anything out of the ordinary?
KH: You know, they [ the pregnancies ] were all of the above. They were different in the sense that we both pretty much suffered from every possible pregnancy side effect that you could have, but we didn't really share the side effects, although we did both have morning sickness. But we never had morning sickness at the same time. Morning sickness is not strictly for the morning. I usually would get kind of nauseous later in the day, and Sarah would sort of wake up feeling nauseous. So we managed to somehow … if I wasn't feeling well, she was, or vice versa, so that worked out nicely for us.
We had totally different cravings. I was always craving really healthy, healthy things, and Sarah was craving literally the grossest garbage on Earth. She was like, literally, a garbage pail, and all I wanted were lentil beans and heads of lettuce, apples. I don't even eat that healthy in real life, you know? But for whatever reason, while I was pregnant, I just … I could eat a tree—and all the leaves on it! I needed nature. It was totally bizarre. Sarah was just eating chocolate … everything. By the third trimester, actually, I did sort of float over to Sarah's side; I would just eat with her. I would have eaten anything. I ate everything. I gained a lot of weight.
If you even said the word "chicken" around either of us, we could literally vomit on command at the thought of chicken. There's no good reason for it. It was the most wretched thing you could ever say to me—or her. The word "chicken" made us want to vomit.
ST: Can you eat chicken now?
KH: I can. But I can remember how sick it made me … just the thought of chicken. I have a couple of other people who I've mentioned that to, and they go, "Oh, I totally agree. Chicken made me so sick."
Pick up the book and learn more about Kristen Henderson and Sarah Kate Ellis on Amazon.
