This is the first of a two-part account of Christy Webber and Jennie Rule's journey to motherhood.
It's tough to out-butch Christy Webber. The small-town girl from Montrose, Mich. (near Flint), grew up loving to hunt, fish, skate and snowmobile. The outdoors was her playground. As a teen she was the National Powder Puff Motorcross Champion. She attended college at the University of Denver, where she received her Bachelor's Degree in physical education and played sports for the university, most notably as a star on the women's basketball team. After college Webber worked briefly as a P.E. teacher, but always felt she had some bigger contribution to make. Soon after, she discovered that something and over the next two decades Webber has made an impressive name for herself in Chicago with her landscaping business.
Jennie Rule met Christy Webber eight years ago at Girlbar on North Halsted. That night, Rule recalls coming down the stairs and being first captivated by Webber's white shoes. At first glance she thought, 'Thank God; finally a lesbian with some fashion sense!' At that point in her life, Rule had been with a couple of women, but was looking to go back to men. In the months to come, Webber would change all that.
A theater major at Western Michigan University, Rule moved to Chicago to study at Second City. After graduating from their conservatory, Rule performed in a number of plays and musicals in Chicago. The evening she met Webber, Rule was planning to move to New York City in three weeks. She did relocate and by the end of the summer had been cast in the nationwide tour of the children's classic 'Lyle Lyle Crocodile.' The show earned Rule her union card. When the tour ended, she returned to Chicago.
Webber was interested in Rule from the start, and was no stranger to going after what she wanted, a fact which is apparent after the briefest glance at her resume. Christy Webber Landscapes began in 1988 with two employees and a mower and now boasts 100 trucks and over 250 employees. She has won the Chicago Entrepeneural Award from Inc. Magazine five years in a row and this past March was inducted into The Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame. The first major growth spurt in her business came in 1998 when Webber put in a bid and won the contract to care for the grounds of The United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls. Since then the growth of Christy Webber Landscapes has been astronomical. Large municipal subcontractors started using her regularly and, soon, Webber was also receiving various City of Chicago maintenance contracts. In addition to her numerous residential and commercial jobs, Christy Webber Landscapes holds contracts for maintainance on the grounds and gardens of Midway and O'Hare Airports, McCormick Place, Lincoln Park Zoo, Navy Pier and The Museum of Science and Industry. However, her crowning glory is Chicago's newest landmark: Millennium Park. Webber is extremely proud of the phenomenal tree and shrub work her company has done on the 24.5-acre grounds.
Yet, despite her singular career success and seemingly happy home life something was lacking, at least for her partner, Rule. 'Webber didn't want kids originally. It was me who always had dreams of the family and the house and the hard working husband.' Finally, things were at an impasse and Rule had to make a decision. 'It was actually her decision,' Rule said. 'I said to Webber, 'Look, I really want to talk to you about this because if you truly don't want any children I might need to move on.''
The 46-year-old Webber was torn for a bit. Then, while having tea one Sunday afternoon with a lesbian couple in Hyde Park it suddenly became clear. According to Rule, 'Webber and I were relaxing, watching our friends' boys play ball in the yard and she turned to me and said, 'Hey Jen, why don't you have one and I'll have one? We'll both do it.'' Their friends were thrilled that Webber had changed her mind. They said it was a wonderful idea and reassured Webber that she wasn't too old to carry a baby.
However, Rule had her doubts: 'We knew Webber was menopausal, so there was no way her eggs were going to hold and we didn't want to adopt. It was important for Webber to be involved in the process rather than simply having me inseminated. Webber decided she wanted to carry the child.' Webber never wanted to be on the periphery of anything. If the two women were going to start a family it had to be about the both of them.
Wasting no time, they promptly made an appointment at the Fertility Center of Illinois in late March 2006. The in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic at 900 N. Kingsbury has been helping infertile couples since 1976 and is world reknown for its high success rate. The attending doctor, reproductive endrocrinologist Brian R. Kaplan, M.D., is a respected leader in the area and has one of the largest and most successful practices in the field. Still, Rule had misgivings about Webber carrying a child to term: 'I really believed that when they looked at us and saw Webber is stressed and menopausal, that she actively runs a company, and that she also smokes that they were going to tell me to do it. We went in there and told him what we wanted and he said, 'Okay, Jennie. We'll take your eggs and put them in Christy and you'll have a child. I was stunned. It was that simple.'
The two agreed that the overwhelming mood of the clinic could be depressing: 'The waiting room was overrun with all these straight couples and so many women. It was packed every time we went there. There was just such despair, worry, and desperation. It was hard not to feel it. For many of them this was the last shot. We were new to it all. We didn't know what we were doing. We didn't have an appreciation of how tough it can be. What scared us the most in that waiting room were all the pictures on the walls of twins and triplets.'
Webber was quick to point out that those fears were soon quieted. The two weren't looking for a multiple-birth pregnancy, which oftentimes can include an array of risk factors such as premature births, low birth weight, caesarians, disability and even death. 'We signed an agreement that we would go with the most viable egg and would selectively reduce if more than one egg took,' said Webber. Though it was a unanimous decision, Webber admitted that the choice made her uncomfortable. 'It just seemed really ungodly to me.' Luckily, it was a decision the two women were never forced to make.
The couple also opted to have an anonymous sperm donor. 'We decided to go to California Cryobank for sperm,' Rule said. 'We knew a lot of men who would have been great candidates, but we didn't want them to have ties or claims to the baby. If we were going to do this it was just going to be about the two of us.
'We paid the cost to get a full donor profile. We could see a form of his head. We wanted good-looking, tall and, most importantly, we wanted a donor who would match so that the kid would look like us—someone of Finnish, German [and] English descent. But they show you so much more for the full price, where the ears are placed, what sort of jaw and nose the donor has, eye color, everything. It's kind of weird because at a certain point you feel as though you're catalogue shopping for your baby.'
By the end of the summer in 2006 all the preliminaries were in order and the couple began going to the Fertility Center branch in Highland Park for injections and pills that were primarily a combination of birth control and hormones. Their cycles had to be in sync so when they harvested Rule's eggs Webber's body would be receptive. Taking those medications caused Rule to develop a blood clot in her leg. The clot resulted in a delay of three or four months in the process.
To hear Webber and Rule discuss the entire IVF ordeal was fascinating. It seemed that once the wheels were set in motion that events simply unfolded. 'We were flying by the seat of our pants. We were both sort of bluffing each other and going through with the shots and stuff. I don't think we ever really thought we would end up with a child.'
Harvesting Rule's eggs caused some inconvenience, primarily in the timing. The date set was also the weekend that Rule's brother was getting married in Michigan. The two drove to Highland Park at 6 a.m. The nurses took Rule into a tiny cubicle and had her put on a hospital gown. After receiving the anesthetic the last thing Rule recalled was asking the nurse, 'Are you the cabana boy?' Upon awakening, Rule was asked her age by the doctor. When she replied that she was 38 the doctor smiled and said, 'You have more eggs than a twentysomething.' Webber promptly asked him if he wanted to buy some. The doctor flatly responded, 'No, she's too old.'
Still a bit groggy from the egg retrieval, Rule got in the car and the couple was off to the Michigan for the nuptuals. Rule was amazed at how good she felt once the anesthetic wore off. 'I was fine. They said I might be sore but I really didn't feel a thing. That night I think I even danced to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller.''
Exactly three days later Webber went to the Highland Park facility for the in vitro fertilization. When Webber entered the fertilization room, she noticed the large-screen TV. 'I looked at that and asked the doc if we were going to watch the game,' she said. Besides Webber and the doctor, a technician and a scientist were also present. Webber was not drugged when Dr. Kaplan began the process. His movements appeared on the large-screen monitor. Using vaginal ultrasound, the technician coached him towards the optimal spot for successful uterine insemination. When Kaplan finally found the ideal place, the other doctor gave the eggs to Kaplan which were then injected. 'I didn't feel much of anything,' Webber said. 'They put three fertilized eggs inside me. After it was all over I got up and they all shook my hand and congratulated me. I told them I'd had sex a lot rougher than that! And we all laughed. I drove myself home that day and I remember thinking on the drive, 'Christy Webber, now what the hell have you done?''
When Webber returned to the clinic for her follow-up visit, she remembered the nurse doing the ultrasound. After a bit the woman smiled and said, 'I hear another heartbeat. You're pregnant!' Webber thought it was a joke: 'I never in a million years thought it would take. I just never thought it would work. I told her I had bled a little bit over the weekend. I guess that was just one of the other eggs not taking.'
Conscious of the expense of all this, Webber and Rule ended up returning all the unused fertilization drugs and needles to the clinic (along with some Christy Webber Landscapes T-shirts) for people who wanted to get pregnant but were having trouble paying for the procedure. The average base cost of an IVF cycle is about $15,000 and subsequent cycles using frozen embryos run about $5,000. As it was, the costly procedure was covered almost entirely by Webber's insurance.
The fertilization was a success, but pregnancy was hardly a bed of roses for the landscaper: 'I was the most miserable pregnant lady you could imagine. I was sort of ashamed at business meetings where it felt like they were saying, 'Oh no; here comes the pregnant lady with the hormones.' I wasn't Christy Webber; I was The Pregnant Lady. As a boss, I didn't want to use the hormones thing as an excuse, so I covered up being pregnant and wore baggy clothes. I hardly wore any real maternity clothes. Being pregnant felt like a weakness. They sure loved me at the clinic, though. The doctor loved to parade me around. I was the 46-year-old pregnant lady.'
A born worker, Webber was hardly one to let a little thing like being pregnant get in the way of running her business. 'I was driving the snow trucks, running the company, screaming, and working long days,' she said. 'I got up early because I couldn't sleep and would start sending emails at about 3:30 a.m. Then I would go into work at 5:30 a.m. and work 12-14 hour days. I had tons of energy. Well, I was tired but I couldn't lie down, especially as time went on because of this gigantic thing inside of me. I've got to admit though, it worked out well being pregnant in the winter because when you're pregnant you're hot. That was the best insulator. I plowed snow all winter and didn't need to wear all the typical heavy snow gear. I was plowing snow down at Millennium Park riding the Skid-Steer front-shovel loader and dumping all that record snowfall into the trucks. To tell you the truth, I was happy to work. I was thrilled to work and so sick of people trying to protect me. The one time I did get scared was when I was plowing behind Menards and hit a sewer cover. That really knocked the wind out of me when I went forward and hit the brace. It worried me and made me pause and just say, 'Okay Webber, just cool it and quit being such a stud.''
Seeing Webber pregnant was a bit unsettling for a lot of people who knew her. Roger Post, Webber's best friend and the vice president of Christy Webber Landscapes, told Webber he didn't like looking at her pregnant. 'I was Rog's buddy,' Webber said. 'We hung out. It was really hard for him to look at me that way. I can see how it would be strange. It's not so hard now that I've had the baby because he has lots of friends with kids.' Webber claimed that, overall, her staff is thrilled that she's no longer pregnant. 'Oh, God. I was on a rampage at work and at home,' she said. 'I was hormone-crazy. I'm surprised Jennie didn't leave me. I was scared shitless and every time I went in to have them check on the baby they kept saying, it's getting bigger.'
Overall Webber and Rule found most people very accepting of their desire to become parents. Some people found it strange or unusual, but nothing more. The two women are also quick to explain that they found nothing but acceptance on a professional level, though at times the two admit the sometimes impersonal nature of IVF clinics and the technology involved made them feel very much like a statistic. 'A successful statistic, but a statistic nonetheless. We were a success story and not Rule and Webber, not people.'
Sadly, professional acceptance of lesbians wishing to become parents through IVF isn't always the case. In Webber and Rule's home state, The Michigan House of Representatives passed a Conscientious Objector Policy Act in 2004, which states that healthcare providers can refuse to perform a procedure, fill a prescription or cover treatment for something they object to based on moral, ethical or religious reasons. It was supposedly passed so pharmacists wouldn't have to prescribe the morning-after pill and doctors wouldn't have to perform or assist with abortions, but it's easy to see how this act could be abused. In Webber and Rule's case, it could have been a technician who said, 'Sure, I believe in IVF, but I don't think it's right for two women to have a baby.' In other words, the technician can refuse a procedure based on who is having it done, which makes the objection not about the method used but about the identity of the patient. Reckless legislation of this sort provides loopholes for discrimination.
In mid-March, Rule went home to Birmingham, Mich., to attend an elaborate baby shower thrown by her brother and sister. The baby was still a month away so Rule thought nothing of leaving a busy Webber in Chicago. Instead, Rule brought her friend, Jennifer Lachica, for moral support and companionship on the drive. On Friday night, when they arrived, Webber called to say she felt funny, but Rule shrugged it off. 'Christy Webber always feels funny, so I told her to relax,' Rule said. The next day, Rule and Lachica were out shopping with Rule's sister looking for various baby items when Rule's cell phone rang. It was Webber again. She said, 'Something is really wrong. You had better start looking for a flight home.' Rule did her best to reassure Webber. She told Webber they were a month ahead, and reminded her that everyone they had talked to said first borns are always late. 'I told her it can't be that, but for the next two hours I was on pins and needles pretending to have a good time,' Rule said. Then Webber called again. This time she said, 'Jen, my water broke [and] you've got to fly home.' Understandably, Rule panicked.
Follow the link for the conclusion of this article www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/A-Tale-of-Two-Moms-Part-Two/18293.html .
