Today, June 2, is the 3rd annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day, organized by the awesome Dana of Mombian.

In case you’re curious, here’s what I wrote in 2006 and 2007.

The topic I’m going to tackle this year is in some ways, not unique to LGBT families, but we have our own stressful twist on the matter: money, specifically saving for the window of time when new parents are not working outside of the home because they have a new baby.

I have no doubt that all 2-parent families worry about dropping from 2 paychecks to 1, and single parents must worry even more. All of us save and plan.

I’m lucky, especially this time around. My company provides short-term disability insurance which will pay part of my salary for either 6 or 8 weeks, depending on whether the baby is a traditional birth or a c-section. (And let’s not even get into a discussion of the twisted incentive that provides towards having major surgery instead of attempting a VBAC.)

I’ve also been saving up vacation time at work and I think I’ll have 4 weeks banked by the time the baby is born.

So we are lucky, basic living expenses are planned for and should be covered.

Not covered by any of this planning is the need for Esmerelda Freugenspeigel to have two legal parents.

Assuming the best case scenario — Jill’s petition is filed and assigned to one of the low-stress, low-paperwork judges in our county — the adoption costs us roughly $3000.

The worst case scenario, which happened with Noah, is that her petition is assigned to the one judge in our county who will not, under any circumstances, approve a same-sex second-parent adoption.

Then we’ll have to move to the adjoining county and re-file. Not only was that an absolute emotional nightmare last time, it also roughly tripled our out of pocket costs. Thank god we were lucky enough to be able to make it work; bye-bye emergency financial cushion.

By a lot of good fortune, I should be getting a good retention bonus at work later this summer. We’ll be using that to pay for the adoption expenses.

If we hadn’t had that, or if we do have to move to the next county over — again — then it will be a very lean rest of the year for us. Maybe I’ll start a side business selling felt food on Etsy.

And yet, even with all of that, we are in a position of privilege!

We are privileged because we CAN do a legal adoption, unlike many families in other states. And we can afford to pay the legal fees to do this, unlike many families in our own community and other places where it might be legal but out of reach financially.

And it is worth it.

Not because we’re afraid that if something happened to me, anyone would challenge Jill’s parenthood of our eagerly anticipated daughter, but for the myriad of reasons why people marry, plan for their families, make wills, fund 401(k)s and college savings plans…we don’t know what the future might hold, but we want to face it as well-prepared as we can possibly manage. We want both of our children to be eligible for Jill’s health insurance and if the worst happened, to be eligible for her social security survivor benefits.

Only, because we’re a two mom family, doing this takes a lot of time, money, planning, worrying, and hiring of lawyers. Unlike heterosexual families, where either a biological relationship or a marriage certificate between the two parents provides these things automatically — in fact, even in the event of one not wanting the responsibility of parenthood.