A WOMB OF ONE'S OWN, 1999, documentary video, 12"45 min

This text may not be published, copied or used in any way without permission. © Gun Holmström

TEXT FROM THE VIDEO:

I often feel I made the iniative rather than these fathers, since it's a thing you wouldn't ask from another. They only manipulated me into rearranging the schedule, making it earlier than I had planned. I'd been thinking of a longer interval between the kids I already have and this pregnancy.

This all started three years ago when I had given birth to my own twins, and I thought that it wouldn't be an impossible idea to give birth to a baby that would be taken care of by another, since my own maternal instincts arose from taking care of them and from knowing I'm responsible for them. That's when I discussed it with the fathers, Juha and Sakari, and made a promise of sorts, that sometime, perhaps, maybe in a ten years, I could consider being this "fractionary mother". I could give birth to and take part in the existence of a baby, but not as a primary parent.

I already knew quite well before I got pregnant what the problems would be, whether I can do this or not. And my views haven't changed during the pregnancy. It's about being able to know about your feelings beforehand. You can know yourself and to some extent break away from the mold you think you'd fit.

So, I've known the other father for a long time, closer to ten years, and the other one since they got together. They have increasingly become "secondary fathers" to the twins, or whatever model males I should call them. It's quite hard to distinguish them from the rest of the "family", since there are quite a few people taking care of my children, we're playing family without living together.

When I first had this idea of procreating for others, it was more or less what it still is; that it is not only or primarily a sacrifice from my part, but rather there's something for me in it as well, something I wouldn't get otherwise. I think I have an everlasting urge to procreate, a need to have another baby for no other reason. And I wouldn't have the resources to take care of another baby anymore, wouldn't have the strength anymore. But somehow this procreating is just always as exciting.

Somebody called it "womb-lust", and I think it's a good description. People always make fun of me, because I have been donating my egg cells, and according to my calculations I could have produced up to six children, so they're asking if I just want to clone myself, but that's not it. It's difficult to explain why... it's just a way of expressing myself, I guess.

I also assume that when the baby exists, it's the fathers who are its primary parents and forced to do all the "dirty work" or forced labour, while I can do the fun parts. That's because when Aada and Eskil were babies, I had to act as a caretaking-robot 24 hours a day. That didn't leave much time for sitting with a baby on your lap. Now, at least I can fantasize about doing it.

I think that Juha and Sakari want a baby for the same reason as everyone else, some unexplainable urge... of course it's different for them since they are in a relationship... actually Sakari and Juha have said, that all the children around them, Aada and Eskil, and other new babies have made them want one as well; in a way they have been socialised into wanting a baby.

I have talked with people who think that children should be born out of love and passion, or otherwise it just won't be right or is too manipulated. But that's quite far-fetched, after all everything is planned and manipulated, more or less; you can't make a distinction. It's the same as with the mother-myth: some things are real and spontaneous, like maternal instinct, or this passion that gives birth to a baby. Such things are felt to be more real or sincere.

What really hurts me is the people who think that I can't know whether I'll be able to give up the baby, while they are implying that if I do, it somehow makes me a bad mother, uncaring or something... like having a limb cut off or losing a part. A mother's love is something everyone thinks they know, even someone else's mother's love, it always has to be something so grand and all-encompassing.

When I was expecting Aada and Eskil, whom I had by myself, I got to hear a lot of moralising, how a child should have a father and it is a child's right to be born into a family with mother and father. Now that we've been getting a child into an arrangement of a mother and two fathers, mainly two fathers, various people have told to us that a father can't take care of a child. A father with a baby can't officially have the same benefits as a mother does. They might see fathers as capable of looking after an older child, play football or something, but to respond to the needs of a small baby, dads are clearly not capable of that.

It's so clear to everyone how people's lives should be, and what are correct families or ways of living. Even a slight deviation to any direction causes a shock. I at least explain it to myself as the way people hang on to such things... it must feel like the world would collapse if we had to admit to ourselves that a child gets by with anyone who looks after it. Of course it's safer to believe in home and country and a specific household arrangement before all's good for the child.

Look at it in practice. No-one believes dads are capable of looking after children, at least small ones... at least babies, since babies don't need just the mother's milk, but all of the mother's body around them, before they are safe. Even quite smart people seem to believe that closeness with just anyone won't do, it has to be the biological mother...

It's going to be a baby with two fathers, which is after all quite unordinary, so I don't know what to think when people ask won't the child be teased or if it has to suffer for this. But I don't think you can think such matters in advance. You can never know why people get singled out.

I never thought that things would be easy with the authorities as far as the baby is concerned, but their moral outrage still surprised me. I thought it would be all "well there really isn't a place for such-and-such in the form" and "the computer doesn't recognise this" or "it's a bit difficult because...". But having all these bureaucrats telling us what is proper and what isn't, "you can't do this", "people just don't do this" ... and they didn't even know the "sordid" details of the whole affair, just who is taking care of the child.

Especially now that I'm near my time and we're all a bit nervous about what's going to happen, it's just exhausting to be confronted by what I see as pure ignorance from the authorities. When I'm dealing with them I always feel as if they didn't understand the same things as I, that they come behind me in these matters. Still they're the ones who stand above me and can say or imply that it's more their business than mine, since I'm doing something so stupid.

Even though families start to develop in all directions now, there are one-parent families and "noveau" families and what ever, the model or ideal is still the nuclear family of four, father, mother, and two children, and everything conforms to it ...as if it had its own pace, this ideal; it doesn't change.