Whitney Mixter always knew she wanted to be a mom, but as a masculine of center lesbian, the road to get there wasn’t exactly clear. After years of pushing it off “until the timing was right,” she decided to just go for it, opting to carry her own child via sperm bank. Despite the intentionality of the Queer parenthood journey, certain things were totally out of her control, like the pandemic hitting just as she left the first trimester. With plans to save money for the baby foiled, Whitney quickly realized the incredible magnitude of being the sole provider for her child.

Originally from the East Coast, Mixter has been in L.A. since her late twenties. After a stint on Showtime’s The Real L Word, she established herself as an event producer and motivational speaker with a focus on creating safe spaces for all people. Since giving birth to Mecca, who will be four in October, she’s also become a voice and possibility model for Queer and non-traditional families. Read on as she reflects on birth trauma, connecting with her feminine side, mindful parenting, and more.

The call to motherhood

If there was ever one thing that I knew from childhood, it was that I wanted to be a parent. That desire has been a clear thread through my life, regardless of my sexuality. I just turned 42 but coming out when I did, things looked so different in terms of visibility and representation. I hadn’t seen Queer people having kids, besides some adoptions, but even so I just knew it was going to happen for me. As I got into my twenties, I had this vision that I was going to be like 27 when I had a baby, and thank God I wasn't, but then I thought okay, in my early thirties. I guess you can say a benefit and a downside of being a Queer parent is the intentionality that comes with it, right? You can’t really  stumble into being pregnant. That intentionality allows you this space to really be mindful about your execution, but with that, you kind of get locked up in this mentality of waiting for the right moment. You have this notion of when I get this much money, when I'm in this kind of relationship, but oftentimes you get past these markers and you didn’t even realize you were in them. You get caught up in life. For me, I was suddenly in my late thirties and realized I had hit all the markers - successful career, I had been married - but I never pulled the trigger.  After I got divorced and career things shifted and I was single at the time, I said to myself, regardless of circumstance when I am 37  I’m making a commitment to myself  to at least start this journey and try—because if this passes me by, I'll never forgive myself.  When I turned 37, I was surprised to find myself in a relationship. I told her about my plan on the first date, but it became clear it was still just my journey. If I paused more and hesitated more, it wasn’t going to happen. She ended up stepping back into a friendship role and we're great friends now. And so, I just went for it. 

Hello, sperm!

As a Queer woman and a masculine of center identifying person, I’ve always lived in a gender gray area. When I was 7, I woke up and told my mom I wanted to be a boy—Billy Idol, specifically. I've had this very interesting view of my own feminine energy and my own feminine body. One thing that was always certain though was that I wanted to have a child. I knew I wanted to carry because I felt like,  if I'm already here in this feminine body and this isn't necessarily the gender I most identify with, I want to at least see the furthest it can go in terms of what it can do. At first I wanted to use sperm from someone I knew, ideally a gay guy who could be like an uncle. The more I tried to get that locked down into place, the more I realized that it was just very hard to actually align on timing and involvement. I decided to go the sperm bank route, which was overwhelming at first. I didn’t know where to begin in the selection process because I didn’t have a co-parent to try to match characteristics. I was just staring at page after page of profiles just waiting for some little baby picture to touch your soul, and that’s really what happened. I didn’t have particular requirements for the donor, aside from maybe shying away from a super carnivore, hunter, hypermasculine type. When I saw the baby picture of my donor I felt a visceral reaction of yes. I just instinctively knew that genetically and energetically it was a match—it really was unexplainable but my body just knew. Then it was only an added bonus to find out he was vegan, and hearing his audio recording he also had a witty sense of humor...so the decision was clear. Honestly,  I was worried my body would meet sperm and be like, what is going on? But somehow my body was like, we've been waiting for this!  I was really blessed and lucky. I just somehow knew that this was going to work and it did.

From panic mode to survival mode

I thought I planned this pregnancy perfectly in terms of timing, but I got pregnant at the end of January 2020. I had all these events planned out, so I could save up a bunch of money. Every April I produced a three day women's festival in Palm Springs, and it got canceled, as did all of my Pride events. I would make 80% of my income May through July. I was planning to work a ton so I could  comfortably relax with my child as a single parent and sole provider. But everything just stopped. I was in panic mode, to be honest. Or more like survival mode. It was my initiation into motherhood where it was like, you're the only one here. You need to figure it out. I did anything and everything I could: I drove for Instacart, did virtual conferences when I was eight months pregnant, and flew by myself to rural Mississippi in the middle of the summer and worked on a job for a month with heavy lifting. It was hard because everybody, including my midwife, was questioning me going to Mississippi, worried I’d go into labor or expose myself to COVID. There was a lot of fear energy coming at me, and I'm like, listen, I have no choice. I had to do whatever it took to save as much money as possible for when I had him. Who was going to be taking care of me? No one, literally, my family's not here. Yes, I have chosen family, but I was alone. I remember it really hit me early on when I heard the heartbeat for the first time, and it's this moment when you’re overjoyed—like, wow, this is real.  When I left I was walking in the parking garage, and I remember feeling like it was the most joyous and empowering moment of my life, but it was the loneliest moment of my life too. In that moment I realized that nobody else would ever be as invested in this child as me. Sure, I could call my best friend, and they would care, but really for the rest of my life, this child is solely my responsibility. 

A possibility model

Being pregnant made me really grateful to have this body and to be able to have this experience. It gave me a new perspective and appreciation for my feminine self, which I didn't necessarily ever have throughout my life. One thing I hadn’t expected was men treating me differently—they were much more aware of me. Another thing was that a lot of Queer women, more masculine of center women, contacted me on social media and shared really vulnerable messages about their desire for motherhood and  to carry but feeling like they didn’t have permission. I was so grateful that they felt like seeing me pregnant they could see themselves—a possibility model.

Birth trauma

Pregnancy was really smooth for me, not so much delivery, which ended in an emergency C-section.  I had this whole vision. I had a midwife, and I was going to have a water birth to my  hypno-birthing playlist. He was 10 days late when I went into labor. I have a really high tolerance for pain and had no  basis of comparison, but it was extremely intense. I was at the birthing center, and my contractions were so off the wall that I was losing consciousness. Suddenly my midwife ran in and started shaking my stomach and saying we needed an ambulance. His heart rate dropped. I was in such a vulnerable state, and I just remember these giant firefighter dudes carrying me out and one guy is like, so what are you having? And I'm like, a fucking contraction, bro. Anyway they rushed me into the ICU, and everybody comes running over and there's so much chaos and they're like, her contractions are too strong. I felt like my back was literally breaking. They didn’t listen to me though, and they didn't do any steps that I think should have been taken to discover what was going on. When my water finally broke about 34 hours in, they found traces of meconium which was especially dangerous because he was stuck. Finally they did an exam on me and they were like, oh, you have a diamond shaped pelvic floor opening which is why he's stuck there spinning in trauma—he's never coming out that way. So I had an emergency C section. I didn't even know what an diamond shaped pelvic floor was. Talk about the lack of information given. When I said my back felt like it was breaking, it was because he was literally pushing into my spine and putting it out of place. By the time I went into surgery my body was so done. It’s so crazy they just hand you your baby after this extreme body trauma and major surgery and you just head home two days later.

A birth and a death

Being a single mom during COVID meant people didn’t come around a lot and it was overwhelming: the hormones, the surgery recovery, and just figuring out how to be a parent. I had many come to Jesus moments during that time. The day you give birth for the first time, you’re not welcoming in a life, but you're welcoming in a death—of yourself. From that moment on, your old self has died and you are now being reborn at the same time as the child. You need to learn this new role, and you need to learn who this child is. And do you love them upon their first entrance into the world and into your arms? I mean, yes I did, but I don't think the falling in love process with a baby is talked about enough. It’s not always as instant as everyone says, it’s the same as falling in love with anybody. It evolves into this beautiful thing—I couldn't even imagine the amount of the capacity of love that I now have now for him and for motherhood, but assuming that you're just going to step right into feeling that while navigating all these other factors is a lot to expect of a woman or a person that has just given birth. I think that there's not enough space to give people that time and space to just lean into that and be okay if you're not totally okay. 

“You’re doing great”

I loved breastfeeding, but wow I had never heard of cluster feeding before. That’s what they should be teaching you in a birthing class! Mecca fed every 20 minutes, and for the most part there was nobody there to help out. It got to the point where I was so exhausted I didn’t know up from down or day from night. Sometimes I would suspend my body over his crib and just plop my boob in his mouth because I was so tired that it felt unsafe to hold him. I have this memory of going to the grocery store with him and I was terrified because I was so tired and emotionally volatile. I was so close to crying, so sensitive. I was praying he’d sleep the whole time at the store. I had a plan: I was just going to literally run through and just grab whatever I could get in my shopping cart. Of course he woke up and started screaming. If this happened now, I wouldn’t think twice, but I was so vulnerable and it was so new. I thought I was disrupting everyone and they were judging me. To this day, this memory makes me feel emotional. There was a woman there, and she had a baby on her hip and a toddler.  She looked at me and said, “you're doing great.” It was literally all I needed to hear in that moment. It speaks to the power of community and the power of feeling seen and understood and reassured—it is so powerful. In that moment, she was an angel from heaven saying exactly what I needed to hear.  

When you’re mommy…and daddy

When I started dating again it was really interesting to navigate as a mom. I felt like I needed to be daddy and mommy at the same time—a nurturer to this small child, very feminine with breastfeeding, and then in my romantic relationships very masculine. Trying to figure out that balance was very foreign and it definitely took some time. It was such a gender fluid learning and unlearning because it's like I have this masculinity, and I have this femininity, and I have a son. And all this bleeds over into my parenting because I want to make sure I am a positive masculine influence for my son while still being the nurturing mother and making sure he feels like he has both so that he can express and find his own gender identity in a safe space.

Mindful parenting

Mecca will be four in October, and I feel like this last year has been a kind of breakthrough year of settling into parenthood. I feel like I've hit such a stride with patience and presence. We all have this hope that we're going to be the best, most present parent.  And then you're in these moments and you feel your triggers because you don't realize what has lived inside of you since your own childhood and how it shows up in your own parenting. I think a lot of times as parents, or I'll speak for myself, I will feel something that creates a reaction in me. My  innate reaction is to look at him and how I can fix a situation, but it's really acknowledging that it's a direct mirror of something in yourself that's a trigger. It’s learning  to pause and acknowledge what is bubbling up in myself and how I can show up now for him as the opposite of what I received. It can be so challenging to be a slow parent. We talk about conscious parenting and gentle parenting, and I like to say I pull from those things, but settling into one definition doesn’t work, especially when things get real. So I guess my biggest takeaway is mindful parenting—just trying to be mindful every moment that you can have space for. It’s so rewarding when you see how wildly beneficial it can be to take five more minutes to try to understand and tap in rather than  rush through and correct. 

Confidence starts at home

When I was little I very much passed as a boy, and my parents were very cool about it. They were very accepting and very supportive when I wanted to identify as a boy. I think I avoided a lot of bullying because I had internalized confidence from just not knowing any different. You really see that things start at home. Mecca loves trucks and traditional boy things, and yet we were at the store the other day and he saw this Elsa dress he wanted. What’s funny is that I'm super gender fluid and progressive but I felt scared in a way I didn’t expect. That fear made me hesitate buying it. It made me realize that parents who I would normally not identify with probably have this deep seeded fear that they don't know what to do with because they can't identify it. They don't have a safe space. They just want their kids to be safe. And this isn't justifying any type of bigotry or anything like that but  fear comes from a direct response of love and a fear of the love. Anyway, I bought him the dress and he wanted to wear it to school, and I felt this overwhelming mama bear fear of teachers or students saying something. I didn’t want him to have the first taste of being shut down because of his expression. We walked into class and his teachers were like, “you look beautiful!” And all his friends loved it. I realized in that moment that it’s my job to do everything I can to build his confidence at home, so that he can enter these spaces that could potentially be unpredictable or unsafe or judgy, and have the confidence that he is perfect the way he is. 

Family structure

I always tell Mecca that families can look like so many things—there can be two moms or one mom or one dad or other care givers. It’s hard because I’ll start being like, oh my God, am I enough? You just have to know in yourself that you are doing the best you can and that it is all love. When my son started watching the Lion King obsessively, he started using the word dad and daddy a lot when he played. And then I heard from a lot of other queer-mom-only parents about that movie in particular, because it's entered around the father/son dynamic. It stirs up a lot hearing him play but it’s also just so beautiful. He's really experimenting with what this looks like and inserting my own insecurities into it is definitely not going to help, that's for sure. It really puts things in perspective of just how you operate—it’s like, just get out of the way. It’s such a sweet and safe space for him to explore these things when he's playing. 

Words: Anna Deutsch

Photography: Emily Malan