Polyamory, pregnancy and the truth about what happens when a baby enters the picture

Ashley Hefley didn't have a second baby on her 2023 bingo card. She and her husband hadn't planned on expanding their family – they already had one child together – but that May, fate drew up other plans. She took a test "just in case" a few days after missing her period. It quickly turned positive.

What else wasn't on her bingo card? A third baby right around the same time. No, Hefley wasn't having twins. She and her husband were also in a relationship with another woman, Anna. The polyamorous throuple found out Anna was pregnant, too, a few months later.

"Don't worry, he's getting a vasectomy," Hefley, 29, joked over a recent phone call. She's laughing now, but wasn't then. Two women with morning sickness. Pregnancy brain. Exhaustion. But also a rare, cool opportunity.

Hefley's story is one of many. Polyamorous relationships, while not new, have become more prominent and commonplace in the past several years. As these relationships flourish, and years pass, babies are becoming part of the equation. The reality is that having a child is the start of a life-changing journey that requires crystal clear communication from all parties involved – no matter your relationship structure. And many in the polyamorous community want people to know that pregnancy does not suddenly disqualify someone from being ethically nonmonogamous.

"Having a baby is challenging for a plethora of emotional, physical, mental and logistical reasons," says Grace Lawrie, licensed professional counselor. "I've known polyamorous people for whom having the extra support of additional partners was crucial for them to have children. As the old adage goes, it takes a village."

'This is who I am'

Jessica Daylover and her husband Joe were not on the same page when they started discussing polyamory. Not even close.

The 38-year-old has been with Joe for 15 years, married almost 11. Before they got married, some friends asked if they'd heard about the concept.

"This is who I am," she recalls thinking. "This makes sense. Let's start tomorrow. Let's start right now." The more confident that she got, however, "the more actually freaked out that my husband got." He eventually discovered his own polyamorous identity, too, and the pair have since written the book "Polyamory and Parenthood."

By the time Daylover got pregnant, five years into the marriage, they were comfortable practicing polyamory. Their household – who they "nest" with, in polyamory terms – has since grown. It now includes their 6- and 3-year-old children and two partners (one with Jessica, and one with Joe). Jessica calls Joe's partner her metamour, or a platonic connection you have with someone with whom you share a romantic relationship.

This living arrangement makes both logistical and emotional sense: "There's a big difference in the experience of adding children between polyam folks who are organized as multiple partners together in one household versus polyam folks who are organized as a dyad with 'outside partners; who live elsewhere," says Sheila Addison, a family and marriage therapist.

The family practices hierarchical parenting; Daylover and her husband are the primary decision makers as far as their kids go. Her metamour is almost like a stepmother, while she calls her boyfriend a "proxy parent."

Some polyamorous people explicitly decide everyone in the household will be a parent. Addison adds: "Of course, most states in the U.S. only recognize two parents, so while this might be an agreement among multiple partners, the legal relationship between the child and the other adults is not protected in the same way which can present challenges."

'I'm wired differently': What it feels like to be polyamorous and how couples make it work

Lawyers help navigate the ins and outs of polyamorous families

Some of this can get complicated. Diana Adams, an attorney who is polyamorous, has been assisting hundreds of polyamorous people with family mediation since 2007.

Adams says it can be helpful to lawyer up. A lot of questions need to be worked out when it comes to polyamory and starting a family: How long does a parent need to be dating someone before they meet a child? Should they be joining for family dinners multiple times a week, or for holidays? Not to mention considerations about shared values, like money, and what everyone's definition of infidelity is.

"I do create legal agreements for people, whether that's a co-parenting agreement or a financial agreement about how they want to share finances," Adams says. "But I see those conversations as even more valuable for keeping people out of conflict."

It can otherwise grow more and more complicated, especially when it concerns biology. Addison knows a family where a biological father had to legally adopt his own child. The mother was married to her other male partner when she gave birth.

In their practice, Adams finds that usually polyamorous people and queer families tend to be very cautious and understanding. And a breakup doesn't necessarily have to get nasty, especially when you prep for it in the fine print.

Daylover has planned for some of those "what ifs": "If a partner had gone out of their way to form a really special bond with my child, and they wanted to continue that bond after a breakup, who would stand in the way of that?"

Great question: Why are we so obsessed with polyamory?

How pregnancy can change things

Sarah Stroh, 35, started exploring nonmonogagmy in 2016 and lives with her partner of four years. They have an almost 6-month-old together. They've dated other people but have never had a committed, long-term partner other than each other.

Having a child was always a high priority. She and her partner were casually seeing other people last year when she got pregnant. As she started showing more, one of her relationships fizzled. "I don't know if it was because he was less attracted to me, or it was too weird, or I was just not as confident in myself and my body," she says. That rocked her confidence; she and her boyfriend ended up being monogamous through her pregnancy and into the first few months of their baby's life.

Actor Nico Tortorella and his partner, too, grew monogamous as their family grew, he shared in a recent podcast.

"When you're focusing all of your energy on creating life, you really have to give it your all," he said, "especially if it's not working. And then, sustaining life – being a father's the most important role I've ever played in my life. There's nothing that will come close."

Adams, however, found it worked well to stick with polyamory while growing their family, especially as they endured multiple miscarriages and a long struggle with infertility. Adams was "grateful that I had more than one partner as well as a robust chosen family of people to be in mutual support and in community with me and with my co-parent." It allowed for time to grieve with more people, too.

Many in the polyamory community see it as part of their identity and say it's not something they can turn on and off. "I'm polyamorous," says Ebony Hagans. "There's not a single day on this earth where I'm going to not be polyamorous." Being pregnant didn't – and couldn't – change their mind.

What’s going on? Polyamory seems more common among gay people than straight people.

Who's the biological father? For some, the answer doesn't matter.

Another question that often comes up – and impacts everyone differently – is who are the biological parents of the child? Particularly the father. Some families have no interest in knowing, and others a vested interest. Some go out of their way to know for sure.

Daylover, for example, "did not have sex with other partners anywhere near my fertility window."

But that's not the case for others in the community, she says. "Just as adoptive parents or step parents will be like, 'that is my kid.' There are polycules that are like, 'we all had sex, and we all weren't using protection, and we were all hoping a baby would come in one of the sessions, and it did and we don't need to know, because we are all the parent.'"

Some poly couples feel when it comes to parenting, the more, the merrier

Dana Hare dates her nonmonogamy back to high school. "I figured out at a really young age that I liked multiple genders and I didn't like the narrative that I was supposed to settle down and marry Prince Charming and never have a princess for myself," the 31-year-old from Tennessee says. Hare grew up, married her first husband and got pregnant. During the pregnancy, the pair become a throuple. Since they had already practiced polyamory, falling into a serious relationship with a third person didn't faze them.

"As I fell in love with her, as she started talking about how she wanted to be a part of the baby's life, things truly changed every single day, and that was the difficult part," Hare says, pointing out the stress mainly came from the fact a baby was coming – a sentiment echoed by all the polyamorous people interviewed for this article.

Hare has since remarried and broken up with that other female partner; neither play a role in her child's life now. She's been remarried for a little over five years to her husband Eli, and they have another female partner, Gaby.

"I was very open with her from the get-go, that I was looking for another serious partner, and I had a kid, and I was like, 'if you don't want to be a parent, you don't have to be, but you have to know that if you want to date me, that you're dating a parent,'" she says. On Mother's Day this year, her daughter made Gaby a Mother's Day card. "She cried and recognized that she was this weird, cool bonus mom."

When it comes to caring for children, the more adults in the room, the better, polyamorous people say. "When there is a stable configuration of three parents or four parents, that can be tremendous for a child, or even just having extra aunties and uncles around," Adams says.

Sure, challenges exist. Whose name goes on the birth certificate? What about parent/guardian forms for school?

But many feel it's worth it in circumstances like "when a child is sick, having three or more adults who can stay home with them – rather than one or two – makes things easier," says Shanna Kattari, associate professor at the School of Social Work and in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of Michigan.

Just because some parental duties may be easier to handle, though, doesn't necessarily mean it's smooth sailing for the relationship. Hefley and her husband are actually getting a divorce in order to make things more equitable for their third partner.

A general explainer: What is polyamory? What to know about poly relationships.

When poly relationships end

Poly relationships, like any relationship, experience high highs and low lows. Pregnancy and newborns, in particular, can result in "polysaturation," when nonmonogamous people "reach the maximum number of romantic or sexual relationships that they can comfortably and sustainably manage," Lawrie says.

Breakups are often messy. Now imagine multiple people in a relationship, and you've got a much bigger mess on your hands. It's much more tricky when children are involved.

After giving birth, Stroh was wary of her partner dating again. Their dynamics shifted. She was the one stuck at home breastfeeding.

She didn't realize this discrepancy would impact her "ability to date and and meet people and be nonmonogamous, or enjoy the fruits of nonmonogamy." Stroh "naively thought I would be able to keep up being a fun, free, sexy person, but I didn't really feel that way a lot of the time, especially later in my pregnancy."

It's different for everyone: "Sex may become an issue when a pregnant person is in a nonmonogamous relationship – if their partners have other partners to turn to for sex, it may bring up feelings of jealousy or of being 'replaced,'" Addison says. "On the other hand, it might be a relief that their partners have other sexual relationships, and the pregnant person is too exhausted or ill or uncomfortable before birth, or recovering from birth postpartum, and doesn't want to or isn't able to have sex."

Stroh ultimately felt comfortable with her beau seeing an on-and-off partner of his own.

Adams points out people sometimes opt for monogamy briefly. In the 17 years they've been in a polyamorous partnership, the only time they've been monogamous was while pregnant. Mainly due to the STI risk.

"I still had dates with other partners that were platonic and still about connecting and felt tremendous amounts of support through my pregnancy, because we took that factor off the table as one of the things to be stressed out about, for me as an anxious lawyer mom," Adams says.

They had a loving marriage: Here's why they started swinging.

'It's just who we are'

Just because you don't understand a relationship structure doesn't mean you should pass judgment.

Daylover ran into that issue with people who were cool with her polyamory, but who assumed she and her husband would give it up once she had a kid.

"It's not even a central part of our lives; it's just who we are," she says. "So the idea of giving up the polyamory because we have kids makes no sense."

"Rather than pushing back on people who are living their lives authentically," Kattari says, "I believe we should work on moving towards a more affirming and just society, including in all of these different spaces."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Polyamory, pregnancy and when everything is complicated