After you decide you are both ready financially and emotionally for a child, you’ll have to choose which one of you will have the baby first.

“There will be lifelong ramifications to whatever you decide,” the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC) notes. “If, for example, you are the one to become pregnant, you may be shocked by how profoundly your body, your feelings, perhaps even your values and life experiences change. If, on the other hand, you decide not to try to conceive, you may regret your decision, perhaps even envy your partner’s euphoria over the miracle of growth happening inside her.”

And there will be legal consequences to your decision as well, as the HRC notes: Though both of you will be a parent to this child, the law only sees the biological mother as the legal parent. The mother who did not give birth to the child has to adopt the child in order to become a legal parent. “Moreover,” says the HRC, “this process, called second-parent adoption, is not available everywhere. And even where it is available, some women cannot afford the expense of hiring an attorney. The result: In the event of a breakup, the nonbiological mother may be denied custody or visitation rights, no matter how much of a parent she truly is to the child.”

The HRC has also listed on their Web site (www.hrc.org ) a number of other important factors you should consider when making this decision. Here are just a few:

• Which of you wants to be pregnant more

Whether you carry the child or not you are still their parent. So you must ask yourself how important it is that you be the one to give birth to them, and how important it is to your partner that she be the one to have the baby.

• How old you are and how old your partner is

As the HRC notes—and as every woman hearing the tick-tock of her biological clock knows—your chance of being infertile gets much higher as you enter your mid-30s. (Only Madonna, it seems, is immune to this rule.) A lesser-known, but still important fact to consider: the risk of having an early miscarriage or a baby with Down’s syndrome also increases with age.

• Are you covered?

Pregnancy is always an expensive proposition, but for a lesbian couple, it can be especially so. Find out if one—or both—of you has an insurance policy that covers donor insemination. If one of you is not from the US, you may get better maternity leave benefits than your American partner does. There are a number of steps the birth mother should take to ensure a good pregnancy. Here are some, courtesy of the British Columbia Medical Association (www.bcma.org ).

• Take folic acid. “Women who have enough folic acid in their bodies before pregnancy can greatly decrease the risk of having a baby with serious brain or spinal cord defects,” the BCMA says. “Folic acid, a B vitamin, should be taken in a dose of 1 mg daily for 3 months before conception because these problems develop very early in pregnancy—only 3 to 4 weeks after conception.”

• Women who are overweight could develop high blood pressure and diabetes during pregnancy, the BCMA warns. But though you want to lose weight, you must do so carefully “as fad diets and rapid weight loss are not good for your body prior to pregnancy.”

• This may seem like an obvious tip, but there are still women who have not yet gotten the message: Stay away from smoking, alcohol and drugs while you are pregnant—always. “Smoking, alcohol, and drug use can all adversely affect the development of your baby. These have been linked to miscarriage, premature birth and low birth weight, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)—which causes mental slowness, poor growth, and facial defects—or your baby could be born addicted to drugs,” says the BCMA.

Until next time!