Shortlisted for the 2015 Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction In Memory of Robbie Robertson

Girl meets girl. Girl marries girl. They want to have babies…but they need a little help.

Double Pregnant is author Natalie Meisner’s light-hearted, poignant and informative true story about starting a family with her wife Viviën. Because Viviën is a woman of colour who was adopted into a white family, the couple wants their children to have a connection to their donor and decide against taking the anonymous, sperm clinic route. But they realize they are going to need some help. Taking matters into their own hands leads the couple to a series of often-hilarious “dates” with potential donors, all of whom have wildly different opinions on how the donation process should go, and how Natalie and Viviën should proceed as a new family.

Natalie Meisner ( www.nataliemeisner.com) is a playwright, an award-winning multi-genre author, and the fifth Poet Laureate of Calgary. Baddie One Shoe is a collection of odes to renegade women who fight the powers that be with laughter. Boom Baby won both the Alberta and the Canadian National Playwriting Awards.  Speed Dating for Sperm Donors was a hit at Lunchbox and Neptune Theatre.  Double Pregnant (Fernwood) topped non-fiction lists, and her first book for kids,  My Mommy, My Mama, My Brother & Me is about a two-mom biracial family finding community. Meisner is a wife, a mom to two great boys, and a professor in the Department of English at Mount Royal University. 

“What an accomplishment, to have written a page turner on a subject like this that is both moving and very funny. ”

— Inge Fraters, KJIK Magazine, Know How Sonoma Publishing

“…an honest recollection of the journey [Natalie and her wife] embarked upon while being pregnant at the same time. ”

— Calgary Journal

“A touching and amusing love story about two women, two babies and one happy family. ”

— Winnipeg Free Pres

“This story implemented so firmly in my mind I completely missed my stop on the train ride home. I want everyone I know to go and see this play. I want it to be performed in schools. It does such a lovely job of conveying a reality that many are oblivious to: that lesbian and gay couples are just as destined to raise families as anyone else is. They just might have to jump a few hilarious, and horrendous, hurdles to get there. ” – Gay Calgary Magazine

“Reading about Meisner’s struggles to not just get pregnant, but to get pregnant at the same time as her wife, was a tad surreal and very rewarding. ”

— Outwords Magazine

“This story implemented so firmly in my mind I completely missed my stop on the train ride home. I want everyone I know to go and see this play. I want it to be performed in schools. It does such a lovely job of conveying a reality that many are oblivious to: that lesbian and gay couples are just as destined to raise families as anyone else is. They just might have to jump a few hilarious, and horrendous, hurdles to get there. ”

— Gay Calgary Magazine

“Passionate and engaging account of a lesbian couple’s struggle to have a family. The book is not about sexuality or gender identity; it’s about love. ”

— Beth Everest, Writer, Professor and Editor

“This book is so full of life and love, of effort and desire and the determination of two extraordinary women devoted to each other and to having a family. Their journey is both delightfully humorous and at times heartrendingly desperate, but they had the courage to solve the riddle, and in the process, they created enchantment. ”

— Chapelle Jaffe, Actor

“Meisner’s book is, above all, a love story, and a close-to-the-bone account of one couple’s hopeful and ultimately rewarding journey to parenthood. ”

— Calgary Herald