PORTSMOUTH, R.I. — Bryce Helie sat in her hospital bed, cradling the newest addition to her family — a tiny girl with her blue eyes and light blonde hair.

Cara Millett, now Helie’s wife, looked on as Greyson, their oldest daughter, crawled onto the bed and cozied up to her mother. She peered "in a motherly way" over wires and blankets at Meyer, her new little sister, Helie said.

“It was our first moment together as a family,” said Helie, 41, of the June 2013 day. “We were so happy.”

When Helie passed Meyer to Millett, anxiety tinged their temporary joy.

Because the women were not married, a right that Rhode Island same-sex couples didn't have until two months after Meyer's birth, Millett had no legal authority over the child — and wouldn’t until the women completed the same laborious adoption process they went through with Greyson.

Even more disturbing in the case of adopting Meyer was a longstanding Rhode Island statute that they, likely due to a clerical error, weren't asked to do with Greyson: The law required they run a newspaper ad in Virginia, near the cryobank where they found their anonymous sperm donor, alerting him of the child’s availability for adoption.

“We decided we’re not going to do this,” said Millett, 39. “We need to fight this. And change this.”

And they did. Helie and Millett found a little-known route to overcome the legal obstacles: An order of parentage.

By naming Millett a “de facto parent” — an option established through the 2000 Rhode Island Supreme Court case Rubano v. DiCenzo — the women could skip the donor notification and get a birth certificate bearing both of their names. (The Rubano case established legal rights of the nonbiological parent of a child, born to a lesbian couple years earlier, after the women split up.)

“It recognizes the reality that they intended to be parents from the beginning,” said Michael Forte, the chief judge of family court, who ruled in their favor. “And it gives them equal rights over their child.”

But most “gap families” — LGBTQ couples who planned pregnancies and had children before they could be legally married — have chosen adoption, Forte said. This comes with the uncomfortable notice to sperm-donor parents “whose whereabouts are unknown.”

The notification is required for all adoptions involving unmarried couples that used a sperm donor, not just LGBTQ parents.

While Forte acknowledges this statute is antiquated, he must follow the law and ensure the adoption can’t be challenged at a later date, he said. Forte also said he is working with lawmakers to amend the sperm donor notification requirement.

Helie and Millett met in 1999 when they were both students at Boston University. It was Millett’s dream for each of them to carry a child using the same anonymous sperm donor.

“For me it was about building a connection between the girls,” said Millett. “They are each a part of us, but also connected to each other through the donor. It sort of completed our family.”

The girls are like miniatures of their mothers, they said.

Millett carried Greyson, a sensitive 6-year-old with her upturned nose, dark hair, and blue-gray eyes that change with the weather. And 3-year-old Meyer, with her wit and light features, is undeniably from Helie.

The idea of reaching out to their “father” seemed unnatural. He’d terminated his legal rights at the donation center, just as Helie and Millett had waived their right to go after him for any child support.

They knew little about him besides his donor number, his love for animals detailed in a cryobank questionnaire and a few presumed physical traits their daughters shared — chin dimples and “identical, cute feet and toes,” said Helie.

“We didn’t want to open a can of worms,” said Helie. “What if 10 years from now he does have a change of heart and says, ‘Oh my God I have all these children out there and I want to know who they are.’”

The women married on Dec. 13, 2014, but still hadn’t finalized the adoption for Meyer. Armed with a new lawyer from GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders in Boston, they set out to have the donor notification requirement waived.

The more the couple’s lawyer, Jennifer Levi, thought about the case, the more she realized “why it didn’t make any sense.”

“It’s like putting a round peg in a square hole,” Levi said. “You’re having couples do an adoption of their own children, and in this case, children that were already living with them and they had given birth to.”

Then Levi found the Rubano case.

In October 2016 in Family Court, she pursued the parentage judgment for Millett before Chief Judge Forte.

Millett took the stand first. Levi asked questions: Do you change her diapers? Do you take care of her when she’s sick? Do you comfort her when she’s upset?

With Helie on the stand, Levi posed another question: “What do the girls call you?”

Helie responded: “Big Mom and Little Mom.”

Giggles rippled across the courtroom as they responded to the nicknames that Greyson had picked. Millett is short, she explained, while Helie is tall.

Calling on the Rubano case, Forte ruled in the couple’s favor, opening up a new avenue for same-sex couples across the state.

“This follows in the court’s tradition of protecting the best interest of the child,” Forte said. “The court’s goal is to create families and to protect them whenever possible.”

Though Levi said the ruling is “hugely important,” Charles Greenwood, a Providence adoption lawyer, expressed concerns about whether the order would hold up in other states.

Forte said he “can’t imagine” why another state would challenge a birth certificate issued by the State of Rhode Island.

“That’s the end game,” Forte said. “To have both of our petitioners on the birth certificate."

In the case of the Millett and Helie family, this was a happy ending. When the girls came home from school, both moms hugged them tight.

jtempera@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7121

On Twitter: @jacktemp