Fern’s journey to motherhood
My journey to motherhood is not one that I was raised watching on mainstream TV and not a route that is entirely easy to research. When I was younger, I always imagined being a mum, but could never really picture the other parent and could never really picture being pregnant. Luckily for me my family is not the norm being made up of adopted and fostered children, so I assumed that was my future. However, at 20 I came out as pansexual and met my now wife and my journey to motherhood became clear.
From the start we both knew I did not want to carry a baby and my wife wanted nothing more than to carry, so that decision was an easy one to get to. That is when the hurdles really started to occur. I started the research on how we could start a family by visiting Stonewall's website, they had a really good resource available on how female same sex couples could achieve families. There were many options to consider home insemination with a known/anonymous donor, private or NHS fertility treatment. We opted to trial the NHS route as the laws around at home insemination were too vague for us, the private fertility clinic was treatment was 1) expensive and 2) very clinical, however NHS Jessops were welcoming from the start and made it feel like a journey as opposed to a lab treatment.
We were very lucky in our timing as, in Sheffield, the definition of infertility had changed to include same sex couples, which meant we were eligible for funded treatment. From start to finish it took us 20 months. Our pregnancy journey was the first time I faced challenges from being in a same sex relationship. I was asked numerous times how far along I was by people who assumed I was carrying, and many people told me, unsolicited, they couldn’t do what I was doing and raise a baby that wasn’t theirs. Even the questions we were asked as part of the NHS counselling process due to using donor sperm, were very much geared towards heterosexual couples, for example ‘what will you do when your 13-year-old child comes up to you and has found out they are a donor child?’. Our response to this was, ‘we will be very open about the whole thing, but we really hope they have figured it out by then…’. Another challenge I faced was during an NHS run antenatal class, where the midwife kept referring to the partners as Dad’s (even though I was on screen and had introduced myself). When we visited the hospital clinic during the pregnancy there was a display board in the hospital advertising a ‘dad’s group’. All these things, and others like them, made both my wife and I feel very frustrated that we were going through them again and again. Most of all it just made the process more exhausting than fertility treatment/pregnancy already is.
We did have some positive experiences along the way, we enrolled on to a private antenatal group who referred to everyone giving birth as birthing person, and everyone else as birthing partners! This changed the game for me as suddenly I felt included, and the people running the course never tripped over their language once, it was in their nature to be inclusive, and I felt it!
Now our son is here, although I know things are becoming more inclusive, something I worry about is him growing up with two mums and how his world will be affected by that. We have tried to buy lots of LGBTQ+ books for him so that he can see his family, and others, represented. His current favourite is called Mommy, Mama and Me and I love that we can do things like reading before bed and have the stories mirror our family, I never want him to feel that our family isn’t normal.
My journey is one we are doing again for baby number 2, already I have been advised to have babies close together in age, and they aren’t that expensive really. We have had multiple failed attempts at getting pregnant this time, and people have remarked not to worry it will happen. My ask is to consider the factors of not being in a heterosexual relationship. Our process is longer, as we waited in a queue for our treatment, our cost is in its £1,000s already before the fertility treatment starts and each time we have a treatment is between £1,000-£4,000. There are questions that people will have, and I am happy to answer, however could the question be researched elsewhere, and would it be asked for a heterosexual couple?
My ask of you is, what small things can you do or change that can help LGBTQ+ families feel more included? Could you try to include more books in your child’s library that represent different types of family. Could you call out something you feel isn’t wholly inclusive? What could you do through your job that could make life easier for the LGBTQ+ community? The LGBTQ+ community is such a small percentage of the population, without allies in our corner we have an uphill battle, the smallest change that could take you a few minutes could really make an impact on an LGBTQ+ family. If you are stuck or do not know where to start, come to an LGBT+ network meeting and ask the questions there in a safe space.