Parenting stories

She was conceived by donor insemination, in a private clinic, after two previous failed attempts.

It was a very expensive process and initially involved securing a referral from my GP and then attending a counselling session to talk through my reasons for desiring to be a parent as a 35 year old, gay woman in a relationship with a partner 15 years my senior who, although never desiring to be a parent herself, was 100% behind the decision. I, on the other hand, was in no doubt about parenting.

Then three years later, we did it all again.

Same process, same clinic, but with a different donor as the previous donor’s sperm had achieved 10 pregnancies and had been taken out of circulation.

Had we known at the time of our first pregnancy, that we could ‘reserve’ that donors sperm, we probably would have done. But we weren’t told that this was a possibility, so a different donor was used. But had we reserved it, we wouldn’t have the same second girl we got, so on reflection we wouldn’t change a thing as we have two amazing young daughters.

We were given ‘pen portraits’ of the anonymous donors physical attributes and hobbies and based our ‘choices’ on family likeness.

We were so conventional (incidentally during one of our clinic visits, we were told that a national newspaper were on the phone, wanting to find out whether the clinic treated gays. Apparently the clinic declined to comment, but this was an example of the climate at the time).