Laura-Rose Thorogood, co-founder of the LGBT Mummies Tribe, join Lotte and Stu on this week’s episode of Some Families. Laura-Rose started Mummies Tribe as a space for women and people globally to make friends and meet other families with similar experiences. Since then it has grown to an international community that aims to educate, share and celebrate LGBT+ women who want to start a family.
Laura-Rose is currently pregnant with her and her wife’s third child. She discusses their road to parenthood, being a bio and non-bio mum, the inequality and postcode lottery that people face within fertility treatments.
LINKS: https://www.thelgbtmummiestribe.com/
Full transcription below.
Laura-Rose: If you want to carry your own child and you’re physically able to, you should have that human right to have your first choice. And a lot of people at the moment are having that choice taken away from them and that right, because they can’t financially afford it. And for us, that’s just, that’s just wrong.
Now she goes around and she tells people how fabulous she is. She has two moms and she’s super special.
Lotte Jeffs: Hello and welcome listeners to some families. I am Lottie and
Stu Oakley: hello. I am Stu. And if you don’t know already, we are a one stop shop for all things queer parenting. So welcome back, dear listener, or have a big hello to you. If you are joining us. For the very first time. So Lottie, I want to ask you how you are doing, and I also want to check that you have your glass of parents ruin this evening.
Our little tipple that we like to have while we speak to our guests, what are you um
Lotte Jeffs: partaking in tonight? So we’ve discovered this new cocktail delivery company called Neo and I’m having a Negroni. From this, um, company and it’s the most delicious Negroni I’ve ever had. And it’s been mixed in a buyer bar, man in Italy and delivered to me.
So did
Stu Oakley: they deliver the barman as well?
Lotte Jeffs: Wouldn’t that be nice.
Stu Oakley: And that would be the type of delivery service I would like for my parents ruin
Lotte Jeffs: to what are you
drinking tonight?
Stu Oakley: I just have a classic G and T with a little bit of lemon, although I did make myself some, um, gin sours over the weekend as well. And I think, I mean, I’m all about the sours, but I’d never made a gin sour before, but it was, uh, it was very, very nice.
It got me.
Yeah. Well, I am actually taking it a little bit easy this evening because yesterday was of course mother’s day and my wife and I at the end of the day, celebrated and toasted our. Always coming up to three years of motherhood with, um, you cocktails then as well. So this is just the leftover from last night.
Did you, did you celebrate, what did you do?
Um, we, yeah, we celebrate our nuns, our nannies, my mom and John’s mom. And so we make the kids. To make things for, for the nannies. And so we just kind of put the focus that, um, and as time goes on, you know? Yeah. My daughter and I have also had a conversation about her birth mother as it’s leading up to mother’s day.
And I think actually rather than being triggering, I think it’s utilizing these opportunities within the calendar. To, to talk to our children about who they are, where they came from and their life stories. So, um, we’re using it very much as an opportunity to, to do that whilst also celebrating our mothers.
Lotte Jeffs: Lovely. Oh, that’s so nice. I’ll try and do a similar thing at father’s day. I think that’s a really nice idea. We obviously have the yearly competition for who is the greatest mother, because, you know, There can only be one greatest. Do
Stu Oakley: you do like a point system? And then there’s
Lotte Jeffs: a points scoring system for the past year and on mother’s day, I tell my wife how she scored in relation to me in terms of general parenting ability and, um, emotional labor.
No, of course I don’t do that.
Stu Oakley: Is it bad for a second?
Lotte Jeffs: We had a lovely day and, um, both forced our daughter to make us cards and gave them to each other. And it’s just a nice time to sort of reflect on what it means to be a parent, but maybe, maybe we should campaign for that to just be agenda neutral parents day.
Stu Oakley: Oh, can you imagine the
Lotte Jeffs: daily mail with Mr. Potato head? Whatever next
Stu Oakley: mad don’t even get them started latte. Talking of mothers and wonderful mothers that leads us on nicely to our wonderful guests this week, who is not only a mama herself, but she is actually the founder of the LGBT mama’s tribe, which I’m sure you are all very familiar with.
It is. The wonderful Laura-Rose Thorogood.
Lotte Jeffs: Hello. Thank you so much for joining us on some families. We’re big fans of yours and LGBT mummy’s tribe and everything that you do on social media and your campaign, which will all come onto later. But if you would mind just by starting by introducing yourself, who are you? Where are you? What do you do
Laura-Rose: that kind of thing?
Bit of everything. I’m Laura Rose. I’m a lesbian mother of two plus bump. So we’re expecting that at the moment.
Stu Oakley: Congratulations.
Laura-Rose: Thank you. So we, I founded the LGBT mummy’s tribe organization three years in January because when we tried for our children, we didn’t really find there was a network or support group or safe Haven or community where we could share.
Our experiences ask for advice or for support. So we kind of winged it. That’s why we created the organization to educate, share, celebrate LGBT plus women and people like us who just wanted to start a family, whether it be through fertility treatment, home, AI adoption, fostering co-parenting as a step parent to give everyone that opportunity to.
Get the advice on the puffs Parenthood.
Lotte Jeffs: Amazing. And do you do that full time or do you have a day job and then try and fit all of the work you do for the community around
Laura-Rose: it? No, I work full time. My wife, Stacy who’s co-founder is at home with the kids and yeah, we fit in evenings, weekends, late nights around, around everything.
So do you mind me
Lotte Jeffs: asking what you do for your main job?
Laura-Rose: I’m an account director for like a sustainable procurement company. So I’m in sales. So I traveled a
Lotte Jeffs: lot, like stressful and busy, two kids, and then you’re coming home and say, thank you for everything you’re doing for the clients, because we really do appreciate it.
Thank you, Laura Bowes, did you go, did you go straight to IVF or did you try some other. Um, means of conception first
Laura-Rose: we’ll know when we, he looked, you’re talking nine, 10 years ago to start a family. We knew. And we were checks that our local CCG within NHS didn’t cover us for funding, CCG clinical commissioning groups.
So basically every trust across the NHS in the UK, like basically you get a budget and then they decide how they spend that budget. And one aspect of it is fertility treatment. So in regards to fertility treatment, they decide what the criteria is, whether you fit here, whether they offer it or if they don’t.
So it’s really disparate across the UK. Some will some, won’t some you have to pay for six rounds yourself or 12 or some, they just don’t offer it. Or it’s dependent on your BMI, your age, all these other criteria. So we knew we didn’t have access. So we knew we had to pay privately. So for us, we decided, and you know, our route for us, that was why was that
we wanted to go through a private clinic. And go down the IUI route to start off with, so that’s the route we went down for our first and our second. And it was only this year when we were trying for our third, that I have experienced fertility issues, quite substantial ones comparison to when we had our second child, which kind of knocked us for six, really, because I’m relatively young and my ovarian reserve service Hovde in less than three years.
So we kind of got told. Your option is carry on with more Ruis and we’d have three failed or move to IVF. So we moved to IVF, had a transfer of two embryos that failed. And then had a frozen transfer, which worked fine. Okay.
Laura Rose: fifth attempt.
Lotte Jeffs: Yeah. So, um, just to go into a bit of the techie detail for a minute, you said that you had two embryo transfers that didn’t work and then a frozen one did.
So would the two, is that called the fresh, fresh
Laura-Rose: transfer? Yeah. So
Lotte Jeffs: that happens like quite
Laura-Rose: quickly. Yeah. So you have like a period where you’re medicated, your ovaries are simulated. You then go in for a procedure. You have the eggs collected. Then they harvest them and cultivate them for five days, three to five days, depending on if they’re going to put back.
And then they freeze the breasts that are safe and you know, not abnormal. And then they say, how many do you want to put back? And obviously we’ve agreed to at the time we were like, we just want it to work. So we are wanting to put two quality ones back thinking, Oh, it’ll definitely work. I’m really, you know, relatively.
Okay. And it didn’t work. And we kind of, it kind of really shocked us because we just weren’t expecting it. And then this time round, we just said, look, we’ve only got three left frozen. We’re just going to put one back and hope for the best. So luckily we did.
Stu Oakley: So you’ve got the three frozen embryos then are they all with your eggs
and could you talk us a little bit, maybe about the decision of who you decided to use and who’s you decided to, and who decides to carry with each of your children as well? So
Laura-Rose: when we, our first we discussed them, we said at first that I was going to carry because I was younger than my wife has severe PCRs.
And the NHS told her at 16, you’ll never have children. It’s so severe. You’ll never carry a birth to term. So in her head she was like, I’ll never be pregnant.
Stu Oakley: What’s PCRs,
Laura-Rose: polycystic ovary syndrome.
Stu Oakley: Okay. Little gay
me. I never know that
Laura-Rose: is fine. So she got, so that she’d never have children. And then we went to the clinic open evening and you know, we asked the question, they said, Look, come for some tests, come and see us and see how it goes.
And it might be a, no, it might be a yes. And they test it and they said, yeah, you struggle. And it might take time, but you will fall. And we don’t see why you won’t fall with Rui. So that’s why she went first. And then obviously I was desperate to carry. So when we went for our second, I carried and then this time around, I kind of, after the birth of our son, I was just like, I want to carry again.
It was the most amazing experience. I had a great, great pregnancy. I was working up until past, my due date I was in heels
and then this time I’m like, Whoa, struggling. It’s been a really difficult pregnancy, a lot of scares, a lot of extra scans and just really quite frightening, but every pregnancy is different. And I think you get into kind of false sense of security that, Oh, I had a great pregnancy. I’ll be fine. But then it kind of, God is like actually going to teach you a lesson.
You shouldn’t think like that. So, yeah, it’s been a bit of, a lot more difficult this time. Not more frightening.
Lotte Jeffs: Can I ask kind of for selfish reasons? Cause it’s maybe something that I’ll be experiencing with, with my wife. So my wife, um, carried. First and she got pregnant first time, our UI. Wow. I’m now realizing what a miracle that was because it hasn’t been as easy for me, but one of the things I’ve been wondering is if, and when it does work out for me, will I, do you think I’ll feel differently towards the child that I’ve carried myself and my body versus my relationship with my.
Child who my wife carried. Who’s
Laura-Rose: now two and a half. That’s a really good question. Do you know? It does come up a lot and people do tend to ask us because we’re both bio Adnan, bio moms, they both had the opportunity and it doesn’t tend to happen as often with our community. It tends to be one tends to carry one either is in first or has issues or financially.
They can’t afford to have another one because it’s so expensive and people do ask and know it. You don’t feel any different, however, you can’t. Didn’t know, I, the bond that you have with your child. So, you know, when our elders, when we were trying to get her to sleep and get her in a pattern, I was like, come on, we’ve got, we’ve got to do what we can.
We’ve got to get her into this routine. And she was. You, you don’t understand every time she cries, she said, it’s not my heart’s been broken in. She, but you understand when you Carrie, and she said, I don’t mean that in a patronizing way, but yeah. Yeah. My wife
Lotte Jeffs: said to me as well, she’s like every time she hears her cry, like it, her whole body kind of goes into like animal.
Like mode. And I didn’t have that as the non-fire mother. Like it bothered me when she cried, but it wasn’t like a
Laura-Rose: physical response pain. Yeah. And then, yeah, I had our son, I said, I really understand, because even now when he cries or when he’s no 10, you have to tell him off. It’s like, it, it does pay pains.
You because you feel, yeah. It’s like a physical reaction. Like, Oh, you just can’t stand it. And it is different. You do have a closer bond than it is nature versus nurture. So. If he’s not, well, he will come to me and he’ll want me more outdoor type. She’s really all, she will want my wife more and it does hurt, but that’s just the way it is.
That’s that bond. It’s very difficult to break, not break that, but you know, they’ve got that bond, whereas there’ll be other things she’ll come to me for things that you’re competent and vice versa, he’ll go to her. But yeah, you don’t love them any differently. It’s no different. It’s just that when you.
Have that child and you’ve carried them for nine months. That bond is very, very strong and it’s, so it’s an amazing thing to experience to be able to be lucky, to get to amazing, to have
Lotte Jeffs: experienced it from both sides, really like what a unique, privileged position to be in.
Laura-Rose: Yeah. Well, I mean, we’re, we’re really, I think we thank our lucky stars every day that we’re in a position where, you know, we really struggled to finance having kids, but at the same time, We appreciate how lucky we are, because we support people globally and there’s women and people in our support groups, or that come to us, you know, just to vent or just speak.
And they say we will never be able to afford to ever have a child of our own. And what we find it really painful is that we feel that everyone has the human right, that they should have. A child by their chosen roots, if they want to foster it and that’s their choice, they should be able to foster same with adoption.
If you want to carry your own child. And you’re physically able to, you should have that human right to have your first choice. And a lot of people at the moment are having that choice taken away from them and that right, because they can’t financially afford it. And for us, that’s just, that’s just wrong.
It’s not equal for most of our community. What about these families? The are, you know, in areas of social deprivation or they’re from backgrounds where they’ll never earn over a certain month because they’re there for low income. Why are they being denied that opportunity to carry a child as a couple or a single woman or person?
Why is that? Okay, why are they having to go down an alternative route? Or why are they going down a route? Say for example, home insemination, which some people choose first out. And it works and it’s amazing, and it’s a great experience, but there are some people that come to us and the ramifications of the fact that they haven’t had that as their chosen route to Parenthood.
And they go down a different route and they’re not legally protected. They’re not well-informed. And then 10 years down the line and their child has got a donor knocking at the door who signed a piece of paper that said, he’d have no involvement. And now he wants involvement. The impact on the child is huge.
The government needs to take this into consideration that our community needs protect him, the child, the donor, the woman, or person, or the couple, and that it’s not okay that people are not being supported on this path to Parenthood. Why are we not getting the right access? Why are we not getting equal access?
And for us, it’s just, I’ll get really ranty sorry. But. For us, it’s just wrong.
Stu Oakley: Now you’re clearly passionate about it and you’re clearly passionate for a reason. Just taking it on. I want to talk more about what you just said about the donor and, and things like that. Explain to us and explain to me what the, what the means test is at the moment and where the kind of threshold stands for whether you’re eligible or not for the IVF treatment on the NHS.
Laura-Rose: There’s no means testing. That’s the problem. If the NHS hasn’t got this massive pot of gold, we know it. Hasn’t we know it’s running at a deficit people. They can’t afford to fund our community and heterosexuals for treatment. If that’s the case and they go, you know, we can’t afford it. Why not fund and means test people who have low income from areas of social deprivation who come forward and say, I will never be able to afford to have children through a fertility clinic, or I would never be able to have a child with my partner or co-parent.
If they have a known donor, want to go down a clinic, right. Then support those people for, you know, people like myself and Lottie and other women and people in the community. If we have to pay for it. No, it’s not ideal. It’s not the best option we’ve spent in excess of 50 grand having our kids. But we’re lucky we’ve got our kids.
There were people out there that are still waiting. So means test people provide that support to heterosexuals and the LGBT community who can’t afford it. And then that way, at least those people are getting the opportunity. The children are protected. The parents are getting the roots Parenthood that they wanted in the first place.
And there’s going to be less defaults, less issues, less mental health issues for the children. All of these things and all of this fallout is we see happening all the time and the government don’t collect data on us as a community by that’s terrible. Isn’t it eats latte is horrendous. I sat in a meeting the other day and brought it up and it was like, Oh yeah, we don’t collect data on your community.
And I was like, it’s just, how is that even happening in 2020, what do you think
Lotte Jeffs: is, is it. Is it latent homophobia? Is it just like the slowness of the government generally? What, what do you thinks holding things
Laura-Rose: back? I don’t think it’s like homophobia as such. I think you’ll get that anywhere across the NHS cost the government and you will get the people that will say, Oh, you know, they’ve got marriage equality.
What more do they want? And I’ve had, I’ve had that said. By people before. And the fact is across healthcare and across our families, we don’t have equality. We just have no visibility or support at all when it comes down to it. It’s just that the time, because we’re growing exponentially, we’re having families at a much quicker rate as a community than we were 10, 20, 30 years ago now where having all these families were an amazing, beautiful community of different types of families.
And instead of investing in education and training for midwives, JPS health professionals, Swan to stand us, it’s not happened because the policies haven’t changed and moved at the same time as we’ve been growing. So now they’re sitting there saying, we know, you know, you’ve brought it to our attention.
These are really big changes we need to make. We know we do. But we’ve got COVID, we’ve got by mortality, both, obviously a crucial, it needs to be dealt with you’re you’re there, you’re on the list, but it’s gonna take a while to get to you. And these things don’t happen overnight. But in the meantime, there’s thousands of people in this country that just aren’t getting supported and missing out on opportunities to have children.
And it’s just, what’s
Lotte Jeffs: your next, what’s your sort of burst and milestone. What would be a big thing for you to
Laura-Rose: have achieved? Well, the current LGBT action plan that the government put in force previously has no mention of LGBT plus families across the community and how they can support us. It has not mentioned it now.
Spokes trans people and non binary people, which is amazing. It’s such a milestone when it comes to families, they don’t actually, there’s no mention of us. So we met with the government equalities office. We’re involved with the NHS and other governing bodies and say, look, these changes need to be made.
Use of language, education and training of professionals. They have an understanding about families, data collection, basic data collection of how many of us there are across the country that have had children. If they’ve been had children by adoption, by phosphate, they don’t have this data. How can you say that?
You want to support us if you don’t know how many of us there are, you know, our children go to a doctor’s appointment with an earache. And you sit there and you have to come out of the closet every single time in front of your child and explain how your child was created. And it’s inappropriate. It’s not appropriate for your family.
If you don’t want to have that discussion in front of your six-year-old of, Oh, have I got a dad? They said, dad, I haven’t got a dad. You didn’t tell me I had a dad. What’s the donor. And you’ve had that conversation with your daughter. Oh, gender age, appropriate way through a bedtime story book that you’ve, you know, given them.
And then they’re questioning how they were made their creation, their family unit. And that is really wrong because there’s no data collected. There’s no info on the buyer and the non bio mum on each of our children’s notes. You have to go, Oh, it was IUI. Oh, I’m the birth mom. Oh, I’m not the birth mom. Oh, so where’s the dad.
All of this happens so regularly to PayPal. Your children’s notes, your baby book. It says mother or father. I sat there at a midwife appointment the other week crossed out. Follow the right donor. And I had to do it on about five pages. Um, the midwives, like you feel sorry for them because they’re not giving the support either.
So they sit there and they don’t know what treatment you’ve had, what medication you’ve had, you know, they don’t understand what you’ve been through. There’s no understanding of your family unit. Like when we had our daughter and the doctor said she didn’t want me in there because I wasn’t a real mum get out.
I don’t want to, I want the real mum and. For like a year and a half after that, as a non bio mom, I mentally struggled and had to validate myself in every situation people would say, Oh, she’s lovely. And I’d go, Oh yeah, I’m her mom. I looked like a nutcase. I looked because I didn’t have anyone around at the time to say, I feel the same or I’m a non-viral mom.
And I’ve been through that. I’ve not felt valued. People would never addressed me in an, in an appointment and all these things happen. And. Use of language use of pronouns. People go, Oh, it doesn’t really matter if they don’t eat. And it does. It makes a huge difference. There’s people in our community that fought to be a woman foot, been man gone through incredible procedures to be who they are and who they want to be.
And yet we can’t even give them their spectrum of actually asking them that question. The open question, can I ask who’s here? Oh, yeah. I’m mum and my mum. Lovely. Okay. Let’s get you scanned
Lotte Jeffs: so simple and easy. Isn’t
it
Laura-Rose: put it like that. So simple.
Stu Oakley: I noticed a difference at all sense that the birth of your first child too well through to now the pregnancy that you’re going through now, in the sense of the attitudes and the way that people have treated you and your wife along along the way.
I think it
Laura-Rose: was worse when we had our first, but we had two amazing midwives at the hospital. We had, they were fantastic. They. The two women that looked after us ask questions. Do you mind if I ask and you were like, no, we’re open and direct. We were like, no, go on. If you get it wrong, it doesn’t matter.
People make mistakes, but you’ve got to educate them. So they understand. And then with our son, we had an issue at the hospital with one of the midwives who was a bit rude, but it tends to be a certain demographic of health professionals that you get discrimination from. Of a certain age of a certain level of experience that don’t feel maybe they have the time or they want to, but that’s not all of them.
You can’t generalize it, but tend to be a certain age of health professional. You get that attitude and then this time, no, it’s been better, but again, the health professionals that I’ve dealt with so far, but appointments because obviously my wife can’t come here, anything at the minute because of COVID just don’t don’t know.
And it’s, it’s, it’s really unfortunate because the midwife looking after us at the minute is lovely. Yeah. And really experienced at her job, but spent two, two and a half hours sat there with me asking me what IVF was like, the type of IVF I’d had, namely my medication spending out for her going into detail about the procedures I’d had and all she kept doing was apologizing.
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. And I said, it’s not your fault. You haven’t been told this it’s you haven’t been trained in this. And she was just getting more embarrassed. And for me, we need the support, but the staff need the support as well. So how can you support me if you don’t know? And for us, we want to create positive outcomes, policy needs changing, but we can help you.
We’ll educate. You we’ll work with you to create a positive outcome. People are so scared nowadays because of social media, the way the society is. To actually turn around and say, can I ask you a question? Is he okay? I might get it wrong. So we try and say no, ask the question, get it wrong. So the next time you meet someone like us or me, you’ll get it right.
And, you know, and that’s the problem. Everyone’s scared of saying the wrong thing. So no one asks anything. Yeah.
Stu Oakley: It’s a really good point. And I always say that if it’s coming from a good, if it’s coming from a good place and it’s coming from the heart and actually it’s just curiosity without. Without any malice behind it and they just want to be educated, then we should be encouraging people to ask those questions in the right way in the right environment.
Lotte Jeffs: Yeah. So could you talk to us a bit more about mummy’s tribe and what it is as a resource? Do you, or did you before COVID do some in-person events? Is it more of a network of people? Is it like a mum’s net for gay women? If you could just tell us a bit more about
Laura-Rose: it. So when we started, it was just so like a community.
On Instagram, a page just for other women and people globally to make friends and meet families that look like them and share, lived experiences. And then it just kind of blew up overnight. And, you know, we did a post about being a non bio mom and shared our experiences and we had thousands of people messaging in and just saying, I felt like that.
And, Oh my God, I’m so glad you said that because that’s me. And I’ve been in that situation. I’ve suffered depression and I’ve. Not felt supported. And then we set up our support groups. So we have support groups. We have the community where people share and we feature peoples, you know, got your days there, fostering panel approve in, um, all these different celebrate three parts of the journey and miscarriage and loss.
People want to talk about that. We want to take the stigma out of that. And then we do have a fence. So we’ve had two events where we had about 130 women and people come together with their bumps, their children, they’ve older children, their partners, just to make friends because you, you both, you probably know it’s difficult to meet other families locally.
You always seem to be the only guys. Yeah. The page. And it’s good for us children to meet others like them and our daughter walked in and went, Oh yeah. Oh my gosh, mummy, that these, these little girls or boys, they’re just like me. And they’ve got two mummies or that one’s got mummy just like me. And I was like, yeah, they’re special just like you.
And it’s really important that the, our children see themselves in other families because of wise, they feel isolated. They feel that different and it’s not different in a good way. And it’s just them. Now, she goes around and she tells people how fabulous she is, that she has two moms. She’s saved Ms. Beth.
Good for her. But none of that. So, I mean, you know, bringing everyone together. Having the support groups, the campaigning is to make real change, but so people can just feel less isolated and alone. And we’ve got people in Russia, Australia. We’ve got people in Hawaii, Canada, all over the world, they all talk and they make friends and we’ve had people actually meet up and send us a picture and say, Oh, we’ve, we’ve met up with this family that we met through your organization.
And that’s just. You know, that’s so
Stu Oakley: nice on that point. There’s families all over the world that are coming together specifically on the, on the IVF element. Have you found that there’s other countries that we could learn from that are doing it
Laura-Rose: better? The state you’re in, in America, if you have a certain level of private health insurance, whether it be your own that you’ve paid for, or if it’s to your work.
So an employer can provide, or does provide health insurance. And under that health insurance, it can cover fertility treatment. So either can cover medication or it can cover a certain amount of rounds or it’ll cover full IVF. And in some States, some people really lucky that they just get full reciprocal, IVF or IVF straight off
Stu Oakley: the bat.
And it doesn’t discriminate against the sexuality either. That’s just. For anybody that dependent on state. Okay. That’s really interesting. I think that’s the second time actually so far in some of our interviews that we’ve done recently, where the States are actually better us family opportunity
Lotte Jeffs: and something that I’ve been thinking of with my personal journey at the moment is like what impact it would have on my decision-making if money was completely taken out of the equation, because so.
So much of the conversation of like, what should I do next? Should I do this? Should I do that comes down to money? And it’s such a, a horrible situation to be in, to feel like I’m making decisions about the family that I long for the rest of my, the kind of life that I want to lead, you know? And it’s coming down to do, I have enough cash in my bank account to facilitate that.
And. It’s kind of depressing and I wish
Laura-Rose: it wasn’t the case. I think it’s awful because it takes the actual excitement out of it. It’s a journey. And for a lot of people, they will only do it once. It should be an exciting journey. It should be fun. You know, it’s going to be difficult, but the financial strain for most people across our community is a bugbear because it it’s the part that, you know, Puts that pressure on your body that you don’t need to go, Oh my God, if this doesn’t work, where are we going to find the money for next time?
Or is it going to have to be put back or postponed? Because we haven’t got that cash. Are we going to have to go and get another credit card or a loan or borrow money or family? Or this is the last embryo we’ve got. This is our last chance. So we have people in that position and it’s horrible. It’s horrible.
And there’d be so many happier people who would be able to enjoy their experience. Like you said, if they didn’t have that. Financial pressure over their head. And also
Stu Oakley: for somebody who’s listening, who wants to help and help, you know, the cause and help what you’re trying to achieve, what, where can they go for help?
What can they do? Is it just a case of just keeping an eye on the, the, the campaigns you’re putting out there on LGBT mummy’s tribe? We share a lot of
Laura-Rose: other people’s petitions with the Meghan who our company starting their treatment. They’re really lovely. So we shared that petition, so they wanted a petition.
To go live about the fact they wanted to go down the home insemination road, but couldn’t because in the UK you can’t have spam shipped from a spam back to your home, but you can’t in America. So they had to go down a more expensive road. So they’re trying to campaign for fertility and equality so that the postcode lottery within the UK is looked at which that’s what we’ve been doing as well.
There’s another woman, heterosexual woman called Amber Rizzo. Who’s been fighting from the heterosexual point of view. She’s got one. There’s another campaign that we’re about to share. In regards to two parents been on the birth certificate if they go through home insemination at home, because at the moment people want legally, both on the birth certificate, unless they go through second parent adoption.
So there’s so many that we share, but obviously for us, we can’t take all of these things on. We’re trying to do bits at a time and it does take time. But for us, healthcare wise, We all of this information through obviously the channels and organizations and with the NHS, we pass that on. We pass that feedback on.
So we’d always say to anyone, if you’re experiencing difficulty, if there’s something you feel needs to be challenged, come to us. Talk to us, you know, we’ll name. You we’ll say that you’ve been involved. We’ll pass that feedback on we’ll feed that back to the tribe. And we want people to be involved. The whole point is it doesn’t just come from our lived experience.
It’s from everyone’s. And for
Lotte Jeffs: those listening, who, who wants to embark on having a family, um, and want to be bio parents one way or another, but don’t have the money. What’s your advice to them as their first as their first steps? Is it still an option for them to be parents?
Laura-Rose: That’s a really horrible question, but it’s, it’s a truthful question.
Um, When people come to us now and say that, and they say our local CCG doesn’t support us. We can’t get treatment. What can we do if I had a pot of gold, I’d pay for everyone, you know, if you won the lottery. But there isn’t much you can do, you can offer them the fact that there are alternative routes to Parenthood.
There are a lot of amazing children in the system and in social care that need homes, you know, Stu you know, more than anyone from your experience, that there’s a lot of children that need to be loved. And yes, there, that might not be their chosen route, but if you can’t have a bio child, And, you know, you desperately want a child and you want to change someone’s life adoption and fostering is something that you can really, really make a huge difference and, you know, love that child unconditionally.
It doesn’t make a difference whether you’ve carried them or not, you still love them. But unfortunately, in our community, a lot of women and people tend to want to carry. And if that’s their chosen route, that’s their right. There’s not much you can do other than go down the home insemination vote. And we’d say, come to us.
Seek out a lawyer, make sure that you are legally informed to make sure that you do everything the right way to make sure you’re protected. Regardless. You need to be protected. Your child needs protected and the donor needs to be protected. You’ve all got to be in agreement of that. Child’s future.
That’s the most important thing we are working with. One of our partners called fertility health hub, one of our friends, and they’ve got an initiative which is going to help some people restart their journey. That’s been affected by COVID or the can’t afford. To go down the treatment. Boom. So a handful of people will be supported through this initiative.
So if people are listening, please keep an eye out on their page and our page because it could really change some people’s lives. And it’s, it’s a global initiative. So it will affect people globally. Such as keeping on that and that might be able to
Lotte Jeffs: help. That sounds brilliant. Thank you for
Stu Oakley: sharing on the show.
This season, we have a new segment, which is show and tell, which is where Lottie and I bring something and sometimes our special guests AK you today. We get you to share something with the class. So Laura Rose, what have you brought with you today?
Laura-Rose: Oh, a book because I think education with our children is really, really potent, like behavior learning at a young age and we do book readings.
So each month we will do one or two book readings where we’ll get an author of a book to do a video and read to the tribe at six o’clock and we’ll announce it and post it and the children from watch it back and listen, you can listen to it with your mom, with your children. So this is a book that we featured a while ago and we might put up again called you were made for me.
Oh, I haven’t come across that one. So amazing. Yeah. And there’s so many different ones. There’s mum and mum by donor sperm, dad, dad, child by donor egg. There’s single mum by choice. There’s all these different books that she’s done. And the lady is called Sherry and it’s all about before you were born and we dreamed about you.
And then there’s a section that says just like a puzzle with pieces that fit to make up a baby or need quite a bit, but no matter how much or how often we dreamed, we didn’t have all the pieces you need. So finding those pieces, we just had to try to make you our baby, we reached higher and higher. And it has these really beautiful images.
That’s like sent shivers down my spine. I think she does adoption and foster three months as well, but then they’re beautiful. You can get them on Amazon or her website, but it’s a really, really good book. Thanks for
Lotte Jeffs: sharing. I’m definitely going to get that. I’ll send you, cause my daughter’s just at the age where I’m starting
Stu Oakley: to talk about it.
Yeah. We’ll include a link on the show notes. Well, on our
Laura-Rose: website as well, there’s a section for LGBT plus family books. So whenever we review or we put a new book reading up, we add it on there so that people can actually see loads of different books. And that tells you about what the books are about.
Lotte Jeffs: Amazing
Stu Oakley: resource Albert. Thank you so much, Laura Rose.
Lotte Jeffs: You’re absolutely brilliant spokesperson and we need people like you in the community to be fighting. The good fight. So thank you for everything that you’re doing.
Laura-Rose: Okay.
Lotte Jeffs: I think the work that she’s doing is so, so important and I’m so grateful for the time that she puts in on top of having a full-time job and a family. We hope you enjoyed that
Stu Oakley: listener. It was wonderful to have her show and tell as well. What a beautiful book. We will put a link to that in the show notes and listener.
If you think you’ve got something that has your seal of approval and you wish to share with your team teachers, Ms. Jeff’s and Mr. Oakley, then do share with us, send us a DM, or you can email us at where latte.
Lotte Jeffs: Some families@storyhunter.co.uk. And you can also find us on Twitter and on Instagram at some families,
Stu Oakley: or check out our website, some families, pod.com, where you can find all the transcripts and lots of old.
Not lots of all, in fact, all of the past episodes. So thank you so much for listening and we really hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did recording. Yeah, we’ll be back next
Lotte Jeffs: week with another one until then. Bye bye. Goodbye. This episode was produced and edited by Hattie Moir
Stu Oakley: families is a story Hunter production.