We join Lotte and Stu this week in our remote recording studio as they talk about Stu’s conversation with Holly Ryan, a single lesbian mum of two, and her journey to becoming a mum through IUI. Holly was raised by a single dad, who gave her the confidence to do it alone. Lotte and Stu discuss the benefits of being a single parent and how they are both managing parenthood this week.
Full transcription below.
Holly Ryan: I just knew I wanted to become a parent one day. And the older I got further away I came from finding my missus right. And I thought right it’s time to take the bull by the horns and go down this path on my own.
Stu Oakley: Welcome to some families, the LGBTQ+ parenting podcast that supports and celebrate everything about queer parenting. We’re here to help inform, educate, well, not too much educating. I am here with the wonderful delightful Lottie Jeff’s as well hello and I am Stu Oakley. We are again this week dialling in to one another. How are you doing from the other side of the country Lotte?
Lotte Jeffs: I’m doing it all right, actually, and I’m doing a lot better than last week. we’ve adjusted to a new normal and we are embracing it and feeling good. And if you’re listening To this when we are out of the new normal, and we’re back to the old normal. Yeah.
Stu Oakley: So I also just want to say we’ve had such an amazing response from people out there, not just from the queer community, who have been listening to our podcast to learn more about queer parenting, or just have their own queer parenting journey reflected back at them, but also from straight community who are really finding something quite special within our podcasts. And I’ve had a few people say to me that it’s actually answering questions that they were always afraid to ask about their own children and the children they go to school with and families they interact with. And we say welcome to you guys. And thank you so much for listening and giving us your support and being part of our community.
Stu Oakley: Absolutely.
Lotte Jeffs: Yeah, everyone’s welcome. And it’s really great to know that it’s resonating for straight as well as gay people. So as you said, welcome, everybody. And now this week we are going to be talking well actually Stu had the honour of talking to a woman called Holly Ryan, who is a lesbian single mom by choice to two little kids. One is called Johann, who’s five and one is Silke. And she is just 11 months old and she lives in Brighton. Now Holly was raised by her father, as we’ll discover through listening to Stu’s interview with her, so a single dad, and that we guess gave her the confidence to go out alone herself and choose to have a baby with an anonymous sperm donor. So Stu, you got to talk to Holly and we’re going to listen to it now.
Stu Oakley: So Holly, welcome, thanks to some families. This is our podcast. It’s here to celebrate all types of different families and your family is you one mum and your kids, you’ve gone it alone. So tell us tell us how you even got to that point of wanting to have a child on your own.
Holly Ryan: It’s quite a long winded tale, but I’ll do an abridged version. I was born up in sleepy town in North Devon by my dad, essentially my mom left when I was young, and I was the only child in school from what I can gather that was brought up by a dad and I for me, I I had a very colourful, adventurous and loving childhood. As I went through the ages, I hit an age whereby I always just knew very noisily in my head. I wanted to become a parent one day, and the older I got, the further away I came from finding my missus, right. And I thought, right, it’s time to take the bull by the horns and go down this path on my own.
Stu Oakley: Was there a particular moment in time? Do you remember? Was there a turning point for you? There was this is there. I’m gonna do it on my own now.
Holly Ryan: I think I think I will always near my gut that motherhood was my biggest ambition. But it was after I did. lost both my parents that I thought, time really doesn’t wait for anyone. I’ve got it in me to love something ferociously. And, you know, I’m established businesswoman now, I don’t have any debt, I have time on my side of ticked off a lot of things on my to do list and I just felt like I had the space emotionally and physically and financially to go forth. I worked for my previous boss for 12 years. And I told him even though it’s nice for none of his business, I was trying to get knocked up. And the moment I felt pregnant, and it took, I think, a year and a half with Johan. He just started excluding me from meetings. And suddenly my opinion wasn’t listened to. And then when I had to negotiate the maternity package, he was very dismissive just about giving you such a tree and conveniently for me One of our biggest clients got in contact with me socially to say, Hey, how’s it going? I want to personally finance you to set up on your own. It’s your baby. You can
Holly Ryan: Call it whatever you like, you can do whatever you like. But I’m, I’m, I’m putting money on the table for you to go forth and do it. I think, as a parent, you learn to get out of your own way. And that’s certainly true. In my case, I think it’s, it’s actually quite relaxing, just to put yourself secondary. And the business now is essentially, it’s my third baby. And it’s a baby that never sleeps. But it is a baby that pays for my other babies.
Stu Oakley: So it has been you and you own that as well. Like you’re it’s, yeah, you’re making you’re making your own path and like, how exciting to be able to be paving that journey ahead.
Holly Ryan: Yeah, well, I think when I set it up in crowds Yeah, I was four months old. So it really feels like I’ve been watching, like, in a way so feels like such an essence ridiculous but
Stu Oakley: and it shows you can do it. And it shows for people out there as well that, you know, there’s always a way if you’ve got the determination, if you’ve got the smarts, if you’ve got that, that the want to do it, you can make things work for you and you can, and you can really be successful as a parent and as a businesswoman.
Holly Ryan: I think as a parent, you have to find another gear every single day. Yeah, and it’s the same, you know, you have to be prepared to work bloody hard. And I, you know, I felt that, you know, being six years of age and having lost both parents, you know, cancer that I was prepared for anything and I still felt slightly underdressed for Parenthood. And you know, you are, you’re learning on your feet and you’re just doing the best you can every day is so ritually rewarding that, you know, you don’t care that you’ve got yesterday’s makeup on your face and you’re wiping off eventually with baby wipes, you know, all of that stuff doesn’t matter if your nails aren’t perfectly painted, it just goes out the window we care about is that your kids are, you know, types of in bed at night, sleeping soundly, and you can lie in?
Holly Ryan: Yeah, yeah.
Stu Oakley: So for you, it must just feel like that is your reality. Right?
Holly Ryan: Yeah. 100% I mean, I don’t I formulated my family based on a ambition that’s always been growling in the background. So going ahead and having Johan and silica on my own is that is my norm. That is that is my family. And I don’t know any different. I haven’t had a reference point of anything outside there is a child or as a grown up
Stu Oakley: so of course because the boys you know, you’ve always had that and then for you is is your normal? Yeah. And you decided to go down the donor conception route? Yes. And that was that always your choice? Or was there other kind of avenues you looked at?
Holly Ryan: Yeah, I must admit, I did Scratch and sniff around the error of trying to someone that I knew because I felt for my kids say that that would be something which would be a lot more circular and easier to sort of explain. And also for them to have a physical reference point in terms of their DNA. But yeah, for one reason or another that that path didn’t work. And so I initially it was reluctantly went down, looking for a donor and yes, not a decision I regret.
Stu Oakley: No, and you went abroad, he flew away. Yeah, made that decision or did I mean, did you look at UK based donors first and clinics or exotics and head off somewhere?
Holly Ryan: Yeah, I just I’ve for me I had a very close bond with Denmark. I went there when I was 18. And it was literally love at first sight. And it was every everything about that country had a lasting impression on me. It was the people it was the culture. It was the scenery. It was their sort of modus operandi, in terms of life, and my best friend who lives there. And it seemed to be approaching people like me having families on their own in a much more relaxed fashion. So I decided to guess meant my ambitions with parenthood with Denmark.
Stu Oakley: So you, you, you, you went out to Denmark, you found the clinic and you found the donor. I mean, how did you find that whole process in general,
Holly Ryan: I found it really bloody daunting. Not going to the clinic and demo because they were just luminous and fantastic in every regard. It was more to do with matchmaking. My DNA was someone I’d never met before.
Holly Ryan: You know, it’s, I guess it’s a very elaborate Tinder.
Holly Ryan: But it’s interesting because some people say, Well, you know, you’ve just procreated with someone you’ve never met. And yet when I go through the details I know about my donor. I know more about my donor than some people know about their husbands.
Stu Oakley: But you’ve gone through my new tie detail and yeah, chosen that person specifically for those reasons.
Holly Ryan: Yeah, I’m gonna tell you, it’s any different from the reasons that you’ve chosen your partner. No, you know, how I’ve chosen previous partners. I think you have to just base base it all on what feels right, distinctively. You know, if there is a feeling of Yes,
Stu Oakley: then then embrace it and go for it in terms of how you’ve approached it being a single parent and going into that, do you feel maybe, um, do you think you have a bigger connection to your donor, because it’s you on your own whereas some people who have their relationship Ships maybe don’t have a stronger connection to the donor? Or do you not feel that you do have that connection?
Holly Ryan: Not at all. I mean, to be honest, I’m so busy just loving my kids picking up Cocoa Puffs from the floor that I don’t have time to think about. Yeah, the other person’s how much the crate might do. In my head. I I sort of, in some regard, give him a salute. When I’m having, you know, these different moments of saying how beautiful and amazing my children I think hats off to you, whoever you are, but I don’t he doesn’t come into my sort of consciousness day to day or anything.
Stu Oakley: So tell me about being a parent on your own because I have three but I have with my with my partner and is it’s incredibly stressful. I mean, how do you find it just day to day do you have the support?
Holly Ryan: I would say that my day to day operates in organised chaos. There’s not one minute of the day that isn’t utilised and it’s It’s silly, it’s stressful. It’s noisy. It’s messy, but I love it. Literally, I I think the word content looks underdressed for how I feel. I mean, yes, I’m bloody tired. But I’m exhausted from being happy than I am anything else.
Stu Oakley: So beautiful. I love that.
Stu Oakley: You live in Brighton as well.
Holly Ryan: Yeah, I’ve given in. Yeah
Stu Oakley: long have you been down there? It’s been
Holly Ryan: just over a year.
Stu Oakley: Okay. So fairly new then. Yeah. So how you finding it and the community and
Holly Ryan: well being single game I’m in Brighton. I mean, I’m like this 10 a penny of me. So yet even in yo Hannes class, there’s two other gay mums. So in terms of postcode It couldn’t be any more rainbow flag waving it’s Yeah, and say I don’t know, I feel like it makes a lot of sense that I’m nuzzled into that part of the world because schools are incredible neighbours Wish you good morning. And it feels very, it feels like I’m part of a sort of cult if you like. And the one that’s, you know, strangers are friendly and everyone feels even might like my neighbours know my setup. And sometimes my next neighbours are like, Can I help you with the pram? Get it down the steps? Or, look, if you’d like me to go and pick up your hand after school, then so you can have that extra 20 minutes of silca is Yeah,
Stu Oakley: that’s brilliant. And that’s what’s so nice about that community down there and having that and I suppose this is so important for any parent to, to have that really? Yeah, just to sort
Holly Ryan: of narrow noise from another human being, especially so from parents. I feel the narrowing knob between parents is a lot
Stu Oakley: stronger. But yeah, that’s great. Is there anything you wish you you knew now that you’d known at the beginning of your journey?
Holly Ryan: And I wish that I had known how difficult it is to get your kids to eat what you’d like them to eat. I and I wish that someone had said to me, your laundry basket will just be this feral beast that you’re constantly wrestle with
Stu Oakley: you miss one day and that’s it. That’s how suddenly has just become a disaster zone. Absolutely. It’s like you’ve just come back from holiday every day, every single day. Oh, God. And then once you start throwing the sheets and the towels and into the mixer, like on your journey throughout the whole process, have you met quite a lot, I suppose. What I’m trying to, you know, if somebody’s listening and they’re thinking about it, and they’re in a similar situation to what you were is it’s always knowing that you’re not alone in this and that it’s actually quite common for people just to go out do it alone, and it’s not as scary as you think it is. Like if you met people on the way that reinforce that for us when you’re on that journey.
Holly Ryan: Yeah, but it is largely existing friends from my point of view. And but I do think,
Holly Ryan: for me, I, I, my feeling of support just generally comes from other parents. It’s not necessarily single parents, I think the only difference is that my parents, friends who are in a couple often say to me, I don’t know how you do it. But these are the same people that sometimes say to me, but part of me is quite jealous. Because, you know, some, you know, they’re not having, I’m not having to negotiate with the dynamic of fulfilling a relationship on top of ensuring that my kids are loved and fed and happy. So, but yes, there is definitely an enormous community out there. And I’ve I’ve never felt lonely in my journey of parenthood and also, I think having been brought up by a single dad My day to day is is my norm in a way Yeah,
Stu Oakley: I feel there’s potentially pressure for anyone in society to partner up and couple with people. And have you felt particularly as a single parent that that society or some people around you are trying to, you know, couple you are poor. Do you feel that that’s
Holly Ryan: I think friendships
Holly Ryan: are probably just bored me being consistently single. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I have been on quite a few dates and I have had some wonderful relationships but I don’t ever feel a pressure I think certainly as as yo Hannes getting older and silk is turning one next week. I do feel that it’s it’s time to share them with someone else. And I feel that for them, just having someone else that they can bounce off of would be fantastic. I think it’s the highest I want To share more so than than the lows and that’s the thing that I think there’s times when you know soccer at the moment is just started walking and it’s like just seeing that happening and clapping loudly by myself I felt like she deserves more of an audience
Stu Oakley: yeah
Holly Ryan: yeah but i don’t i certainly don’t feel any any pressure and but I think from my point of view in terms of apart now I there’s nothing more lonely than being with the wrong person
Stu Oakley: yes 100 percent i mean it sounds like you’ve got it completely made you’ve got like you’ve got a wonderful outlook and i love it i your energy just even sitting here with you now I can you can feel your energy it’s it’s, it’s infectious. So would you ever think about more children so so because you say coming up to one now. City think in the future you would be open to having more and I would on your own or with someone or?
Holly Ryan: Yeah, I mean, my soccer mom car just about fits us in and there’s anyone out Oh, and the booze constantly random reading weekends away. So I would need to think about logistics of bundling us all into a car but I yeah, I think if I was fortunate enough to meet someone that was crazy enough to want to spend the rest of their life with me then I would totally embrace having another I mean my my body clock is not ticking as quickly as it once
Stu Oakley: was. Would you look at any other means? Or do you think now that you’ve been through just move him to the new
Holly Ryan: sound? Yeah, just come here. Come stay with
Stu Oakley: me. Yeah. commune just all together. Lots of fun. Just cuz you talk about
Holly Ryan: Yeah, I mean, I feel like to be honest, I feel a beastly lucky that I’ve had two beautiful children and I felt that I don’t want to get too greedy and away. You know, another addition to the family would be You know, another layer of glitter but I’m, you know, I’m very lucky with my mom already.
Stu Oakley: So thank you, Holly for speaking to some families and hearing about your family and the fact that you are rocking it. And I wish you all the best.
Lotte Jeffs: I found it really interesting story when you asked her about her relationship with a sperm donor, given that she doesn’t have a romantic partner that she entered into this
Lotte Jeffs: parenting experience. And you know that I’m obsessed about you. Are you any
Lotte Jeffs: opportunity to ask someone about sperm. But you held back? I thought you did well, but I thought that was actually a really interesting question because it’s true. If it’s just you and your own and you have this donor. Do you almost kind of think about the more or do you imagine them somehow as part of your setup in a way that you don’t if your two parents
Stu Oakley: Which I don’t think Holly did. But when you were in a couple, as you say you focused on the two of you with that child, so to then not have the other person. I feel I feel personally that I would focus a lot more potentially on on
Lotte Jeffs: Yeah, you know, the experience of just raising children is so visceral and in the moment, you’re just not really thinking about that at all. Anyway, I mean, I’m surprised she has a bloody moment. I know. Well, I’ve had my first experience of what it must be like to be a single parent. Last week and the week before having my, my wife not feeling very well at all, and me doing all of the child care. And it’s really, really hard. It’s really hard and I really got one yeah, kids. And I was, by the end of the day, pretty much like in tears. It’s hard so hard. I found it really interesting when you were talking to Holly that she she never wants to kind of complain to us that it was a struggle. I don’t think the word struggle at any stage. So I thought that was really reassuring and inspiring. I think. Maybe we have a real idea of single parents being just quite exhausted and harassed and stressed all the time. And it was really nice to hear her be like, no, I chose this and I’ve got this, well, maybe there’s something in that you live with it and you crack on and you do it. And back to what we’ve talked about many times as a gay parent, but maybe, regardless of your sexuality as a single parent, maybe you feel you have something to prove. And actually, you don’t want to be the one flying that flag to say I’m, I’m drowning. I don’t I guess in Holly’s case as well, it was such a conscious choice to do it on her own. Whereas I guess a lot of single parents,
Stu Oakley: maybe they become single parents, because the relationships broken down and maybe they’re dealing with a lot of resentment and anger about their ex partner as well which is just fine. feeding into the whole experience feeling difficult, whereas for Holly, she knew that that’s what it was going to be like from the beginning. And it was a really positive conscious mindful choice. Ever since I’ve become a parent, I have a newfound respect for anybody who’s a single parent. My mom was a single parent to me and my sisters and looking back at it now I’m like, how, how did you? How did you do it at the time and, you know, and work and look after us. And I think, I think if you if you go into the journey, without the baggage as you say, of divorce or a relationship breakdown, or whatever it may be, then you must have a different mindset towards it. Yeah. On that note, actually, we did a little shout out and spoke to some of our some families community, who are single parents, and in particular, just on that point lofty spoke to Joseph Tito, who is at the dad diaries.ca incredible Instagram account, I encourage you to follow. He was talking about the every decision that you make you make it alone. And I just think that’s actually could be. He was looking at it as a way of actually being an absolute positive because you haven’t got anybody else that you have to either get into an argument with about schooling or how you parent your child, it’s just you and you can decide whatever you want to do with that child. I mean, what do you think about Yeah,
Lotte Jeffs: I think that must be really empowering, actually, to just
Lotte Jeffs: not to have to negotiate anything, I think must remove some real stress from parenting actually, to just be like, No, I think you should go to this school, or I think you should have fish fingers for dinner or I think you should watch another episode of Peppa Pig. I’m sure there was Sometimes where it you’d really benefit from a second opinion. But I’m sure that all single parents just have friends or family that they can just call in and get that second opinion. I do wonder if single parents and please do contact us and let us know, if you find it really frustrating, how little or how few examples there are of single parents in the media and in children’s books. And whether you find it in a positive way, or if you’ve seen good examples, for sure. But I would imagine that everything and like shopping for baby stuff and the assumptions people make is that you always have a partner.
Lotte Jeffs: So I can imagine that as a gay person, you’re having to
Lotte Jeffs: deal with the fact that people assume you’re straight and then assume that you’ve got a husband.
Lotte Jeffs: And that that must be quite frustrating
Stu Oakley: to do you think having this had Holly Story or if it’s something you’ve ever thought about before. Do you think You could ever do it alone.
Lotte Jeffs: I think my desire to have kids would have always
Lotte Jeffs: come up for me. And I think that if I wasn’t in a relationship I would have done on my own. Yeah, I really do. I think I wanted it. I wanted it that much
Lotte Jeffs: that I would have done it on my own.
Stu Oakley: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I agree. I think it’s a, it must be an incredibly daunting and hard thing to do on your own. But I think you’re right. It’s that feeling of wanting children is so great that you would just just go for it. And that’s why it’s so great speaking to people like Holly and hearing her story because it can be done and people do do it. And people do it very successfully.
Lotte Jeffs: So get in touch on
Lotte Jeffs: on social media. He also said which I thought was really nice. If this is something you want, don’t let anything stop you. It’s not easy, but having Baby, whether you are alone or not, is not easy. And remember, this too shall shall pass. Nothing lasts forever. And no matter what you will get through this, which I think is really nice advice. Absolutely. And I think anybody who’s going through the thought process
Stu Oakley: of having a child and I think that applies to anybody, anybody in any parenting situation there in that there are moments that are really hard, but in particularly at this time, but you will get through and there will be an end point. Yes.
Lotte Jeffs: Here’s another story about being a gay single parent. is a your children less
Lotte Jeffs: conscious of your sexuality then if they had two moms or two dads, do you think? Well, I suppose it depends.
Stu Oakley: Yeah. I mean, I mean, I just around the house to jazz hands around the house to breakfast all the time. So you know, my kids can’t escape it. But I think that’s a really interesting point though. And the people Must, it does break down that barrier in the sense of even even if it’s at school. And Holly’s great in a great community where there are many LGBT parent children of LGBT parents within the school, but she will she would, she would escape that question of Oh, why does Silke have two mommies? It would just be Silke has exactly and then you could argue that why does silica not have a daddy would be a question that would potentially come Yeah,
Lotte Jeffs: I guess it’s like what Trumps what being gay or being a single mother.
Lotte Jeffs: So as to this this week has been crazy, obviously with being in lockdown. How have you? Have you guys been coping and how have you been like managing the emotional load between you and your husband and looking after the kids while
Stu Oakley: doing Don’t forget It’s, it’s hard It puts, I think it puts a strain, not just on the relationship with the children, but your whole relationship under strain because, and it’s something. And john and i have practising this because when we adopted our first two children, we had to go into self isolation for a period of about six, seven weeks, where we couldn’t see anyone, we, we, we weren’t allowed to meet anybody else if it had to be just us. And many adoptive couples would have gone through this, so that we build that bonding attachment to the children. So we have a slight experience in this and then I had time off work and john had time off work when we first got them as shared parental leave. And at the end of that parental leave, it was getting really tough. I was frustrated because I wanted to get back to work. I love work. So for us at the moment in this new normal, it has been challenging again. But it’s not something that we’re not. It’s it’s not alien to right. I think what is it to us is the fact that we can’t go out to soft play or we can’t go out to the swimming pool or we can’t even feel comfortable walking around the park. And I think that’s what is the really tricky thing, I guess for families at the moment. There’s only so many arts and crafts and fun schooling things you can do within the house before you actually almost start to feel that you’re letting your children down a bit. I is how I felt a few times as well. Right.
Lotte Jeffs: We’ve got a choice. Exactly. I mean, we’re all in it together. That’s really interesting. I didn’t know that that you had to hatch. What was it six weeks where you were just with them? Yeah,
Stu Oakley: there’s I don’t think there’s any set amount of time but it is. We spent about six to seven weeks where we didn’t see my mom we didn’t see John’s parents to give it so that the children were I’m confused of Oh, we’ve just been taken out of our foster home And who’s this person And who’s this right and and it just allowed them to really get cemented that it’s me. It’s dad. And this is our unit and I saw something that somebody posted online which I just thought was adorable which was there’s just more time for cuddles. Yeah, and people always rushing about in and out and here there and everywhere and actually if it means that you’ve spent an extra 20 minutes cuddling, then fantastic and we Yeah,
Lotte Jeffs: we’ve been spending a lot of time on the sofa. I’ve got to admit, God our kids are lucky aren’t they? Oh, they are. Alright, she will we better go but it was really nice talking to you. Thank you to Holly for talking to us about being a single lesbian mom and we will see or you will hear us again next week.
Stu Oakley: You will indeed and please do follow us. We are at some families pod on Instagram and Twitter. You can find us on the book of face if that is your choice. As a method of choice as well, or send us an email, we are at some families at story Hunter co.uk.
Lotte Jeffs: Take care Stu
Stu Oakley: you to Lotte. Stay safe