This week on Some Families Lotte and Stu are joined by Kym and Jade, from East London. Kym and Jade have a two year old. They discuss the difficulty they had finding a black donor as a bi-racial couple, why some women don’t want to carry and how they discuss having same sex parents to their son. Lotte and Stu catch up about lock down life.
References:
https://www.gov.uk/register-birth/who-can-register-a-birth
Full transcription below.
Jade: And we were really lucky to find a bank in the UK. This black Jamaican donor came almost out of the dust
Kym: will raise another generation of open minded individuals that it’s an even even more free generation even more able to see people’s differences and respect them without ignorance. I think a lot of it comes down to ignorance I think more than hate.
Kym: Some families have a mom, a mama, maybe a mummy, maybe two mommies, maybe a step mommy. All families are different.
Lotte Jeffs: Hello Stu.
Stu Oakley: Hello Lotte
Lotte Jeffs: and Hello, listeners. And welcome to one of my favorite podcasts. Some families
Lotte Jeffs: I’m Lotte Jeff’s and I am here with the wonderful Mr. Stu Oakley:
Stu Oakley: Oh yes one of my absolute favourite podcasts as well but only because I get to have a little chat with you each week my dear Lotte so welcome to some families we are the LGBTQ plus parenting podcast. We’re here to support families and also answer questions for those who are curious about queer Parenthood. But how are you today? Lotte?
Lotte Jeffs: Oh, I thought you’d never ask. I’m good. Thank you. I’ve had another nice day in in lockdown, well, a slightly less of a Look down, look down. And it’s been one of my days where I’m looking after my daughter. So I work three days a week and I look after my daughter three days a week and my wife and I split the week like that. And we have one family day where were we together. So today we went mud larking. So we went down, and we were frolicking about in the in the surf.
Lotte Jeffs: Not quite but we were kind of
Lotte Jeffs: yeah just exploring the the shores when the tide was out. And just top tip. Just don’t do it. Don’t do it with a toddler because I basically spent the whole time trying to stop her running into the Thames. So picking up horrific looking things. So it was a nice idea. It was quite Dickensian, but yeah, don’t don’t bother.
Lotte Jeffs: How lucky What have you been up to today?
Stu Oakley: I’ve had a, I would say an up and down week this week. And something I wanted to speak to you about actually because it just I just found it really interesting was I wrote a piece for attitude magazine, which went live and the feedback has generally been really positive to it. I wrote a piece about how I felt the the term normalizing when it comes to queer parents.
Stu Oakley: It just didn’t sit right with me. And actually, God, why would you want to be normal when being the actual definition of normal is being conforming and stepping in line with everyone else?
Stu Oakley: And as I say, the feedback to it was mostly great. There were just a few and I suppose it was my first real experience of internet trolling in a way. And yeah, and it just I just found it really interesting. Especially because it all came from other queers and other queens so No, just well I don’t think so. Just from what I could see just just people who just didn’t quite get it. And, and there were a few to throw away ones one compared me to Edna Mode, which I just took as the ultimate compliment to be
like darling
Stu Oakley: But then one really hit me because somebody said that they pitied my kids. Yeah, so it just it’s just been a bit of a weird week because it just kind of hit me. But it also made me realise that even in amongst the queer community, there’s so much and we talked about it with other people where actually they felt, they felt like some of the negativity they got towards their parenting was from other people in the gay community. And I just think it’s really interesting that there is an element of the gay community that either just doesn’t get queer parenting, or just
Stu Oakley: just just go against it because they feel it goes against what it means to be gay. I don’t know. It’s just it was just I just found it really interesting advice.
Lotte Jeffs: Stu, as a journalist and somebody who’s written a whole load of First Person pieces about all I mean, I’ve written anything that’s happened to me, you can find it in print, but my one rule is you never read the comments. Just don’t read the comments because the thing is, whether you’re gay or
Lotte Jeffs: Straight, there’s always going to be people out there. And they are the people that comment on articles to cause an argument or wouldn’t say something upsetting and you just don’t need that in your life. So what you’re doing with your with your column is brilliant. And I would just say, don’t engage with the comments. I just say keep doing what you’re doing and don’t let the bastards get you down.
Stu Oakley: Thank you. Fuck them. That’s what I say. But on the note of social just before we get in today’s episode, there was also something else I just wanted to. It’s been amusing me greatly because we have our some family’s Instagram account @somefamiliespod go and follow us go share. Go just love us on the socials. But there’s one person every time I notice because I get notifications every time we post a story or anything. There’s this one person that continually likes things. And this person I was like, God, wow, this person really likes us. And I clicked
Stu Oakley: This person today this afternoon and it suddenly clicked that this person is Mummy, Lotte Jeffs and it just made me smile so much.
Lotte Jeffs: Oh my mom. Yeah. A big fan. Oh, she’s so sweet. Yeah, yeah. I loved it. I loved it. This person had been like, wow this person really dig first. I was like, Oh, it’s Lotte’s Mum, I love her there with a hand emoji.
Lotte Jeffs: She’s my biggest fan. Hi, mum. And yeah, that’s so sweet. So today we are welcoming two moms onto our show. Yes, Jade and Kym. And we got to talk to them from their kitchen table. because again, we are still in lockdown. And we are still not allowed to share microphone germs with one another. Yeah, we had a really interesting chat to them. Actually. It was particularly interesting for me as they
Lotte Jeffs: are a mommy and a mama just like me and my wife are. They’re a mixed race couple. And so they talk really interestingly about the experience of finding a donor that matched their own ethnic makeups. And what that experience is like so, have a listen and then we’ll see you on the other side.
Kym: We met via MySpace actually, so probably wait before people start.
Kym: We honestly like the original online daters.
Jade: We live in Essex where we’re both East London.
Jade: Essex based, originally so we’re currently we’re still in Essex at the moment.
Kym: We will live in in in Hackney until I got pregnant and then we decided to relocate properly and were you kind of conscious at all of being somewhere a bit more sort of out of London. I think I was definitely more aware that we might be different that there wouldn’t be as many families like ours.
Kym: Around Jade’s mom lived in the part of Essex that we move to. And so we knew the area quite well anyway, it was starting to become a lot more diverse. And so we I didn’t think I’d say that I was too worried about it. But definitely It was a consideration.
Jade: Obviously, there’s other things to consider other than the fact that were two women, but obviously, you know, culture, race, all of these things come into it as well. So you don’t want the child to feel isolated in any way. Yeah, I think I think it was as as he was starting to get older. And obviously, he’s still like quite a while away from thinking about school. But a few years down the line he will be and we’ll be considering those options. So we started to think about, do we want him to be probably the only child in his class or definitely within his group that has to same sex parents? Do we want him to be the only black child within his class? No, we don’t. So we had to find a middle ground of somewhere where we border so many different cultural diversity sexual diversity.
Kym: So
Kym: I think definitely the discussions would have been added like, I was really young, you were still quite young. And it was something I think we both had to have that conversation. Do we want to have kids further down the line? And we both did. So there was no pressure straightaway to be like, okay, we want to do it within the next two years, the next three years, but I think we both were on the same page that Yeah, towards our life goal. That’s what we would aim for.
Lotte Jeffs: So you spoke about it. And presumably, like all of us, that conversation, just flows over the years of your relationship. So could you talk a bit about that moment where you were like, let’s just do it. Let’s do it tomorrow.
Kym: I think we had we’ve been engaged for five years, four years before we got married. We we didn’t plan to get married really quickly. We were just engaged. But then we decided that we wanted to have a baby. We thought about We were old enough, we would come far enough. So have enough fun. And we traveled, etc. And we’d start Okay, let’s do it. We then look to the legalities, as I’m sure you guys know, around it. And it just didn’t make sense for the non biological parents have to go through adoption and so on and so forth. So we, I’d say not rushed through our wedding because we’ve been engaged for so long, but we just decided to get married.
Jade: Yeah, I think that was a it wasn’t just about the getting married for us. It was getting married with intention. Yeah, so we can get it so we can get to something else. So definitely having having a child was that was that intention that we wanted to make? Sure we were we were there. Before we get to that we were able to be kind of thing.
Lotte Jeffs: So what were your next conversations after you’d agreed that you’re going to have a child How did you decide who was going to carry it and then also, how you going to do it?
Jade: I think it’s a balancing act. We had we had compensations I definitely wasn’t going to carry what you’re thinking of it from a financial perspective, you’re thinking about it from
Kym: a success rate, perspective. And also, you know, what it’s going to do to you both emotionally and physically. You have to go through it together and kind of just hash it out and see where you’re comfortable with it. For me, it was nice to actually be with a woman that wanted to be a mother but didn’t want to be pregnant. Because I guess it’s really stereotypical by always thought that that was my role within the relationship. And then I think it was about two nights we look to the success rates, we were told that it wasn’t likely to happen very quickly. And it wasn’t a quick process. So we looked at buying our flat and we did a lot of things at the same time. Yeah, that we probably wouldn’t have done in hindsight with knowing that had worked as quickly as it did
Lotte Jeffs: Jade, can I just ask about like your sense of self and kind of gender identity and how much apart that plays in your assertion that you you just didn’t want to be pregnant.
Jade: Yeah, I mean, either. For me, I’m a woman. And that’s how I identify it. I thought for me, it didn’t. That’s not something that I kind of deal with in that in that way. But it was just, it just didn’t. It’s just not something I ever kind of saw myself. Doing, you know, being pregnant, it’s just not something that I was ever kind of, I always saw children in my future, but I never saw myself, you know, pregnant or going through that kind of process. So
Lotte Jeffs: yeah, I think that just really resonates for me, you know, like, I feel like I always felt like I’d have children in my future but never massively thought I might actually give birth but I just asked because I imagine so many gay women, it’s not even gender identity. It’s just sort of the way we see ourselves or see our bodies or our in the world. And it’s like, it just doesn’t feel right for us. Whereas there’s other women who It does feel like
Jade: but I also know you know i think that just just this women in general so I think it’s just it just is who you are you know how how comfortable you feel with the whole thing
Kym: I come from a really really massive family that oh really close
Jade: I just said why don’t you know I’ve got a massive family Why don’t we think about doing something you know not not I don’t consider him my son Isn’t he even though we’re not you know blood, it’s blood but why don’t we just do something for your family in the sperm donor side of it, obviously we try to align that much more with me. My background, my ethnicity, my we try to align that with me to kind of mesh compliments Kym’s slide.
Kym: We were just really sad. We sent our we’re just really sad. Science hasn’t caught up yet that we can biologically make a baby together. Yeah, I know it sucks, doesn’t it? So we picked a donor We searched high and low and I’d say continent to continent across oceans to find a donor that matched as close as we could today. Yes. So
Jade: it had to be someone who resembled the culture culturally, my family my family’s from the West Indies. So it has to be someone that was I’m from like my family, my grandparents are Jamaican. So it has to be some kind of Jamaican kind of background with being a black donor as well. There’s less to choose from. So you’re kind of with with you’re not spoilt for choice.
Kym: Yeah, I’d say we will. We were really lucky. We found a donor that we liked the look of in the states and they were the probably the closest match we found Yeah, and then are connected and support working with that bank for some reason. They weren’t partnered with them. And and we had to go back to the drawing board and we were really lucky to find a bank in the UK. This black Jamaican donor came almost out here, just we don’t know where it came from. But personality matched up as close as possible interests match up as close as possible.
Jade: Race like when we when we found it was like, let’s just go before this before we can’t you know before we don’t before it’s the chance is snatched away from us. Yeah, let’s do let’s do this so
Kym: and to be honest, we had this conversation the other day and I couldn’t imagine. We just couldn’t imagine if it was any donor at all. It doesn’t seem like it would have made our son any different.
Lotte Jeffs: I know what you mean. Yeah. I totally know what you mean. They were just gonna be that person one way or the other because they’re, in a way they’re there you guys, right? So whoever the genetic makeup was,
Kym: you spend so much time poring over donor profiles, and then we have this conception of damages at the end of it. Did it really matter? Probably not. Is he is just a is a product of us.
Lotte Jeffs: I think that’s going to be really, really inspirational advice for people listening to this who are at that point. obsessing over donor sperm at the moment, I think that’s really great advice. Yeah,
Jade: we will get caught up with a small thing.
Lotte Jeffs: And in a way, there’s an argument for not seeing it at all. Because then, you know, you don’t have that in your head when you’re looking at your, your child, you’re just seeing you and your partner, you’re not seeing this sort of photo of a complete stranger in your head, you know?
Jade: And that’s the way we went. Yeah, that’s the way we went. We went blind. And for us, it felt comfortable and it worked. Yeah, yeah.
Kym: Could you just talk a bit about why it was important for you to feel like your child shed your mixed ethnicities. Uh, for me, it was, again, going back to the fact that we we couldn’t have a child together biologically, it was just trying to make that child as much us as we possibly can. And, and I think it was important for me for we didn’t know if it was him or her but for him to be able to look at both of his parents and relate them. He doesn’t have That biological parent on both sides. So it’s important for him, for example, I’m I’m mixed race, but I present to anybody else’s work because my skin is so fat sounds pretty dark, and he would never look at me and share the same experience as me. But he will look at Jade, and they will share the same experience.
Jade: It was that as well. But I said it was also because I don’t know maybe if we chose, for example, a white donor,
Kym: I would have felt like
Jade: we’re not biologically connected. And also, I can’t I don’t want to make you feel isolated in your experience with my family as well. So I don’t need to be the only one who has two moms in my family and the only one who is Jeanette I mean I didn’t want you to be the end everything. And so I think that as well. Was that was part of the process as well what you want to you want him to feel
Kym: I think there were many considerations, but I think that the end thing for me was just that I wanted him to feel like he was as much both of us as he possibly could be, and if he was made with my egg and then with a white donor or an Asian donor or an oriental donor, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t exactly be as close to us as he could be. We are both his mom. And that’s, that was important to us. If he was fully white, for example, we’d walk down the street and no one would assume that you were his mom. Yeah.
Kym: Yeah.
Jade: Hundred percent, I think. I mean, I’m pretty sure it works for the x side of things as well. I don’t know, you know, we don’t make up that much of the country or the population anyway, I think it’s something like 3% or around that. We make a small, a small number of the country and obviously, there’s not a lot of people that are donating, you know, sperm and eggs.
Kym: And I would say it’s probably not something that’s discussed widely within our community. It’s not it’s not It’s not something that I know of anyone ever openly talking about the fact that they’ve needed donor sperm or they’ve needed donor eggs. And inevitably, in any race, it happens. People have fertility issues. People want to be single parents people need to adopt, so on and so forth. But I would say it’s not something that’s openly discussed. And I don’t know if that brings a level of uncomfortableness when it comes to people that maybe would like to donate but feel like they shouldn’t.
Jade: I mean, if you’re looking outside of the UK, and you’re looking like towards Americans and places like that, then you know, there is there is more of a chance you’ll find a black hole mixed or you know, yeah, other ethnicity, but it’s too late. Certainly. Here is the definition a short it?
Kym: Yeah, I was gonna say to give you some context, when we looked at a sperm bank once we put in mixed or other just to see what would come up and it came up with one result for somebody Turkish. Yeah, it is. It’s really limited in the UK.
Lotte Jeffs: Yeah. So you chose your donor you went and did you have I UI or IVF we had our UI the pregnancy experience, what was that like for you guys and Jade specifically, you know, as a mother to other Mother, how did you how did you find it?
Jade: How did I find it?
Jade: It was just weird. I mean, for me, it was it was a weird experience because obviously I’ve been around as Kym says, What large family so I’ve been around a lot of pregnancy but I don’t know. It was weird. I was you know, I was supposed I was excited and nervous and all of those things. I don’t know. How do you feel?
Kym: Yeah, I didn’t know how it was for you. But I know from how you were with me, I’d say you’re definitely excited. And our son was a really, really nice baby, really active night baby. And I was a really deep sleeper. So I’d wake up in the morning and JJ can’t believe you slept through that and that show me videos of him. Literally having a pie in my stomach. I think that in a strange way, I think that that was where I bonded with him physically carrying him. I feel like that was that time of night was your bond in him because I was literally dead to the world. I didn’t have a clue. She was having a rave inside. And it was, and she was there filming it and sharing the pictures. And I felt like that was a kind of you had your own bond in as well. Yeah. In a non pregnant parent. Yeah. And but we also moved house when we bought our flat and then found out I was pregnant. So we had to move house five months into the pregnancy. And I’d say we were so focused on logistical stuff that a lot of the not a lot. That’s a portion of the pregnancy. Kind of just happened. Yeah. Because there was so much other stuff going
Jade: on as well. I mean, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that question. So this is for a little bit, but yeah, I don’t know. I don’t really know what I was feeling at that time. I was just on autopilot. I think and it was just, I need to get this, this and this done. To make sure that you know, Kym’s comfortable when they’re when they’re little gets here. He’s constable. So I think that was my main kind of.
Kym: Yeah, I think we’re both quite quite logistical people and acting longer pregnancy was amazing. There was a lot of emotion behind it. And we were so happy that it happened so soon if not a little bit shocked. And because I think like I said, they told us that I wasn’t very successful, and so on and so forth. So it just happened so quickly that there were so many other things going on that I don’t think we had time to just sit there for the whole nine months and be like, oh, wow, we’re pregnant and sit in this amazing cloudy bubble. Yeah, we just had to get on with stuff as well. When he arrived, he could not be in a cardboard box. Yeah.
Lotte Jeffs: And what about the birth was that straightforward.
Kym: I was almost a week overdue. I think I was 40 weeks and six days and I’d hadn’t really felt him moving much that day. So we went to the hospital and the nurse quite frankly said to us, you’re not leaving the hospital without your baby. You’ll say it in now and we will. Okay. Okay. And luckily the hospital bag was already in the boot. So we will kind of pray. If not prepared, and I was induced, some hours later, the induction failed long story short, and after a really long induction process of them trying to get different things to work, it just resulted in an emergency c section. Which was it was I mean, yeah, he got here safely. Yeah, it was just a bit rushed towards the end. But it wasn’t terrible.
Jade: It wasn’t the way we planned it. So I think that’s important for anyone that hasn’t gone through this. Don’t write a birth plan.
Lotte Jeffs: And then do you remember like those first few weeks and how you what, what sort of roles you both slipped into?
Jade: I certainly think I was the less anxious one and I had more of a hands on well, then Tim did that initially because she had the C section. So it limited her physical movement quite a lot. So for the first two to three weeks, I was, you know, hands on everything. So I think that’s where we kind of that’s that was the end issue. I would
Kym: say it’s probably hard. I think I’ve written it quite a few times on Instagram and in blog posts, but it’s probably I’ve not said it on a public forum, I really struggled to bond with our son at first, in a way that I never imagined that I would. And I loved him immediately, kind of without saying, but I think I’d had the C section and I just couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t watch him. And I was struggling to breastfeed. I just, it just didn’t go the way that I was expecting it to go. And I brushed over in antenatal denied when they kind of talked about C sections, I listened. I didn’t really process it. I was like, No, it’s not what I’m having. And so I wasn’t prepared for and Jade will tell you I read every book under the sun and I was constantly researching but I’ve kind of really skimmed over the sea session parts and I kicked myself for not studying it a bit more because I thought I would maybe this is why I’m not bonding with him. I don’t know what to do.
Lotte Jeffs: And what what advice would you give to someone else now because obviously you came through that? What advice would you give to a woman in similar situation that’s feeling like I’m not bonding with my baby in a way that I expected I would,
Kym: I don’t want to say that it’s a one size fits all thing because it doesn’t, but I would say nine times out of 10, it will come. And I think we’re conditioned to think that because you’ve given birth to this person, you just have this rush of love and adoration for them, and you just know what to do. And you don’t. And yeah, I would say it came. It didn’t take me more than I’d say, four or five days. It came quite soon once. Once I got over the fact that I understood I was feeling like that because I couldn’t do things like wash my baby, or change my baby’s nappy. And once I got over that, I understood it a bit more. So for me, it was more processing but I think emotionally, you’re just taught to love this person, but you don’t know them.
Jade: Yeah. And I think I think I mean, I don’t know but I think for you probably it was more of the physical side of things that was you know, had an A had a mental You know, it has an effect on the emotion rather than, you know,
Kym: It was it was a struggle to love him. I loved him. I just couldn’t bond I couldn’t I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t bond because in my head I hadn’t competed. I just had major surgery.
Lotte Jeffs: I suppose particularly stew in adoption, you know, like there’s such emphasis put on that moment that you’re going to first bring your kids home. And maybe when you first bring them home, maybe you have a nightmare night, maybe they don’t sleep, maybe it’s difficult. Maybe it’s not this perfect thing that you thought it was going to be. And I suppose just giving things time not expecting as you say that everything’s just going to be perfect straightaway. So okay, where we are To you’ve, you’ve had the C section bonded with your son and you’ve gone home. So those sort of early months, up to a year when you were kind of going out and about with him in a pushchair. Did you ever feel like self conscious or that people were making judgments about you or and particularly given your mixed race backgrounds like did you ever feel that uncomfortable or that people were making you feel unwelcome in any any place that you went?
Kym: So I think probably is for me, I went to a lot of baby groups Jade was back at work and so I was probably day to day more out and about with him, and I didn’t get that straight away because as you know, you you go into these places you don’t tell everyone your life story straightaway so people just assumed his mama baby. But then as you start talking to People more and then you start saying, Oh, I know my wife and tastes of a mom and so on. They, I didn’t get any negative responses. I wouldn’t say that. I’ve luckily never had anything really. Oh my god, I can’t believe that. But I had a few ignorant responses. And just a few also, who’s the dad, and then you have to read really nicely pointed out, but quite firm. He doesn’t have a dad, he’s got a donor, and just correct language. And then in terms of his race, I just again, it’s just really ignorant questions. We, we lived in a really, I’d say, predominantly white area was the demographic and you’d have just really, really ignorant questions. I look at his hair. He had a lot of hair when he was born. And look at his hair. Oh, I thought you’d have Afro, you know, because he’s black. And I’m like, well, that babies aren’t born with an afro. It’s not how it works. So there was just a few ignorant comments around things like that more than people being nasty. It was ignorance, I’d say
Lotte Jeffs: As he’s got older, has he sort of how he’s to now write is almost two
Kym: and a half yet?
Lotte Jeffs: Has he kind of picks up on the fact that he’s got two mums yet?
Jade: Yes, yes. He’s like
Jade: he’s got like a little wooden box with little characters on there. And he always seems to say you know, one the white one is Kym and black one is is me and that’s my two moms. That’s two moms two moms. He says it was on
Kym: my my mom’s pink and blonde I’m not sure. If he’s got the looks down. He
Lotte Jeffs: understands the concepts. And do you what do you call each other? What What does he call you both sorry.
Kym: So I’m mama and J’s Mama.
Kym: We have been thinking about it
Kym: he started to get more inquisitive so I think it’s forced us to think about it he’s not asked
Lotte Jeffs: in an inquisitive about a dad
Kym: about family yeah
Jade: he mentions dad a lot you know because everything that he watches is you know any any family that is on a cartoon or you know Peppa Pig or yeah
Stu Oakley: so what kind of thing does he say?
Jade: It just whenever he’s talking about families it’s known as mommy daddy or he’s pretty sexist to be honest yeah for a kid just two months he prefers men Yeah, he does really does
Jade: is very much for you know, granddad and Uncle Yeah, much if he picks up
Kym: his Peppa Pig figurines. He straightaway goes for for Daddy Pig and George’s Yeah, he’s just geared towards fairy men which is Yeah, what can we do about it? We try not to say Oh, you don’t have a dad but we say I’ll take Scott to mommy’s tastes got mama a mommy we just really gently broaching the subject with him. So then he picks up the same actual bust figurine says two daddies and we’ve not told him anything about two daddies, he’s just put that together himself. So I think we he’s still really young. We don’t want to force it on him when he’s not necessarily going to understand just yet.
Jade: Yeah, so we also don’t want to leave it to the point where, you know, yeah, he feels uncomfortable, you know, outside of the house, when it’s when because he’s going to be pull up to him. You know, the fact is that I’m very aware of that outside of this house, outside of our family, it’s going to be potentially a problem for some people. And he’s going to be you know, I want to prepare him for for that and make him feel comfortable in his, in his skin in his in his, you know, his family.
Lotte Jeffs: Yeah. What I’ve loved about doing this series is that I feel like every LGBTQ parent that we’ve met, has just been doing such an amazing job of raising emotionally intelligent kids, you know, We’re all trying so hard to create these kids that are going to be able to go out into the world and deal with whatever prejudice life throws at them and give them the tools to respond to people’s ignorance. And, you know, we I think we should all feel really proud that we’re sending these people off into the world. You know, like we’re trying, and I think it’s really good that we’re trying.
Kym: Yeah, I agree. I think it’s really nice of where our generation is in terms of being able to be with who you want to be with or be who you are, is so much more widely accepted, not everywhere, but we’re getting there. And I think what that means is that hopefully those of us that are choosing to have children will raise another generation of open minded individuals that it’s an even even more free generation even more able to see people’s differences and respect them without ignorance. I think a lot of it comes down to ignorance I think more than hype
Jade: and yeah, that’s that’s that’s another thing of the I’ve considered this out is not just you Is this within this house it’s also outside I’m the oldest child and my mom doesn’t have any other grandchildren and she she totally adores you know I think a bit too much. is a bit crazy but also for her I mean I don’t know dealing with she’s never said it but I’m saying dealing with you know your daughter this guy and then you you have a grandchild that’s not biologically yours. I’m putting a lot on our plate or my my life is kind of putting a lid on other people’s lives as well forget what I mean in some to some degree.
Jade: Yeah, I mean, from
Jade: my in terms, I’ve been really lucky. And I, you know, I don’t have one of those Jamaican families that are, you know, out there
Jade: trying to kill gay people.
Jade: But I do, you know, have a big family, not just not just my, you know, my mom’s siblings, but I’ve got a lot of cousins outside of that, as well as the fact that and I know that there’s probably people with opinions that haven’t said certain things to me. But I kind of took the came up very late, I suppose. And I think I took the I was of the opinion in that time to just live my life the way I wanted to live it. And obviously, I have to consider, you know, my mom’s feelings and people are gonna adapt have to adapt to this because it’s not. It’s not it’s not been done before. You know, I’m the first to do it. So But I’ve been pretty lucky and I have had support we’ve had the most support yeah and everyone you know we’ve never been made to feel any fire honestly couldn’t
Kym: I couldn’t is like I don’t know you couldn’t write down I couldn’t wish for bear in laws honestly is the complete opposite of what Jade has with my family put it like that it’s I couldn’t they couldn’t have welcomed me anymore and like you said I don’t think in the immediate family I think in the extended family there are for sure there are people that think the way that we live is wrong but don’t understand that our son is both of us. There are definitely those opinions but nobody is has has been brazen enough to come up with those and I don’t
Jade: and also because I’m pretty
Jade: assertive. So you know, if those things that come to me then I would you know, I would address it and and that would be that I suppose.
Kym: I don’t think anyone anyone close enough with would voice an opinion if they had one and I don’t think anyone close to us does have a negative Okay. Yes, yeah, yeah.
Kym: Don’t get me wrong, we wouldn’t we wouldn’t go on holiday to Jamaica and start waving our rainbow flags around because
Stu Oakley: so I always love hearing from other two mum families, I guess because I just don’t know that many of them myself. So I don’t often have conversations with people where I feel like that’s exactly like me. And I felt like that and we, you know, we’re the same. For me. It’s about learning throughout this whole podcast about how other people in our queer community, raise children and have children. So finding out those different details. I just find fascinating. There was something I was thinking of during the during the chat with Kym and Jade actually, which is something I’ve never asked you or any of our guests about, don’t about donor preferences. Does the donor ever have any preference in terms of I mean, can they discriminate in any way, for example, and the donor, the donor can say, I don’t want a same sex couple to have my sperm.
Lotte Jeffs: No, they just donate their sperm and then what will be done will be done with it. They certainly don’t get a say. And that’s, I think that’s really important that’s really important to, to us as the receivers of it that it feels it feels quite depersonalized and the whole process makes you it’s geared towards that feeling. So yeah, it’s an interesting question though.
Stu Oakley: Absolutely. So get in touch. Our email is some families@storyhunter.co.uk.
Lotte Jeffs: And we are on Instagram, which is my preferred means of communication if anyone’s interested to get in touch with me, which is at some families pod. And my personal Instagram is at Lotte, Jeff’s and do you are at Mr. Stone I play which looks a bit like Mrs. To Oakley but it’s not It’s Mr. Stokely. It’s like when Susan Boyle did her album launch and it was.
Stu Oakley: I don’t know that
Stu Oakley: on that bum note, it’s time to say goodnight.
Lotte Jeffs: Goodnight, everybody. Thank you for listening.
Stu Oakley: Thank you. Goodbye.