Lotte talks about her IUI journey, the emotional and physical impacts. Stu shares an update on his family and they are joined in the studio by Producer (and Producer on this show!) Kirsty Hunter. Kirsty talks about her journey through IVF and the decision to be the birth mother.
Full transcription below.
Kirsty: I guess the thing everyone forgets about going through IVF is you’re usually doing it while you’re working full time. You don’t want to tell a lot of people what you’re going through, or we didn’t. We managed to get two eggs. They both survived and became embryos. We put two back in and one of those embryos ended up being our son.
The older he gets, the more like her he is. We never want him to feel like he’s lesser than. Yeah. Um, so we never say you don’t have a dad. You say you’ve got two moms.
Stu: So welcome to some families, the LGBTQ parenting podcast, where we deep dive into all things parenting. When your kid has two moms or two dads or any other combination you can think of.
Lotte: It’s been like quite quiet time, quite a slow week, not much going on.
Jokes!
Stu: Ah, yeah. I decided to leave a job I’ve been in for almost seven years and, uh, just have a new baby,
Lotte: So last time we talked to recap, you told me that you just got an email telling you that there was another yes. member of the family.
Stu: Yeah. And in Lightspeed time, he is home with us and we’re fostering to adopt him at this moment.
In time, we have a matching panel coming up with him and then we will hopefully be his adoptive parents. So it’s been a blooming whirlwind, a
Lotte: wonderful how’d you feel like right now?
Stu: Happy our decision was made. The moment we heard about him in our hearts and he just felt like part of our family, the moment we heard about that, just be like,
Lotte: I’m getting like, um, Tingley in the back of my neck.
When you say that it’s, it’s so nice.
Stu: He has out the best in all of us, I would say so. No, he, especially in my daughter so that when we break the news to her and we. We did it by wrapping up a photo of him and wrapping up a cuddly toy that we’d bought for him and her and my son opened it. And. Kind of a looking at it and we had to explain, this is not a present for you.
This is a present for your new baby brother.
Lotte: How incredible would that, what you’ve been on this journey that we’ve talked about? Normally it’s at least nine months to people and that whole nine months was just, um, totally squished into this intense, like what was it?
Stu: Even though we are. Uh, adopters and we’ve adopted two children.
We were not approved to adopt again or to foster adopt. You have to go through the whole process again. And that was potentially going to be a very long process, but because we wanted to get him home as soon as possible. So we worked really hard on that.
Lotte: Well, congratulations. Thank you so happy for you.
And you’re amazing.
Stu: Crazy. I mean, what else do you, when we started this podcast, I was father to two, and now I’m father of three, got by the time we end, I’ll be father of 10, Angelina Jolie. But yes, but anyway, that’s my week. You know what you’ve been up to? Yeah.
Lotte: I’ve started a new job. Thank you. I’ve been freelance as a writer and a kind of creative consultant type person for just over a year.
And I’ve really, really enjoyed it. And I’m not going to say anything bad cause you’re just moving into the freelance world. Um, but I have loved being back in the company I’m working for Mary Portas. Yeah. People listening might know she is a lesbian moms and it’s a brilliant company. People that work there, she has an amazing podcast, could work like a woman.
And I can honestly attest that, that brilliant work culture that they talk about in that podcast genuinely exists in agency. And it’s like, nowhere else I’ve ever worked. It’s brilliant. Yeah. So that’s really good and positive. Um, But the other big piece of news is that last time we spoke, I, I was coming and arguing about whether I wanted to try for a baby myself.
Yes. Um, and I think I was kind of discussing the pros and cons with you. And I was saying that in so many ways, I’m so satisfied as the other mother, I don’t know if I have a real biological urge to carry a child, then. I kind of decided I’d like to try.
Stu Oakley: Okay.
And the reason I decided that really after interrogating myself and speaking to my therapist was I think it would be really amazing to see my family in another person.
Yeah. And I’ve had quite a unique leave. Kind of disjointed, slightly tragic family life. Um, so I’m my parents divorced. I’m my I’m really close to my cousins. We grew up like sisters, my older cousin, um, who was like a sister to me, died of a brain tumor when she was. Um, 31, um, my younger cousin, Rami who’s in the band, The XX her mum died when she was 11 and she came to live with me.
Then her dad died when she was 21. And so we’re this really tight family of women. So there was something about the idea of, you know, family is so important to me and I feel like there’s something so emotional for me about my family and these. The thought that these people that I’ve loved and lost, like my cousin could somehow let my cousin, he was called, Billy could somehow be in this new person that I brought into the world.
Like, there’s a bit of her in this person. There’s a bit in my aunt. Romy’s mom who died in this person like that, to me, felt like an incredible gift and an amazing possibility.
Stu: So in a way, that’s what motivated me to do you not feel the, that your daughter. Does have that already in the nurture and the way that you bring her up.
And she does, she’s surrounded by this amazing family of yours.
Lotte: If it doesn’t work for me, that is entirely who I would think that, that I think is something or would be something powerful in the, the very genetics and the biology of seeing a baby and thinking that’s come from me. And this baby actually has.
Yeah, the blood and the genes of these people. Um, so I tried, yeah, I U Y um, and then do you know, I felt really special. Yeah. I felt like, I felt like something magical could be happening inside. And that really surprised me because I wasn’t, I’m quite cynical and white, like, um, and I’m sure a lot of other.
Perhaps mask of center, gay women also feel this, like, I don’t, I like my body. I’m not like in touch with my feminine body in the way that some women are like, I just don’t really engage with my body in that way. I’m just like, I’m happy. I’m flat-chested I exist in the world. I’m not a woman that particularly wants to celebrate her body.
But suddenly I felt in touch with myself in a way that I never have done before. That’s amazing. And, um, just sort of, it was on my mind every single day and like, I was like, what’s going on? So you have to wait two weeks before you do the test. And, um, I’m so impatient as a person. And I just have to know something now.
So obviously, like I bought loads of pregnancy tests and just started doing them like way before the time. And it kept going back negative. And I was like, well, that’s fine. You know, it’s not the time I felt I did feel disappointed, but I didn’t feel devastated. And I think. It’s given me a whole new respect for friends of mine who have had miscarriages and who have been trying to have baby to conceive and not being able to for months and years, because that we can a bit that I felt like I could be pregnant.
It felt like a really special time and to have lost that felt like a loss. So obviously going through. The process of IUI made the idea of being the actual birth mother, feel like a reality for me in the way there hasn’t for a while. And I guess it’s really given me a lot of respect for my wife and for other women who are.
The carrier’s birth mothers of children. Um, and that is actually going to be the theme of the rest of today’s podcast. Yes. Yes.
Stu: It’s on today’s show. We have Kirsty who is a birth mother to , a little boy. Uh, so we have her coming in to talk about her journey and what she’s been through, and I’m sure having.
Been through what you’ve been through this week, Lottie, there’s going to be some great conversation there to be had. Hi, Castillo Castillo. We were just talking about Lottie’s experience this week of going through IUI, um, which sadly hasn’t worked for Lotte. This time. And that was something I wanted to ask you, is that then the doorposts on
Lotte: that for you, I’m going to try a couple more times.
How many times did you try IUI three? It feels like three is the magic number.
Kirsty: Yeah. I mean, I think we, uh, they, you do that counseling at the start at the clinic I went to and I think you might be going to the same clinic and they ask you that question in terms of as a couple, um, W, you know, have you talked about if it doesn’t work, how many times are you going to try?
And for us it was, it was three in kind of regrouping. Uh, we, my wife and I have worked together for five years before we start to talk about having children.
Lotte: Oh, that first conversation, do you remember it?
Kirsty: Well, I think I came out a lot later than my wife, so I think I’d always thought I would have children.
Um, whereas she. You know, it came out very young and probably identified as gay, a lot, sort of younger than that even. And so in her head, it wasn’t possible, um, to have kids. So it wasn’t really something we started talk about, um, until maybe we’d been together for three or four years.
Stu: What led you, do you think to, to, for you to be the birth mother and that’s the path that you eventually went down?
Kirsty: I mean, that was a pretty short conversation. Um, like a lot of gay women. I know, um, she, uh, wanted to be a mom, but she didn’t want to carry. So it was always that I was going to be the birth mother.
Lotte: You sort of talk about it as though. Oh, it was just easy. And that one, person’s like one, one kind of thing.
And the other person is the other bit, it’s not necessarily like that for everyone. Is it? I think it’s, it can be quite, uh, Complex conversation. It sounds like maybe you were quite lucky that it was clear cut in that way.
Kirsty: Yeah. I mean, we did have the conversation and my wife, I think did consider it for a short while, but it was also really important to me to, um, be genetically related to a child.
Stu: Why do you think that was?
Kirsty: It’s a natural human instinct, I think, to want to see yourself in your child. Um, Whereas for my wife, that wasn’t as important. She wanted to be a mum and she didn’t really mind the fact that she wouldn’t be genetically related to that.
Stu: Cause that’s been a journey that I think that I’ve been on through the adoption process.
And I think, you know, is. I used to want that so much. And it wasn’t necessarily for me, the, and I suppose that’s one thing right now with science and who knows where it goes for all of us gay, lesbian, whatever is, for me, it was always about, I’ve really not necessarily wanted me genetically because Christ, I’m happy to skip that one.
Poor buggers if the, if they did, but it would be more about having the combination of me and my husband in a child. I used to say to people, to birth mothers, you know, lesbian, straight, whatever, you know? Wow. Gosh, you’re so lucky. What an amazing gift to be able to have that bond with your child.
I have not thought that once since having our three, do you see parts of your extended family in him?
Kirsty: You know, bits of my mom, particularly sometimes the way he looks at me. Um, my wife says that she can read his face because it’s so similar to mine. The older he gets, the more like her hears. And he loves saying things to me.
Like he loves building Lego. And my wife works in the construction industry, says mummy and I are builders. So he’s constantly aligning himself as well with her in terms of the things that they have shared interests.
Lotte: I’m so looking forward to that moment that you’ve just described your wife, feeling like your son is taking on her characteristics.
Because I feel at the moment our daughter looks so like my wife, she kind of has elements of my personality, of course, but there’s nothing that we can say yet. They’re like, Oh my God, that’s so Lotte. I mean, other than her diva-ish tantrums, but that’s all kids anyway. Let’s backtrack. You tried IUI. What happened?
Kirsty: Yeah, so we did it every couple of months. Um, I have a few fertility issues, which meant we went straight to assisted IUI.
Stu: So did you know that before you went into the process?
Kirsty: We talked about the fact that if it didn’t work, we talk about IVF, which is what we eventually did.
Yeah. Um, but also, um, my wife was quite keen that we look at adoption. Okay, because her view was that there’s lots of kids out there who need families. So that was, you know, the other option that we talked about
Lotte: Kirsty, can I ask you just, um, obviously, as I said, I tried IUI assisted IUI and it didn’t work.
Can I ask you how you felt after each unsuccessful trial of IUI?
Kirsty: Very positive initially, um, I found the drugs. Really difficult. And I think by the end of the third IUI, I kind of felt like it was slightly tearing me apart, emotionally. I needed a break. So at that point we had, I’m trying to think of the timing, maybe a two year break, but at that point I was 38.
Uh, when we went back to have IVF. So we knew that, you know, my window was closing. So we had to sort of get a move on.
Lotte: Can you talk a bit about the conversation you had before we’re trying to have IVF? Was it an easy conversation? Did, was your wife suggesting adoption at that point?
Kirsty: No, I think we, we thought we’d give it another couple of rolls of the dice in terms of IVF.
So at the time I think the success rate was maybe like in the high twenties percent. Okay. So yeah, I think we decided to try again. We obviously our original donor wasn’t available anymore. So when you go to the London women’s clinic in Harley street yeah. The all the women go upstairs and it’s very sort of plush building and you see men kind of scuttling down the basement stairs and that’s this bone bank at the bottom of the building.
Lotte: Right. So you can like look out the window and be like that one we could go and like spy, imagine all these lesbians in the coffee, shop outside with like big newspapers
Stu: with eye holes. Cut out, get in there. Now
Kirsty: I ask this question a lot, like, how did you choose your donor and lots? You don’t know if it’s still the same, but they have a website. Uh, the one in span bank and you basically start flicking through a digital catalog. And do you have to sign
Stu: up or can you just have a flick? I think you can have a flare.
Lotte: I think you can have a plaque on, well, I didn’t use that donut. I used a different one and I think it’s, I think it’s public. Maybe you need to put some info in, but it’s very easy and open to use,
Kirsty: But it prompted a lot of quite bizarre conversations. My wife and I had because. She had a particular sort of profile in mind.
And I had a very different profile for me. It was really important that our donor was tall. I think my reasoning was he’s. Our child’s going to have two moms. They’re going to need to be able to defend themselves. So they need to be big. Oh, that’s so
Lotte: interesting. My favorite thing that you get from choosing donor sperm is you get the receptionists view of them.
So there’s obviously a woman whose job on reception let’s call her like Susan is to like, make a snap judgment about all of these handsome men that come in. And it’s just basically like one person’s sort of
Kirsty: judgment. Yeah. I actually have a friend who, uh, Went up to the sperm bank desk and said number XYZ, ed.
Nice. That’s all she wanted to know. Amazing. Just like did the nonverbal like shook her head? So she was, I can’t go for that one. I know a lot of people who’ve got what they call sibling sperm in storage, so they’ve put some away. Um, I think we would have tried to use the same. Uh, donor, but we, uh, we’re one and done.
Yeah. We had our son and we knew that was our family. Um, but, uh, the other thing to note about the UK is, um, the sperm bank we used each donor wants they have a successful or live birth. They call it, um, That donor then gets registered to you or your child, and that donor can only have 10 families.
Stu: So there’s that a nationwide registry or is that just at that spot?
Kirsty: It’s registered in the UK with the H F EA the human fertilisation embryo agency, our son, when he’s 18, if he wants to, can apply for the details of his donut. I guess the thing everyone forgets about going through IVF is. You’re usually doing it while you’re working full time while you’re, and you’re not, you don’t want to tell a lot of people what you’re going through or we didn’t.
So you’re kind of jamming in appointments before work. I had to go to the clinic every two days to get scanned because they wanted to measure the length of the follicles and how they were responding to the medication I was on. Also, I am terrible with needles. I find whenever I give blood, so my wife was injecting me every day with these shots.
So we were doing it, I think in my stomach, I sing it and then pinching it. And then they’re quiet. Thin needles. So they actually don’t hurt that much, but you get very bruised, but quickly we managed to get two eggs. They both survived and became embryos. We put two back in and one of those embryos ended up being our son.
Um, there was, uh, likely to have having twins. We also got the sort of warning from the doctor. We could end up with triplets because one of the embryos could divide, which isn’t unheard of. But, um, given my age, At that time they recommended putting back into embryos. So I don’t know which one was outside, but one of them obviously.
Yeah. Yeah.
Lotte: Amazing. And how was your pregnancy?
Kirsty: I don’t think I believed it was going to happen, uh, until really we got to that 20 week scan. I think I was preparing myself for the fact that it may end in miscarriage or, you know, and it was really funny. I have asthma and I ended up in a, and they said to me, are you pregnant?
And I said, I am actually. And they said, well, we need to do a pregnancy test just to make sure. And I was really scared. It was going to be negative, even though I was about eight weeks pregnant.
Lotte: I can imagine that something that I felt even that brief period that I could possibly have been pregnant was that as a woman going through it, you have to keep so many competing things in your head and it’s so emotionally draining.
So in your head, you have to have, this might not work. I might have a miscarriage. How am I going to feel about that? Am I going to be okay? But then you also have to have, this might work. How the hell am I going to have a child? What’s that going to be like, what’s pregnancy going to be like, and personally, even just for that week of like, it might work, it might not work.
What if it works? What if it doesn’t work? I found it really draining. And the thought that you almost have nine months of that until the baby’s actually there. Of kind of like second guessing yourself and not letting yourself get too excited about it and always thinking, well, it might not work, but then shit.
What if it does work? What if it doesn’t work? Did you feel that
Kirsty: I did. Yeah. It was kind of like this, um, sort of hum in your brain the whole time.
Lotte: So your son is now five?
Kirsty: He’s four and a half,
Lotte: Four and a half. Okay. He’s at school. What’s it like having a man about the, how
Kirsty: we do sometimes call him the little man of the house.
Our son’s just started school, um, in a school of 600 kids. And he’s the only one with a family like ours. And, um, they’ve been getting, uh, sight words sent home every week that they have to learn off by heart. And this week sight word was dad, which is a word. I guess you have to learn. Um, and so driving home from football on Sunday morning, he’s in the backseat, says to me, Mommy, why don’t I have a dad?
And you think in your head that these conversations are going to be perfectly curated. Like you’re all going to be sitting together as a family and there’s going to be a script, but instead, you know, you’re getting asked on 10:00 AM on a Sunday morning after you bought donuts, like why don’t, I have a dad drive me to football and I think what we’ve said is, this is going to be obviously an ongoing conversation.
Um, and what he already knows to say, when are the. Kids ask him is that I got two mummies. Some families have two moms, some families have two dads, some families have a mom and a dad focus on what he does have rather than what he doesn’t.
Kirsty: We never want him to feel like he’s lesser than. Yeah. Um, so we never say you don’t have a dad, so you’ve got two mums.
Lotte: Okay. So we have some questions that we ask all of our guests. The first one is based on our imaginary aunt, Sally, who is, uh, just the worst.
Stu: She means, well, Sally, she loves you. She loves you. She just loves saying,
Lotte: She’s naive. She doesn’t. She really wants to understand. But she likes the drink and she just asks the question that’s on her mind without she has no filter,
Kirsty: I guess.
Um, people feel entitled to ask, uh, You know, who’s your son’s dad or who’s the father. And we don’t ever describe the donor like that because they don’t have a parenting role. Um, so I find that challenging. I’m also very conscious of my son’s privacy. So, you know, um, I could sit here and tell you all the donors characteristics, but I’m not going to because that’s his story.
And that’s something that he deserves to know before anyone else. Apart from us. It’s a great point. How do you, I mean, I guess situation I’ve had people ask me, you know, school drop off. Oh, who carried, you know, sort of, and I think they’re interested and I try and be factual and they also think we have a certain responsibility to help educate people and normalize this.
Um, and their
Stu: intention is coming from coming from a good place. The question being curious, and
Kirsty: the question you really resent is when it’s implied, who’s the real mother.
Lotte: Finally, what do you wish you knew before you went into the process of having or starting to try and have a family?
Kirsty: Um, I wish I had.
Taken on board, what my sister said to me, which is no one’s ever emotionally or financially ready to have a child, so you just have to get on with it. Um, but also I really wish I’d been more hopeful full because I just remember being so worried and stressed during that conception period. And so pessimistic really.
And I wish someone just sort of said to me, If you want to be a parent, you’ll be a parent. And you know, I think back on those three, are you eyes? And, um, they were difficult, but they weren’t the child we were meant to have. We have the child we were meant to have. And I remember when they collected my eggs and my wife burst into tears and the doctor just hugged her and said, you only need one.
And she was right. And he was.
Lotte: Thank you so much Kirsty for sharing your story with us. It’s been amazing to have. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s been great. Thank you for listening.
Stu: We hope you’ve learned something, found something interesting. Um, and I will ask a lot about the sperm as well.
Lotte: And I know a lot about sperm, so that was fun. It was nice talking to Kirsty and hearing her experience of IUI. Um, and if you at home listening, have any, any stories at all that you’d like to share with us, if anything that we’ve.
Spoken about has resonated with you today. We’d love to hear from you. It’s the whole point of some families. Um, it is the LGBTQ parenting podcast for you and about you. So please feel free to contact us on social media.
Stu: And if you are a sperm donor, we’d love to hear from you.
Lotte: Oh my God. I would love to hear from some sperm donors.
Stu: Yes. Cheers. Thanks. Have a glass of wine. Yeah, we’ve published. We’ve
been, you know,
moderate
Lotte: tonight. Um, good night. Good night. God bless this morning. Whenever you’re listening
Stu: and thoughts to all the sperm out there.