Well initially we weren’t going to have children because he had had a vasectomy. He had three grown up children from his first marriage and he didn’t particularly want children. And he was the one that changed his mind initially and said, actually he would like to see if there was some way we could have children.

Okay but once he had the vasectomy there was no way that he could produce sperm in other words is that right?

Ten years ago no. I mean what I don’t know with the improvements in technology since then whether they can now extract sperm directly. I am not sure if that is true any longer. I think perhaps now there would have been other alternatives.

But when you were going through it

But when we were going through it, it wasn’t being done. ICSI had just started at that stage was very experimental. And we weren’t really given many other options. It was sort of if you want to try and get pregnant you will need to get donor sperm. And that was when donor sperm was anonymous. Which it isn’t anymore. And one of the problems with people now who want donor sperm is there isn’t any. Because with the anonymity removed from the donor they are almost no donors. So it has sort of, the theory was just to solve one problem for the children, so that they could find out about their natural father later on. But of course, since then there are very few children being born. Which I think is a real shame.

Describe to me the process for you of changing your mind and deciding that you wanted children.

I think my husband brought it up first when we were on holiday. And it was sort of like Pandora’s box once he brought it up I absolutely decided that yes, that I did want children, having always known with him that I wouldn’t be able to have children. I had accepted that as part of the terms of the relationship. But it was like a Pandora’s Box the moment he said that he would like to consider the possibility. I was like right fine we are doing it [laugh]. Both guns blazing. Absolutely determined from that stage that if I could possibly get pregnant I was going to.

And how old were you at that point?

I was, I would have been just before I was 30. Because I was 30 when we married. So right about 30. And I was 35 when the children were born.

Okay. So it took five years?

It took five years, yes.

Right. So why did it take that long?

I think because after the vasectomy reversal I think my husband was determined that it was going to work and that the children would be his, and I don’t think at that point I had actually considered donor sperm as an option. I hadn’t really thought about if the surgery didn’t work, how we were going to try to have a child.

Because as I say it wasn’t until I was at the gynaecologist one day, and she said to me, Well you could consider donor sperm because obviously the surgery hasn’t worked. Or it may be that you have a problem that you haven’t investigated Because at that point actually I hadn’t even though to have myself investigated to see if there was any reason that I couldn’t get pregnant.

And we went to a course which was for any gay person thinking of co- parenting and we actually met a couple of men on that course. A gay couple. And we got friendly and we built up a friendship over a few months, and we said, Well let’s do it together

So we tried with them for quite a few months. And it didn’t work. It didn’t work. And we fell out with them about a year into it. They, we found out about a health issue that the Father had. And we were upset, not really about the issue, but the fact that he hadn’t said anything about it. And it’s hereditary and it just created a bad feeling, and I think, I don’t know if it was waiting to happen this thing, but anyway, so we stopped that and thought. Oh dear, let’s ask somebody we know. Let’sWe know some lovely men let’s ask

And so an old friend of mine said he’d help out and he’d got his own family and he wasn’t interested in being a Father, but he was really happy to be, you know, at a distance and meet the child, but just not, you know, the odd photo every now and again, but not more than that.

And so we tried with him. And it just didn’t work. And he lived quite far away so logistically it wasand so in the end. And there were a few other things. I think we started to go off the idea of having somebody else involved and started warming more to the idea of the anonymous donor.

And so we thought we needed to go to clinic. We needed to do it properly. And maybe there was something wrong, which is why it hasn’t happened.

So I think it was about 2003 that we went. So we’d sort of tried for three years, I mean not every month, because it just didn’t work like that because of the logistics. But for three years nothing had happened and it was, you know, quite emotionally draining and traumatic and all the rest of it.

And so I went to the clinic in 2003 and it was my understanding that I could only be treated as a single person at that time. I couldn’t, we weren’t going to be treated as a couple. And it was also my understanding that I wouldn’t necessarily get treatment. That we’d have to demonstrate certain things, that we had male role models and there’d be certain sort of judgements, you know, we’d have to say the right things and what have you. I didn’t think it was a sure thing that we’d be able to have it.

I could have actually you know, started some kind of treatment. Because we then started to think about egg donation. Which I had never considered and initially I would never have contemplated that kind of treatment. But once you actually know what the situation is you start to look at things in a different way. And people also change their views I think as well as time goes on.

So we thenyes, so it was actually said that if we were serious about wanting to conceive then the only way would be by egg donation, that IVF wasn’tbecause by that time the eggs weren’t of sufficient quality any way. And you know, it looks as though the eggs are affected by endometriosis anyway, the quality of the eggs

Soand so yes, we tried egg donation. I had to go somewhere else for that. I went to a few places
In the UK or..?

Yes. I hadn’t actually looked at anywhere else then. I wish I had. And
Why?

Because I think that they certainly have more experience with endometriosis and fertility and in a lot of centres in other European countries. Not all, in some European countries and theand some countries have specialised in egg donation specifically. And others more on the IVF side. And they have huge data bases of you know the patients results and so on. So I think they are able to sort of make decisions on an individual basis, better.

And so anyway we went ahead and it was actually a long wait. I think it was, gosh, it was, let me think, we were told that it would be a few months but it was very much longer. A longer waiting list for, it must have been getting on for a year and a half and I had to also go to another part of the country where the donor was andI didn’t know it at the time, but there were various things that they forgot to tell us to with you know the progesterone pessaries and so on to prepare the endometrium for implantation and I wasn’t very impressed. You know. And also we were only given information in little snippets, you know, a stage at a time, and when you are going through all that for the first time, you don’t know whether what they are telling you is the standard thing or you know, whether something has been overlooked or you know whether they have told you to do something incorrectly, and I had to actually follow up on quite a few things and I realised that there were certain things that they had forgotten to tell us and I was absolutely staggered.

And you are paying, you know a lot of money for that kind of treatment.

And at that point we had to stop and think, well what do we do? Do we just make the decision not to have any more children? Do we think about adoption? Or, and it was a pretty obvious third choice was to think should we perhaps go for a family where [wife] could be inseminated by an anonymous donor, through a clinic, and we might have children that way.

And I suppose it made you stop and think a great deal about what was important. Important to yourself. Important to [wife]. What did we have to give as parents? As potential parents? I suppose we had already been in the parenting business. Found that not terrible [laughs]. And I suppose other the kind of recollections, the reflections I had were about the family that I’d come from, and I come from a family of farmers who, I can trace my father’s line back for, two or three hundred years, and just some feeling of wanting to continue not just the line, but I think the kind of values that I’ve inherited from my father and mother and the possibility of carrying those values on to another generation. And we were relatively well off, we were in a position to support a family, and all those things made me think, yes, I do want to go on. Childlessness or future childlessness, or just having [son], [wife]’s child. That wasn’t going to be fulfilling enough.

So then there’s the question of well what does one feel about this idea of having a child to whom I’m not going to be genetically related. And that’s a much deeper question and it’s a much more penetrating question I think for a lot of men to say, well am I going to love this child? What if, what is, Most people have children that they are genetically connected to. And that creates the family bond Well I suppose I was quite well prepared by being a step-Dad and knowing that you can love a child that you’re not genetically related to. And feel that that child is part of your own family. So I suppose I had an advance in thinking on all that sort of thing.

But nevertheless, you still, I think, go through a periodof some bereavement, loss or grief over what is not to be. And that some period of thinking, is, can I cope with this? And
Can I come to terms with this? And I think I probably resolved it in a rather simplistic sort of way, thinking well, if we go down this route at least we have a child whose, as opposed to adoption, this is a child who is going to be genetically connected to at least one of us, which seems sort of better than none. So a bit simple, kind of maths almost, and [wife] would go through the pregnancy, and we would go through that whole process together so I think I came to that conclusion relatively quickly, but not without some pain and grief and feeling that this was going to be rather significant in my life. Little did I know how significant it was going to be in my life at the time.

What is a family? What are genetics? What is the nature, nurture issue here? And what does it really mean? One of the big questions that nobody knows the answer to. How much of our personality and style and success or failure in life, is attributable to the, genes we’ve inherited, and how much of it is attributable the upbringing that we’ve, that we’ve given our children or that we’ve received.

And nobody knows the answers to these questions. So almost every aspect of social science if you like that is engaged in the question of donor, donor conception. As I say, there’s genetics, there’s medicine if you like, there’s anthropology. What is a family? How does, what value’s placed on genetic relationships in this particular culture? At this particular time? In Western society, in UK society, in London society which is totally different I suspect from what it would have been two hundred years ago, in this particular country and probably very different from what it would be 6,000 miles away in Africa in some communities or in South America in some communities. So anthropologists will have a field day with all of this. it’s a subject of potential, enormous study I suspect. Sociology, how do we, how do families relate to each other, and what’s going on in the culture of societies, more generally, in the movement to accept this as a more natural thing. Or is it? Philosophy. What are we valuing here? Why are we valuing it? What engages us to value it? Law – what are the legal implications of non-genetic parenting? We have been so used to the inheritance of land, names, legal parenting, titles. That’s genetically in the law, in family law, in property law, and so almost everysychology what’s our understanding of ourself and our understanding of identity? What do we, how do we identify ourselves? What do we see as the key issues in our identity make up? Do we think of ourselves as, do you think of yourself as a researcher? Or do you think of yourself as the daughter of your parents? And how much of each? So that is only a glimpse of the profundity that there is that you’re led to think about in this area intellectually. So… But it’s not just of course an intellectual game, or an intellectual pursuit. it’s about real people. it’s about our family. And so I do find it , rightly absorbing of my, some of my energy, both intellectual and emotional. As one ought to have for one’s children. But I guess most people don’t have the necessity to think as deeply as we do and as I’ve had the opportunity to do, about these questions because parenthood just happens and it happens through sort of peer pressure. People live together, other people seem to be having kids, oh we better have kids. And that’s the way most people slip in, slide in to parenthood. We’ve had to think about parenthood and why we want children. Why do we want children? What is this driver that rather simplistically says that either if other people around are having children then we think we’ll look a bit odd if we don’t. Or, and/or a real urgent need to have children. Where does that come from? And yes, we must know that the human race wouldn’t continue if there wasn’t something of a [primal], primordial drive. And we know it’s not just sex, it is a need to have children. And how enormously painful and distressing it can be for people who have, who are unable to have children. Not everybody of course, but for some people who cannot have children of their own, or can’t have children at all, the immense grief and loss that they feel about being confronted with that situation. So there is something pretty deep, and yet none of us really know what it is or where it comes from. So I have had through the opportunity to talk to other people and hear from, other people’s storie