Experiences of parents and carers of young trans and gender diverse people

You think about all these things, because obviously that's one of the things that you do worry about. You know, if you were gonna go down the route of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and things, you're gonna go down that route then the child needs to know that that is gonna effect their fertility. And I've, we, I have talked, I have said to her about it. I've talked to her. We've talked around the subject of puberty blockers, already. And I said, ''What about children? What if you can't have children? What would you do?'' She said, ''She'd adopt.'' I mean I know she can't really know for sure how she's gonna feel now as she would when she's older. You can't, as a child, you don't really know the consequence, the full consequence of it, do you? But I don't know a lot about the actual process for fertility preservation. But I do know that if the earlier that you go on puberty blockers and sex hormones then it's harder to be able to preserve fertility, I think, because of the hormones just affect so much.

We had some really big conversations around, you know, she wants to get married. She wants to have children. And started in the process of how that might work and you know, part of the hormone blockers and waiting for as long as waiting for the, you know, for the sperm to be produced and then they could extract it. These are massive conversations to be having when you are eleven. She gets it. We get it. But it’s huge. I never thought in a million years we’d be having those kinds of conversations and they can be really challenging, at times. Because the person you are at eleven is not the person that you are, you know, when you’re 21 or 31 or whatever. But, yeah.

So, the fertility preservation is that something that was discussed at the GIDS or is there something that you discussed as a family?

Oh yeah, both, all the way through, yeah they’ve spoken about it and so that’s something she really, really wants. She really wants having children.

He doesn’t want to. He has always been he’s never ever wanted children, ever. My nephew had a baby a few years ago, he’s five now. So, that would have made my son 11 and they are very close. And at that point, that’s the only point in his life where he has ever been like, maybe I would have a baby. But that lasted for a couple of weeks. And so we did talk about it. And he is adamant that he doesn’t want, he doesn’t want that. I said, ‘Well, what if you change your mind in the future?’ His view is that, if he does, he won’t mind whether that child is biologically his or not. He’s really not at all, doesn’t just, it isn’t an issue for him. It’s not something he wants to think more about.

Have you discussed fertility preservation options with your daughter?

Yeah. It’s something which they basically they offered for her. They explained that it was something that she could do with the aid of something, or the more traditional technique, which she was obviously quite embarrassed about, but most children would be, sat in a room with adults talking about producing sperm. So, I think it’s something which she would like to do in the sense that she would like the option of being a parent when she was older. But she’s talked about adopting or something like that. I remember when she was very young she was saying that she would like to meet a girl who wanted to be a boy, the opposite of her and they could, they could fall in love together and get married and have a baby together because they would have the right physical body parts to make a baby.

When you say, they discussed fertility preservation options with your daughter, who is they?

The hospital. The doctor.

Okay.

I don’t remember [Gender Identity Development Service] ever discussing or describing that.

Richard talked about his daughter being offered fertility preservation options by the endocrinologist.

While my son was an inpatient, he had therapeutic sessions with one of the nurses on the ward around storing eggs and stuff like that. So the nurse said to him at one point, you know “If I was in your position I’d want my eggs to be stored.” Up to this point though he was clear “I don’t want to be a biological parent. I don’t want any of my eggs to be stored.” He has a genetic condition as well, which implicates matters which means there’s a 50/50 chance of his genetic condition being passed on to an offspring. So he’d already made it quite clear in his decision, “I don’t want to be a biological parent.” And through the dysphoria he felt that if he had been pregnant then he really wouldn’t want that. So therefore the hormones should stop. So they made the decision that he shouldn’t be on hormones while he was an inpatient. Fortunately, he persuaded them otherwise and they negotiated a reduced dose, not stopping it altogether. But there is still a lot of judgment. 

We discussed it, it came up at the first [name] GIDS meeting and sadly, because my child didn't have the confidence to say, ''Absolutely not. I definitely don't want it.'' They thought that to please the person that was asking they should say that they would look into it. And then we had a barrage of appointments offered at various fertility treatment places and my child then thought that that was a stalling tactic, because you can't harvest eggs if you're on testosterone. So they thought it was just a stalling tactic to stop them starting testosterone. But they've always been pretty adamant that they personally don't want to have any children. They didn't want the invasion of egg harvesting, because it's an area of the body that they don't want looking at, playing with, touching, talking about, they don't even wanna think about that area of their body. So they were absolutely anti harvesting

Well we've got a year to get to the next step. However, I'm already working towards making sure that the next step is easier. So we are having conversations, right now and for the last six, twelve months about preserving his eggs or you know, birth children before he starts cross sex hormones. If that's his choice if that's what he wants to do, you know, we have to kind of pre-empt what the [Gender Identity Development Services] and what the judges and what the local authorities are going to say he needs to do. So it, it is continual working and being that two, three, four, five steps ahead of everybody else.

And how did you find out about the fertility preservation option?

Google [laughs]. Yeah, just Google. There's not much out there. I did have to contact the CCG myself. I sent them an email, the Clinical Commissioning Group. So I did contact them myself and asked them what their policy was for trans youth if they was accessing fertility to be told that this local authority doesn't prejudice against trans, trans young people. So it would just be a case of the GP referring if that's what he wanted to do. And then looking at him going through the process, whereas many, many, many, many other local authorities don't support trans young people in fertility whatsoever. You then need to pay privately. Bearing in mind, eggs are only viable for about ten years. So if a 13 year old, 14 year old, 15 year old is looking at preserving their eggs, you know, they have to have had children by 23, 25, 26. You know, most people aren't starting families until their 30s. Why are our kids having to think about it at 15, 16. It's a big conversation to be having.