When my girlfriend and I decided we wanted a baby, we knew it would be a long and arduous journey. But as we skipped into our first fertility appointments, we had no idea just how financially and emotionally gruelling the process would be.
At first, there seemed to be myriad options available to us: from the rudimentary at-home turkey baster method (literally a syringe filled with donor sperm , which is as no-frills as it sounds), to medical interventions such as intrauterine insemination (IUI), where the best-swimming sperm are picked out before being injected directly into the womb, and IVF, where an egg is extracted, fertilised to become an embryo, and then implanted.
We decided to pursue reciprocal IVF, where an egg is extracted from one partner, fertilised with some sperm via a donor, and then implanted in the other. That way we could both be physically involved in conception and pregnancy – the closest we could get to experiencing what most straight parents get to have.
But we quickly discovered that if we wanted help from the NHS, we’d either need to have been trying “naturally” for two years (alas, complicated for a queer couple) or already have gone through £30,000 worth of private treatment.
The reasoning behind this is that most NHS trusts require you to prove your “subfertility” before granting access to funded treatment – apparently, being in a relationship where neither of us is able to produce sperm doesn’t count.
Since my girlfriend and I first started this process in autumn of last year, the legislation on who can access IVF treatments on the NHS has been changed to widen access in some areas. But the options are still overwhelmingly punitive towards same-sex couples.
In Wales, where we live, patients must have been trying to conceive for two years or already have undergone 12 private cycles of artificial insemination , at least six of which should be IUI, before reciprocal IVF becomes available to us at our local hospital.
One of the leading fertility clinics in the UK provided us with a quote for a single round of IUI, which ranged from £850-£2,200, depending on which medications were deemed necessary. Six rounds of this alone would cost upwards of £10,000 – a prohibitively expensive sum.
Other couples in our situation are challenging this discrimination. Whitney and Megan Bacon-Evans launched a legal fight in 2021 against their hospital trust over the requirement that couples had to try to conceive for two years – a requirement that has always been and will always be totally irrelevant to same-sex couples. Last week, they claimed victory, announcing they had withdrawn their legal action after NHS Frimley Integrated Care Board (ICB) said it would address inequality in its rules for LGBTQ+ couples. This is a win for us all, but how many couples, already stressed and exhausted from trying to create their family, are going to have to take action against health boards for this two-year rule to be scrapped nationwide.
The government has also announced plans to tackle the additional financial burden faced by female same-sex couples when accessing IVF treatment. Maria Caulfield, parliamentary under secretary for women’s health strategy, said she expected the changes “to take effect during 2023”.
This is undoubtedly good news. But in the meantime, we have been forced to pursue private treatment. Understanding this was our only option was a blow.
We found ourselves searching out success stories and examples of families that might look like ours; looking for some confirmation that the effort and money and longing we’d be pouring into this process would eventually lead to us having the family we dreamed of.
What we found gave us hope. I devoured a podcast called Parental Guidance by Rose and Rosie, a lesbian couple who share the day-to-day reality of being a queer family. On TikTok we found several couples sharing their fertility stories – Caitlin and Leah who filmed themselves dancing while administering hormone injections to each other in their kitchen; Stuart and Francis who brought their beautiful baby into the world with the help of a surrogate and are now expecting their second child; Camilla and Julie, a Norwegian couple who are renovating their house while expecting their baby, conceived through reciprocal IVF.
We are just beginning this journey and are already exhausted and confused (and way too knowledgeable on how to buy sperm). We are scared; that we’ll try and try and never get to have the family we planned; that we’ll end up taking a different path to parenthood and regret the efforts (and money) we put into this part of the process; that we’ll get what we want and find that the rampant homophobia that exists in this world affects our future child who will have two mothers.
But we have also realised that regardless of what happens, however this baby is brought into the world, it will know it was wanted and was loved before it even existed. A line that we will be teaching our child to deal with any potential bullying is: “Yeah, I have two mums. At least I know they wanted me.”
Priya Hall’s debut stand-up show Grandmother’s Daughter is now on at the Monkey Barrel Comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival until 27 August
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