It had taken weeks to make the appointment, and still, all they could offer me was a phone call. So instead of seeing my doctor in a nice warm room, I was standing in a cold parking lot in January. I cringed as he asked me to “outline the problem.”
Lowering my voice so the nice people in their nearby Toyota couldn’t hear me, I half-whispered that I wanted to get pregnant. The word pregnant seemed to echo in the almost silence.
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“Ah,” he said confidently. “You’ll need to stop taking contraceptives and start having sex without condoms. You see it is very simple when a man…” I zone out while I listen to him explain how the mechanics of heterosexual sex work.
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I waited for the right time to tell him it wasn’t going to be “very simple” in this case since my partner and I both have vaginas. Finally, when he paused to ask about my partner’s sperm, I told him. That was when he informed me he had no idea what that would mean for us – which meant I also didn’t know what that meant for us.
Having children wasn’t something I had ever really thought about as a queer person. It wasn’t until a doctor suggested I may be going into early peri-menopause and asked if I wanted to have kids that I stopped and thought, do I?
Today queer people have more choice than ever. In many ways, we can have the wedding cake and eat it too. But if that’s true, why does the process for getting pregnant still feel so demoralizing?
My queer and nonbinary identities have always made sense to me, but they create confusion for healthcare professionals. I’ve become the master at coming out over the phone and the expert educator explaining how “just having sex” won’t work. I’m used to mustering up the courage to ask someone, yet again, to use they/them pronouns.
It feels confusing, isolating and overwhelmingly heterosexual to enter the world of fertility. Fortunately, there are organizations fighting to change this. Fertility Network UK provides free, impartial support and information to anyone affected by fertility issues. Bethan Shoemark-Spears is the Welsh Project Manager of the network which offers group sessions online for queer couples.
“It can be quite lonely going through fertility treatment,” Shoemark-Spears told LGBTQ Nation. “When myself and my wife were going through it, I often found my loneliness was manifested because I didn’t feel I belonged to any of those groups.”
“People who attend our groups who are LGBT+ say it’s nice not to have to explain themselves or go into detail. My experience is that people can ask inappropriate questions about the donor or who is carrying or use the wrong pronouns. We are in a group where we all belong to the same community and it’s easier to be who we are.”
One of the most overwhelming parts of fertility treatment is the cost. Just looking at the price of sperm made my head spin. Then there’s testing and prospects of multiple rounds of treatment to contend with.
“We know that NHS funding for LGBT+ people is severely lacking,” Shoemark-Spears continued, referring to the UK’s public health care system, the National Health Service, “and there are only a handful of ICBs [integrated care boards] that will support you to become parents on the NHS straight away. Whereas the majority of others need to prove that infertility status by itself over six to 12 rounds, which isn’t fair nor affordable in a cost of living crisis… It’s not achievable for many. Everyone has a right to create a family.”
Due to these challenges, some folks choose to bypass the public system altogether.
Imogen Brown had twins with her wife four years ago. She opted to go private to avoid long waiting lists. She found a donor in the US who matched what she was looking for with her wife, and the sperm was shipped to Denmark and then the UK.
“We spoke to friends who were gay, married and had two kids, and they talked us through the process because it’s daunting,” she told LGBTQ Nation. “You got to see the doctor where they use all these terms, but you don’t know what they mean so we read up and spoke to friends which was good.”
“I spoke to the GP who said they would refer us, but no one ever contacted us so we decided to go privately. I remember my sister saying, ‘If you want to do this, you’ll find a way to fund it, which we did. It was very expensive about £12,000 to £14,000 [$15,000 to $17,500].”
For many, including me, the crucial years that we should have been planning for children were ultimately swallowed by lockdown.
“COVID has massively impacted things,” Brown said. “Fortunately, our twins were born on the day of lockdown in March 2020. We were fortunate we did it when we did because if we had left it any later, I don’t know what my egg count would be like. There are now massive delays with the NHS and private practices because everyone missed out from this time.”
Shoemark-Spears has heard the stories of many couples. Like me, others have had to deal with doctors who have no idea how to work with LGBTQ+ people.
“The awareness in the medical profession on LGBT+ is lacking,” Shoemark-Spears explained. “People have reported GPs saying, why don’t you have a one-night stand with someone? That’s not fair or appropriate and it’s damaging.”
“I’m often told people will enter services where they are called by the wrong pronouns or name. They are presumed to be heterosexual. I had one female couple go to a clinic where they were asked if they brought a sperm sample with them. There is so much that needs to be done with regards to diversity, equality and training that can make a stressful time a lot easier for people.”
Months after my initial appointment, I am no further along in my journey. My doctor, who barely understood the system, was now the one charged with fighting for me to get funding or support. At 38 years old, I am now left considering what I can live without, as I would need to sell something to raise the money. I’m not alone, but I still feel lonely watching heterosexual couples with multiple children flourish around me.
There is something that feels bitterly unfair and backward about the system in which queer folks find themselves. Yet as alone as I feel, I know there are hundreds of people in exactly the same place.
