Anticipating becoming a parent

I met my partner - my current partner - who I'm in a same sex relationship with. I actually met her about 10 years ago but at the time she was married to a man and so was I and we were you know, part of a mutual friendship group for a few years. But at some point along the way we fell in love [laughs] and created some havoc in our lives [laughs] and to our marriages. And to cut a long story short the marriages ended, we stayed together and very, very soon into that I started to get - I'd - strong ideas about wanting to be a mum.

I'd considered it previously with my husband who I was with at the time when I met my current partner, but he'd actually already had two children in a previous marriage and had had a vasectomy so we couldn't get pregnant by accident. So that sort of left it all up to actually having to make a decision about whether we wanted to be parents, my husband and I. And I was always a bit ambivalent and I wasn't really sure why at the time I was ambivalent but I think, looking back now, I was probably intuitively just looking for the right co-parent [laughs] and someone who could provide better financial stability which he probably couldn't as much.

So without really knowing why I was sort of hanging out to be a mum you know, it was ironically when I - for the first time in my life - got into a relationship with a woman that I suddenly had to be a mother [laughs] so, so yeah, a lovely irony. So my partner had already been - six years older than me - so she'd already actually let go of the idea that she might actually have children. I think she was in her mid - getting into the second half of the 40s by the time we got together and she and her husband had made a decision not to have kids for various reasons previously.

And anyway, so we've been together for about ten years. But anyway, so we hadn't really talked much about children, and then I think he sort of started to say, "Oh, it would be really nice to have a baby. But you know, it's up to you, it's entirely up to you, because we don't want to have a baby that you don't want".

And it had never really been on my mind. I was like, 'No I'm not having children. If I ever accidentally got pregnant, I'd definitely have a caesarean because the technology is there and I think we should use it. Birth sounds terrible'.

And then, I think one of my friends said to me, "After our house is built, I'm definitely going to have a baby next year". And I thought, 'Oh my God, that's crazy. Okay'. And I think I turned 33 or 34, and I just - one of my other friends was pregnant, and it just started happening all around me, and I thought, 'Oh, that's kind of nice. That might be nice'. I suppose that it was just sort of this unspoken biological urge that was in me, and my partner of course was happy to go along with that. So we just thought we'd take a wait and see sort of approach.

So the next sort of big decision for us was how the hell [laughs] are we going to do it? Are we going to go through IVF? Are we going to do the whole turkey baster thing which women have been doing, and other couples have been doing, heterosexual couples have been doing for decades, centuries probably even?

How are we going to approach the donor issue? Are we going to go with a known donor, someone that, one of our friends? Are we going to ask someone to donate? If so, how do we approach them? How do we do it in a non-threatening way? What are the implications?

So all of those sorts of things we started to talk about. Because I am a researcher and studier by nature and I like to research things and make sure I'm looking at all of the whatever, the opinions and the perspectives - we started to do some research and my partner is really into online stuff so she had a field day on researching Google and we went to a few seminars.

We went to Prospective Lesbian Parents which is like a forum for same sex, for lesbian parents, but also people considering becoming parents, and we also went to a session on, called 'A Time to Tell' run by VARTA which is the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Technology… I'm going to go with Association [laughs].

And that seminar was brilliant because it was a day long thing and it had, donors talking about their experience of finding out when they were donor conceived. It also had parents, and it wasn't all about same-sex couples which was really important to us because you know, yes, we're in a same-sex relationship but as far as we're concerned big deal, doesn't matter.

We could easily have been a heterosexual couple having to go through this thought process as well.

And that seminar was brilliant because it really helped us sort of get our head around what the issues would be for our child. How do you tell them that they're donor conceived? Well then in our case it's bloody obvious so it's not an issue, but how, what are the implications if it is someone we know?

So I guess when I met my partner and things went really well, I guess I was in a fair rush to have children.

But you know, my partner was quite supportive, and just as a side-track, he also has another daughter who, is - she'll be 16 soon. And he lived with her until she was about three.

So he also felt fairly mixed about having another baby, just because he hadn't had a very good experience the first time round and didn't want to repeat the same mistakes.

We had - we had talked about it and - he had mostly said that he didn't want to have any more kids. And then I remember one day, like I sort of was really upset about that and saying to him, "well I don't think we're suited to one another then because I really want to have kids". And I explained to him about the biological urge that I felt. And I guess he couldn't really understand that, and said, "okay, well you know, like I'm not ruling it out completely, but just not right now".

And then I feel bad for saying this. I'd sort of taken matters into my own hands. We'd sort of tried a few contraceptive methods and then around the time that - like I left my job - it just sort of all stopped. And I stopped really doing anything to prevent getting pregnant and he didn't say anything and I didn't say anything. And you know it just sort of happened [laughs]. So I guess I'd sort of taken that he didn't say anything to be his agreement. And since we've talked about it since then, that really wasn't the case. So it was sort of my - I guess my decision more than his.

Initially he was really upset and really quite scared and to be honest, we didn't really talk about it in the first couple of days because I found out and then decided that we needed to both just have a think about it. So I went somewhere else and he stayed home and by the time we came back together, because I wasn't sure how I felt about it either. Even though it was what I really wanted, I didn't want to do it with someone who wasn't - you know, didn't want to have a baby with me.

So we sort of both went away and came back and decided that we wanted to have the baby. Then he was more excited than me. Like I was still really scared, but he was really very excited, so yep - and remained that way through the pregnancy even when I was still scared.

And we got married in 2009 and we decided to have our first baby maybe after one, one and a half year, or two years so our marriage was on January 2009, so after came here, around middle of 2010, we're just thinking about maybe having a baby and she got pregnant.

It was a bit exciting for us, because in Indian culture normally the parents, they are expecting that just after the marriage we should have kids and especially for the grandmother and whenever we call, "Oh why is she not pregnant, why? Why you are not having a baby?" And they're a bit upset, the older generation and they think that we may have some medical problems or - and we said, "Oh no, no, no, we're just waiting for two years and after two years we will have a baby", so all the family was waiting for this news and when I say the news back in India, the family have become very happy and so we are also very happy because we made them very happy.

So we met when we were in our late twenties and always wanted a family, but never felt like we were comfortably in the right place to do it and then eventually we just ran out of time and had to try anyway.

When it came to children, I was not in any way going to force that on him. So for a long time I just had to internalise it and I just about went crazy, you know. Really wanting to start a family and not being able to and eventually he just said - you know, I was - after - I'd turned 40 and he just one day just said, you know - something had happened and one day he said "well maybe we should start trying".

So the very first month we tried I got pregnant and it ended up being an ectopic and it was horrendous and I had surgery and it was incredibly painful and I had three blood transfusions.

So after that I had to heal and, you know, it was emotionally difficult, but we just sort of - it was just one more thing. We just kind of kept it aside and - so that was pretty horrible. So we kept trying once I'd recovered. It took a few months, because I was just so lacking in iron and we started trying again and then just couldn't, because I'd lost one um fallopian tube. So, I really felt violated and brutalised and it was hard. But, you know, we really wanted to have children. So my mother had said she would help us and she gave us some money so we would be able to afford to do IVF.

So we did three IUIs and none of them worked. And so the day that you know I'd start menstruating I'd just have this meltdown and like I was telling you, my husband would get hundreds of phone calls. With me just you know screaming at him down the phone how cross I was that it hadn't worked and it was all his fault. Because we'd had to wait you know so so many years to try because he wasn't ready. So we - and the other thing is you know reading on the internet about how old I was and time was just ticking away. AND I knew we were wasting our time with IUIs, I really didn't want to have done them. I wanted to just go straight to IVF because I didn't think it would work but you know we - we thought we should really try.

I wouldn't say I was so - yeah I was happy at one - it was in between happy and, 'Oh crap', 'cos me and my friend we just looked at each other and we're like, 'Oh shit', and she was just crying. She didn't know what to do. And she doesn't believe in abortion but then if we're still in the caravan park then we'll just go up for adoption because we can't raise a child in a caravan park, I am like, 'That's fair enough'. But, I can't say I was the most helpful because I was so drug-affected that that's the lifestyle I wanted to keep going.

So, pretty much every time it was brought up, I'm like, "You're going to have to get rid of it or you're going to have to put it up for adoption". I didn't really put into account what she wanted. Then it come like about six, seven months in to her pregnancy, I just got a change of heart. I'm like, 'Well if this is going to happen, it's going to happen now'. Pretty much changed everything, ended up working, well yeah, I was working, we got a place. I cleaned myself up. Pretty much bought him all these clothes, all these toys, bought a cot, you know just all my money just went boom, it's gone straight onto our son.

That's it, that's what we have to do and that's pretty much when it started when he was about seven months into the pregnancy.

I can't really say what her feeling was about but I know she wanted a child, she needed something that would love her always and she'd love it always because she had a rough childhood as well. But, I just knew we weren't ready but seven months in I'm like, 'It's going to happen anyway,' and we both had three months to get ready and that was it, we had to get our act together. I stopped everything, like today I only smoke ciggies and I'm even trying to quit that.

And her reaction, well she wanted a baby but I didn't want it. And it just come down to a, 'Well, we've gotta compromise,' and then about seven months into the pregnancy she's like, "Oh well if you really want we can give him up for adoption if we're still not ready". I said, "No, it's already been seven months in, I'm really in love with him and I haven't met him yet and I can't just give him up for adoption now".

Late start, I started late in parenthood and… I am glad it's happened the way it's happened but I wish I did it sooner. If I had the opportunity and the means I would have done it a lot sooner and I'm turning 37 in three weeks so I remember being late 20s going, 'If I turn 36 and I have had no more children that's it, I'm not having any more. That's it, 36 is old enough, too old there's much more to do,' and I [laughs] turned 35 and I started thinking about it. Going, 'Oh okay,' and I was at a job that sucked and I started talking to a friend of mine who was going to help.

Had lots of time at work to do research. I was getting paid to Google pretty much which is fun for about three weeks and then it gets really boring [laughs]. Really boring quite quickly and I started looking at donation, because I kind of went - I've got - I've had [oldest son's name] I was single, single mum with [oldest son's name], he was turning, he was six. I'd done okay and that, we had our moments, but I was doing okay with what I had and we were getting on - what is it, chipping away, bubbling away nicely. And then I looked up how - sperm donation and the research that I did, it came out, it was going to be $4,000 and I kind of went, 'I don't really... okay!'

And then I had a friend who I thought he might be able to help me out. And I started talking to him and we spoke in depth for about three or four months, going, 'Are you sure you want to do this? You're helping me out and this is a favour'. And then we finally made the decision to do it. We've been friends for a long time and we started setting up to fall pregnant. We did it the old-fashioned way [laughs] which was fun [laughs].

So my husband and I were married in 2005 and we started trying for children. We'd been trying for about 12 months before I went and saw the GP who sent me off to a specialist. So I saw a fertility specialist for about a year and finally we were suggested to try IVF.

So we went through IVF and from other people's experiences I sort of knew or we both knew that there would be a point where we would just go, 'No we are not going to go through this anymore, we're just going to be without children'.

So we were fully prepared for that. We didn't want to be 20 years down the track still trying and we went through IVF, and at the time I was told I only had one viable embryo and we were also told that 99 per cent of - 90 per cent of the time the first try doesn't work.

So we were fully prepared and of course they rang me and I was pregnant and I didn't believe them [laughs] and it was almost for the first day or two it was a bit of a shock because you can't tell anybody. You know you want to wait those 12 weeks, especially when you've been trying that long, you don't want to go and tell everyone, 'Oh we're pregnant, we're pregnant' and then something goes wrong.

So we waited and until we actually saw the ultrasound I don't think it sunk in that we really were pregnant.

From an early age worked in early childhood. All the kids with disabilities and all sorts of things. So, I was really interested in parenting and being a parent. And I guess that was one of the issues I had with coming to terms with my sexuality was that at the time perception that I wouldn't be able to have children. So a bit of a struggle. So that desire to have a family. But that desire, of course, didn't go away.

So I guess time moves on and so does the modern world and ways of people having babies has changed, I guess. So, [laughs] in my mid-thirties I tried for a couple of years to have a baby with lesbians, because at the time it seemed to be the way - the only way to have my own biological child. But it did mean that I wouldn't be really the sort of full time parent.

And maybe that was a good thing in terms of that not working out, because it meant that - I had to explore other ways. And, so surrogacy came along. And I kind of looked into it for a while and on and off for over a couple of years in between relationships and things. And then decided when I hit 40 [laughs] I'd better do something soon because I wanted to be a parent. So, not that my clock was ticking, but, you know, just being energetic enough to raise children.