BABYMAKING

D. and her wife Carlota start a family

L ong before we were all grown up and respectable, my wife and I always knew we wanted children.

I had always thought adoption would be the surest route, but having fallen in love with a Spaniard and moved to Madrid, I discovered that adoption was not only incredibly difficult, but also prohibitively expensive. So when we started discussing parenthood, we decided that when the time came, we’d go the insemination route.

We read the books on queer parenting and, after much discussion, came to the decision we should keep things simple and opt for donor sperm and use a private clinic.

While we were building our “patient history” to access fertility treatment through our insurers, we began to browse online for sperm, finally finding “our guy” who we gave a suitably Scandinavian name, having pulled him from a Danish sperm bank, found ourselves a good gynaecologist, and started the seemingly endless cycle of tests and examinations.

When the day of our appointment at the fertility clinic finally came we were excited, but felt prepared with our religiously-tracked cycle notes, donor printout, blood tests, X-rays and scans. Carlota and I had been together for almost a decade, had built our life together, were thinking of adding a puppy to our nascent family, and were ready to get the babymaking show on the road!

We sat down with the head doctor, gynaecologist and fertility nurse, all of whom were friendly and happily answered our questions but told us firmly that all donor sperm was, under Spanish law, 100% anonymous; so they’d find us a match but our carefully selected tall, hippy Scandi was out of the question.

We’d agreed that I’d carry the baby some time earlier for a number of reasons, the main one being that I’m a couple of years younger than

“We’d been together for almost a decade, had built our life together,

were thinking of adding a puppy to our nascent family, and were ready to get the babymaking show on

the road!”