IVF is a great way to start a family but it can be a stressful process. GENNET City Fertility clinic in London offers professional counselling to people going through IVF to reduce stress and improve their chances of conception For same-sex couples, single women and couples who have had difficulties conceiving naturally, IVF (in vitro…
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Queer Journeys to Parenthood
Growing Families (formerly Families Through Surrogacy) are a not-for-profit organisation who work globally to promote safe and informed family building through surrogacy. They ran their first UK seminar back in 2014 and quickly gained momentum. Since then they have hosted 14 events in the UK and Ireland and many more abroad. The key to the…
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Getting fresh in the flesh: fresh sperm vs defrosted frozen sperm
Alice Ellerby and her lesbian partner want a family one day so they've started looking into their options. As an aerialist and performer Alice was inspired to create Mother Mother, a collaborative show about lesbians' experiences of becoming mothers. In part two of Alice's guest blog she gets a rare opportunity to see life being…
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From Beyond the Couch
Ruth Yudkin is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist, with many years’ experience of therapy with individuals, couples and families. She has worked at several independent agencies, and now has a thriving private practice. She has a special interest in the needs of LGBT clients and the particular issues that arise for LGBT families. Ruth is also an…
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Interview with Susan Golombok
Susan Golombok is director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge. Her fascinating book, published in March this year, brings together over thirty years of research into new family forms – forms which include lesbian and gay-parented families, single mothers by choice, and families created through assisted reproduction techniques (ART). The…
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Sperm donors: anonymous or not?
This year it is ten years since the laws changed around sperm and egg donor anonymity. Where all sperm and egg donors had been anonymous, they are no longer. Donor-conceived children now have the right to trace their biological donor once they turn 18. So if our sons, who are 5 and 2, had been…
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Calling two mummies
Mother Mother is an innovative performance project in development for 2016, exploring the experiences of lesbians who use donor conception to create their families. Incorporating circus, theatre, projected images and animation, it looks at parenthood outside ‘normal’ family structures, attitudes to assisted reproduction, gender identity and more. The company, a collaboration between lead artist and…
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Mother Mother: a circus performance exploring lesbians’ experiences of becoming mothers
Alice Ellerby is an aerialist and performer and is making a collaborative show about lesbians' experiences of becoming mothers. www.aliceellerby.co.uk I'd been with my girlfriend for about two years when it hit me that we might one day want to have children together. The realisation was terrifying – if one of us was going to…
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Asking friends to be your sperm donor – how to do it
Part One of a series: How To Approach Known Donors Want to ask your Gay Best Friend to be the donor dad of your future kids? It can be challenging territory. Patricia Salem's been through it. Here’s what she wishes she’d known before she started... There are many things I envisioned about being a gay…
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Sharing my story
My first official 'talk' to share my story - and the Routes to Parenthood Show Last weekend I got to meet myself 12 years ago - several times! The We Are Family team trekked to Manchester for the Routes to Parenthood show – the second in a new series of regional shows. We had a…
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