Sperm and egg donation never promises a relationship. It’s true that in the UK you can find out a donor’s identity when your 18 but

Being lesbionics in rural Nova Scotia meant our birth plan had an extra bit that I knew I didn’t want to potentially negotiate after pushing

The above is from an excerpt of her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. When she was about eight years old, Maya Angelou

The stories we are told as children play a role in who we become when we grow up. After all we eventually narrate our own lives. The character who inhabits books and screens have an impact on how children see themselves and others. Representation is so important.

I know 10 is much punchier but I just couldn’t let any of these drop off the list. Watching movies about foster care and adoption

Choosing A Donor Starting a family always brings with it surprises and unknowns. But what if you are using a sperm donor or egg donation?

Adoption or surrogacy or IVF, it’s all great. We should all be sensitive about how people come to parenthood. You’re a parent, you’re a Mama

For many who chose adoption or donor conception the choice began from an initial place of loss. Unable to conceive or have a child without assistance this was the alternative. For others such as single parents and same sex couples such as myself, it is a choice that goes against ingrained societal norms of what a family looks like. 

Glen’s tears ran down his face as I told him that he wasn’t born in a prison as he believed and he was not destined to be a criminal. He had thought this for 10 years and had done everything he could to prove this was true. His Mum was in prison but I shared this didn’t mean that was his future.

12 years ago, my wife and I spent an enormous amount of time and energy finding a way that worked for us to have a baby. We are both women, we needed a sperm donor and we got undeservedly lucky both in who we chose and our beautiful child. Today our son is 12 years old and those days of anticipation, pregnancy and birth are behind us but how to weave the third person in his creation and story of his life are not.