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Sperm Husband Friend
Experience: I was a sperm donor for my friends
'I'd go round to my friends' house, we'd have a cup of tea and a chat, which we called our pillow talk, and then they'd go for a walk and leave me to it'
'This pregnancy was exploding the myth that I could never be a father.' Photograph: Ian Willms for the Guardian
Being pregnant felt like being in drag
I fathered over 20 children through sperm donation
Tales of pregnancy and childbirth: the world wide womb
My dad was a sperm donor. My lack of identity reflects his
Home birth: 'What the hell was I thinking?'
Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning
© 2022 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (modern)
T he first time I saw my baby daughter, my initial reaction was surprise. It was as if someone had taken a knitted version of me and shrunk it in the dryer. Despite the family resemblance, I didn't feel a paternal connection; instead, I was happy I had been able to help my close friends start a family.
On the day my friends, a lesbian couple, asked if I would donate sperm, I was delighted. I didn't think about the reality of what that would entail; I just impulsively said yes. In fact, I was grateful to be asked.
Incredibly, my friend became pregnant on that first attempt. I was overjoyed. As a gay man, I had been programmed to believe that this wasn't part of my narrative. Now, though, this pregnancy was exploding the myth that I could never be a father, and it was wonderful.
But five months later, my friend miscarried and I felt responsible, as if it was my fault. We sat down and had a lovely talk where they reassured me and we decided to wait before trying again. It took me three or four months to allow myself to say I had lost a baby. As the donor, I didn't know if I had permission to grieve: they had been watching their baby grow, while I was peripheral. It was a growing-up moment: life had been all fun and games up till then, and now I realised there were consequences to my actions.
A few months later, we all felt ready to try again. It took longer for my friend to become pregnant this time, and I worried that it wouldn't happen; that I'd lost my powers. We settled into a monthly routine and I became less embarrassed about the process. I'd go round to my friends' house, we'd have some tea and a chat, which we called our pillow talk, and then they'd go for a walk and leave me to it.
But I did grow tired of having to dash round as soon as I received a text saying my friend was fertile, so after a while she'd come to my home instead to pick up the donation, wrapped in a brown paper bag. It felt like a drug deal. To keep the sperm at the right temperature, she'd store it in her bra for the journey home.
I used to try to hide what I was doing from my partner, Matt: the text would arrive and I'd slope off to the bathroom, saying I was just brushing my teeth. He'd always guess, though.
I'd met Matt just when we began the process, and meeting someone when you're starting a family with someone else is complicated. It took a while before we could talk about what was going on.
Finally, my friend conceived and the pregnancy progressed well. Just before the birth, my friends held a baby shower, which I found unexpectedly painful. Despite the efforts of the mums to include me, and despite being thanked by the grandparents, I found myself sobbing on the floor afterwards. I was still an outsider; it wasn't about me. I was physically having a baby, but I wasn't part of it.
On the day of the birth, last October, I was like a father from the 1950s, but instead of pacing the corridor, I was walking on the treadmill at the gym. After the baby was born, I couldn't tell people without welling up. I never thought I would be announcing to everyone, "I have a child."
It was also time to tell my parents, because they hadn't known they were going to be grandparents. They had written off having grandchildren, so they were over the moon.
I think they also felt relieved. As parents of a gay child, they had worried I would struggle, but now that I am a father, I must be OK. We also have a new topic of conversation, one I never thought I'd be party to.
It has been a rollercoaster two years, but writing a comedy show about it has been good therapy. I'd be willing to do it again if my friends wanted another child.
The baby is now 10 months old, and although I see her regularly, I'm certainly not "Dad". I'm Shawn. But we will always be open about my connection to her. I don't want a "Darth Vader moment" when she's older. It's important for her to know that she was born in a special way, and that her arrival helped to change ideas of what a family can be.
Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@theguardian.com
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I never thought my best friend’s husband would get me pregnant. Or that he would also get my wife pregnant . But after a few years of consideration, that’s how we all decided to build our families.
It all started at the wedding of this best friend, Tracy, and her brand new husband, Matt. After the reception a bunch of us from the bridal party were hanging out in a hotel room with the couple of honor. My wife Liz and I still had our teal bridesmaids dresses on, basking in the glow of how special it had been to stand together (weeping) with the friend who had officiated our own wedding two years earlier. We adored the man she had just committed to in front of the aquarium’s tank of beluga whales. He was hilarious, feminist, kind, responsible, intelligent, and witty.
You know how when a couple gets married they immediately get bombarded with nosey, inappropriate questions about when they’re going to have kids? Something about big-step ceremonies triggers people to think about the next big step, I guess. I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but I imagine I asked Matt that annoying and cliché question (feeling I was close enough to him not to have it count as annoying or cliché) and he asked me back what our plans were. Being a uterus-rich and sperm-poor couple , the question was less “when” and more “how.”
I told him where we were at: that we wanted kids but felt uncomfortable about the idea of having an anonymous biological father out there. Would our kids want to find him? Would they always wonder? Would they see him as a dad? What if he turned out to be a jerk? Worse, what if he wanted to be their dad? The idea of using a donor from a sperm ban k was scary, but I had always wanted to experience growing a human inside me and this seemed like the only way.
Off the cuff, Matt said that maybe he could help us out instead (provided Tracy was comfortable). Time moved in slow motion for a couple seconds as this idea clicked into place in my head. I immediately knew this was it. This was how we would have our babies.
Matt was not an anonymous looming set of what-ifs; he was our friend. He wasn’t a threat as a potential third parent who might try to hone in on our two-parents-only dream; he was a respectful, queer-friendly guy who understood that Liz and I would be this child’s only parents. His offer answered all of our concerns about our future children having access to someone who is undeniably important to them to ask questions and have a relationship they could create in the way comfortable for them.
Liz and Tracy were on board. We asked about Matt’s family’s medical history, we all talked, and then we waited — until we were ready.
Tracy got pregnant first. I cried for joy when she told me in her kitchen. The excitement set my baby fever off anew, and when Tracy was about three months along, we started trying to conceive a baby for me to carry.
I know you’re wondering how it worked (if you’re not, skip this TMI paragraph), and it’s pretty simple. I tracked when I was ovulating and we did a few inseminations each fertile window. Liz and I would drive over an hour to Matt and Tracy’s apartment and we’d visit like any other time, surprisingly not awkwardly. Tracy and Matt would go to their bedroom, Liz and I to their guest bedroom with a small amount of supplies ordered off Amazon. Tracy would bring Matt’s deposit in a cup over to our room and Liz would put it in me. It was almost completely free and involved no doctors. I got pregnant on our second month of trying.
Tracy’s baby came late and mine came early. We all adjusted to life as new parents, but our work wasn’t done. While Liz and I were able to be the listed parents on our baby’s birth certificate, we still had to go through a legal process for Matt to terminate his rights as the biological father and for Liz to adopt the baby . It all went smoothly (except for my baby spitting up on Matt’s good suit in court).
Tracy’s second pregnancy overlapped with Liz’s, too. Now we each have a 3-year-old and each have a baby and live half an hour apart. They’re all technically half-siblings, but we are raising them to know each other as cousins. We are called uncle and aunts by each other’s kids — family.
That’s not to say we aren’t telling them the full story about their connection. Our 3-year-old knows she came from Uncle Matt’s sperm (or as she says, “perm”). We actually made her a custom book about it. She’s not confused or impressed by it, at least so far.
I love the way we ended up building our family. We not only got the two kids we dreamed of, but we gained four more family members along the way.
Here are some more (and more famous) LGBTQ-inclusive families we love .
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I never thought my best friend’s husband would get me pregnant. Or that he would also get my wife pregnant . But after a few years of consideration, that’s how we all decided to build our families.
It all started at the wedding of this best friend, Tracy, and her brand new husband, Matt. After the reception a bunch of us from the bridal party were hanging out in a hotel room with the couple of honor. My wife Liz and I still had our teal bridesmaids dresses on, basking in the glow of how special it had been to stand together (weeping) with the friend who had officiated our own wedding two years earlier. We adored the man she had just committed to in front of the aquarium’s tank of beluga whales. He was hilarious, feminist, kind, responsible, intelligent, and witty.
You know how when a couple gets married they immediately get bombarded with nosey, inappropriate questions about when they’re going to have kids? Something about big-step ceremonies triggers people to think about the next big step, I guess. I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but I imagine I asked Matt that annoying and cliché question (feeling I was close enough to him not to have it count as annoying or cliché) and he asked me back what our plans were. Being a uterus-rich and sperm-poor couple , the question was less “when” and more “how.”
I told him where we were at: that we wanted kids but felt uncomfortable about the idea of having an anonymous biological father out there. Would our kids want to find him? Would they always wonder? Would they see him as a dad? What if he turned out to be a jerk? Worse, what if he wanted to be their dad? The idea of using a donor from a sperm ban k was scary, but I had always wanted to experience growing a human inside me and this seemed like the only way.
Off the cuff, Matt said that maybe he could help us out instead (provided Tracy was comfortable). Time moved in slow motion for a couple seconds as this idea clicked into place in my head. I immediately knew this was it. This was how we would have our babies.
Matt was not an anonymous looming set of what-ifs; he was our friend. He wasn’t a threat as a potential third parent who might try to hone in on our two-parents-only dream; he was a respectful, queer-friendly guy who understood that Liz and I would be this child’s only parents. His offer answered all of our concerns about our future children having access to someone who is undeniably important to them to ask questions and have a relationship they could create in the way comfortable for th
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