A counselling session raises some soul-searching questions for Katy Robson-Malone.
We survived the three-year-old's birthday party and she had an absolute ball. L and I were both full of emotions… how can our baby be three already? Wine helped with all of this now dry January is over and WE HAVE A KITCHEN! We were doing high fives and happy dancing around our new open plan living space like a couple of idiots with the kids just staring at us!
On the baby front we've had our counselling session about egg donation. I pretty much expected it to be a waste of an hour of my life where there would be eye rolling and WTF faces in abundance and L thought it would be a "load of old tosh" but we were completely surprised as there were some really important points to discuss and plenty we hadn't even considered.
We found out that as part of the process they have to advise the recipient that we are in a same-sex relationship in case they have a problem with that and then don't want the eggs. It had never crossed my mind that someone would turn down the eggs based on my sexuality. Well screw you, person who could reject them… go get your eggs elsewhere!
There was a lot of discussion about my feelings if any child created from the eggs were to get in touch when they are older. To me, all I'm offering is a cell. It's nothing more than that. I am not their parent, or their family. Of course I wish them well, and I will write this in my goodwill message to them, which all donor-conceived children receive, but it's important to remember that and, for me, I don't want to overcomplicate the situation by getting too deep about it. L is worried it might affect me more in the future and I might be concerned and emotional about the recipient's children if they were to get in touch. But that's 18+ years down the line and I can't tell you how I will feel about something a year from now, never mind almost 20 years!
I was also asked how my parents will feel about there being half-grandchildren that they will never meet. I hadn't thought about this one. I hadn't thought of them as half-grandchildren because they are just an egg so to think of someone in a family member context is quite difficult to get my head round. But my parents are sensible and I'm sure they would see the donation for what it is and not for anything bigger than a donation – certainly not extending our family.
What concerned us most was the implications it can have on our girls when they carry out genetic testing on me as it may reveal something which could affect them. It made us consider whether it's best to know about these things or if not knowing would be better. We both agreed that we would rather know so that if there were any red flags then maybe we can do something about it. Better the devil you know for us.
You don't think about all of this when you're thinking, "Hey, let's help someone out and give them some eggs" but it's really important – thought provoking questions and pretty heavy stuff. My head was spinning after it. We've both been over it again and got everything clear in our minds so we can park it for a little while as we have a wedding to plan. Only two weeks to go and my spreadsheet is massive but I'm super, super excited with the celebrations beginning next week when the Aussie family arrive – woohoo!
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