So my ex wife and I had been together for 4 years. We owned a home and we were in a civil partnership. We wanted a child desperately so we initially went to our GP who told us that our lifestyle had made us “intentionally infertile” and because we didn’t have a legitimate fertility problem the NHS couldn’t help us.
So we went down the private route. It took us a year to save for the first round which was unsuccessful. We then put two rounds on credit cards one successful but led to a miscarriage and one unsuccessful. We then took out a loan for another unsuccessful round.
Eventually we ran out of money and options so we decided to look into home insemination via friends.
Without the help of the fertility clinic we had to monitor everything ourselves. Peeing on sticks every day, temperature checks, set underwear for set days, analysing loo roll, logging books, apps and websites. Plus drinking weird concoctions for good luck.
We attempted to conceive with 2 friends however, because they don’t have a vested interest in the project they were not going to change their plans at a drop of a hat because my temperature is right but because you are dealing with tight schedules and small windows of opportunity if they didn’t drop everything then you loose a whole month and have to start all over again. Eventually the relationship with both friends broke down and that was that.
Until our friends told us about the gross business of under the counter sperm.... something that I would never never have got involved with. I wanted to save for more treatment via clinic but my ex wife refused to waste the money after all our previous attempts had been unsuccessful and left us 15k in debt. Eventually she convinced me.
Essentially it’s a Facebook for sperm donors. It’s not licenced or regulated and essentially really stupid. People advertise sperm, eggs, surrogacy all kinds of things from all over the world. It led to us meeting weird men in dark corners of train stations, truck stops and car parks who handed over pots of sperm that we kept in our bras to keep warm on the trip home. On one occasion I had to inseminate myself in the car because we were stuck in traffic and we couldn’t leave it for longer than 30 minutes. It was all very seedy, disgusting and degrading.
After several unsuccessful attempts with 3 different donors we eventually found a guy who seemed quite nice and he even offered to travel to our house to donate which we stupidly agreed to. We worked together for 5 months and eventually found out that we were pregnant. We were overjoyed but cautious. All the donor wanted was a picture of the baby once she was born to confirm that everything had gone well. That was it. We didn’t see him for 9 months.
Khali was born in May. We sent the picture as agreed with a basic text regarding how it went. The donor randomly turned up at the hospital within an hour and stayed for 4 hours. The next day he showed up again. The following day he text continuously. We told him we were home and trying to settle... he showed up there. He harassed us from the day she was born until August. Went to the police but they couldn’t do anything other than “have a word” with him.
At the end of September he filed an application through court for joint custody of Khali. We didn’t know that this was even possible because my ex wife and I were legal parents of Khali according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act which also states that when two women are the legal parents of a child no man can be treated as a father for any circumstances. We thought it would be thrown out of court.
We got to court in December 2014. The judge looked at the paperwork and said “I don’t know what to do about this” and he transferred it to the high court in London. The battle went on for 15 months. We were dissected and studied... every element of our lives was questioned. Whilst the proceedings were going on he moved into a flat within walking distance of our home. I turned up to my job after maternity leave and he had managed to get a job there too so I had to leave. I was terrified. My ex and I ended up remortgaging our house... it cost a total of 68k.
My ex wife and I dealt with the stress of the legal proceedings and the debt differently. We eventually won the case but our lives were a mess and we were not the same people. A year after the case was finished (2016) we were separated.
In May 2017 the donor made contact again and threatened legal action AGAIN! I didn’t think it was even possible for the matter to go back to court because we already had a high court ruling.... unfortunately that was not the case. I begged him not to do it again... I begged and begged and begged. He would threaten via e-mail. I would beg back he would disappear and just as I thought he was going to leave us alone he would contact again. We finally went back to court in September 2019 and I am still in the middle of this process for the second time. We are due for a final hearing at the end of April however, due to the covid-19 process I have no idea whether it will be postponed.
The only advice I can ever give someone is go through the correct process. No matter how much money it costs or how long the wait. Never ever do it under the table like I did. It has ruined our lives.
