My partner and I have been together since the 20th century. Imagine! As with any relationship, when things start to get serious, conversation leads to serious things; grown up things like where do you want to live, do you want to travel, is marriage something you look towards, do you want to have kids some day? There’s nothing more natural in the evolution of any loving relationship.

We both agreed on the important things; we don’t mind where we live once we’re happy, travel is holiday-based, we’d love to be able to marry and yes, we both want kids. Two of these things are exceedingly difficult in our small country. I’m going to concentrate on just one.

We’d been together just over three years, had been living together for two, when we started to talk more intently about having children. We are both very, very close to our own families and each other’s and, as such, it seemed a natural things to do.

Straight people tend to forget that gay, lesbians, bisexuals and trans people grow up in a straight world, surrounded by straight people, educated and influenced by a straight society. We grow up with the same expectations as our straight peers whether that be getting a job and paying the bills or marrying and have children. We see the white picket fence, read the ‘and they lived happily ever after’ just as straight people do and have the same cloud-nine dreams. The problem for us is that we face a different reality; an unfair reality.

So, when my partner and I decided that we were ready emotionally, financially and physically, to have children we, naturally, had all of the doubts and fears as a straight couple, plus some extra doozies. Is it unfair, selfish, cruel even for us to have a child? To bring a child into a relationship that is tolerated yet treated unequally at best and hated at worst? It’s something I examine my concious about a lot. However, if you bring a child in to the world, it should come from love. Nothing which comes from love, unselfish, pure love can be wrong.

So, years ago, we went searching on the net to see if/how we could have a child. We met with wonderful people, amazing Irish gay men and women who are parents. Some were going through the gruelling adoption process, others were in extended-family relationships with gay male partners and lesbian partners living as a large, loving family unit. Something which, despite my cynicism, worked extremely well.

After spending over a year meeting people, talking and questioning, we decided we were going to try donor insemination. And herein lay more soul-searching.

I’ll be updating this blogg as much as I can so keep checking up on me

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