Advice on sperm donors, insemination and same sex parenting, Manchester

[KateRHart]

My wife and I have recently celebrated our civil partnership and are planning to start a family at some point next year.

We are looking to get advice from lesbian couples who have conceived through sperm donors in the Manchester area. We're hoping to use the Bridgewater clinic in Manchester for insemination as we want to be as safe as possible and don't want to use a known donor or do DYI insemination.

If anyone has any advice or would share their experiences with us we'd be very grateful as we're very new to this and only have straight friends who obviously have no experinece in same sex conceiving or parenting.

Thanks

Kate

Hello. We're not in Manchester but are going through the same thing at the moment. What has surprised us most is how long everything has taken so start as soon as you can. I got a referral from my GP in May and have not had the first insemination yet and probably won't this year now because of Christmas. We did have a 2 month delay because of some treatment I was having but other that this has just been the speed of the process. Very frustrating. If there is anything specific you want to know I can try to answer as best I can. I know our heads were spinning a bit at the beginning.

Hi Kate

This sounds like us. My partner and I are in Manchester. We've spent the last couple of years discussing and researching the best route for us and have realised that means using a clinic. We're hoping to get things moving in the new year and we don't know anyone else who's going through this (cycle monitoring, head scratching over multiple treatment lists, clinic websites). We've shocked some friends who didn't think the lesbians would know more about the ins and outs of sperm than they do ;) We're in touch with a couple of places at the moment, if you ever want to share experiences get in touch.

I also can't use a touchscreen phone on a moving vehicle or I would have signed that off with my real name.

Karen

Hi there. Congrats on your civil partnership. My DW and I have two beautiful DD's, we used MFS who were fantastic and quite a lot of lesbian couples use them I believe (and have witnessed in the waiting room!). We were able to reserve sperm so both DD's have the same donor. Good luck with your journey!

Hi, we have got three children conceived through iui, not in manchester though. I would certainly agree that it all takes time. I don't know how old you are, but I would definitely say don't spend too long investigating. The whole process took us a couple of years to conceive after we first made enquiries at a clinic. It can be a hard journey but so worth it in the end. Make sure you have at least six months of dates of periods and get to know your cycle really well ie when you're ovulating. Good luck!