Pride Angel

Five couples will begin free fertility treatment as winners in an Ottawa radio station contest dismissed as "tacky" by an infertility awareness group, but praised as "amazing" by one of the women who will undergo the procedure.

"If you've never been through it you don't know," said Carly Perkins, 23, while dismissing criticism of the controversial Hot 89.9 Win a Baby contest.

"The chance to just have a baby is incredible. What they're doing is absolutely amazing, and there's nothing negative in my head at all about it," she said.

Carly and her husband, Benjamin, have been together nine years and are coming up on their first wedding anniversary. The Athens, Ont., couple was stunned by the news.

"I was shocked, amazed and happy for everyone. I'm so thrilled that we all got an opportunity," said Carly. "It's a chance to have a child, you can't put words to that," she said.

Benjamin, 25, who is in a wheelchair, said a car accident in January 2007 resulted in him breaking his neck. But the fact that he is a quadriplegic hasn't deterred him from trying to start a family.

"It took a long time to recover but I definitely wouldn't be able to do it without my wife. We were quite informed as to what to do and which way to go. The way that science is now there are ways around everything pretty much," said Benjamin, adding that they consulted with other people who are quadriplegics.

But a Canadian infertility awareness group has branded the contest as "tacky." Beverly Hanck, executive director of the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada, acknowledged the contest generated plenty of publicity for the station, but caused undue pain for the five couples who were contest finalists.

"Pain is personal and having to expose that in order to have a chance of getting treatment ... is a sad state of affairs," said Hanck, who heads the Montreal-based group. "I found it (contest) really tacky, I mean it's like you're trying to give a human being. I just don't find it nice at all," she said.

About 400 couples applied for the contest which was marked by controversy over ethical questions after it began in early September. The five couples will receive up to three rounds of invitro fertility treatments which could cost up to $35,000 per couple. Hanck said she feels for the plight of the couples, but added there could be grave emotional ramifications for any new offspring if the treatments are successful.

"My thought was 'what's the kid going to think? He's going to think he was won in a contest like a stuffed teddy bear. Did anybody think about that? Did anybody think about how the pain would be exacerbated for the ones that didn't have an opportunity to win the contest,'" she said. Hanck said she lobbied the Ontario government for about seven years to pay for fertility treatments for couples but to no avail.

She is also disappointed that the issue of fertility treatments for infertile couples did not become a hot topic in the recent Ontario election. The Quebec government pays up to three rounds of invitro treatments and stipulates that only one embryo be planted per round, she said. One in six couples suffer from infertility problems, she said.

Hanck said the contest was very effective in increasing listenership for the radio station as well as creating awareness of fertility treatments. "The contest promoted awareness, it was the hottest thing that was going on. We've tried, but nothing raised awareness like this," she said. For Tracy Broad, the surprise announcement by the radio station was the perfect birthday present. "It's probably the best birthday I ever had in my life and a birthday I will remember for the rest of my life," said Broad, who celebrated her 30th birthday on Tuesday.

"It's been a rough couple of years, especially when you've been trying over and over and you're being told that there's nothing wrong and you can have kids. Yet, so many people around me are pregnant and they're having their own children. You watch other people's kids grow up and it's just something that I've wanted for a very long time, so it's been a very emotional year for me," said Broad, who was accompanied by her husband, Nathan, 28.

Nathan said he was "ecstatic" over the chance of becoming a father. "It's been a crazy couple of weeks since the contest started, we've been voting like crazy. All the support from our friends and family has kept us going," said Nathan. The Ottawa couple has been together four years and were married this summer.

Hot 89.9 morning co-host Josie Geuer said the station was satisfied by choosing the five couples. "We decided it was just the right thing to do, we couldn't see it ending any other way," said Geuer.

Article: 12th October 2011 www.ottawacitizen.com

Read more about alternatives to IVF treatment at www.prideangel.com

Charlie Condou, Coronation Street star, has always wanted to become a dad and has now become a well known 'gay celebrity dad'. But, he says, what's important is the parenting, not the fact that his daughter has three parents.

I left the Granada studios in Manchester after work one day and jumped into a cab, heading for the station and then a London train and home. The cab driver looked at me in the mirror, gave a little smile and said: "So, when's the baby due?" Not "Hello" or "I know you", or even "I read in the Sun today …" but I'm getting used to the surrealness that sometimes accompanies being part of Coronation Street. It is, after all, the world's longest-running soap opera. And I'm a friendly, polite sort of bloke.

Me: "January, still a while to go."

Cabbie: "Right, so that's, what, a two-year gap between this one and your daughter?" OK, so the driver is clearly a Corrie fan but, even so, that's some detail he has retained.

Me: "Yes, that's right, she'll be two-and-a-bit when the new one comes along."

Cabbie: "So, how does it work then?"

I get this a lot – people are curious about the logistics of my child-rearing arrangements, I understand that. While not the rarity it once was, gay parenting is still something that few people have direct experience of, and it is only natural that they ask questions.

Me: "Well, our daughter spends half her time at her mother's house and half her time with me and my partner. We co-parent; it works pretty well."

Cabbie: "And did you and the mum have sex?"

Me: "Er …"

Thankfully, I am released from having to respond as the station hoves into view, but it is not the first time, nor I imagine will it be the last, that a total stranger has asked me about my sex life. Such is the life of a "gay celebrity dad".

Gay celebrity dad. It's funny because those first two words seem to dictate everything about the way the world reacts to me these days, and yet they are in many ways meaningless to me. I don't feel like a gay dad, any more than I feel like a celebrity dad. When I'm with my family, caring for my daughter, watching the little bean jump around on the ultrasound screen, I just feel like a "dad". My day-to-day experience of the ups and downs of parenting are the same as everyone else's. I feel the same frustration as any other parent when my daughter fills her nappy just as we're heading out of the door, and the same ridiculous pride when she lisps her way through Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

Even our shared residence arrangements with her mother are not really any different from those of millions of divorced and separated parents. Perhaps because my own upbringing is a far-from-unusual 21st-century jumble of step-parents and half-siblings, the quirkiness of my current situation feels unremarkable.

And yet, at least to the wider world, it is remarkable. And, because of that, I feel that maybe I do have some responsibility to open up, to talk about my life, and to let strangers ask personal questions.

When I was a teenager, coming out and coming to terms with being gay, one of the hardest parts of that process was dealing with the fear that I would never have kids. I'd wanted to be a dad for as long as I could remember – aged four, coming home from nursery in tears because they always picked girls to bath the dollies at the end of the day. Gay parenting didn't exist then, at least not in any public way. There were men, often estranged from their kids, who had tried marriage in their 20s before coming out and leaving their families. It was easier for lesbians, of course, though still never spoken about, but gay men and kids? Unheard of. I know what it would have meant to me then to have had role models to look up to. To see gay men in loving relationships, raising children together and building families would have removed so much fear from my teenage years and made my path to self-acceptance smoother.

So here I am, talking about my life. It seems ridiculous to talk about normalising something that any fool can see is normal in the first place. Having kids is the most normal thing in the world. Yes, we had to plan more than most people – I was never going to become a dad by accident – but it's hard to see how that could be considered a bad thing. I want to answer those questions, even the personal ones, so that perhaps another gay teen might understand that his sexuality does not have to close any of life's doors.

I always wanted to be a dad. Always. My thrice-married mother loved my sister and me ferociously and taught us that, whatever else life threw at you, whatever changes you went through, the love of a parent for a child was life's one constant. Having kids was not so much a goal, as an assumption.

After I came out, that changed. I could no longer assume that it was something that would eventually just happen when the right person (or even the wrong person and a faulty condom) came along. There was no path to a family that I could follow: surrogacy was in its infancy, even for infertile straight couples; some lesbian couples were using gay male friends and turkey basters, but I never wanted to be a sperm donor; gay men were still considered too deviant to adopt.

I talked to my sister, who told me: "When something is this important to you, you'll find a way." She had absolute faith that I would one day be a father and, I realised, so did I. She was right, this was too important to me not to happen. I was 18, far too young to start a family, but I tucked that certainty into a corner of my mind and got on with my life.

I met Catherine in 1998 when she was dating a friend of mine. We clicked straight away, so much so that when their relationship ended, it was Catherine I stayed in touch with. One night over dinner, I had a conversation with her that I'd had with a number of female friends over the years. She said that, if she were still single when she got to 40, we should have a kid together.

Now this is something a lot of gay men have heard. We're used to drunken requests to be the "insurance policy" should the unthinkable happen, and no eligible stud present himself before the biological clock's alarm goes off. But it was different with Catherine, more serious. We talked about kids and parenting and found we shared ideas about how children should be raised and what was really important. We were both close to our own families too, and well supported emotionally. As the years went by, we continued to talk about it, with increasing seriousness as Catherine approached 40.

Six years ago, I met Cameron and so, then, there were three of us. Clearly, if Catherine and I were going to go ahead, Cam would have to be involved too and, while he had never had the same burning urge to reproduce as I had, he was more than happy with the idea of us starting a family.

Finally, around four years ago, we had talked enough. We had discussed every aspect of our three-way relationship, looked at every worst-case scenario we could think of, and shared our plans with our families – to universal approval. It was time to take the plunge.

It took a year, and three cycles of IVF, before we got that first positive pregnancy test. It was really happening.

Catherine's house is not far from ours but, nonetheless, we decided it would be best if she moved in with us for the last bit of the pregnancy and stayed for the first three months after the baby arrived. She moved in one sunny August morning. We spent the afternoon settling her in and relaxing in the garden. With immaculate timing, labour started that night and our gorgeous, miraculous, much longed for daughter arrived by caesarean section at 11.55pm the following day.

Catherine's family very generously offered to pay for us to have a maternity nurse for the first month, but we declined. Three adults, one small baby, how hard could it be? It turns out we were right. That third pair of hands really does make a difference; everyone gets enough sleep, someone always has enough energy to cook dinner, you can even take it in turns to do the pacing up and down with a colicky baby on your shoulder. Our arrangement might look unusual from the outside but, for the three of us, it has always been simple.

Catherine moved back into her own house after three months and Georgia has split her time between the two homes ever since. At first, while Catherine was still exclusively breastfeeding (which she did, as recommended, for the first six months), Cam and I just had Georgia for a night or two, loaded up with expressed milk, but once we hit weening we were able to split the childcare duties much more evenly. It helps that we are all good friends. We regularly spend weekends together at Catherine's parents' country home, and we all go on holiday together too.

Logistics are just logistics. You work with what you've got and it's as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. As I say, it helps that we are all friends and really motivated to make it work. Unlike separated couples, there is no bitter history here, no point-scoring secret agendas. Just three parents who all want to raise a happy, healthy child. And Georgia does have three parents, Cam is as much a dad as I am. He's been there since day one, wiping up sick and poo, fretting over changes in temperature and sleep patterns, watching 5am Peppa Pig re-runs. He has earned the title of parent as much as I have.

Right now, we have the added complication that I am filming in Manchester for much of the time, so Cam and Georgia shuttle up and down from London on the train. We lucked out again in that all three of us have careers with a lot of flexibility. Catherine and I are both actors and Cameron is a writer, but on the rare occasions that we are all working (and it does happen occasionally), there are enough willing grandparents, uncles and aunties to plug any gaps. If there is one thing Georgia is not short of, it is adoring relatives – three sets of grandparents and countless cousins. There can be few children in the world who were so wanted by so many people.

All of this is not to say that there won't ever be difficult issues to deal with. While we are all fortunate to have immensely proud and supportive families and to live in a part of London that is tolerant and diverse, I know that homophobia is real and ugly and, naturally, I have some concerns that Georgia will be subjected to it as she gets older. Kids can be cruel, seizing on anything that makes someone different to tease and torment. But, experience tells me that things really have changed in recent years – at least here in the metropolitan heart of the capital – and I don't think Georgia's quirky background will be as big a deal as it once was.

Funnily enough, it is things such as the gay parenting storyline in Coronation Street that I have been involved in recently that make the biggest difference. Catherine's father found our arrangement immediately easy to understand because he had heard the same situation played out on The Archers. In all the furore over the "gaying" of Corrie, people forget that these shows really do have an impact, and play an important role in demystifying, and promoting tolerance.

It was a recognition that Georgia's upbringing might be different from that of her peers that was the real driver in the decision to have another kid. While we had Georgia "for us" – to satisfy our desire to be parents – we are largely doing it again for her, giving her a sibling with whom she can share her roots and history; an ally in the world. That is not to say we are not all ridiculously excited about welcoming the new baby in January. Like most parents of one child, I'm finding it hard to imagine how I will ever manage to love another baby with the intensity I feel for Georgia, but everyone tells me it will be as natural and easy as falling for her was.

I used to have a fantasy about being a father. It involved me gently lifting my sleeping child from the car and carrying her upstairs to her bed. I would imagine the small weight in my arms and the soft breath on my neck, even the feel of her hair on my face. That's my truth now; I can't count the times I've re-enacted this scenario for real. And it feels exactly as I imagined it would. I put her down into her cot and watch her chest rise and fall, and I feel so completely happy and calm. I don't feel as if she has given my life meaning, my life was already meaningful, but the sense of responsibility I have now makes me feel more of a man somehow; maybe more adult is a better way of describing it. I understand what it is to put someone else first, to know that you love them more than they will ever love you, and that's as it should be. I'm a dad, and it just feels right.

Article: October 2011 www.guardian.co.uk

Read more about gay and lesbian parenting options at www.prideangel.com

Fertility groups have branded a Canadian radio station "tacky and distasteful" after it launched a competition to "win a baby".

Ottawa music station Hot 89.9 unveiled the contest on its breakfast show last month, offering three rounds of fertility treatment worth $35,000 (£21,700) to the contestant who convinced listeners and a panel of judges, including fertility specialists, they were most deserving of the prize. Those entering were asked to write 100 words on why they should win.

Advertisements featuring photographs of babies beside the slogan "she could be yours" and "are you my mommy?" were splashed around the city. The station in Ontario, where fertility treatment is not publicly funded, has received 400 applications from a diverse range of people including same-sex couples, single women and cancer patients. The winner will be announced on 10 October.

The contest was described as "an excellent idea" by one applicant, Kristy Middleton Leduc, who saw the posters and wondered if the station was "giving away babies". She and her husband have tried unsuccessfully to conceive for the last two and a half years. She said: "I would have liked [the competition] a little less in your face. Seeing the baby and wanting it so bad, something doesn't fit with it."

Gillian Wood entered in the hope of winning fertility treatment to conceive her second child but did not reach the final. She said: "When people reach the end of the rope, what are [they] going to do?". Her first child was conceived through IVF after six years of medical problems and treatment costing $38,000.

The competition and its marketing campaign were widely criticised after messages such as "see who you think deserves to win a baby" were broadcast to encourage listeners to vote.

Beverly Hanck, executive director of the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada, dismissed the contest as tacky and distasteful. She said: "The station is clearly capitalising on vulnerable patients who are desperate to have a family. Has anyone stopped to think how the hundreds of patients who do not win are going to feel?"

Toronto fertility counsellor Jan Silverman said she objected to "commodification of babies, turning babies into products" but added that the contest raised awareness about fertility issues and the high cost of treatment faced by one in six Ontario couples.

However, the station defended the competition. Breakfast show presenter Jeff Mauler denied that the competition exploited vulnerable people. "Read the rules and regulations and listen to the radio and then you will understand what the bigger picture is," he said. "We are trying to do a good thing for a family which can't conceive." He said no pressure would be placed on winners to reveal their identities. "We wanted to shock people, get them talking ... capture people's imagination," said Mauler.

Hot 89.9 is the latest Canadian radio station to use shock tactics to win listeners. Other recent prizes have included a Russian bride and breast implants.

Article: 7th October 2011 www.guardian.co.uk

Read more about fertility treatment, IVF and sperm and egg donation at www.prideangel.com

Sperm donation is often seen as a gift to thousands of infertile couples, who find joy and completion in a child that might not otherwise exist. But their children sometimes find that joy bound with longing, loss and lifelong confusion about their true identity.

Narelle Grech knows the details by heart: his code name is T5. He is brown-haired and brown-eyed with O-positive blood type.

He's probably in his 50s and attended university. He stands about 173 centimetres. His surname starts with T and he is likely to be Maltese.

These scant points are Narelle's only information about the man who is her biological father, a man who has occupied Narelle's thoughts and deeds for much of the past 13 years since her parents revealed that she was conceived with sperm donated to a fertility clinic.

"When I was a teenager, I carried that information around with me on a scrap of paper, the way other kids carried a photograph of their dad," she says. "It was my way of keeping a link to him because I had nothing else."

Narelle remembers her parents sitting her and her older sister down at the family dining table one Sunday afternoon, her mother telling her that she was conceived with the help of another man's sperm and how much they loved her.

At first, she laughed it off, thinking it was cool to be different. "But, later that night, I was washing my face in front of the bathroom mirror and I realised that everything I thought I knew about myself had vanished," she says.

"The man I thought was my father wasn't and half the family I thought was mine wasn't related to me. I started crying uncontrollably. Almost from that moment, I wanted to find him. Not because I wanted another father, but because I wanted to discover who I really am."

Narelle is one of the hidden generations of Australians given life by our ever-expanding technological and scientific expertise. She was born in 1983, at a time when donor conception was still in its relative infancy and donors gave their sperm anonymously. She is one of hundreds of people Australia-wide who are today searching for their biological antecedents, but may never find them.

At the heart of the dilemma is a delicate balancing act between the competing rights of offspring and their donors. Offspring feel they have an emotional and medical right to know their biological history. Yet, while many donors are happy to be contacted, others gave their genetic material in a spirit of goodwill to childless families, in the belief that their identities would remain anonymous.

Rightly or wrongly, they fear a knock on the door might tear their families apart or lead to claims on their estates. There is another even more pressing reason why Narelle needs to find her biological father.

In May, doctors diagnosed her with advanced bowel cancer, which doctors say may kill her within the next five years. Her cancer, discovered after she suffered severe abdominal pain one morning, is the most aggressive kind and, though she is just 28, is already classified at stage four.

"The galling thing is that doctors suspect the cancer is genetically linked," says Narelle. "My mother's family has no history of cancer. The possibility is that I've inherited a genetic predisposition from my biological father." The diagnosis is a nightmare come true for Narelle. For more than a decade, she has sought, without success, the identity of the man who helped her parents conceive her.

While that has eluded her, she has discovered something else, something that now keeps her awake at night. She has, she says, eight half-siblings scattered around Victoria and possibly Australia, all created with her biological father's sperm. "I have eight brothers and sisters out there who I've never met, but who all share some of the same genetic building blocks as me and that terrifies me," she says, curled up on a sofa in her suburban Melbourne home.

"Each one may be a genetic time bomb waiting to go off and it's probable that they don't know anything about it." An unfortunate combination of disparate, sometimes contradictory laws across state boundaries, poor record-keeping and bureaucratic inertia means that Narelle and others like her may never find the answers they are seeking so desperately.

Article: 5th October Australian Women's weekly aww.ninemsn.com.au

This story shows how important it is for donor conceived to be able to receive more information about their donor, something which Pride Angel strongly supports. If you are considering conceiving using donor sperm or eggs, why not think about the option of finding a known donor through a connection service. This will not only enable you to discover more details about the donor such as their characteristics and personality, but most importantly you will have more information to pass onto your child and even have the ability of maintaining a level of contact, between donor and child.

Read more about finding a known sperm donor at www.prideangel.com

Today’s news about the diminishing numbers of babies being adopted in the UK does not at all surprise us. The BBC has today reported that only 60 children under one were adopted in the UK last year, of the 3,500 currently in the care system.

This marks a significant drop from the 150 adoptions of children under one completed in 2007. The drop indicates that the barriers to authorising prospective adopters and to releasing children for adoption seem to be increasing and the process taking longer.

Ann Marie Carrie of Barnado’s has said: “This is a tragedy, it’s a tragedy for the children who are languishing in the care system and frankly it’s a tragedy for those people who have come forward who want to be parents and adopt a child.”

None of this comes as much of a surprise to the many frustrated clients we hear from daily who have considered adoption but instead turned to surrogacy as a means of building their family. Again and again we hear that prospective parents have been actively discouraged from pursuing adoption or told that the process will take many years with no certain outcome.

Parents with an existing child are often told they are only eligible to adopt if there is an age gap of several years between siblings, which in practice rules out adoption entirely (depending on the parents ages) given that so few young children are available.

Again and again we hear that couples who are unable to conceive as a result of infertility or other medical problems, and same sex parents wanting to build a family, would love to offer a home to a child who needs it, but find that adoption simply is not an option for them.

Many of these couples go on to be fantastic parents to their own biological children conceived through fertility treatment or surrogacy. They could have been fantastic adoptive parents to children who desperately need their care.

Article: by Natalie Gamble Associates

Read more about gay parenting, sperm and egg donation at www.prideangel.com

A lawyer who became a sperm donor and donated sperm to pay his way through college has learned that he has fathered an astonishing 70 children.

More than 15 of those have already attempted to contact 33-year-old Ben Seisler.

The sperm donor confessed to his fiancée as part of a new reality show, 'Sperm Donor', that aired on the Style Network on Tuesday.

Seisler donated sperm for three years while attending law school at George Mason, Virginia. He earned around $150 per donation.

He originally planned to remain anonymous but later joined an online registry called the Donor Sibling Registry that connects offspring and siblings to each other and their donors, Boston Globe reported.

During the reality show Seisler also comes face to face with two of his biological children, a boy and a girl.

The Boston lawyer said there is no 'road map' for the situation he is in now.

'It was kind of wild,' he said after meeting the children. 'On the one hand, these kids are biologically my kids. On the other hand they are not my kids. I didn't raise them. I have no control over how they are raised.'

View You Tube click, where sperm donor confesses to his fiancee You Tube.

Article: 29th September 2011 www.dailmail.co.uk

Read more about finding a known sperm donor, or donating sperm at www.prideangel.com