When I was coming out in the early 1980s there was a widespread assumption that being gay meant I had to give up on having children, that the need to be true to myself also meant a choice not to be a mother. I was interviewed about a new novel in the mid-1990s and mentioned, to the journalist’s obvious surprise, that we were thinking about how we might have children. It simply hadn’t occurred to them that a gay woman might imagine children as part of her future. While it is understandably frustrating for heterosexual women to constantly be asked about their procreation plans in their 30s, my experience was that even the possibility was assumed not relevant to me. The assumption of my non-mothering was clear, ongoing and society-wide.

Then in 2000, at 36, just as my partner and I were ready to try with our babyfather, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I remember the oncologist telling us – as if it wasn’t that big a deal – that chemotherapy would have at least a 70% chance of making me infertile. He seemed surprised I’d even asked, after all, we were a lesbian couple. When I said that we wanted to have children, the looks of shattered assumptions on the faces of the medical staff in the room were plain. We weren’t even allowed to civilly partner then, let alone marry, we were having to come out at every appointment. Yes, times have changed, and the medical profession’s attitude to our relationship was far better when I had my second cancer six years ago. We never did have children though, and that lack of understanding right at the start stays with me.

The fertility department was more generous – although we were asked to have extra counsellor interviews as a gay couple, no reason given, just how it was. My wife conceived, miscarried and, despite several round of IVF, never became pregnant again. I tried with the five embryos that were frozen before chemotherapy and each one of them died in me.

My first experience of breast cancer was also of infertility and of constantly having to prove ourselves worthy as a gay couple. It was several years of ongoing loss and took many years more to accept as part of the life I now live.

Coming out is exhausting. LGBTQ+ people know this, we have to come out again and again, often daily, constantly revealing a part of ourselves that most heterosexual people rarely consider with strangers. How often does a straight person get asked, “When did you know you were heterosexual?” (BTW, this can be a useful question, if you are heterosexual, you might want to consider it.) It's like coming out as childless, it never stops. It is a part of our story, of who we are as not-parents and not-grandparents in a society that embraces pronatal privilege as the norm, rather than recognizing it for the choice it is.

Disappointingly, this lack of inclusion exists in the childlessness community too. The experiences of trying to conceive are different for gay couples, as are our experiences of stopping trying. Gay couples never get a ‘happy accident’. When we decide to give up it is with the knowledge that this really is it. Thankfully we don’t have to struggle with false hope, on the other hand we never have the hope of false hope either. We find ourselves rarely mentioned in work around infertility, often we are left as an afterthought.

None of our experiences are the same, those of us childless-not-by-choice are each childless in our own way, each of us makes peace with it – or not – in our own way. We experience our losses, and the reconciliation of those losses, differently. But we are all in it – in the trying, the trying again, the losses, the accommodating, the learning to live differently.

On World Childless Week's Diversity Day – and every day – let’s try to remember that infertility doesn’t just affect the able-bodied, white, heterosexual couples of the vast majority of infertility material, it affects every type of person, from every demographic. The more we acknowledge our glorious multiplicity the better we can support each other, campaign together, work for our place in a society that prefers us to conform to a pattern that some of our lives simply don’t match.

Stella Duffy

Not Writing But Blogging