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Celebrating Pride and Navigating LGBTQ Family Building · Love and Science Fertility

• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Hello, my loves.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Love and Science podcast.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: This is episode 15, pride and the Fertility Journey.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Happy Pride Month y'all.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not even from Texas, but I just said y'all.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I am so excited about Pride Month and I really thought a lot about what I wanted to say on this episode, because this is a professional journey for me.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: It's also a very personal journey for me.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I think that pride is, first and foremost, about being who you are, about having the freedom to explore who you are, to love freely and also, as it pertains to the fertility journey, to build your family with confidence and compassion.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: And so, for me personally I grew up in a pretty conservative Catholic background, catholic community, and I love so many things about that community, don't get me wrong I also feel very much like there was not a lot of room to think outside the box and, honestly, in my experience there still isn't, which makes me so sad.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I think that for me, even as a little kid, the labels never really fit.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Some days I felt masculine, some days I felt feminine, I was never really interested in dating, like there were so many things about me where I just didn't feel like I fit in.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And you know it really wasn't until post-divorce.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Actually, this is one of the gifts of divorce is to really ask those hard questions of like who am I?
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Who am I most authentically?
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: When do I feel most authentic around, what people, loving what people and, really, ultimately, which human do I choose to love?
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Not which gender of person, not which sex assigned at birth, which person you know.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It just kind of really has been such a rich time over the last several years of just being like, okay, who am I, who do I want to be and where do I feel most at home?
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Right, and that's what I want for all of us.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I think that, as we think about being LGBTQ and possibly wanting to build your family, many times there is an element of needing to access the fertility clinics to build your family, and I know there are many queer folks who build their families through home inseminations or through other means.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I will also say a bulk of my practice, now that I'm a UVM, is helping people of all sorts of orientations and all sorts of situations build their family in the way that feels most authentic to them.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: And so conversations about third-party reproduction involving an egg donor, involving a sperm donor, involving a gestational carrier.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: These are things, these are conversations I have every single day, and you know, it gives me so much joy to show people that there are options, that there are safe options, that there is more than one option much of the time, and it's really about that empowerment to help people make the best choices for them.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: So we'll talk about that in a few minutes, but I just wanted to sort of bring up that meme that you may have seen on social media that says, like, what people think pride is and what pride actually is.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: So on the top it says what people think pride is, and that's rainbows and parades.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: And then on the bottom there's this like very beautiful rainbow colored pie chart that says what pride actually is, and some of the things that are listed are feeling at home in yourself, honoring those who paved the way, fighting for equal rights, protecting trans, youth, gender euphoria which I love that being accepted and respected as ourselves, and then, of course, still rainbows being valid in the closet to stay safe.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think in many communities still people are not safe and we need to honor that and bring that up.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Another thing is boring everyday life is your authentic self, feeling free, having community and loving yourself more than needing to be loved by others, having community and loving yourself more than needing to be loved by others.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: And I think you know, just as I grew up in this very sort of one-dimensional culture, I think many people grow up not being able to express parts of themselves.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: You know, I know someone personally who was sent to camp to try to pray the gay away, as they say, which of course we know that does not work.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: And I think, even more recently, you know these forward thinkers like Lennon Doyle who are advocates and they say you know what if it's a choice, like maybe part of it's who we are born as you're born this way?
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: But what if there are serious benefits of doing an inventory and making an educated choice?
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: And fortunately in this day and age we do not need to be in a heteronormative relationship to build a family, and that's such a gift.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: So I think you know, in terms of the different things that people can experience as they approach a fertility clinic, I will tell you, when I first started practicing, we were not even able to treat single women, which was just astonishing to me, and I was also practicing in a state that was very, very made it very difficult to have a gestational carrier, and then you had to adopt the child basically at that point, and so there was a huge risk in using a gestational carrier, because what if the birth mom changes her mind at the last minute, and then everything you've gone through as an intended parent is just washed away.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: And so I've really seen a big change through my career in people having more access and having more laws that support intended parents and third-party reproduction.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I will also say we still have a very long way to go, and there, as you know, there are many states where all of IVF is being challenged, and part of it is because people don't want single women or people in same-sex relationships to be able to conceive.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: We just saw that recently with the Southern Baptist Convention, and so I think part of this is sharing what is so important about everyone being able to build a family that is right for them, and part of this is really advocacy in terms of fighting the good fight in all of the places to ensure that every single person has reproductive rights.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I see a lot of people in my medical practice, as well as my coaching practice, who come and find me because they thought, hey, all I thought I needed was donor sperm.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: And now I'm in this situation I guess I'm the one in six of people who have infertility too and the journey is a lot longer and a lot harder than I expected.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: And so what I will say is we have a beautiful, safe space at Love Science.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: We have people of all orientations who come and share and really hold space for each other.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And also I think that, in terms of the cost, that's something where insurances differ in terms of whether they cover reproduction under various situations, and I think some places it's a lot better, but some places there's just a really, really high cost.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Say, you're married to a woman and you want to do IVF or even reproduce outside of IVF.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's actually more cost-effective, because of the price of donor sperm, to think about doing IVF and fertilizing all the eggs at once, which again it's a little bit backwards, but at some point there's a cost benefit.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And how many inseminations do you go through before you decide to think about IVF?
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: So I think we have to think about age.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it just takes us a little bit more time to figure out who we are and who we want to love, and what our family planning, what our family building plans will be.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, you know, I've seen wonderful, wonderful humans who said you know, we have been together for a long time and we both grew up in poverty and we just really needed to make sure that we were in a good financial place before we could entertain accessing the fertility system to build our family.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: And sometimes in those situations it's like, okay, well, if you're in your mid forties, maybe donor IVF is the way to go, and that comes with a pretty high price tag if that's what people want to do.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: So again, there's all sorts of situations that I think that age, cost, barriers to access and discrimination all those things can make it harder, as an LGBT person, to really feel at home in our system.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: So what I wanted to say is this is Pride Month and on one hand, it is a very, very happy month and a colorful month and a month of celebrations and authenticity and freedom and demonstrations of love in all of its forms.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And I really think, if all of us think about it, isn't that what we want for every single person on this planet is to be authentic, to love freely, to feel at home in their skin and all those things?
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Authentic, to love freely, to feel at home in their skin, and all those things I mean.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Absolutely what I will say is I see you, I love you, I am you, and what we really need the most at this point in time is safe spaces.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: We need advocacy, we need access to resources, we need clarity and we need community.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: We need support systems for youth, including trans youth who may be transitioning, to say, hey, did you know?
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: You can preserve your fertility before you undergo the gender transition, all these things.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: And so, if you're listening to this podcast, I will say most of my clients are physicians and I know there's a wonderful group.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: This podcast, I will say most of my clients are physicians and I know there's a wonderful group.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Well, we've organized this, but there's many, many groups of people, but, of course, the LGBTQIA physicians have really come together.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: And so, if you are listening and you're trying to build your family and you're meeting more roadblocks than you thought, I just wanted to say I'm here for you.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: It is a.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: You thought I just wanted to say I'm here for you, it is a safe space.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: I would love to have a conversation with how I can help.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And on that note, I will say happy Pride Month.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: May we all be who we are.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: May we all keep exploring.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I think about Amanda Doyle on the Gun and Doyle podcast, who says she feels like she was sort of cheated out of her experience of exploring because she never had to question her own sexuality or her own identity, and I think that's so true.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: May we all be fully who we are.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: May we all explore, may we all love freely, and may we all build our dream families with confidence and compassion.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: If I can help you do that, I would absolutely love to do that.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, I love you.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I'll talk to you the next time.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Bye.