Jenny + Elaine
Hi I’m Jenny. Elaine and I met playing for the same rugby club, Old Belvedere in Dublin. Elaine loves sport, especially playing with a team and I was looking to make some new friends after moving from Boston to Dublin. During my first training session, Elaine winded me with a cracking tackle. Clearly I was out of my depth!
Elaine is the type of person who isn't into small talk and I’m a very private person (for a Yank!). When we found ourselves staying up late into the night to talk about the real stuff instead of partying with the rest of the gang, we knew something was different about this friendship. I knew Elaine was 'the one' when I realised that I wanted to be challenged and cheered on by this magnificent woman for the rest of my life. Elaine might say it was when she tried my chocolate chip cookies for the first time.
We were married in 2016 at Fallon & Byrne in Dublin surrounded by our family and friends. One of our ceremony readings included many of those friends standing up and reading quotes about the journey our community had to endure to get us to the place where we could legally wed in Ireland. It was magical!
We started discussing having children immediately. Elaine wanted many and I wanted zero! Luckily, Elaine was able to paint a picture of our future family so vividly and beautifully that I quickly changed my mind. Now that Cate is here, that picture has become a beautiful (and joyous and exhausting and daunting and rewarding) reality.
We still live in the same two-bedroom apartment we've lived in since moving in together in 2011. It's tight, but we love living in Dublin with access to all the city has to offer right on our doorstep. We are planning a move to Cork to be closer to Elaine's family and to have some room to spread out in the near future.
At first, I really wanted to carry and we went down the IUI route using a Dublin clinic and anonymous donor sperm. We started this process in 2012, long before the CFRA. After several unsuccessful attempts, we were exhausted, mentally burned out and broke so we took a break. The decision at that point was that Elaine would carry if possible in the future, but we didn't rush into anything. We wanted to get ourselves back to that excited and hopeful place that we were in before the disappointing journey with IUI. During the break, we talked a lot about what might be a better fit for us the next time. We had no reason to assume that Elaine had fertility problems, other than a missing gamete! More importantly, we wanted to find a way to create a family with genetic links to BOTH of us. Being from the States, I knew that it was common practice there for siblings to donate sperm and eggs to help their loved ones who were struggling to conceive. When I first floated the idea of one of my brothers being the donor for our child, Elaine was not receptive to say the least. We talked about it over the next couple of years and eventually Elaine saw the many benefits. The donor would be someone who our child would know, we would know the entire health history of the donor - both past and future, and most importantly any children we had would have genetic links to both of us. Once our donor, my brother, and his family agreed (with love and enthusiasm), we drew up our own donor agreement after consulting with an Irish family law solicitor, ordered an intracervical insemination (ICI) kit (commonly called at-home insemination) from Amazon and gave it a try. We were successful in our second attempt, which was in the privacy of our own home. Cate was born in May of 2018.
Because we had done some research and consulted with a family solicitor previous to conception, we knew that I would not be recognised under the CFRA as a legal parent. We felt quite strongly (and still do) that the Irish government should not have the authority to regulate our method of conception or donor choice options simply because we are a same sex couple. We’ve both spent countless hours working to fix this discriminatory legislation.
Her moms think Cate is probably a born leader. She came out with a mighty roar and has been telling us exactly what she wants and how things should be done since that moment. She never crawled but walked before 11 months. Clearly she had places to go. She mastered the Micro scooter just as she turned two and fearlessly zips all around Dublin. She's also sweet and clever and shy (though to the observer she often looks a little cross). She loves hunting for bugs, reading, playgrounds, and any kind of new adventure. Periodically she will shout 'family' and expects everyone to fall into a group hug immediately.
Cate has been in her local community creche since she was 16 months old, bar a few breaks for COVID shutdowns. She loves it there and there are other kids with two moms in the creche, which we love.
Elaine is Mommy and I am called Mama. We chose these names before Cate arrived on the scene! As a family we love to read and learn new things together. When we can, we like to get together with other families - especially LGBTQ families so that Cate always knows that loads of kids have two moms or two dads. Cate burst into the apartment the other day shouting about finding TWO ladybirds and a worm. She's seen hundreds of each at this point, but every single one is as exciting as the last and she genuinely wants to share these moments with us. Everything she sees is new and shiny. Seeing Cate's personality shine as she continues to grow, develop and learn new things is one of our favourite things about being parents. She remains loving, curious, independent, fun, empathetic and mischievous through it all.
The children of LGBTQ+ families exist. LGBTQ+ families will continue to grow. Ireland is failing its citizens in a major way by withholding the full protection of the legal system from these children. What the Irish government is saying very clearly is: Children are citizens and need us to protect them (EXCEPT when their parents are queer). They are saying that we are a progressive country that overwhelmingly recognises the equality of it's LGBTQ+ citizens (EXCEPT when they start families). It's important to us both that Cate benefits from the same rights as her peers, but more important that she grows up in a country she can be proud of. A country that does not contradict itself and practice open discrimination.
