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I’d love to hear from you. Whether you have a question, want to share your story or don’t even know where you start. I’m here to listen. I will do my best to respond to everyone as soon as possible but please don’t be disheartened if you don’t hear back from me immediately. Please note that as much as I like to help, I am not a medical professional – all of the content on this website is using my own experiences and opinions.

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I now offer my services as a patient advocate, a speaker and consultant, using my insights and experience with the aim of improving the patient fertility journey, particularly when it comes to donor conception support. In addition to the large following I’ve now built on Instagram I’ve spoken at several events including The Fertility Show; been interviewed on BBC Radio 2 and 5 Live; spoken on a number of podcasts and written many blog posts, including one about our story for the BBC.

I’m open to collaborating with organisations who share my aims – if you’d like to work with me you can contact me using the form below.

I sometimes hear donor conception (along with othe

I’m re-sharing this oldie because I know that ta

I shared these words by @lexyflorentina (via @soma

Acceptance. I didn’t realise at the time but it’s been a huge part of becoming & being a parent through donor conception. It’s not been easy & has definitely been a process over time.
Acceptance of a different path, that my child won’t share my genetics, that they share genetics with someone else, that we have a more complex story, that we have a responsibility to tell them that story & support them with what it means.

I’ve also learnt that acceptance doesn’t mean being 100% ok with it 100% of the time, we are human after all & often still hold feelings of loss from our journey to parenthood. I still have moments of grief & anxiety around some of these, but it has become so much easier.

A lot of these play to our fears around using a donor to conceive, the fear of not feeling like the ‘real’ parent, of being replaced one day, of the potential impact to our child, of our child not resembling us, that it will dominate our whole narrative & family life. On the other side, almost all of these fears have been unfounded, with the exception of how my children might feel, but this has definitely lessoned over time, whilst also being an inevitable part of parenting!

Time has helped me towards acceptance but also talking, recognising these fears, understanding them & hearing from others. All of this is part of @paths_to_parenthub & the reason why I created it. Conversations with professionals & shared lived experiences to help you feel less alone & have a better understanding of why you’re feeling the way you do, plus peer to peer support in a safe private space. Tomorrow evening I’m hosting a webinar with Julianne @parenthoodinmind called "Living with grief, do we ever move on?" where we'll explore all of this.

Do these statements resonate with you? These are personal to me but I’d love to hear if your moments of acceptance have been any different? I also want to recognise that I know acceptance around the term ‘genetic parent’ is hard & the word ‘parent’ can be triggering, my acceptance has come through realising that scientifically this term is most accurate, whereas our reality, our day to day parenting (the verb) is completely different, & that’s all me.💛

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