Conceiving as a Queer Person in Canada Part 1: Preconception Planning

Written By Lara Esrey

When my partner and I started to navigate getting pregnant, we were fortunate to have many resources available to us because of my work as a doula. However, there were still a lot of things that we needed information on, and not a concise resource out there that was geared to families like ours: queer folks using a known sperm donor. When it came time for us to start working with a fertility clinic, in particular, there were many bureaucratic hoops to jump through, necessitating an immense amount of labour (emotional and otherwise) on our part, and a huge amount of decision fatigue. I hope that the bits of information I have gathered can prove helpful to someone else who finds themself in a similar situation to us!

A note: This series will not go in depth into our own conception journey, in order to protect the privacy of our donor and our child. You are always welcome to reach out directly if you would like to connect, or if you are looking for additional resources - especially if you are either in the Montreal area or in Ontario.

If you are looking for additional support, I offer fertility & conception doula support which you are welcome to read more about here.

I started to write this as I approached this birth of our child, which felt like a good time to reflect on what this journey looked like, and hopefully to provide some helpful information if you find yourself navigating similar things. I am going to break down this process into several pieces: preconception planning, trying to conceive at home, Health Canada regulations, and working with a fertility clinic. This is part one of the series: Preconception Planning.

Preconception Planning

For those of us who do not have all the genetic material needed to conceive, planning to get pregnant starts way before actually trying to get pregnant. I will be focusing here on what it looks like for folks who are specifically lacking sperm in their relationship (this also applies to solo parents).

Where to Start

When you find yourself ready to have a baby, it might feel wildly exciting, but possibly also overwhelming. For those of us who know we will need a donor to conceive, there is already a big step to take before ever trying anything that could actually make a baby. You may start with choosing your donor as step one (more on that below) or you may choose one of the following to check of your list:

  • Learn to or continue to track your menstrual cycle, especially if you plan to conceive at home or with minimal interventions.

  • Seek out additional fertility testing or a health check up. This may be with a fertility clinic, your family doctor, or you may choose to see a complimentary healthcare provider such as a naturopath. What you do here might be influenced by your age, health status, and what method you would like to use to get pregnant.

  • Write up a contract (if you choose to use a known donor) and/or consult a fertility lawyer to seek professional support for this.

  • Financial planning such as saving for fertility treatment or planning ahead for parental leave.

  • Reflecting on your intended parenting style, either on your own as a solo parent or with your partner(s).

For many of us, there is an intense desire to plan and prepare — we are understandably very excited to be embarking on this journey! If you find yourself at this transitional point, getting ready to become a parent, I hope you can hang onto that excitement the whole way through. And, I encourage you to also take your time. There are a lot of decisions (big and small) ahead, and sometimes the bureaucracy and the decision fatigue can get to be a lot. There are tons of resources out there on tracking your cycle and what fertility checks you may wish to have. Instead of going into these in detail, I will link some excellent resources later on. For now, let’s dive into a big checkbox at the beginning of anyone’s TTC journey who lacks sperm: choosing a donor.

Choosing a Donor

For those of us lacking sperm to conceive a baby, one of the big first steps is finding a sperm donor. There are two main options when it comes to finding a sperm donor:

  1. Purchasing sperm through a sperm bank

  2. Using a known donor for sperm

Finding a donor is a very personal choice and there is certainly no one-size-fits-all way to go about this. In Canada, it is helpful to know that it is illegal to pay gamete donors for their donation (just as it is illegal to pay surrogates). How this plays out in practice is that if you work with a known donor, you are legally allowed to reimburse them for any and all expenses and costs incurred with their donations (i.e. travel costs, reimbursement for missed work, supplements you may ask them to take, etc.), but you cannot offer any form of monetary compensation. If you work with a lawyer this will be built into the contract.

If you want to work with a known donor it may be worthwhile sitting down (on your own, or with your partner(s) if you have them) to think about why this feels important. This might inform who you choose to work with, and how much effort you are willing to put into finding a known donor. Some reasons that people may feel it is important to them to have a known donor:

  • Ability for their child to grow up knowing the other person who contributed to their existence

  • Access to ongoing, up to date, health information about their donor

  • To have a donor who is involved in the child’s life in some capacity

If you work with a sperm bank, this means that much of the sperm available for purchase in Canada comes from elsewhere, largely the United States where donors are allowed to be paid. What this means is that while the bank you purchase sperm through might have a family limit of, example. 25 families per donor, that donor may also be affiliated with another bank, or banks, abroad and that bank may have their own family limit regulations. Therefore, it is harder (if not impossible) here in Canada to purchase sperm from a bank that offers lower family limits per donor. (For example, some European sperm banks allow you to pay an additional fee to purchase donor sperm that has lower family limits - anything from 1 family to 10. This sperm is not usually available to be approved by Health Canada, even if theoretically the bank will ship abroad. I will get more into Health Canada in a future part of this series).

For some families, there are ethical considerations when it comes to choosing a donor, and this can heavily influence how they decide what sort of donor to use. For others, there may be health considerations, or, they may be unable to find a donor through a bank who had the same racial heritage as them. There are so many factors that go into this decision making process, and it is an incredibly personal decision. For some folks, choosing a donor feels like a huge deal and can take months or longer to choose what kind of donor and then what donor to work with. For others, it may be an easier choice.

If a family decides not to purchase sperm through a bank, the other option is to work with a known donor. For some people, they have a friend or family member already in mind who they plan to ask to be their donor, and for others it may be more work to identify a known donor. There are also apps and websites where you can connect with someone to be your donor, but these unfortunately often involve a lot of labour to sift through the less legitimate offers. The cheapest way to work with a known donor would be to work with someone that the intended parents already know, and to proceed with at home insemination, which will be part two in the series.

Resources

Come back soon for part two: Trying to Conceive at Home. In the meantime, you can reach out to Lara for fertility & conception support here.

Lara Esrey
Next

Navigating the First Trimester