21 February 2023

When Ines and I met, it became clear early on that we both would love to start a family.

We did a lot of research but chose The London Women’s Clinic because they were the only clinic that spoke about ‘creating families’ rather than the rather miserable message of ‘fixing an issue’.

There really is no way to sugar-coat the IVF process, emotionally and physically, it’s brutal. We had two failed attempts and one miscarriage over the course of two years before I became pregnant with my wife’s embryos. We had two embryos implanted and I knew within a few weeks that I was pregnant with twins. I had two very distinct points of discomfort, like period pain in my tummy.

I was considered a high-risk patient because I was ‘old’, it was a twin pregnancy and they had been conceived via IVF. From day one, we received incredible care from Homerton University Hospital. I had scans every few weeks and my C-section was planned and executed perfectly.

As a gay woman who doesn’t really conform to the ‘normal’ gender narrative, nothing could have prepared me for the process of being pregnant. It’s right up there on the bucket list of life experiences, but it’s a very feminising experience. In the way, the doctors and midwives talk to you, how your body changes, it was quite unsettling. I used to joke that no one ever really gave me a seat on the tube as I looked like a middle-aged man with a beer belly!

Alex and Maya spent one week in the neonatal unit where the incredible nurses set in place a tight schedule of feeds. It meant that Alex and Maya ran like clockwork for the first eight months. It’s when they started moving that our workload increased six-fold!

Alex and Maya are now four. We live in Girona, Spain. They are both tri-lingual as they’ve been exposed to English, Spanish and Catalan from birth. They are completely different but so similar in lots of ways. They have an incredible bond, they find each other hilariously funny and regularly gang up on us. 

Their school is great and the whole community has been completely accepting of two mamas. There is also another set of twins in their year, identical boys.

We've built a special bond with the parents of the other twins, I think only twin parents really understand twin parenting.

It's hard, chaotic, we're exhausted most of the time, but it's so much fun and just wonderful to watch them grow together.