Joking aside, there are certain challenges that my wife and face as same sex parents. Challenges which massively impact our emotional and mental health. One of the biggest issues in our two years of parenthood has been the fact that my wife is not legally recognised as a parent to our children. Despite the fact that marriage equality was supposed to have made us one of the most forward thinking countries, same sex parents in Ireland are still denied rights to have an equal family.
We did reciprocal IVF, which means that we used my wife Audrey’s eggs and carried the pregnancies. So biologically our children are hers, but because physically gave birth, am seen as a single mother and Audrey is effectively a legal stranger to both our two year old, Ava, and her sister, who is due at Christmas.