Out in Perth – “Winding Road To Motherhood” by Kelly Pilgrim-Byrne

Kelly and Sam’s journey to building a family has been a long, hard fought road for them both. Throughout the process they have remained committed to their goals, to each other and to supporting others in their own journeys.

We are nothing if not persistent. My partner Sam and I have a beautiful 21-month-old daughter named Charlotte, but motherhood didn’t come easily for us and it was only after 4 years of assisted reproductive technologies and some fairly major changes of direction that she was finally conceived and born.

We have now been together for 17 ½ years, although quite early into our relationship and when we were still in our twenties, we both knew we wanted children, however it wasn’t until the beginning of 2002 that we were legally able to access a Perth fertility clinic for assistance (following ground-breaking law reform in WA). At the beginning of the journey, we had decided on an unknown donor because the law wasn’t clear at that stage whether or not we would be protected as the child’s parents. So, after registering with Concept Fertility Clinic and putting our names down for an unknown donor, we waited 18 months before one became available. In the early days after the law reform which allowed lesbians to access fertility treatment not many donors granted permission for their donations to be directed to a lesbian couple, hence the long wait.