If you're part of a same-sex female couple thinking about starting a family, you'll already know that "trying" looks a bit different for you than it does in a lot of the material aimed at people trying to conceive. You don't need a diagnosis to need our help. You need donor sperm, a clear idea of your options, and a clinic where your relationship is simply one of the many ways families begin. Here's what the process tends to look like, from that first phone call through to treatment itself.
Your first point of contact is a conversation
You may well start by sending us an enquiry through our website, but the first real conversation is a call with our patient enquiry team, with no lengthy forms to complete or referral to chase. During that call, we'll talk about your circumstances and book in fertility tests for whichever of you (or both of you, depending on your plans) will be providing eggs or carrying a pregnancy. Those tests happen before your consultation with a doctor, so that when you do sit down together, your results are already there to be discussed properly rather than posted to you afterwards.
Working out which route fits
Same-sex female couples typically have a few routes open to them, and part of your consultation is talking through which one suits you.
The first is intrauterine insemination (IUI) with donor sperm, where one partner carries the pregnancy using her own eggs. It’s often the most straightforward starting point, particularly if there’s no known fertility concern for the partner carrying.
The second is in vitro fertilisation (IVF) with donor sperm, where eggs are collected, fertilised in the lab, and an embryo is transferred to the partner who’s carrying. Your doctor may suggest it from the outset or after IUI, depending on your tests and your circumstances.
The third is shared motherhood, sometimes called reciprocal IVF, where one partner’s eggs are used to create embryos that are then transferred to the other partner, who carries the pregnancy. It means you can both take an active biological part in having your baby, one through the egg, one through the pregnancy.
Egg freezing is also an option, though it’s less common for same-sex female couples. If you’re not ready to start treatment yet but want to keep the door open, it’s worth asking about at your consultation.
Choosing a sperm donor is part of this too. You can choose from our donor bank, where profiles include physical characteristics, or import donor sperm from an external bank. Every donor we work with has been carefully assessed and screened, including for health conditions, so you can choose with confidence. In some cases you can also bring a known donor into the process, which comes with its own legal and screening requirements that we’ll talk you through.
Funding and what it might cost
One question we're asked often is whether any of this is available on the NHS. The honest answer is that it depends on where you live. Funding for same-sex couples is set locally by integrated care boards, and criteria vary a good deal between areas, with some asking couples to have already self-funded a number of cycles of donor insemination before NHS-funded IVF becomes an option. It’s worth checking with your GP or local integrated care board, and our NHS IVF calculator is a good place to start. You enter your GP practice postcode and it shows what NHS funding is available in your area and the criteria you’d need to meet. We’d rather give you an honest “it depends” than a figure that doesn’t hold up once you look into it. Whatever the outcome, self-funded treatment remains available to you, and your Salve summary will set out the costs clearly so there are no surprises partway through.
After your consultation
Once you've settled on a route, you'll get a summary of your recommended treatment and an estimated cost through Salve, our treatment companion app, so you've got something to sit with and refer back to rather than trying to remember everything from the appointment. Ahead of your treatment planning meeting with one of our nurses, you'll complete screening blood tests and the relevant consent forms through EngagedMD. This is also the stage where legal parenthood is addressed for the partner who isn't carrying the pregnancy, since that isn't automatic under UK law unless you're married or in a civil partnership. It's a detail that's easy to overlook and important to get right, so we make sure it's covered properly rather than left as an afterthought.
Your treatment planning meeting covers the practical side, including medication, which is then supplied through Stork ahead of starting your cycle.
Support beyond the clinical side
Plenty of couples find it useful to talk through the decisions involved, particularly if you're weighing up which of you will carry, which donor to choose, or how to explain your family's shape to relatives who might ask questions out of curiosity rather than unkindness. Fertility counselling is built into your care with us, not offered as an optional extra, and it's there for the thinking as much as the feeling, so it's worth using even if you don't consider yourselves the "counselling type." Many of our same-sex female patients also find it helpful to connect with others who've been through the same decisions, and we're happy to point you towards peer support networks like The Fertility Alliance alongside the care you get from us directly.
What doesn't change
Whichever route you take, the level of care and the honesty about what's realistic for you stays the same. We won't oversell a treatment that isn't likely to suit your circumstances, and we won't assume anything about your relationship, your finances, or your reasons for choosing one route over another.
If you're not sure yet which option fits, that's a completely normal place to start from. A conversation with our patient enquiry team costs you nothing but a phone call, and it's often the easiest way to turn a list of questions into an actual plan.
