When 36-year-old Jade Richards and her partner, 32-year-old Ann Gard, got married, they both knew that they wanted to start a family together. The lesbian couple, however, didn’t want to go through the long process of IVF for a variety of reasons.
Because of Richards’ age, the couple wanted to have a child sooner than it would take the IVF services to screen them and their sperm donor. The $30,000 price tag of the procedure also deterred the couple.
Richards and Gard then took it upon themselves to approach friends as potential sperm donors. While it did scare off a couple people, the couple wanted to find someone they knew, so their child’s biological father could also be a part of their life.
Their friend, Jarred Evans, ultimately agreed to be the sperm donor.
The three of them – Richards, Gard, and Evans – met each month at the couple’s home to attempt inseminating Richards. It was a trial and error process. “We went into it blindly because we didn’t know anyone else who had done it,” Richards explained.
After several failed attempts, they went on Facebook groups to consult others online, but everyone was attempting the same methods as them: turkey basters (that didn’t work) or syringes.
The couple eventually found and bought a syringe that’s typically used to inseminate horses.
14 months after the trio first began attempting to get Richards pregnant, they succeeded.
On New Year’s Eve, Richards’ pregnancy test came out positive. Although they all wanted to celebrate, Evans advised them to hold out until week 12 to really get excited.
When week 12 came around, they commemorated the occasion by sharing the happy – and amusing – news on Facebook with a photo of themselves and speech bubbles floating over their heads. Richards’ bubble announces her pregnancy, Gard’s bubble confesses that she’s not the father (as she wields a syringe), and Evans’ bubble reads, “Oh $#!& it worked!”
Richards’ pregnancy is, thankfully, going smoothly, and the couple have already made plans with Evans to have more children – this time with Gard getting pregnant – after they’ve had their first child. All three could not be more excited to be setting on this journey together.
