Karen Heffernan wouldn’t know the father of her child if he passed her on the street. What she does know is what he looked like as a baby, his height, that he is Danish, and has a clean bill of health.
That’s because when Heffernan, a 37-year-old hairdresser from Blackrock in Co Dublin was in her early 30s, she began to explore the idea of intrauterine insemination (IUI), using donor sperm.
“I always knew I wanted a child, but my last long-term relationship ended when I was 25. I told myself, if I didn’t meet anyone I would be happy to have a child by myself, and then I hit 30 and gave myself two years to look into the option of using a donor properly. But then Covid hit,” she recalls.
“That put a stop to socialising and going on dates. When restrictions were lifted I was around 34 and all my friends were having kids at the same time and I was like ‘what am I waiting for?‘”
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Before she went for the first consultation at a fertility clinic to discuss her options, Heffernan sat her parents Paula and Alan down to explain her plans.
“I knew that taking this on as a single mother would require support. From the outset, they were 100 per cent behind my decision and my mum came with me for my first consultation,” she says.
At a new Thérapie Fertility Clinic in Carrickmines, Heffernan was told of her options. Learning about women’s fertility and how rapidly it starts to decrease in their 30s, she knew she would be taking a chance on the donor route. She purchased three “straws” – three IUI rounds with the donor’s sperm, at a total cost of around €5,000.
Under the Children, Family and Relationships Act (CFRA) 2015, which commenced in Ireland in May 2020, all imported donations – sperm or eggs – must be from a non-anonymous, or traceable, donor. Donors must agree to open contact with a donor-conceived child once that child reaches 18 years of age.
“The donor was listed under the European Sperm Bank. In Ireland, there’s a lot of rules and regulations, so only three women in Ireland can use the same donor, and we can only use what is termed ‘open donors’, who can be contacted at a later stage by the child,” Heffernan explains.
“I was only looking for a healthy, happy baby so that meant a donor [with] no health issues. It didn’t matter if they had brown or blonde hair, or [were] a boy or a girl.”
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When her first attempt with IUI failed, Heffernan decided to go for a second round, but this time she kept what she was doing under wraps. In October 2022, she found out she was pregnant.
“I live alone so I was sitting in my house in shock and happy-crying. I couldn’t believe it had happened for me so quickly. I hadn’t told my parents that I had gone for the second round It was my mum’s birthday on the day I was getting the blood tests to confirm my pregnancy, so I wrote on the card ‘Love from baby H’,” she adds.
“When I told people I was pregnant, some would ask if I was going to say how it happened. My reaction was always, of course I will, because getting pregnant from a donor is nothing to be ashamed of.”
In June 2023, her daughter was born. Heffernan sees her own family in the looks and traits of her child, now 21 months old, but has noticed some characteristics that are probably from the donor.
“She’s quite a tall baby. Her skin is more sallow than mine too, but she looks like my family and she’s quite active in the way I was at her age.”
Aimee Crinion wasn’t thinking about having children when she married her partner Dave in 2009. Then aged 32, and with both of them working full-time – she as a professional dog walker and he in IT – there was plenty of time to start a family, but first they would travel, enjoy plenty of nights out and long lie-ins.
When the couple from Glasnevin in Dublin 9 decided to have children, they expected it to happen naturally. Except it didn’t. At 36, Crinion shared her concerns with her doctor and the couple subsequently opted for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to try to help them to conceive. Crinion knew there were no guarantees.
I knew I didn’t have it in me to go through IVF in my 40s. We had looked into adoption but we realised we were also too old for that
— Aimee Crinion
“We went for one round at the Merrion Fertility Clinic in Dublin 2, and in our minds we were thinking, we’ll do it once. We were baffled why I couldn’t get pregnant. We were both healthy and neither of us had fertility problems – I simply wasn’t getting pregnant naturally, even with an egg reserve that wasn’t bad for my age,” she explains.
“We did our first round of IVF against a background of people telling us that it never works the first time, which I thought was really pointless advice. But they were right, it didn’t work and I was desperately upset because all of my friends were married and had children or were pregnant and it consumed me – all I could see were babies everywhere. And that was all I wanted, to bring a child into the world.”
Crinion credits the strength of her marriage as the reason for getting through the first failed round. Dave was a constant support and they had each other at the end of it all.
Crinion’s father Michael became very ill during the same period, and died in October 2013. It was an incredibly stressful time.
“I found it so hard to lose him and not have been able to let him meet my kids because I always believed he would,” she says.
In 2014, the couple decided to go for one last round of IVF.
“I knew I didn’t have it in me to go through IVF in my 40s. We had looked into adoption but we realised we were also too old for that. I remember that day in May in the Merrion Clinic and one of the nurses there turned to me and said ‘this is going to work, you’ve done everything you can and I’m telling you, this is going to work’. She mentioned my dad, just a passing comment, and something felt different, almost like he was watching over me.”
Having never done a pregnancy test herself for the fear of disappointment, one morning just after a blood test at the clinic while out walking her dogs, she took their call.
“I was on Killiney Hill with six dogs running around me and all the clinic said at the other end of the phone was ‘yes’. I started screaming, ‘Finally, finally’. Me and all these dogs [were] running towards the car park to get to my van. It was magical,” she says.
Her son Hugo was born in February 2015.
Content with her life, Crinion still had the option to pursue IVF, but didn’t know if she could go through the process again. Two years after her son was born, she went to the doctor with a urinary tract infection (UTI).
“I gave the doctor a sample for the UTI test and she said, ‘Do you know you’re pregnant?’ I couldn’t process that. I remember saying something like ‘Okay ... but can you give me something for the UTI’ and then very quickly adding that I couldn’t be pregnant because I couldn’t have children naturally.”
Arabella was born in November 2017, and there was no question of IVF again.
“I do consider myself lucky. I’m 50 now with two beautiful children, a husband, a dog, and a lot of grey hair. As difficult as that path was to get here, I am very grateful for it all. I do believe my father has watched over every step.”
Having raised three birth children of her own, Mags Murphy from Enniscorthy in Co Wexford is now a foster mother. Since 2018, she and her husband Danny, who also have three grandchildren, have taken in 10 foster children over short and long-term periods, with ongoing check-ins with Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, and support from Foster Care Ireland (FCI), an organisation that places children with foster parents.
There were 5,595 children in the care of the State last year, according to Tusla, with 91 per cent of those children in foster homes. For Murphy, these figures are heartbreaking.
“All of these children deserve a parent, or a caring adult that can make a difference. They have done nothing wrong, and yet many carry this feeling of guilt that it was something they did,” says the 57-year-old.
“Even when they come into care, the children try so hard to please. They ask, ‘am I being good?’ and you’re thinking, ‘you are a child of four or five, you shouldn’t be worrying about having to be good or trying to figure out what is expected of you from adults.’ It’s very, very hard on them.”
Murphy says her house has always been a lively, loud, and busy home. Her children – now 31, 35, and 37 – often had friends over. For 30 years, she ran her own childcare business for preschoolers, and over a 10-year period had 12 children from Belarus stay at Christmas or during the summer months under the Chernobyl Children’s Project International, founded by Adi Roche.
When they call you mam it’s lovely but also sort of bittersweet, because you feel a sense of loss for them
— Mags Murphy
A self-confessed nurturer, it was after her children left home that she and Danny began to discuss fostering. Following assessments, vetting and training, they were accepted, and in April 2018 got their first placement under the “respite fostering” programme, where a child already with foster parents would come for a weekend or a week to give them and their foster parents a break.
“At first it was like I was a doting granny because I would take this little child in on a Friday and they would return to a foster parent on the Monday, and you could really have fun with them and take them places. You didn’t have to deal with homework or the stress of school and all that goes with full foster care,” says Murphy.
“You would also see their behaviours and ask yourself if you could deal with that on a daily basis. But then we got our first boy and he was with us for four years. He was really lucky because he was reunited with his mum. It was a happy story. That often doesn’t happen for children in foster care.”
It has been a challenging experience at times, too, but FCI’s link workers have offered a lot of support to the Murphys over the years.
Murphy has maintained contact with many of the children who stayed with her, and has framed photographs of them all on the wall in her home. Some of the children have referred to her and Danny as “Mam and Dad” when speaking about their new family in school or with friends.
“When they call you Mam it’s lovely but also sort of bittersweet, because you feel a sense of loss for them,” Murphy says. “You also want them to become comfortable and confident enough to just be children.”
