Revisited: Having a baby with your best mate

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:30I hope you enjoy it too. Today, what happens when you have a baby with your best mate instead of a romantic partner?

0:48Hi! Hello! It's a sunny day in Shrewsbury, and a very cheery little girl with rosy cheeks and just a few front teeth is keen to see who's at the door. Hello. Who's this? Hello, gorgeous girl. She loves visitors. Does she? Yeah. Oh no. She was just doing a poo though. Oh really? This is Nicola Slauson, a journalist and writer, and her very sociable 11-month-old daughter. Shall we let them in? Thanks for having us. Hi, no worries. Nicola recently went back to work and Tom, the baby's dad, took over the shared parental leave. The baby can already walk and loves razzing around the living room on her ladybird scooter, carefully manoeuvred by Tom every time she gets into a tight spot.

1:50it's the perfect picture of domestic life a mum a dad and their longed for baby girl but here's the twist Nicola and Tom are not a couple they never have been not least because Tom is gay Nicola meanwhile hasn't had a boyfriend in 10 years and has become something of a poster girl for the single life with a new book out called single living a complete life on your own terms. Last year, these two best friends decided to make the ultimate commitment to each other. They had a baby. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus, the joys and challenges of platonic co-parenting.

2:40when we visit it's lunchtime and tom is knocking up some kind of frittata for his and the baby's dinner he and nicola are very proud that she's an adventurous eater and on the kitchen door there's a big sheet of paper listing everything that she's tried from kimchi and chia seeds to artichokes and pickled onions. Nicola and I sit down on the sofa and I ask her if she'd always wanted to be a mum. Yeah I mean when I was a child I think that it was just one of those things you just kind of assume like oh you'll get married you'll have a house and you'll have a couple of kids and I remember like I had a boyfriend when I was between the ages of sort of 16 and 20 and it was one of those amazing first loves where we just literally didn't think that anyone could possibly understand how we felt no one's ever had this kind of love and we used to talk about kids all the time and we used to buy children's books from charity shops when we were like you know 17 years old and we talked about you know what we'd feed them and stuff it was ridiculous so yeah I always had in mind that I would be a mum.

3:47And you've got this book out called Single celebrating the single experience and kind of exploring what it means to be single and the kind of advantages and disadvantages of it and you've recently celebrated 10 years of being single but I know because I've been there like being in your 30s and wanting a baby and you're not quite seeing how it's going to happen is very tough and obviously the conventional route is to uh yeah get a male partner and and make a baby that way were you dating in your 30s and if so were you open about your yearning to be a mum? So there were periods where I was sort of dating so I've I've never actually been on a date off a dating app I've always met people in real life so I've met people through friends of friends at parties at work so I'd have like sort of what I'd call situationships or flings and I was living abroad a lot in my 20s and also having these crazy love affairs that went drastically wrong and was just you know crying a lot and as I got older and nearer to sort of the scary age of 35 when your fertility is meant to fall off a cliff I was like I feel really uncomfortable about dating actually because it just feels like so much pressure and I watched some of my peers and some of my friends feel like they had to quickly find someone and then it all go wrong and then they're basically tied to that person for the rest of their life and I also saw people who were in relationships who they assumed they were going to have a baby with that person or try for a baby and then either found out that the person was cheating on them and so it all went terribly wrong and so they felt like they'd wasted that time their fertile years or they turned around and said actually I don't want children luxury that men have to put it off and then just changed their minds so I was like oh no I've got a problem actually yeah I had a problem how to be a mum when I wasn't really interested in dating

6:05Nicola found it hard to be open about her yearning to become a mum when she didn't have a partner When we talk about infertility, obviously we're talking about medical infertility, but there's another term that people use which is called social infertility. One of the reasons that people end up without children is actually they didn't find a partner in time and I think that most of the time we don't think it's that. We think it's, oh, there was some kind of medical problem. And I think that people don't talk about it because there's still a lot of shame and stigma around being single, especially being single in your 30s or later.

6:39even some of my closest friends didn't really know that I wanted to be a mum and that's because I developed this cool girl persona and pretended I didn't care and is that because you didn't want to be pitied yeah I think so I think I still thought oh it's my fault that I'm single and people would just judge me or think that there was something wrong with me and now obviously I've written a book and it's called single and it's like having single tattooed on my head but yeah someone once told me you know you're being too picky you always told that the same people who also say but don't don't settle yeah literally the same people um so that was what was going on for me so sort of as I hit 35 and the pandemic started and at the time three of my best friends had babies within four months of each other and the pandemic meant that we were also really far apart I just moved back to Shropshire and lots of my friends up here had already long been married and had children and so it was obviously a really difficult period for everyone but for me it really brought home the fact that I was very much on my own and I did start then really researching solo motherhood but I sort of realised that it was going to be really really difficult for me to do.

7:58what to be solo to go solo because it's so costly in most places in the uk single women don't get any help on the nhs unless you have either six or 12 failed rounds of rui so that's artificial insemination yeah which you'd have to pay for yourself or if you need full ivf which obviously is very costly you need lots of medication stuff like that so for some people it costs a lot of money if they've got to keep trying or if they need egg donation as well because some people go down that route so people get into a lot of debt so I thought well either I've got to save up the money which would then eat into my fertility years or I'm going to have to take out some kind of loan but then I'm freelance like how would I then have maternity leave and also then look after the baby if I've completely rinsed my savings and go into debt and Jeremy Hunt announced that they were going to do free childcare for nine-month-old babies.

8:55This is when he was the Conservative Chancellor at that point? Yeah, that was right. And I was like, okay, there's going to be something in place, hopefully. So I just sort of took it as a sign, which is such a weird thing for me, for Jeremy Hunt to be the one that helped me make a decision. But basically that day... Nicholas started looking into sperm donation. I was on like a sperm bank website and I found somebody whose favourite colours were the same as mine. So I was like, perfect, this is the one. What were the colours? Teal and fuchsia. My favourite colours. You're sitting on a teal sofa.

9:29Yeah, exactly. But that's as far as I went. I didn't put them in my basket or anything. Solo parenting was daunting, but then Nicola remembered a conversation she'd had a few years ago. So a few years before I'd done jury duty, it was a really long trial, so I'd ended up making friends with one of the other people doing it. She told me that she had two children. I knew she was a lesbian and she had a wife. And I didn't ask her because, you know, it's not none of my business. But also I probably just assumed they'd done it with a sperm donor. But actually, she then told me the story one day. Basically, she went to her gay friend who's single and said, how would you feel about being a known donor?

10:09So that's where you just donate the sperm, but the child knows who you are. And so they know about their heritage and stuff like that. And it's quite common in the queer community. And then the guy said, well, actually, I want to be a dad, not a donor. And then she just told me how it was working and how, you know, they spent some of the summer in France because his parents lived there. And I just couldn't believe it. It just sounded like these children were so surrounded by love. I just said, well, you know, I'm really worried about not being a mum. I think I was like nearly 35 just before the pandemic.

10:41And she just said, oh, just ask one of your gay friends. And I was like, huh. But I didn't fancy asking any of the gay friends I actually had at the time because I just didn't want to be tied to any of them for the rest of my life. No offence to them. But I had it in the back of my mind, oh, that's a really good idea.

11:00When her best friends started having babies, Nicola got stuck into her new life back in her hometown of Shrewsbury. During the pandemic, I became a trustee of an art centre called The Hive in Shrewsbury and met Tom. The first thing we talked about was the fact that all of our friends in Shewesbury had kids and so didn't want to hang out with us as much as they used to and weren't available to come to the pub. So that's what we sort of bonded over and because we hit it off really well I was like oh we can be that for each other and we both lived really close to town and then we started like meeting up went to a few weddings together and I knew that he worked with like young people with special educational needs so I was like oh he's obviously like a really good guy he's good with children um his sister's disabled and he'd been like a carer for her personal carer and um at some point I can't remember exactly when it was but I started to think oh he'd make a really good dad she started subtly auditioning him for the role so yeah I sort of started to like ask him more questions about you know his life and sort of subtly interviewing him for the job I worked up the courage to ask if he wanted to be a dad and he said he'd looked into solo fostering and adoption was thinking of going down that route quite seriously and so I was like okay so he obviously is interested in being a dad and I'd already told him like I was you know thinking of the solo motherhood idea so he knew that I you know it was something that was on my mind and we talked about that quite a lot and I think I mentioned to a few friends yeah I've met this I met this guy um this gay guy he's single and uh I just you know I've got this idea about platonic co-parenting and people I think sort of people thought I was joking because they'd never heard of it before and they were like are you actually you going to ask somebody to have a baby with you?

13:05And I was like, yeah, I might do. Finally, Nicola built up the courage to pop the question. It was the LGBT History Festival launch party, and it's at the Hive, which is the art centre. And I decided it was a sort of a fitting night because it was a celebration of like LGBT rights. So I just started knocking back the wine and I got really drunk. I was, you know, working out what I was going to say. So I grabbed his head and whispered in his ear. I honestly can't remember actually asking the question, but I think it was something like, how would you feel about having a baby with me? He said, as a donor or a dad.

13:51And I was like, you know, I know I mean, let's do it together. And then he basically said, yeah, go on then. Something like that.

14:02we started then telling people in the pub we told his friend we're like we can have a baby together and I was like we're the turkey baster do you remember how you were feeling that night when she asked you we were just really excited weren't we yeah we were really excited you'd sort of guessed what I was going to ask as well I thought it would be very subtle and he's like alright I'm just heading off now we can have a baby and he's like what are you talking about see you later you're too drunk

14:34the morning after Nicola worried that maybe Tom didn't mean it was he really serious about becoming a parent with her so we didn't see each other for like a week and then he texted and said you want to go for a drink and at first we were just talking about you know I'd just been asked to write this Guardian article about being a childless woman and you know how it affects friendships and um so i was talking about that and he was talking about his friend's kids and you know so we were kind of like dancing around the subject and i said oh should we address the elephant in the room and he said it's not an elephant it's like it's all i've been thinking about they spent months talking through every aspect of parenting something straight couples rarely do before they get those two blue lines on a pregnancy test though maybe they should most people's decision to have a child is oh shit what we're going to do shall we keep it you know like there's some universal advice for anyone having a baby it's like you know really sort of talk about it and you know like most people don't yeah put a lot of time into that I'd say that began this period of about three months where we met up at least twice a week if not more and we also messaged a lot where we did loads of research about platonic co-parenting and we just met up and just talked and talked and talked about how it would work and like should we go to a lawyer and draw up a sort of almost contract and um we actually realized that legally in this country the courts just decide what's in the best interest of the baby which is 50 you know 50 50 seeing both parents and so there's no point doing um any kind of agreement in advance because it's just not worth the paper it's written on so we actually didn't do that and um we discussed you know what would happen if we met partner you know those people would have to accept that that we've got this sort of unconventional family that they'd have to be part of we discussed finances because originally we weren't going to live together and that's actually a funny story because everyone said to us when we started telling people oh you're going to move in together and we're like do people not get it we're we're platonically co-parenting we're friends we're not you know together we realized that financially it would make a lot of sense and also practically and also Tom wouldn't want to be away from the baby and I intended to breastfeed um which he wanted me to do as well and so the baby would have to be here anyway so we were like oh we went to everyone oh we've got this great idea we're going to move in together for at least a year and they were like yeah we you know we suggested that and we also discussed you know what would happen if we had a miscarriage and how we'd support each other and stuff like that so we discussed like the big things but also smaller things we discussed what the baby's surname would be and decided to double barrel it we even discussed things like how we did Christmas day because we decided that if we were going to do it even though we're obviously not in a romantic couple we would consider ourselves family because we thought that would be in the best interest of the child and also ourselves as well because you know then we feel like we're part of a family it was all so exciting but also you know very serious and some of it's quite emotional and then we started telling people what reaction did you get well they hadn't like my family like hadn't heard of platonic co-parenting but I think because I'd already talked about the solo parenting idea they actually were like oh this is a better idea and so they were on board with it fairly quickly you know had some questions I think Tom's parents were even more like well when are you just going to get going and get started because they really didn't think they were ever going to be grandparents because his sister um is quite profoundly disabled and she can't have children and obviously Tom had come out as gay so they just assumed that it would never happen so their reaction was pretty much like when are you starting start now and then we started telling our you know friends and some of my friends kind of already knew that I was thinking of you know I'd already talked about the idea um but then others yeah it was quite a big shock and then some people were saying things like you know oh you'll probably still be the one left holding the baby like it's all going to fall on you how are you going to feel when you know it's not your romantic partner and you know it's just your friend and you're holding the baby and how are you gonna deal with that I said to them I'm not even remotely worried about being the one left holding the baby I'm more like am I gonna get a word at edgeways with this baby because I knew he was so excited to be a dad he got more negativity actually than me he got more like oh you know you're gonna have a custody battle on your hands like it's never gonna work and was this from gay friends yeah really yeah and some of them might be more au fait with the idea of sort of chosen family yeah I think that um some of them had heard of horror stories where it hadn't worked out and so they hadn't heard of many positive experiences and so they just assumed that that it was all going to go wrong but then I met some of them and they obviously saw that we were really good friends and that we were really open with each other and I think they may be before they met me and saw what we were like thought oh you know Tom's just got carried away with this kind of great idea anyway so then um so yeah we started to try and I bought this kit online actually this uh turkey-based kit and a pot and um and so began the process and it was like a Tuesday morning I remember and um Tom came over before work and I was like everyone said oh it's gonna be really awkward but it wasn't it was just so funny we just thought it was hilarious and um so I think I made breakfast and then he took the pot upstairs and I remember he came back down he's like I'm gonna need your wi-fi code

20:31and then um he went upstairs and obviously you know did his thing and um came back down and he said I think this is what you're after and we were just thought he was hysterical we were like was it weird like holding a pot of your friend's sperm yeah well I didn't really think about it at the moment yeah I guess but I actually what I said was is that it and then he was like that's quite offensive and I was like sorry

21:06two weeks later it was time to find out if the sperm had worked I remember we were in town and Tom had just met my mum and sister actually and I was like holding a wee in and then we went to this like art studio open day and I was just like we got to go because I need I need to go to the loo so we went back to his house and um I did the test and there was a line I was like oh my god oh my god and he was like what what because I hadn't told him like what to look out for and I was like there's a line there's a line and uh yeah I just couldn't believe it and it worked first time but Tom was saying like over and over I can't believe it but also he was saying I know it's going to work first time and then you were very lucky yeah the odds were against it working first exactly yeah we we don't you know we've talked about that so much we just don't take that for granted we just can't we've got fertility privilege and it is a thing and we because I think we went through years of like thinking it might not happen we have got that sort of solidarity with people who haven't had kids um because of fertility issues um or have you know still haven't you know they're still trying and like sometimes I feel quite emotional about it because I just think like it could have gone so you know and then how would that have impacted our friendship as well having years of fertility issues because it's not like we've committed to like get married and yeah um you know would we've wanted to keep going but actually the pregnancy did go really smoothly from her perspective I actually had the worst like really really bad morning sickness Nicola realized that although Tom had never seen her naked she was going to have to get over any embarrassment about her body in his presence I decided I was going to breastfeed or going to try and one of the things they suggest you do is harvesting colostrum which is where you sort of try and squeeze out bits of the early milk before you've even had the baby and the reason is one if you were separated from your baby for some reason they could still have some of your milk but two it's to help you get used to how it works so that you can it helps you breastfeed and um I decided I was going to start doing this I bought all the kit and everything from Amazon and I went and had a bath one day and it just wasn't working and I was like read about it and it was like everything was like doing it as a couple like the man getting over there with the syringe and I was like you know I think I'm gonna need your help so obviously he hasn't seen my boobs because we're just friends.

23:34So then I was like, right, we're going to have to get past this because if I'm going to breastfeed, they're going to be out all the time anyway. So then that was the sort of big moment in our friendship where I went from, like, obviously just being normal friends to here's my boob and can you help me get this tiny bit of colostrum out the end of it. The pregnancy progressed well, and when the time came, Nicola and Tom opted for a home birth. she was born uh basically practically where your foot is there oh really yeah she was born in a pool I was the first to pick her up and uh they said oh you're gonna check if it's where a girl and um on the birth preferences like we said Tom wanted to you know be the one to announce so I lifted her up and he said it's a girl and basically since I was 19 years old I had the name because my friend's sister was called it and I met her and I just thought she was so cool um so when he said it's a girl I then said it's and I said her name and that was like one of the best moments of my life because I'd actually in the years the dark years where I wanted to be a mum I often would picture a little girl with this name so it just felt like that would come true and so it's like a very emotional moment for me and um Tom's face is just like can you believe it we're parents coming up can you have a more equal parenting relationship without the complications of romantic love

25:14let's talk practicalities about being parents how do you divide obviously so you were breastfeeding yeah oh you still are breastfeeding so that was one thing that only you could do hello hi how did you divide so yeah um we decided that you know it's very important to us to be like equal parents something that people I know still struggle with that they still the woman still has to do a lot of couples yeah straight couples yeah and um so in the early days Tom did all of the housework and cooking and I was just like on the sofa trying to make it work with a breastfeeding but then he went had to go back to work so I had nine months maternity leave and decided to give him three months of my maternity leave because that's how the law works you have to you have to literally sign a form to like relinquish your months so he's now got the last month of that left while I've been working which has been really good because she's got this really strong bond with him she's cleaning he's teaching her to be good at cleaning not like uh not like she doesn't take after me she takes after you in that respect and you paint an extremely inspiring and rosy picture of how it's gone but there must have been some tricky points yeah of course yeah we moved in together in the january and then the baby arrived in the march so we didn't have that much time to get used to living together and we'd both been living on our own for quite a long time yeah and you know we don't live in a huge house as well so we had to like merge all of our belongings and get rid of a lot of stuff and it's my house that tom moved into because he had a one bed house so then it's obviously like making it feel like his home and then just yeah having to learn to like really communicate so you know I'm not very good at that at all and even though you know I've always think I've got really good communication skills but actually I'm not very good at communicating when I'm annoyed about something I just pretend it's all fine definitely like recovering people pleaser and so sometimes Tom can tell that I'm upset about something but I'm not saying it so so yeah it's been a steep learning curve for someone who just like avoided you know all kind of conflict in the past and has it been tedious having to explain over and over again he's not my husband yeah because you have to sort of tell you can't just briefly say it because people want to know more so then you feel like you're telling your life stories sometimes a bit tricky because also we pass as a heterosexual couple it's weird for me as a single woman that people just obviously just assume that he's my husband or boyfriend yeah um and also I don't even know whether to call myself a single mum because I don't feel like a single mum because we're doing it together yeah seeing the set of action it doesn't feel like no single parenthood no it's like definitely co-parenthood yeah definitely and I think that in the future when we live in different houses you know we'll get into a new regime then of like sharing so What's the plan for that?

28:27So I don't really know when we're going to stop living together because at the moment it just makes so much sense and especially financially as well. So why split up then? Why move up? Yeah, I guess at some point we might want our own space but we do want to live really close to each other or work out some kind of arrangement. Ideally it would be next door to each other. So like Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton? Yeah, with our door going between the two houses. So that would be the dream? to sort of live apart but together. We've even found this building and I was like, wow, imagine if it had a top floor flat and a bottom floor flat and then the middle flat could be a shared space.

29:05That would, you know, it would have to be quite loaded to do that so it probably won't happen. But, you know, these are the kind of ideas we have. But I don't know, we're just going with the flow at the moment. But presumably, assuming that you do, one of you moves out and you have two separate residences, you're only going to have her part-time? Yeah, that's going to be really tough. and that's when they it'll really kick in because what some mums did say to me when I told them the idea they're like oh my god you're gonna have a break you found like the holy grail of parenting and I was like I know isn't it great now and she's here I don't want to be away from her for a second because I'm obsessed with her and so it's Tom so um but at the same time it is good to have a break and it is good healthy to have a break and you know I still haven't been to like the gym yet or I'm doing the exercise and I need to start doing that like going for a run and and are either of you dating at the moment no I mean I haven't even had a night out with my friends so I wouldn't waste any time that I did have away on um probably a bad date to be honest um yeah it's just not on my radar and yeah I think for Tom it's not a priority and you know it has sort of taken the pressure off as well because there isn't that sort of for me there isn't that sort of oh I need to find someone but also I think for both of us we're like we are each other's sort of companion so we have like you know we look out for each other and if we are one's ill you know help each other out so we've got we've got that and because we consider ourselves a family so you know if we did find someone in the future yeah they'd have to sort of slot into what we're doing but if they've got a problem with what we're doing and they're not right right person for us yeah but I guess you you two can't service all of each other's needs exactly yeah someone said oh you're missing out on the best part like well what's the best part oh sex like oh is that actually the best part or is it is it being best friends I think you know obviously you know romance and love and intimacy and sex are also really really important I'm sure that will come in the future and you know and that could be great and it could be good for you know for me it would be great because I won't have that pressure of you know oh do you want a baby like they'll know that I'm a mum and they'll have to deal with it I think we are we are quite open-minded people anyway we're quite open-minded and flexible and you know go with the flow go with the go with how things are happening some people are not so much like that but yeah I think that's a big part of it it's our attitude which is why it's been so effective for us you know i can't believe we're like a year down the line and we're like essentially we're so happy with how this is going and yeah there's like you know we're asking about challenges before there's like you know there's always challenges when you're moving someone you know like start essentially sort of starting a version of a relationship like this partnership or companionship but you just trust another person and you just have confidence in this journey together you know sometimes you get that wrong and some hopefully you get it right you know and it's a struggle having a baby isn't it but it's also amazing it's just like such a privilege isn't it to be there to experience all of that experience childhood again and you know to do it with your best friend it just felt right But your belly!

32:28No! No!

32:38That was Nicholas Lawson and Tom Hayes and their delicious little baby girl. Thank you to them for opening up their home to us and for sharing their story. Nicholas' book is out now. It's called Single, Living a Complete Life on Your Own Terms and she also has a sub stack that I would recommend and it's called The Single Supplement. I absolutely loved meeting Nicola and Tom and I found it really inspiring to hear about a different model of family. Their household is so clearly filled with love, just as much love as any romantic relationship would offer. It's just the platonic kind. And I hope that you really enjoyed hearing their story too and if you did, perhaps you'd consider leaving us a review.

33:17We always like to hear what you make of the show and it also helps other people to find us. Today's episode was produced by Eli Block and presented by me, Helen Pidd. Sound design was by Tom Glasser and the executive producer was Elizabeth Cassin.

33:40This is The Guardian.