Hayley King, Co-Director of Paths to Parenthub and a mum in an LGBTQ+ family herself, will be joined by Kayleigh, a parent with first-hand experience of parenting in a two mum family, and Julianne Boutaleb, perinatal psychologist who specialises in families built through donor conception. Together they will work through five themes that speak directly to the LGBTQ+ donor conception experience.

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What we'll explore:

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• "Am I a real parent?"​
  Imposter syndrome and parenting identity. What it feels like to question whether you have earned your place, and what is actually happening psychologically when that question surfaces.
• Love, bonding, and the fear that it is not enough​
  The experience of deep connection before birth, and the pain of early months when things feel harder than expected. What the evidence actually tells us about bonding, attachment, and genetics.
• Preference, rejection, and the really hard days​
  The rawness of a child turning to one parent and not the other. An honest conversation about something that comes up quietly but painfully in the community, more often than people realise.
• The world outside​
  When LGBTQ+ family structures are being publicly questioned, the internal doubts do not exist in a vacuum. They get louder. This session dedicates real space to naming the current climate, to minority stress, and to what it means to parent with resilience right now.
• What shifts, and what helps​
  What has gotten easier, what the clinical evidence tells us, and what Hayley has seen help people in the Paths to Parenthub community over time.

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Who is this for?

This webinar is for you if you are in an LGBTQ+ family navigating donor conception at any stage, whether you are still in treatment, pregnant, or already parenting. It is for the parent who has not said any of this out loud yet, as much as the one who says it constantly and wonders when it will ease.

It is not a session full of reassurances that everything is fine. It is a session that takes the hard parts seriously, holds them carefully, and makes space for what is genuinely complex..

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Meet the speakers

Hayley King is Co-Director of Paths to Parenthub, a mum in an LGBTQ+ family, and donor conceived herself. She brings both lived experience and deep knowledge of the themes that surface most often in the donor conception community. She will host and guide the conversation throughout.

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Kayleigh is one half of @ourlittlegaylife, a space for honest storytelling about fertility treatment, pregnancy loss, and life as a two mum family. As the non-biological mother to her donor conceived daughter, she brings first-hand experience of the parenting identity questions at the heart of this session, and the honesty and warmth to speak about them openly.

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Julianne Boutaleb is a perinatal psychologist with over 25 years of experience working in this space and will offer clinical grounding, research-informed perspective, and practical insight throughout.