In 2021, West Ham captain Katrina Gorry, who was then playing for Avaldsnes in Norway, walked into an IVF clinic without telling friends or family what she was about to do. A few weeks later, after picking a sperm donor and having IVF, she was pregnant.
“I tried to not really think about what was about to happen. My period’s always spot on on the day and on the day that I walked in, I got my period. I think it was about a week early,” Gorry told Sky Sports News‘ podcast Real Talk.
At the time, Gorry was single, which was one of the main reasons she says she did not tell anyone before deciding to start her IVF journey.
“When I spoke to the doctor, he said ‘we can start today’. I think it was probably meant to happen because I wasn’t able to really think about the process.
“I think a lot of people would have had thoughts about it and would have shared those with me and I didn’t want them to change my mind.”
Now, Gorry is engaged to Swedish footballer Clara Markstedt, and the couple have a second child together.
In the UK, the number of single women having IVF or artificial insemination treatment increased from 1,400 in 2012 to 4,800 in 2022.
Gorry decided she wanted to start trying for a baby after meeting with a life coach.
“There was just something missing. I went to sleep thinking about kids, about the names that I wanted, what life would be like with a baby in it. I didn’t really think about football too much at all. Everything happened really quickly, which I’m really grateful for,” she said.
“I had a meeting with a life coach, he said ‘what’s missing in your life?’ and I said I want to be a mum. He said ‘well, go and do it’.”
But, despite the increase in lesbian women having babies – whether while single or in couples, it is something that is still rarely spoken about in the mainstream media, and when it is, homophobic abuse often ensues – as the world of women’s football witnessed via one of the game’s most high-profile couples last year.
In November 2024, Gorry’s team-mates Sam Kerr, who she has played on the Australian national team with for 13 years, and Kristie Mewis, who plays at West Ham, announced that they were pregnant.
While many were quick to congratulate the couple, they faced what Chelsea described as “unacceptable and hateful homophobic comments”.
Chelsea head coach Sonia Bompastor offered her full support to Kerr and Mewis the following day, saying: “These comments are unacceptable, especially in our world in 2024.
“It’s crazy to understand how people can react like this. We’re so happy for Sam. I can’t wait to welcome this little baby into our Chelsea family.”
Gorry told Sky Sports that she hoped her team-mates know “ there’s gonna be more love than hate through it all”.
“I don’t think it should matter who your parents are. I feel like if you have love in a family and you have happiness in a family, then nothing else should matter,” she said. “The more people that can show that, the better the world will be.”
Egg collecting, buying sperm and IVF
Anita Asante played for Arsenal, Chelsea and Aston Villa and won 71 caps for England. She was part of the historic 2007 quadruple-winning Arsenal side, won four league titles and four FA Cups and also played in the USA and Sweden. And now, she is also a mum.
At the time Asante and her wife Beth Fisher, a former sports reporter and Wales hockey player, decided they wanted to start trying for children, Asante was still playing at WSL side Aston Villa.
“There was a lot more thinking involved in terms of when in the year can we do it? Or how does it fit with football and my schedule?” Asante said.
Asante was told that due to opting for shared motherhood, whereby her egg was extracted – with the embryo carried by her wife – she would not be able to train for several weeks due to the medication she would be taking to prepare for egg extraction.
“It made sense for us as a couple to wait until after I was done playing.”
Real Talk returns with host Miriam Walker-Khan speaking to former footballer Anita Asante and her wife about what it is like for lesbian sportswomen to have babies. Listen to the full episode of Real Talk on Sky Sports
After retiring, Asante, who is also a pundit, joined Bristol City’s women’s team as a coach, and the couple began their IVF journey.
“I started with the injections and it was such a weird feeling. I felt different in my body. I felt heavier, because your ovaries get enlarged, so it literally felt like I was carrying these massive eggs around,” Asante said.
“Physical activities I was used to doing, like moving goals around, felt a bit more challenging. Nothing can prepare you for that feeling of physical changes, and probably hormonal changes as well.”
The couple wanted to have a mixed-heritage baby and decided to use an egg from Asante, who has Ghanaian heritage. “We both talked about how important it was that our baby would know where that part of her heritage was from,” Fisher said.
Asante and Fisher then chose a sperm donor based on his interests and values from the European Sperm Bank.
“You can also hear their voice on a recording and you can see a childhood picture,” Anita explained.
“While we were sifting through all these profiles, I think we went with our gut,” Fisher said. “We found these two donors, both from Denmark, but one was out of stock. So we went for this one donor that was in stock.”
A few days after ordering the sperm, Asante and Fisher were notified that their first-choice donor was back in stock. Fisher called up the clinic and got an exchange on the previous sperm they had purchased, swapping for their first choice.
The couple got pregnant on their first IVF attempt.
Katrina Gorry and Anita Asante were speaking on the Sky Sports News podcast Real Talk, with host Miriam Walker-Khan also joined by this episode’s expert, Laura-Rose Thorogood, who is a lesbian mum of four children and the founder and CEO of LGBT Mummies, an organisation which gives advice to LGBTQ+ people hoping to become parents and campaigns for equal access to fertility treatment.
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