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Woman's Hour

Parenting: The Other Mother

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.13K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2019

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The comedian Jen Brister talks about what it was like becoming a non-biological mum. She had twin boys with her partner Chloe four years ago after two rounds of IVF, and it was Chloe who gave birth. Jen talks about the reaction of friends, professionals and what she felt like herself having babies in this way and being the other parent - experiences she has written about in her book 'The Other Mother'.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

0:04.6

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

0:08.4

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poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

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If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

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less searching and a lot more

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1:05.8

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1:10.6

Hi this is Jane Garvey and this is the women's Our Parenting Podcast today you can hear a conversation with the comedian Jen Brista who's written a book called the other mother about her relationship with her partner Chloe and their IVF twins who are now just about to start school.

1:26.0

So you can hear the conversation with her now.

1:28.4

Two rounds of IVF, but there were three goes of sort of sticking it up there so to speak I'm sure that's not the

1:34.9

technical term it's not we're not a medical program I think most of our

1:37.9

listeners will know what you mean so it was actually Chloe who had the boys yes she did yeah and that's in a way that is the interesting thing

1:46.1

about your book which is written from the perspective of the other mother so just

1:50.4

tell us about that dynamic first of, how were you treated by the authorities with whom you necessarily come into contact at these times?

1:58.0

Well, we went, it was IVF, that's how we did it. And we went to two different clinics.

...

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