Imme Ermgassen first offered to donate her eggs to her friends when they were at a wedding seven years ago. George, 41, and Toby Corbin-Greenall, 37, told her they wanted to become parents and were chatting about how hard it is for gay couples. “I told them I wasn’t planning on having children. They are amazing, and in love and would bring up a child in the most wonderful, loving home,” she remembers.
They seemed to appreciate the offer, but didn’t take her up on it immediately, so she repeated it the next time she saw them. “We laugh about it now: it took them an embarrassingly long amount of time to accept, and I actually had to chase them,” she says.
It was only once Imme reiterated her offer that George and Toby understood it was genuine. “It felt too good to be true; we’d get people offering but they were never really serious,” George explains. “Once we reflected on it, it all made sense.”
George says that he and Toby had initially researched the idea of having a baby using an anonymous egg donor and surrogate. When the couple sat down with Imme, he remembers, “all my reservations disappeared”. The couple sat down with Imme over coffee and had “complicated, necessary conversations about our future family – but they never felt difficult.”
They chatted about language – Imme would take on the role of “fairy godmother” in the family, rather than be referred to as an auntie. Everyone involved was very clear that sharing her eggs in no way made her a mum. “Language is really important over roles, especially when it’s a new kind of family. People can be really careless with language – it upsets me – and I think that discussion needs to happen with family and friends right from the start,” Imme explains.
My eldest two children were conceived with the help of a sperm donor and I look forward to language catching up with our family. I’ve also grown used to correcting anyone who confuses the words donor and dad.
Imme went through three rounds of egg donation, injecting hormones into her body to stimulate egg production. “The first time we got no eggs at all, and then the second time we got 18 eggs – every cycle is so different.”
Toby (left) and George (right) thought Imme’s offer to donate eggs was too good to be true (Photo: Toby Corbin-Greenall)Her life changed dramatically during that time: she went from being a “footloose and fancy-free” marketing consultant working in New York and Shanghai to falling in love with her now-husband, settling in London and co-founding the non-alcoholic spirit brand Botivo, which is served at 38 Michelin-starred restaurants.
And despite being adamant that she was unlikely to become a mother, she and her husband did have children. They now have five-year-old twins Rufus and Sanne.
Meanwhile, Toby and George began their parenting journey, too. They now have two sons, Benji, four, and Frank, aged one, both made with the help of Imme’s eggs.
Imme is one of a growing number of people donating their eggs to help couples become families, as a rising number of same-sex couples and heterosexual couples with fertility issues seek to have children. In 2019, over 4,400 egg donation IVF cycles were completed in the UK, compared with 160 rounds in 1991. Meanwhile, egg donation births in the UK rose from 37 in 1991 to 3,489 in 2023, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority.
Rising maternal age contributes to the number of women who are able to carry a pregnancy but cannot conceive with their own eggs. In 1991, there were 3,086 births to women aged 40 and over in England and Wales; in 2022, there were approximately 19,000, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Imme values her role in her extended family. “These are George and Toby’s children. They’ll always be welcome in our home, we love them and I want to be their godmother,” she explains. She went to both boys’ christenings and the families visit each other every few months, spending long weekends together. The children all refer to each other as cousins and often celebrate birthdays together.
Imme, George and Toby all signed an informal agreement about Imme’s egg donation, while George and Toby’s legal application for a parental order was with their surrogates. British law recognises the birth mother as a parent, and if she’s married, her husband is automatically considered the father. Therefore, George and Toby had to legally apply to become dads in the UK. In the US, where their surrogates live, their role as dads was recognised pre-birth.
Imme’s twins, Rufus and Sanne, often celebrate birthdays with Toby and George’s kids (Photo: Imme Ermgassen)George and Toby initially tried to find a UK-based surrogate with the help of Surrogacy UK, which they found “incredibly supportive”. There are “so many people looking for a surrogate” here – where it is altruistic and women cannot be paid to carry babies.
Eventually, they decided to use a US surrogate, where it is legal to pay. George found that once they’d had those financial conversations, it left everyone open to have “amazing emotional dialogue”. The family remain in touch with the surrogates, Ashley and Lizz, sending regular photos and videos.
“Someone said to us early on: put yourself in your child’s shoes,” Toby says. “Everyone focuses on the baby, but there’s a child and a person who has their whole life ahead of them. For us, that meant providing Benji and Frank with as much information as we can, having the conversations about why we did this and making it really easy for them to have relationships with everyone. Benji came with us to Chicago for Frank’s birth: he was able to see Frank in Lizz’s tummy and understand the special women who helped to bring him and Frank into the world.”
Imme’s twins similarly understand the relationship with their “cousins”. “They say, ‘You need an egg to make a kid, and George and Toby don’t have eggs,'” Imme says.
For Imme, she doesn’t see herself in her friends’ children. “With my kids, because I had twins, I could see their personalities side-by-side. Within the first two weeks, one was like a cat, one like a dog, and they still are. But with my friend’s kids, there are obviously physical similarities between my kids and theirs, but actually, I don’t notice similarities with me. They’re very much George and Toby’s kids.”
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George and Toby have found that their fears about family have receded as they parent. “I was worried how we’d feel about any child that wasn’t genetically ours,” George says. “That is something that so quickly disappears; this is your family that you’ve created and blood becomes insignificant.”
Toby is still anticipating someone may challenge them on becoming gay parents. “I’m still waiting for someone to have a problem,” Toby admits. “I have my argument ready. I saw someone on social media receive some hate recently and it draws you out of your bubble. There are people out there who believe we shouldn’t be parents but it doesn’t come into our space.”
They all feel grateful for their extended family, which, Imme explains, means their children have “a whole ecosystem of more love than a normal nuclear family.” She says the decision to donate her eggs was “easy”. “I don’t find it difficult or complicated, I find it amazing and beautiful.”
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