When Karina Rincon and her wife Kelly Mesa decided to have a baby together, they wanted to double their chances.
Unable to afford treatment at a fertility clinic, they used £72 home insemination kits and found a donor online but decided to both try to get pregnant at the same time as they knew the chances of having a baby were slim.
But amazingly, both women conceived and they ended up giving birth just three days apart in July last year. Now, they describe their son Leo and daughter Sophie as ‘almost twins’. Karina, who lives in Los Angeles, California, said: ‘I’m really glad we didn’t go into labour at the same time.
‘That was a worry of ours, but thankfully, being three days apart meant that I could be there when Leo was born and Kelly could when Sophie was. ‘People told us that we would kill each other being two pregnant women in the same house, with all those hormones flying around but, actually, it was great to go through this with the love of my life, who completely understood how I was feeling.’ Kelly, 31, and Karina, 32, met at school in Venezula, South America before moving to the US after graduation. They lived separately in lots of different places but eventually reconnected when they were both living in Miami, Florida and working as biomedical engineers in 2013.
They had both been dating men but realised they had feelings for each other and decided to start a romantic relationship. Karina said: ‘Whenever I’d hear Kelly talking about boyfriends, I’d feel almost jealous and started to realise that it was because I had romantic feelings for her.
‘She moved around a lot but, eventually, we found ourselves in the same city when we both moved to Miami. I was so nervous, as I had no idea how she would take it, but I had to tell her how I felt. Thankfully, she felt the same.’ For the first few years of their relationship, Kelly and Karina kept their love secret from their families – eventually coming out in 2017, just before marrying.
Karina added: ‘Not all of our loved ones approved. Coming out as a process is very hard. You have to come out to yourself first, accept who you are and understand that you aren’t doing anything wrong. ‘As I’d only ever dated men before Kelly, some people thought it was a phase, but it wasn’t.’ ‘Part of why we wanted to get married was to formalise our relationship and show the world that we were serious about one another.’ After they married in September 2017, they decided to start a family but knew they couldn’t afford the thousands required at a fertility clinic. ‘Growing up, I hadn’t thought I wanted children,’ Kelly explained. ‘I wanted to focus on my career and studying instead.
But Karina changed all that. She has always wanted to be a mother, and I knew she’d make a fantastic one. My love for her changed my mind.’ In early 2018, they discovered a company online that offered at-home artificial insemination kits for just $89 (£72).
Kelly said: ‘Some of the clinics we looked at would have cost thousands and thousands – and that was just to find the donor. Then, there’d be all the costs of insemination, medication, doctors’ appointments and so on. ‘The awkwardness of it all was also a component. Being able to be at home with a DIY kit seemed less invasive.’ When it came to choosing a sperm donor, they wanted to know as much as possible about the person so they found an online network called CoParents.com, which matches couples looking to start a family with potential donors. As registration on the site is free – though users do also have the option of paying for members-only access – it helped get around the issue of budget. They set up a profile explaining what they wanted and soon had a full inbox.
Karina said: ‘Across the course of three months, we filtered the responses down to around 15 which we liked the sound of. ‘Then we got to know them, sending questionnaires about their family history and genetics, and also what their motivation was for wanting to help was. ‘We wanted somebody truly altruistic, but unfortunately not everybody out there is genuine. ‘We narrowed it further and further down until there were just two donors. We would joke that it was like the reality show The Bachelor.’ Kelly and Karina then met the remaining two potential donors in person – neither of whom asked for money – before settling on their final decision in October 2018.
After all three parties took part in genetic screening – the results of which did not bring up anything of concern – it was time to start trying. Kelly had just been offered a new job in Los Angeles, California and they decided to both try at the same time as moving meant leaving their sperm donor behind in Washington. Karina went first, followed by Kelly the next day, never imagining that both attempts would be successful.
Shortly afterwards, Karina went for a blood test, arranged as part of a health MOT just before they moved. ‘The results seemed to show that I wasn’t pregnant, so we thought, “That’s okay. Let’s just wait and see what happens with Kelly,”‘ she said. ‘Days later, in our tiny new apartment in Los Angeles, we got a test for Kelly to take. Two lines appeared, but they were so faint that we didn’t know what they meant. ‘I said to her, ‘My blood test has shown I’m not pregnant, so why don’t I take a test, too, as a control?’ ‘But when I did, mine looked the same – two little lines.’ For clarification, Kelly and Karina sent a photo of the tests to a nurse friend – who replied saying she thought they were both pregnant.
Karina added: ‘We took some more tests which confirmed it. We were both expecting, and around four weeks along. ‘We couldn’t believe it – what were the chances? ‘The reason my blood test hadn’t shown anything was because it was too early, so the levels of hormones in my body weren’t high enough.’ It meant they navigated their pregnancies together right until the end. Karina added: ‘We both understood how the other was feeling. It was nothing like it would have been if we’d had babies with men, where one of us wouldn’t be facing the limitations and challenges of pregnancy. ‘The only difficult thing was sharing a bed with two ginormous bellies and both of us wanting to pee every five minutes.’ Leo arrived first, weighing 6lb 12oz, with Kelly giving birth on July 7, 2019. Just three days later, Karina went into labour, welcoming little 7lb 11oz Sophie into the world.
Now, the pair are enjoying their life as a family of four and say they are utterly in love with their children. By sharing their extraordinary love story, they want to give hope to other couples for whom traditional conception is not an option, and raise awareness of the many different paths to parenthood. Kelly concluded: ‘My advice to other couples would be to be systematic. Think about what you want, and what will and won’t work for you.’ Karina added: ‘My advice is to be patient. I still can’t quite believe the way things all happened for us, but don’t give up hope.’
