It might seem improbable that a couple would have a baby together before even meeting, but for Aminah Hart and Scott Anderson, that’s exactly how it happened.
In 2011, newly single advertising executive Aminah Hart was grieving two young sons she lost to a rare genetic disorder known as X-linked myotubular myopathy. The rare condition mainly affects boys as it is passed on to 50 per cent of males by the mother, who is a carrier.
She hadn’t yet given up on her dream of motherhood though, and decided to turn to IVF for one last shot at becoming a mum. The option of IVF had only been opened to single women the year before, after legislative changes in the Victorian parliament.
The usually banned process of gender selection was open to Aminah – as the gene she carries affects only males – but she chose instead to “leave the gender up to the gods” because the process also runs the risk of destroying the embryo.
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Speaking to the ABC’s Australian Story in a revealing interview, Aminah said she cried with relief when she found out she was pregnant with a baby girl. In 2012 she welcomed a healthy Leila into the world. The first thing she noticed though, was her baby’s blonde hairline.
“I thought, ‘I can’t have a blonde baby, I’m a black woman. Black women don’t have blonde babies!’.”
Never having had the chance to know her own father, curiosity about the blonde-haired donor and father of Leila continued to grow for Aminah, and she requested to make contact with him via the donor-recipient voluntary register.
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The Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA) states, “donors can only donate on the basis they are not anonymous”. In spite of this, donor offspring and their parents aren’t usually legally entitled to this information until they turn 18.
In the case of donor Scott Anderson though – a twice-divorced father of four – he had ticked the box on his donor form giving consent for recipients and offspring to contact him before turning 18. Nonetheless, he admitted that he hadn’t expected to hear anything until he was “elderly”.
So when Aminah’s email – accompanied by pictures of baby Leila – arrived in his inbox, Scott “didn’t know what to think, it didn’t seem kind of real”.
He agreed to meeting Aminah when Leila was just one.
“I was nervous and tentative but the rapport was really easy,” Aminah said. “The first thing for me was ‘phew, he’s a nice guy’.”
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Scott said he could see a lot of his sons’ features in the face of baby Leila, and as the pair got along so well, they continued to see more of each other. Soon, their growing relationship caused conflict between Scott and his partner, and it led to their break-up.
Scott, meanwhile said: “Looking at Leila… and, you know she’s gorgeous isn’t she, you know so… It’s hard to describe, but it was good, yeah, it was really nice.”
“To be honest I thought she was totally out of my league for a start.”
Not long after though, the pair began a romantic relationship.
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Aminah had come from the high-powered world of advertising in the city, and Scott was a farmer from the bush, but his differences only made Aminah more intrigued.
“I don’t have a lot of experience with farmers and so I was really intrigued and interested in his life. You know, I’m a city girl, he’s a country boy. So there wasn’t kind of, you know, any common ground, so I had a lot to learn about him I guess,” she said.
Now the pair have been together for over 12 months, and although Aminah still lives in Melbourne, with Scott on a cattle farm near Phillip Island, they commute to spend time together and manage to co-habit and co-parent most days of the week.
“I can’t quite believe my luck to be honest, “ Aminah said. “I mean he’s such a loving partner and he’s such an amazing dad and who, who gets that? Who gets to have that from the kind of ruins of what went before? I don’t know. It feels amazing.”
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