It all happened so quickly. For a long time, I didn’t want to be a mother. My partner, Vicky, had a child with a previous partner, and she always talked about having more children, but I didn’t think that it was for me. Things changed, we started talking seriously about it and imagining what it would be like. We had our first doctor’s appointment in April 2018. By September, Vicky was pregnant and in June 2019, Gaël was born.
Having a child is a really good feeling. They really need you: you can’t just say that you don’t have time, you have to be there. Even though I wasn’t the one who gave birth, being a mother felt very natural to me, which I wasn’t expecting. During the first few months, he would wake up every hour at night: I would be the one to get up and check on him. Suddenly, I didn’t feel tired, I just didn’t have the need for sleep. When Gaël was born, the law had just changed in Spain to allow co-parents to have 12 weeks parental leave. Colt HR helped me with the paperwork for this as well as other things, like childcare vouchers, and I felt really supported. Colt has now made parental leave more inclusive for all globally.
It’s fine to not want to talk openly about being LGBTQ+ if you’re shy, but don’t not do it because you’re afraid of others’ reactions. I’m naturally quite shy, but the Pride Matters network at Colt has made it really easy to raise awareness, it’s fantastic. This year for Pride month, I’m making a video as part of Colt’s internal e-Pride, to talk about my experiences as an LGBTQ+ parent. We want to get to a point where two women being married and having a child together is normalised.
Raquel Gabaldà Fernández | Lead Voice Engineer | Barcelona
