Just over a year after their Las Vegas wedding, Candice Huffine and Shelly Lynch-Sparks are expecting their first child together—a girl.
Amidst their joy, the model and interior designer must now reckon with welcoming their daughter against the backdrop of a newly elected government that poses a direct threat to the LGBTQ+ community and women’s reproductive rights. “We are really emotional, wondering what this looks like for our future,” Huffine says. “We are bringing a little girl into this world too. I want the best for all of us, for our community, and I want the best for her future.” But in the darkness, they are finding comfort in their community. “A lot of people have reached out to us—which has been really great—to even say, I love you. I’m here for you. This is shitty,” Lynch-Sparks says. “If there is a bright spot, it’s that you switch gears to figure out how you’re all going to rally around each other and support each other in this time,” Huffine adds. “So if there’s anything to look forward to in the upcoming years, it would be that we all bring each other in so much closer and love each other and protect each other. That’s all that we can try to do and be hopeful.”
Shannen Fusco
Around three years ago, when the duo’s 15-year friendship took a turn for the romantic, Lynch-Sparks made it clear to Huffine that, in her mind, a future together would include children. Huffine, who describes herself as an in-the-moment thinker, found it a challenge to look beyond the immediate. “I don’t even know what’s going on through the end of this year. She wanted me to look at the whole of our life,” Huffine says. Lynch-Sparks offered her time to think on it. “I thought, okay, she’ll come back to me tomorrow. It was three weeks,” Lynch-Sparks recalls. “She came back and she was like, ‘I thought about this a lot. Let’s do this.’ And that was the start.”
From there, the two underwent the grueling IVF process, each of them freezing their eggs. While Lynch-Sparks described the preparation for egg retrieval as “an experience in itself,” the two were heartened by the support they found. “We had a lot of friends to lean on who had gone down the same road—some LGBT and some heterosexual—who were all in the same boat with fertility, creating embryos, and IVF. We had people that we could ask questions to, which was really important,” Huffine says.
The couple decided to have fun with the process, each of them making presentations to state their case for their preferred sperm donors. “We keep saying it’s like Hinge,” Lynch-Sparks says, “but way more high-stakes.”
After the eggs were fertilized, they decided that the best course of action was for Lynch-Sparks to carry one of Huffine’s embryos, so that both of them would have an important connection to their baby. But there was another factor involved. The two, both now 40, froze their eggs at 37. “Where we are with age was also the defining factor. When you make embryos the number of what you have to implant goes down,” she adds. “We started Candice’s eggs because her egg count was a little bit lower than mine, just in case we wanted to go through another round of an egg retrieval—which we didn’t.”
For Huffine, the process proved enlightening—something she is trying to share with as many people as she can, especially as reproductive rights come under attack. “A lot of our girlfriends—whether they’re in a relationship or not, queer or straight—have been freezing their eggs for protective measures for themselves, because they don’t know if they want to have a child right at this moment and they would like the option,” she says. “In getting this information and seeing how everything works out with retrieval and freezing and thawing, and what you’re left to work with, I’ve been really vocal in sharing like, if you need to do another round, do it now, so there are no surprises.”
Shannen Fusco
Although the family planning process—especially for queer couples—is long, expensive, and labor-intensive (“So much paperwork,” Lynch-Sparks says), the pair knows it’s just another way to express to their daughter how loved she is. “I think the most beautiful part about this kind of family planning, especially in a same-sex relationship, is that it is a plan,” Huffine says. “It’s a plan that you want to make for your future and for bringing life into this world, and there’s a lot of work that goes into it.”
With a due date of January 2025, Huffine and Lynch-Sparks will be welcoming their daughter into the world in uncertain times. But for the couple, loud, proud queer love is an act of resistance all on its own. “We have to celebrate,” Lynch-Sparks says. “That’s all you can do. Share queer joy,” Huffine adds. “And we’re not hiding, no matter what the country plans to do.” The first plan of action? “We’re going to have a big amazing gay celebration for her baby shower with drag queens and music and fun,” Huffine says. “The thing that we can keep doing is celebrating love.”
