Francesca Farago and her fiancé, Jesse Sullivan, knew they wanted to start a family together — and how — on their second date.
The Netflix reality star-turned-influencer, who hails from Canada, and the trans activist from Orange County, Calif., met in 2021, felt an “instant connection” and began their relationship.
“We’d known each other for, like, two months, and we were driving down a mountain [in Canada], and we were talking about how we would conceive our future children,” Farago, 29, told Page Six in an exclusive interview alongside Sullivan, 34.
“It was one of our really early-on conversations. And the way that we spoke about it in that car is the way we actually ended up doing it, which is crazy.”
The pair got engaged via Sullivan’s “best, biggest proposal” in late April with the intention of tying the knot in May 2024.
12
But after becoming overwhelmed by the “money and effort and stress” of preparing for their big day — coupled with getting a “bad vibe” from their planner — they decided to discuss switching up their timeline.
The couple shared with us what their specific journey to parenthood entails, and according to Sullivan — who came out as trans in 2019 — undergoing in vitro fertilization was “a lot more mentally and physically taxing than [either of them] realized.”
In IVF,an egg isfertilizedby sperm outside the body to create an embryo. The embryo is then implanted in a uterus.
12
Farago told us she and Sullivan had “the exact same process” with some differing symptoms.
“You start off with some appointments, some ultrasounds, some blood work,” the Farago the Label owner explained, “and then you go on hormones for 10 to 12 days. So every day, you inject a certain amount of hormones. [Jesse] had to inject a lot because he didn’t have as many eggs.”
Sullivan, who has “been on testosterone for four years,” chose to stop amid his IVF injections because “he wanted to give himself the best chance.”
12
“While you’re doing this for the 10-, 12-day span, you go in for an ultrasound and blood work every other day so they can track how your eggs are developing,” Farago shared.
“And then once your eggs are ready and ripe, they give you a shot to drop the eggs. … Then you go in for surgery, and they take all the eggs out.”
Farago and Sullivan — who had already chosen their sperm donor — told us they were able to create a total of 18 embryos: 15 using the former’s eggs and three using the latter’s, all of which have been sent off for genetic testing, which will determine their in-utero viability.
12
Though they feel “lucky” they did not have to undergo multiple rounds of injections, like many people who experience fertility issues, the process was still quite taxing.
“It’s extremely hard on your mental health. You’re freaking out, you feel terrible, you’re tired, you’re bloated, you feel depressed in a way,” Farago recalled.
Since Sullivan — who underwent top surgery in 2022 — has “dealt with the ups and downs of hormones” for several years, he was somewhat “prepared” to “feel like it’s kind of the end of the world.”
12
“Being trans does require a lot of strength, especially in this political climate. So just going into these things, I think I had a lot of strength and understanding of what this was and that there was this end goal that was so worth it, even if it was going to get hard,” he said.
“And I did warn [Francesca] about that. I was like, ‘You know, this might get really, really hard for me.’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ And she was right there the whole time.”
Farago, who will be carrying, told us she was unable to do a “fresh embryo transfer” immediately after her egg retrieval because she “had a bad reaction to the IVF.”
12
The plan is to try again in January using one of her embryos first and one of Sullivan’s for their second.
In their ideal world, they would have a total of five children: four together in addition to Sullivan’s 15-year-old, Arlo.
“People are always like, ‘Are you sure?'” Sullivan told us. “I’m like, ‘If anyone’s sure, it’s me, because I had to do it single and as a teenager, and I still want more kids.”
12
Farago and Sullivan admitted that their IVF experience has been “mostly joyful” thanks in large part to the clinic they chose, which has “rainbow flags and trans flags” displayed throughout the facility.
Sullivan, specifically, noted that it made him feel “safe.”
“They were just so careful with me. They knew it was a very difficult process as a trans man to go into those situations that are considered female and for women, and they were just so sensitive to me,” he said, acknowledging that the majority of queer couples don’t get the same experience due to “discrimination” and a lack of “research.”
12
Though many of those watching the twosome’s road to parenthood via Instagram and TikTok are rooting for them, they said they still receive regular criticism and threats.
“You cannot be a trans person in this world and not get hate for almost everything,” Sullivan explained, adding that the ante has been upped since he and Farago revealed they were “creating a family.”
In August, Sullivan shared photos showing him injecting himself with hormones, which he captioned in part, “Real men do IVF.”
12
“The point of that was A) to call myself a real man because I knew the first thing people were going to say is, ‘Yeah, see, you’re doing IVF because you’re a woman,'” he told us. “And then the second thing was to show people that men do do IVF. Like, if you actually do your research, cis[gender] men do IVF all the time.”
Though Sullivan’s goal was to “break those stereotypes and open people’s minds,” he said that “all it did was create the opposite.”
“I have never gotten more hate on anything ever on social media than that post,” he confessed. “It’s still going off to this day.”
12
His fiancée pointed out that she evoked a similar reaction after captioning a recent upload of the duo, “mother & father.”
“I don’t think people are fully ready to really understand this as something more fluid,” Sullivan explained of the resistance with which they’ve been met.
“I think it’s very rigid. I think it’s boxed in. And I think when you try to make gender and sexuality fluid, they cannot comprehend it, and they cannot handle it.”
12
The pair told us they also receive plenty of hate for having and supporting a non-binary kid.
“I get full-blown death threats, like, telling me I should un-alive myself, telling me I’m the cancer of society,” Sullivan revealed, as Farago added, “People are like, ‘We feel so bad for your future children. Someone call CPS.’ … They’re saying that we’re abusing and mutilating children because we let Arlo dress how they want to dress. It’s crazy.”
For more Page Six you love…
- Listen to our weekly “We Hear” podcast
- Shop our exclusive merch
Sullivan and Farago told us they have ongoing conversations as a family about how to navigate the negativity. But ultimately, they feel passionately about being their authentic selves and sharing that publicly.
“It’s something that I guess is the price we pay as a family who does put these things out in the open,” Sullivan explained.
12
“But I’ve always told Arlo since they were little, ‘As long as we can handle it as a family, I never want to stop. I never want to give in because of those haters, because there’s so many young people out there that need people like me — representation — because I didn’t have it growing up.'”
He added, “I want young people out there to see someone like me — happy and successful and getting married and having kids — and be like, ‘I can have that, too.’
“So although these things are really hard for us as a family,” he noted, “I really do think there’s a bigger picture here that we have to focus on.”
