(All excerpts are from my diary ‘Single and not going to miss the baby boat’)
07 July 2008
I had been single for 2 years, after ending a relatively happy 8-year relationship with man who promised me that we would have babies ‘one day’. I had been very clear about the fact I wanted children when we were falling in love, I was in my late 20’s and starting to consider these things. Being 3 years my junior he wanted to wait. I accepted that. And I waited. But 8 years later when nothing changed I began to grow suspicious. After another year of an agonizing separation process I found myself 37, pissed off and single.
I spent the next year marinating in blame and self pity and justifiably so. Finally I get cross with myself for ending up in this predicament and now we can fast forward to the bit where I actually decide take some responsibility for myself.
At this point I have to credit my sister with something. Christmas present 2007, a book called ‘Knock yourself up’. She gave it to me concerned that she may be offending me (the sub text being, you are getting on and clearly not managing to find another boyfriend, so how about considering ‘plan b’) but she cunningly covered her tracks by buying herself a copy as well. How she pulled that one off, given that she is happily married to a man desperate to have kids, is a credit to her. I read a couple of chapters, wanted to vomit, had a sleepless night, cried and bit and gave the book away in disgust.
But the seed was sown.
And I didn’t even know it.
A couple of months later, I tell myself that I just want a fertility MOT, I want to be in good shape when I meet the father of my child at one of the many awful social events that I now feel I have to drag myself to, just in case I meet ‘the one’. Nowadays when I have one of the very rare flashes of anger that I sometimes have aimed at my ex, they are always prompted by leaving some dreadful ‘do’ that I would never have gone to had I not been single. A mixture of the mild disappointment at leaving yet another party, having fancied no one, and also of realizing it was written like a book before you left your cosy home a few hours earlier.
It’s humiliating.
So my fertility tests all come back positive.
Now what?
My doctor says that he’s pleased to see a woman of my age, that all too often single women don’t start to worry about these issues until their early 40’s, by which time it’s harder to help them. I explain that I only want to know I’m in ‘good working order’.
But now the seed has sprouted.
I’m asking myself why would I wait until I’m 40+ (and let’s face it a year goes mightily quick) and it’s harder to conceive? I started to look at sperm donor sites and softly, softly, gently, gently the concept sinks into my soul.
In fact it was a quick transition and a wonderful one. The hardest part was letting go of the romantic dream, but reality once faced is so much less scary. (How I wish I could remember that). And what arrived in its place was beautiful. For the first time in years I took hold of the reins and I was in charge of my happiness. If what I want is a baby then I can try for one. I don’t have to be looking for the father of my child in a desperate way, a way in which I’d surely accept less then I should.
At this point I want to express that I am the product of a single parent upbringing, unusually it was my father that parented me. He did a good job but I suffered greatly. I don’t take lightly the decision to have a child alone. I realise that it is selfish but I think I will be a good mother. I have a solid support system of friends and I am financially independent. I truly believe that I will one day meet a good man and fall in love but it may not be in time for me to have a baby, and I’m not prepared to sacrifice myself to the universe in that way. So I’m making the informed, and very considered, act of trying for a baby alone, by donor insemination.
And I’m really excited about it.