How I got here.

It's hard to know where to start.
I suppose the beginning would be a good place.

I'm 38 years old, soon to be 39.

I have 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. He, being 3 years my junior, wanted to wait. I accepted that. And I waited. But 7 years later when nothing changed I began to grow suspicious. After another 2 years of an agonizing separation process I found myself 37, pissed off and single.

I have just put into a paragraph the most horrendous experience of my life, one that nearly floored me, dragging myself through month after month in a world without hope. For a long time my anger was aimed at him, 'How could he do this to me when we had an agreement?’ He stole my best childbearing years and the most painful part was he didn't even understand the tragedy that had just dripped off him like an unconscious bead of sweat. He just moved swiftly on to his next lady, telling me he how much he loved me and how sorry he felt about the unfortunate situation he had left me in. The worst pain I felt was the aloneness, the aloneness of realizing that as much as he cared (aka guilt) and as much as your friends rally round and love you (and mine really did that, they really did) this is the crappiest thing that has ever happened to me and I didn't deserve it, and whilst I was completely justified in my feelings that a great injustice had occurred, at the end of the day it's just shit, and it's my shit and no one else can make it better.

So here's the bit when I get a bit cross with myself for ending up here and then fast forward to the bit where I 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 parties that I now feel I have to drag myself to, just incase I meet 'the one'.
Nowdays when I have one of the very rare flashes of anger that I sometimes have aimed at my x, they are always prompted by leaving some dreadful event 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 prior.
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 so much 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 sunk 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, solid 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 great 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.