So, as you might have guessed from my previous post, it’s full steam ahead, all guns blazing, let’s try and get pregnant on my own. Project Faberge is GO. Well, sort of. I’ve booked the appointment to talk to my consultant about IUI, IVF, donors and all that, and I’ve joined the Donor Conception Network, and I’m all set to work out the protocol, pick my donor and all that. But I’m not planning on actually starting the process until after Christmas.

I know, I KNOW. This sounds horribly like more procrastination, and I don’t think there’s ever a good time to try to get pregnant (or to freeze your eggs, as evidenced by me going to my best friend’s wedding stone cold sober with a syringeful of hormones) but let me explain:

I’m spending Christmas with my parents.

My parents still don’t know I’ve frozen my eggs, and I’m certainly not telling them that I’m planning on trying for a baby on my own. I’ve seen friends go through it — everyone trying not to notice, but really clearly clocking, whether or not you’re drinking / eating mayonnaise / eating raw fish etc etc etc — NOBODY needs to know about my menstrual cycle but me, thanks very much, and my parents sure as hell don’t.

Throughout the year I probably spend no more than eight hours at a time with my parents. I can get away with not drinking, or being a bit off colour on random days throughout the year — I could be driving, or doing some crazy fitness thing, or trying a new health kick, or whatever, most of the time, it doesn’t matter. But at Christmas it does. Christmas in my house isn’t just a foodfest, it’s a boozefest, and if I’m not drinking, It Will Be Noticed.

And I don’t even know if they’ll assume I’m not drinking because I’m trying to get pregnant, but they might, although they probably wouldn’t ask me outright about it. More likely, they will think that I’m ill, that there’s something seriously wrong, and I’m not telling them, and they will worry.

If I tell them I’m trying to have a child on my own, they will also worry. I’m not concerned they won’t be supportive, I’m sure they will, but they will still worry. They will go through all the worries that I’ve already had to go through — will she be OK on her own? How will she juggle work and a child on her own? Will she be able to do it financially? Will the child be scarred by not knowing its father? How does she know that the donor is legit and not a schizophrenic like that one in America? What will she do when the baby gets ill? And on, and on, and on, and on.

And some of those questions, I have answers to, and some of them I’m just ignoring because I think that I’ll cross bridges when I come to them, and take things one step at a time, and I’m just relying on the fact that I’m the sort of person that generally Gets Shit Done. And, that, as my friend K put it “You’re quite a happy person, I think whatever happens, you’ll make it work.”

If I were relying on my parents for financial or emotional or practical help to do this, then yes, I should probably have a chat with them about it first, but as I’m working on a worst case scenario of it being just me, I kind of think that, at the age of nearly 40, it’s not really any of their business.

And the thing is, it might not ever be any of their business — I might try multiple cycles of IUI and IVF and other weird acronyms and Never Get Pregnant. I might try multiple cycles of IUI and IVF and other weird acronyms and get pregnant and miscarry. So why put my parents through worrying about all of those questions, if it might not EVER be something they need to worry about?

(Obviously I’m not just being considerate, I don’t want to have to deal with their reaction to something that might not ever happen.)