Tag Archives: solo parenting

It’s just me — and that’s OK…

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Before I get to The Plan referenced in my last post, I just wanted to write a short post about something that I hadn’t really thought about as a positive until quite recently, and that’s the fact that I’m doing IVF on my own.

I mean, part of the reason why I started this blog in the first place was because it’s just me, doing this on my own (although back then when I was egg freezing I was only doing half of IVF on my own) and I kind of bought into the idea that it was shitter to be trying to conceive on my own than as part of a couple. But the minute I found out Continue reading →

A new vocabulary…

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The other day, I saw B, one of my dearest friends, and I was telling her about finding my donor. And, in passing, she called him “the father” — and I realised that’s not what I’m calling him. And I could have just not said anything, but a) I’m not very good at that, and b) for some reason it felt important to tell her that I was calling him “the donor” not “the father.”

And I realised that this is just the start. Continue reading →

A, B, C…

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So I’ve basically been thinking, and dating, and sleeping with unsuitable people, and thinking that something might become A THING — and then realising that it wasn’t going to. And I’ve been thinking some more about what life would be like if I had a child on my own, and thinking what life would be like if I never had children.

And I’ve been listening to friends with kids tell me I should “totally do it” and then listened to them, ten minutes later, blithely bitching about how shit it was when their bastard husbands worked late/were hungover/left them holding the baby, then seeming surprised when I gently pointed out that if I did “totally do it” I’d ALWAYS be left holding the baby. Continue reading →

So you want to be a single mum…?

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This is a really short post but I thought it was worth noting some of the advice that I’d been given by the great women that I wrote about in my last post.

One recommended a book called Choosing Single Motherhood which I started reading and then had to stop because it made me cry too much – partly because I realised that I am so NOT unique when it comes to all the things I’ve been worrying about, every single other woman who has thought about this has thought about exactly the same things. But also, partly, because I felt overwhelmed by it all at the time I was reading it, and the possibilities and problems and permutations just fucked with my head. So I stopped reading it but I will go back to it again as it does get rave reviews and I think I was just not really in the right frame of mind when I embarked upon it.

Both of them were also really positive about the Donor Conception Network, and specifically their Solo Mums section, and their workshops — which do sound really sensible and something I’ll definitely think about going to.

More useful info as it happens… Kind of.

It’s been a while…

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Bloody months actually – I’m sorry. I never promised regular updates but even by my own  — pretty low — standards, it’s been an abysmally long time since I last posted.

I’d love to tell you that there’s a good reason for that; that I’ve been swept up in some torrid love affair (although, given that I just checked the spelling of “torrid” and found that synonyms include “hot, sweltering, sultry, scorching, boiling, parching, sizzling, roasting, blazing, burning, blistering, tropical, stifling, suffocating, oppressive; dry, arid, barren, parched, waterless, desert”, I’m not sure I’d really want a love affair like that) or that I’d made some momentous decision Continue reading →

Bored…

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I’m bored of being single. I know this isn’t news. I know you’re probably bored of me being single. But this is where we are. Or at least it’s where I am and I wish I weren’t.

But you know where I’m most bored of being single? At weddings. I can only remember four weddings that I attended with a boyfriend. Four. Of the 30, 40, 50 weddings I’ve been to, four I recall Continue reading →

Self-pitying wallow…

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I don’t usually do this but someone who reads this blog emailed me the other day and said:

Hope you’re ok. You always sound really UP and high-kicking your way through life, but I never know.

And it got me thinking that this blog was meant to be about honesty, and was meant to be about “what it’s really like to freeze your eggs” and what it’s really like is not high kicks and being up the whole time. Even when the egg-freezing bit is over. The truth is that yes, I do have my shit together most of the time, because frankly what other alternative is there? But, just like anyone else, I have days, weeks, where I just want to crawl into my bed and cry about how unfair life is. And most of the time I don’t write about that sort of thing – I don’t think it’s particularly helpful, or informative. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe sometimes reading that someone is Continue reading →

The Daily Mail and donor sperm. It’s all just clickbait. BUT…

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Let’s get one thing straight, you don’t become the second biggest selling newspaper in England and the most-read news site in the world by publishing stuff that everyone agrees with. You do it by publishing stuff with provocative headlines that make people angry, or upset, or want to voice an opinion. I know how this works. You know how this works, but that doesn’t stop us from having those reactions – it’s a gut reaction.

So even though I know all that, I couldn’t help but feel a bit “oh fuck”ish when I read the headline:

“How would YOU feel to find you are a sperm donor’s child? These women say it shattered their lives” on the Daily Mail website today.

Because although I know that the Daily Mail Continue reading →