Esther Robinson - David and Me - My path to solo motherhood

My path to solo motherhood

Esther Robinson

Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.

HarperTrueLife

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First published by HarperTrueLife 2015

FIRST EDITION

Text © Esther Robinson 2015

Cover photo © Shutterstock 2015

Cover layout © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015

A catalogue record of this book isavailable from the British Library

Esther Robinson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780008100131

Version 2015-03-25

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For my beautiful baby boy - my heart sings for you.

May you have 'courage equal to desire'.

‘Hope is hearing the melody of the future. Faith is to dance it.’

Rubem Alves, Tomorrow's Child, SCM Press (1972)

Contents

Cover

Title Page David and Me My path to solo motherhood Esther Robinson

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Chapter 1: Deciding moments

Chapter 2: Dipping a toe

Chapter 3: A new clinic

Chapter 4: IVF

Chapter 5: The viability scans

Chapter 6: Loss and learning

Chapter 7: An Athens odyssey

Chapter 8: A frozen embryo transfer

Chapter 9: Pregnancy

Chapter 10: Birth

Afterword

Sources of advice and support

Acknowledgements

Why not try …

Why not try …

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About the Publisher

This is the very beginning of the story of my life with my son. In some ways it is an unconventional one; a tale of choosing solo motherhood, with all its painful and joyful twists and turns. But at its heart it simply recounts a mother’s love for her child; a love that has been replicated throughout time all over the world.

At the time of writing, the number of women seeking to be solo mums by choice is increasing significantly, and they are making the decision at an earlier stage of their lives than many have in the past. I have known of women in their twenties – as well as thirties and forties – who have acted on their desire to become solo mums and are currently pursuing treatment or already cradling their babes. Some have gone back for more and are the proud mummies of two or three (and possibly more) children.

If you are considering the solo route to motherhood, I hope my story answers some questions and, ultimately, inspires you on your journey. For others, may this simply be a tale from one of the many routes to motherhood that exist today.

‘Jump or stay in the boat.’

Margaret Stohl, Beautiful Darkness

I don’t ever recall deciding that I wanted to be a mother. I always believed that motherhood would be an inevitable part of my life, so I looked forward to it and planned for it. I chose names in idle moments and designed first-birthday cakes in my mind. I’d be a mum who would knit and make bunting and smother the walls in my children’s works of art.

Yet despite this powerful maternal instinct, I didn’t target potential husbands while at university or plan a wedding on graduation as I had seen some women do. And when friends and family started to have children, I loved to welcome their little bundles, often making gifts in the knowledge that, one day, I would be making clothes and toys for my own little ones. I’d have five, I always thought. It was an adventure and a challenge that lay before me. It was simply a matter of when , not if .

Despite all these expectations of motherhood, greatly bolstered by others’ expectations that I would have a large family (my own family used to say I’d have ‘a cottage in the country, a kitchen full of children, a cat and a dog and a gingham cloth on the table’), I didn’t ever give myself a deadline by which I should start producing as so many of my friends and acquaintances had done. Nature could take its time. And when some friends started to confess that they too wished they had waited, my sense of urgency retreated further. Nothing was to be gained from setting deadlines and forcing a fit where perhaps there was none.

Yet time passed and increasingly I was being reminded that I was gambling away my chances of motherhood with every birthday I celebrated. As I turned 30, the media kicked up a frenzy about foolhardy women not realising that by wasting time in the workplace or waiting for a good relationship with someone they loved and respected, they were effectively making their chances of being mothers negligible once they reached the big 3-0. At 35 – well, you may as well give up and resign yourself to childlessness forever, so the media narrative goes. Any potential role models for older mums had typically been convinced to appear in ‘I should have done it sooner’ fillers for the tabloids. The clear message was: get married – to anyone – and reproduce or else. It’s an absurd argument, particularly given what we know now about reproduction, but it’s one that some corners of the media are particularly keen on peddling.

Yet for me, and several of my friends, not being married was far preferable to being in the wrong relationship. I didn’t want to make a partner fit, or be made to fit myself, and I was happy to be unmarried. But the desire for motherhood never diminished, and once I hit 38 I decided to seriously look into being a solo mum by choice. I had seen enough of my friends struggle through divorces and custody arrangements to squash any doubts about solo motherhood being a positive choice, but I had no idea how to go about it.