OPINION:
I am 41, eight months pregnant with my first child and in the final stages of preparation. If by final preparation you mean cot not bought, bag not packed, still juggling working full time with trying to buy a house. Despite the ever-expanding bump straining the fabric of my dress, it’s hard to believe it’s real after so much disappointment and trauma.
I honestly gave up believing I would be here. In fact, in November 2021, I wrote a piece for The Telegraph lamenting the loss of my last childbearing years to Covid. Then it seemed hopeless. After years of failed dating and toying with the idea of sperm banks I was coming to terms with a child-free life. But then Eddie agreed to have a child with me: Eddie, my gay best friend.
I am one of a growing number of women in the UK – over a million of us – between the ages of 35 and 45 classed as “not living in a couple and never married” (Office of National Statistics). It’s impossible to get to the bottom of the number of us really having children – at-home insemination can’t be tracked, and there’s complicated and discriminatory legislation. It means it’s easier and cheaper to do as Eddie and I have done, and say you are a couple. The latest data from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) shows that the number of IVF cycles completed by single women doubled between 2009 to 2019.
At 2 per cent of all IVF cycles, it’s still a tiny amount, but anecdotal evidence suggests the true number is much higher. Mel Johnson, a solo motherhood coach and founder of The Stork and I, a network for single women who want to be mothers, has noticed a huge increase in people turning to her for support. “When I embarked on my solo motherhood journey I didn’t know anyone else going through it. Now I’ve coached hundreds of women and every month more women contact me than the month before.”
While being single isn’t exactly a choice, it’s something I’ve learned to embrace. I’ve lived, loved, danced and laughed. And, boy, I’ve dated. From absolute charmers to charisma-free car crashes, I’ve taken a non-discriminatory approach. I’ve had one-night stands and been stood up and stood down – and had my heart broken and broken hearts. When I completed all levels of Tinder, Bumble, Hinge and every other dating app you can think of, I dated women too. Nothing clicked. Everyone swiped. And after a particularly bleak encounter with a slinky Egyptian doctor left me sobbing into some bins in Hackney, I abandoned the Prince Charming fantasy we are schooled in from birth. No one, I discovered, is coming to the rescue.
So I stopped dating and threw myself into living. But then, Covid. With no work and a period of enforced reflection, I was made to look inwards. And there I found a child-shaped hole. For a while, I’d carried an invisible ghost-child on my hip, her leg knocking against mine. Humans have a boundless capacity for love. My love was running over. My ghost child haunted me. I wanted a baby.
Out of curiosity, I signed up for a site where you can meet potential donors or co-parents. Most of my messages were from men who offered “natural insemination only” and “would drive to deliver”. I cried over wine. I made a free account on Cryos International – the world’s largest sperm bank, where prices for sperm begin at US$110 (NZ$179). I paid an additional US$250 to see donors’ “extended profiles”. Here, you can see their baby pictures and read personal messages, as well as listen to voice recordings, favouring certain people with a red heart icon. I was back to swiping again. It didn’t feel like progress.
While writing my 2021 article, deep in my Covid grief for the child I’d never have, one woman I interviewed said, “I’m having a baby with the wrong person. It gives me sleepless nights. Honestly, it would be better to do it by yourself. Better still, if you have a suitable gay friend, ask him! Imagine being able to bring a child into the world in a relationship based on understanding, friendship and trust.”
And so I asked my friend, Eddie. I’ve known him and his partner for 20 years. They are a similar age to me – we met working in the same restaurant in Edinburgh while I was a student there. We’d never talked about children together and looking back I’m amazed at how brave and blunt I was. “I want to have a baby,” I wrote in an email. “And I wondered if you wanted to be the father? It’s really important to me that my child has an origin story and I would like someone to share the experience with. I am asking you because I love you, we share the same values and I think you’d be a great dad. But don’t be scared to say no.”
Extreme butterflies kept me awake for three nights. Then he replied. “Jack and I have already been talking about a new direction for our life with children. But we felt that while a child can get full love and care from two male parents, it’s more fulfilling to be a supporting father to a child that has the love of their mother. I would love to be part of your life decision and want to be involved in any possible way. I will support whatever you need from the start.”
I danced around my living room with glee. Our initial conversations were around how involved Eddie would be, and how Jack would fit in. We agreed from the beginning that I would be the main caregiver, able to make day-to-day decisions when they weren’t around, but that as they wanted to be active co-parents Eddie would be named on the birth certificate as father, which confers parental rights and responsibilities. As this also affects Jack, all three of us should have a say, but so I didn’t get outvoted we’d see ourselves as two units with equal weight, as in “Ellie” (me) and “Eddie and Jack” meaning they had to be aligned on important decisions.
It sounds ludicrously idealistic, but we worked on separate manifestos for the future to check we were on the same page, then went on holiday where in between hiking, eating, swimming and an unfortunate incident where Eddie had to kill an injured cat, we spent time going over a co-parenting document downloaded from the internet. There is no legal basis to these kinds of agreements, but it forced us to focus on the details, some of them skin-pricklingly awkward – living arrangements, finances, childcare, schools, life insurance, wills – and it felt like a good starting place.
Before we started IVF I told my family. My dad is a retired naval officer who once lamented that I hadn’t married an ambassador – been one, I corrected him – but a big smile broke across his face and he said, “you’re going to be the most marvellous mum”. My own mum was delighted, but also worried for me. The emotional toll of IVF is hard to watch. She had a front-row seat. She’s quietly supportive too. The last time I went home there was a pushchair that she’d found in a charity shop, waiting patiently for the baby.
For a year I injected myself with hormones derived from human urine and Chinese hamster ovary cells, in the hope of conceiving a child. At 40, I knew that the odds were against me, but I reasoned they were just stats and not reflective of my situation. Most women seeking fertility treatment have fertility problems, whereas I was having IVF because my chosen co-parent was gay.
So now, eight months on, I can feel the baby not just flutter inside me, but deliver a good blow. Eddie and Jack and I are trying to buy a house together, one that will be a stable, loving home for the child (the technical term for this approach to co-parenting is a “nest”). News that our mortgage fell through left me in tears. Great big, wracking sobs for a full day. The idea that we might all be stuck in my two-bedroom flat for the first year gives me the horrors. It’s been my kingdom for so long I can’t imagine it cramped with three adults and a baby. I worry that we won’t get on, and feel sad there won’t be room for my mum or sister to stay.
But this living arrangement won’t be forever. We have chosen it so the boys can bond as much as possible with the baby in the first year. I’m looking forward to their support, humour and friendship, and hope that any problems we face now will be balanced later when they have a strong, easy and independent relationship with the child. In the future we’ll revert to a more traditional co-parenting relationship that gives room for us as individuals. For now it’s all about what’s best for the baby.
In case I’ve sugar-coated any of this, I’ll say it clearly. Project Baby has not been easy. A million complexities, difficult conversations, unanswerable questions and what ifs have lined the road. I’ve skipped over the IVF part precisely because it was so hard. We discovered that we did indeed have fertility problems, and a rollercoaster of egg collections produced 11 embryos and a failed implantation. Blood. Then a last chance and an embryo that passed its PGT-A test. That it had “taken”. The joyous surprise of a positive result. Then a haemorrhage. More blood. By a miracle our baby clung on. But two years of trying tested our friendship to its limit.
I am a worrier and I’m awake between 2-4am most nights overthinking. What if I meet a partner? What if I have to leave London for work, lack of work, or because it’s so expensive? What if I die? At this time of night I feel like the only person in the world, unsupported and afraid. Gay men are, after all, still men, and while they may be infinitely more charming, suave and empathetic than their heterosexual counterparts, they can’t actually climb inside your body and feel how you feel. The joy of the first flutters; the horror at blood in the toilet; the crippling fear that you’ve gone about it all wrong. Pregnancy is an abstract concept for a man.
But also I’m excited to set out on this great adventure, and have this chance to have a family outside of the norm, infused with love and a generous, inclusive perspective on the world. It’s one in which I get to bring a child into the world with two of my greatest friends. It may not have been the easiest route, but it’s the best route for me and my family. So the hormones, human urine and Chinese hamster ovary cells were worth it. My chosen co-parents are gay and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.