From that point on, each step flowed.
Several of the solo mums who were local to me got in touch via the Fertility Friends website. Knowing that so many others had trod this path before me and that they were willing to help me achieve my dream was incredibly reassuring. Initially I arranged to meet a lady called Stella. We did similar jobs and I was interested to find out how she coped, what the network of solo mums was like in the area, how she’d found treatment, and to ask her a whole load of other questions that were buzzing round my mind. We met in a busy café after work one day. I was late and as I walked through the door I immediately saw a mum and daughter sitting opposite one another, chatting. Stella’s girl, Mary, was tall for her age and seemed shy at first in the noisy café. I said hello to them and handed Mary the book I had bought her. We chatted and I began to suspect that the bond between solo mums and their babies is very special. That’s not to say that the bond between all babies and their significant carers isn’t special, but what I witnessed was distinctive and further cemented my resolve to be a solo mum by choice.
It was some time before I heard from the clinic I’d been referred to by my gynaecologist, by which time I was in the United States for work. On my return, I made an appointment and worked hard at keeping the nerves (what the hell was I doing?) and the excitement (I might be a mum!) in balance.
‘There is nothing like a dream to create the future.’
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
It was a 70-mile round trip to my first appointment at a fertility clinic. I arrived feeling conspicuous. Despite knowing of several solo mums who had been helped by the same clinic, I wondered what the people there would think of my plans.
If I had known then what I know now, I would have had different expectations from my initial consultations and I would have done some research and chosen a clinic that best suited my needs. With hindsight I can see that this clinic had a rather parochial way of going about things. Having been referred by my gynaecologist, I had gone along to the appointment under the impression that there was little to distinguish between clinics, and at that stage I didn’t imagine that quality of service could vary so wildly between them. I was also naïve about the fertility industry.
I was so excited about my initial appointment and could not wait to get treatment underway. I had soul-searched until every doubt had been cleansed and every question answered, so I was not prepared for what came next. During that initial appointment it was spelled out to me with the greatest clarity possible that being over 40 was ancient in terms of fertility.
‘But my great grandmother had healthy twins in her mid-forties,’ I retorted, when presented with the age card within minutes of being seated in a room clearly laid out for couples.
‘Statistically your chances of conceiving over the age of 40 are very slim indeed,’ the consultant said.
‘I want to try. My hormone tests were great for my age and I know I can conceive and carry a baby.’
He looked through my notes and commented on my AMH result.
‘Well, according to your body, you’re in your early thirties,’ he joked. ‘It is worth a try, but the chances of success are remote.’
I was underwhelmed by his attitude and left the clinic with a bundle of papers detailing treatment options. Other small things had disappointed me, too. Clinics like that one often use generic forms that are inappropriate for the would-be solo mum; they are designed so that we must cross through the ‘partner’ section or simply leave it blank. It would be easy, and cost nothing, to have appropriate forms for each client group and I wonder why so many clinics overlook this.
‘Think about it,’ the consultant had said, but it felt futile and hopeless. On the one hand age was clearly too much of a problem for success to be a possibility, but on the other hand they had accepted me for treatment and charged for their services. The messages were mixed but all I wanted to hear were those of hope. To be written off so soon was deeply upsetting.
Back home, and deflated, I read through the information I had been given, but it was incomplete and raised more questions than it answered. The girls on Fertility Friends were as helpful as ever, but I still had questions that the clinic needed to answer, so I decided to ring them.
‘I have information about the range of treatment options, but I haven’t been told which ones would be most suitable for me,’ I said.
‘We can’t tell you that,’ the nurse said. ‘You have to make that decision.’
‘But I’m not medically qualified. I would be guessing.’
‘If you want to ask a question you will have to have another appointment with the consultant.’ It was an attitude I hadn’t anticipated. In my field of work I could not get away with that approach and the withholding of information and advice felt obstructive. It was already averaging £100 a question, such is the business of making babies in the UK. As my journey to motherhood continued I was to encounter worse, once paying £200 for an eight-minute appointment and then being landed with a £50 hospital bill for the use of a consulting room. It’s difficult not to be cynical about being viewed as an income stream. At its worst, it feels like the exploitation of vulnerability, but the health industry is littered with similar – and worse – examples and you either take the financial hit and hope the service is worthy of the expense or seek treatment elsewhere.
Eventually it was decided that I would start with a cycle of IUI – inter-uterine insemination. It’s an incredibly quick and easy process during which donor sperm would be inserted into my uterus via a catheter and the clinic would be £1,200 better off.
I now know that there were many questions I should have asked (I later learned that the clinic had omitted to do some basic health checks and had no way of knowing whether my Fallopian tubes were free from blockages – which is vital if IUI is to have any chance of success). But I was naïve and excited to get treatment underway, especially as the message about being TOO OLD at 42 was repeated ad nauseum every time I had anything to do with the clinic.
So the process began. An appointment was made with the clinic counsellor (a compulsory part of treatment), who swigged a bottle of Coke throughout our consultation, and the nurse in charge of the clinic’s sperm bank got in touch with information about possible donors. Curiously, I was asked about my financial health. I wonder now whether this was more to do with my ability to pay for treatment than my ability to support a child as a solo mum, because I haven’t heard of other clinics doing the same. It seemed absurdly intrusive at the time and not something that those who fall pregnant by other means are ever faced with.
Choosing a donor was easy. I had a call from the nurse in charge of sperm and she described two donors. I asked if I could see more information but was told no, the choice was between these two. Using the limited information I had been given, I discussed the pros and cons of each with my parents. It was a surreal moment and the humour wasn’t lost on us. I remember thinking that, with support like this from my family, I could do it. As a solo mum, I would be far from alone.
So many bridges had been crossed to get this far that I felt only excitement about treatment day. The fact that the appointment with the Coke-swilling counsellor had been a farce and the conversation about possible donors went along the lines of, ‘choose between these two or you go to the bottom of the list’, raised no alarm bells, so I rolled up for treatment one September morning full of a sense of new beginnings. Harry drove me in the milky autumn sunshine. We listened to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in the