by Rachel Lehmann-Haupt @rlehmannhaupt excerpted from DIY Mom: A Solo Parenting Adventure (Shebooks, 2014) On my 39th birthday, two years after I froze my eggs, I decided that if I wasn’t in a serious relationship by the time I turned 40, I was going to start intrauterine insemination with the poker player’s sperm. Even though…
I met Vanessa at the Choice Mom networking event in London (July 2010). She is developing community connections for Choice Moms in her area, and had these tips to share about the pros and cons of Belgium as a fertility treatment option for single women.
I am a 44-year-old former teacher turned librarian in Tennessee and am now experiencing the most blessed time of my life. In my mid- to late 30’s I researched becoming a mom on my own. I had been divorced for years and had not met anyone with whom I wanted to spend my life, but…
I got a few of these wonderful updates from women last week while I was on a camping trip with my son. Diana is a woman I met in the United Kingdom, who had originally decided that the “fatherless” issue was a reason for her to NOT become a Choice Mom. That story is here.…
Kara Herold is creating a hybrid narrative/documentary (with actors) about her Choice Motherhood journey. Like many of us, she started out with the traditional dream of having a child with a partner. At age 39, she realized time was quickly passing by. An older sister encouraged her to purse motherhood on her own. “I was…
this is a continuation of Lorie’s Russian adoption story started with Part 1 and Part 2 The Interim Visit to Meet My Daughter After arriving in Kuybyshev and getting “settled” in the hotel, the families I was traveling with were all taken to meet our kids. My daughter had been moved with other toddlers to…
read part 1 of Sarah’s fertility tourism journey read part 2 Preparatory Medications and Tests The other big challenge was the need to have most of my prep and medical care completed in the U.S. in order to simply arrive for the week of my transfer. There were several steps that needed to happen in…
Over the years I’ve learned so much about myself, through parenthood. Before my daughter was born in 1999, I largely drew my identity from work. I was good at what I did, and enjoyed being the ‘ambitious career woman’ since I was 16 and landed my first job at a community newspaper. I also tended…
(see part 1 of Sarah’s fertility tourism journey here) The doctor I had at the Fertility Center Cancun seemed so sweet and I immediately felt like his heart was in the right place. I had a less than stellar experience with my reproductive clinic in the Bay Area, which felt more like a factory with…
My story starts like many. I started trying to decide whether to become a single mother in my late 30’s. By the time, I finally took the plunge I was 41 years old and already facing very high FSH and low AMH. All the same, I was determined to try with my own eggs, even…
