I spent £10k to have kids solo – single mums make better parents, other women say they wish they had done what I did
MEN have always been my downfall. I fall in love easily and get hurt just as easily.
By the age of 36, I was wise enough to recognise that someone being my lover and being the potential father of my children were two very different things. I always wanted to be a mother but I wanted to do it on my own terms.
The singer Adele has spoken about the breakdown of her marriage and how not seeing her son every day was not in the plan when she became a parent. And as a child I had seen the heartache caused by families splitting up.
If there was any way I could prevent this for my own children, I would. Luckily, these days that is easily possible — and I know that being a single mum makes me a better parent.
Having IVF, where eggs were removed from my ovaries and fertilised with sperm in a laboratory before an embryo was inserted into the womb, was my choice. It wasn’t the emotionally draining last-chance-for-a-child that it is for many.
It was simply the way I knew I would conceive. If I had my children with IVF and a sperm donor there would be no man to consult or consider. They would be mine alone. Both the joy and the responsibility. I was working as a medical secretary in my home county of Cornwall when I began my IVF in 2012. At that time, I was seeing a man who did not want children.
I wasn’t going to trick him into a lifetime of commitment he didn’t want and that would have been wrong for me, so I explained about IVF and how it was what I had always intended to do. He had no objections to my plans — not that it would have mattered if he had.
He wasn’t the first man I had been with who would have been unsuitable to father children with me. For a variety of reasons all the men I had been out with would not have been right. Sometimes it was age, sometimes circumstance, more often than not, personality. Having children with any of my exes would have led to volatile break-ups and misery all round.
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'Always be a single mother'
One embryo was transferred five days after my egg collection. In August the following year my daughter Raphael was born. She and I moved back into my parents’ house, and this support from my family was an added bonus.
My parents agreed with my opinion that I had not met anyone who would make a suitable father for children, and they supported my decision to do it alone. In January 2017 my second daughter Aelfrida was born from a frozen embryo.
The two girls share the same donor, and because he is what’s known as an open donor they will be able to meet him when they are 18. On my consultant’s advice I chose sperm from a Danish clinic. Denmark has the most thorough checks on potential donors. I was able to see a picture of him as a child, read medical information about him and his family. He sounded like a decent bloke.
Some people might be worried about the expense of IVF but it costs no more than new cars or foreign holidays. It cost around £10k for both rounds. It is simply a matter of choice. And just because I am a single mother it does not mean I have to be single myself. Of course I enjoy the company of men. Of course I want sex and relationships. But I will always be a single mother.
When I started my IVF it was a relatively new thing for single women to undertake. However, in the years since then, there are a growing number of women choosing to have children alone.
Lucinda Hart
No man will ever have rights over my children and, in the same way, they are not able to make demands on any man I should meet. I stayed with the man I was seeing for some years, until after Aelfrida was born. Eventually the relationship ran its course and we parted. I was so relieved he had not been the father of my children.
Since then, I have not had any negativity about the girls from men I have dated (and I have also enjoyed months of being on my own with the girls). When I started my IVF it was a relatively new thing for single women to undertake. However, in the years since then, there are a growing number of women choosing to have children alone.
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There are online groups and even single-mother holidays and trips. The whole concept of what a family is has changed and will keep changing. I have always been open with my girls (now eight and four) about their circumstances. I explain to them that: “Some people have a daddy, and some people have a donor.”
In her class at school, Rafi has even done a spur-of-the-moment talk on sperm donation. Over the years several women have said to me they wished they had done the same. I have seen mothers damaged over break-ups and children having to visit ex-partners and new families. I have none of that.
And I have only had positive comments about the choice I made to be a single mother. It’s not that I hate men. Not at all. I ensure the girls have men in their lives. They do not lack male perspectives or relationships with guys.
Until his death in 2017, my father Chris was a huge part of our lives. Now my girls regularly spend time with male friends. Certainly they will not grow up with any fears of or dislike towards men.
And another thing: Because I don’t have to worry about keeping a two-parent relationship on the straight and narrow, I can devote more of my time and energy to my girls.
Feuding with a partner is a monstrous distraction from being a responsible mother. The girls and I are very close, and I am confident that they have more of me because I am a single mother. The girls and I still live with my mother Caroline, which suits us all.
Feuding with a partner is a monstrous distraction from being a responsible mother.
Lucinda Hart
She loves having her grand-children with her every day and she gives me fantastic practical support looking after them. In the eight years since I became a single mother, I have experienced no conflict over the girls’ upbringing.
I’ve not had arguments with anyone about what the girls can do, who they can see, and so on. I am a very laid-back parent, but that has given me two happy, relaxed girls, who know they are loved and wanted beyond measure.
It is easy — but unwise — to forget that when you marry a man, or form a long-term partnership with him, he is no island.
He will have parents, family, possibly other children, and they will all be involved in your life and that of any children you have together. This is another thing I do not have to worry about.
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I’ve heard it said that women like me are brave doing this alone. The brave ones are those who have a family with another person. What I’m doing is the easy way. Well, as easy as being a parent can ever be.
- Lucinda Hart, 45, is a writer from Cornwall and her novel about IVF and using a sperm donor, with Vulpine Press, will be out next year.
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