A lockdown LOVE STORY like no other
Blanche, 42, was single and pregnant by a sperm donor. Anthony, 63, was an empty-nest widower. They met by chance as Covid struck and the result was...
Anthony had arrived late, keeping us all waiting at the dinner table, and I was tired, grumpy and longing to go to bed. It was the first evening of my holiday in France, so as soon as I could, I made my excuses to leave the room.
And that’s when I heard the dreaded sentence, murmured by my host as I closed the door. ‘her name is Blanche and she is 12 weeks pregnant,’ he said, in confiding tones — leaving me spitting with anger that my secret had been revealed to a complete stranger.
the fact that I was having a baby on my own, by means of a sperm donor, wasn’t something that I felt ready to talk about. Being single and childless at the age of 42 was, to me, a source of great shame.
It wasn’t that I thought there was anything wrong with a woman of my age not having children: it was that I’d always wanted to have children and I felt that I had failed. Growing up, I had it all worked out. At 30, I was going to have my first child and then, shortly afterwards, my second.
Getting married at 31, I was a little off the mark but the situation still seemed promising. however, all too soon, my marriage hit the rocks and, by the time I was 35, we had filed for divorce.
At 35, female fertility starts to rapidly decline; I couldn’t have been more conscious of the fact. By 40, with a string
of unsuccessful liaisons behind me, I was growing desperate.
And then I met ‘Mr Right’. he was witty, intelligent, interesting and great company. I could see myself growing old with him, and I very much wanted his children.
But within a year we were seeking relationship counselling.
‘I’m desperate to have a baby,’ I explained.
‘I love her but I don’t want a child,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s a deal breaker,’ said the counsellor. And she was right.
I was utterly devastated. I had always thought the challenge lay in finding the right partner: never had it crossed my mind that that very man might not want a child. But he didn’t, and I did, and there was
THAT nothing we could do about it.
Christmas, I sat through a school carol concert in f l oods of tears. The stage was lined with children, singing sweetly, while their parents, all around me, looked on proudly.
And I sat in the midst of them and felt utterly desolate, feeling their love wash over me and fearing I’d never have a child.
I was 42 and single, and my childlessness had become a torment. I could no longer visit friends with young children. I was blocking posts f r om new mothers on Facebook, and I couldn’t even stand by the photocopier at work because it looked onto a noticeboard announcing new births.
Worst of all, I found it hard not to believe my childlessness was all my fault. I’d been too picky. I’d been too difficult. I’d been too wary. I’d been too hesitant.
I’d spent too long with the wrong men and lost the good men I might have kept. And now, I felt, I’d messed everything up. I had always wanted to have children and I would not be having them.
Not, that is, unless I braved it on my own and used a donor.
Becoming a single parent had never been part of my plan, but now I saw it as my only option.
Fortunately, I had one thing on my side: I had frozen eggs. Soon after my divorce came through, at the age of 37, I had taken myself off to a clinic near London’s Baker Street and had my eggs ‘harvested’.
Every year since then, I’d paid £300 to have them stored — and now they sat, 16 of them, ready to be defrosted and then fertilised.
Choosing a donor wasn’t easy. When you fall in love and have a baby, you don’t worry about the fact your partner might have flunked his A-levels, have a squiffy eye or a grandmother with dementia. When you’re looking for a sperm donor, you most certainly do.
For days I scrolled through donor ‘profiles’ on sperm bank websites, scrutinising and comparing every detail. In the end, I opted for the man I felt most drawn to.
Like me, he sang in a choir, came from an academic background and had a father who had told him bedtime stories. he had a lovely deep voice (audible on a recording), a cute baby photograph and an impressive string of achievements to his name. But, best of all, he had written a wonderful letter to his donor children, making it clear that he would be there to ‘talk and listen’ in the future, if they wanted to make contact, and signing off ‘ with loving thoughts through time and space’.
This donor’s sperm came from a sperm bank in Europe. It cost me ¤639 to purchase one ‘ straw’ and another ¤295 to have it shipped over to London.
Still clinging to a shred of hope that I would one day have a baby with a man I loved, I decided to have only half my frozen eggs defrosted and fertilised — then I sat back and waited to hear what had happened.
From eight eggs I was l ucky enough to get five embryos, three of which made it to day five — the age at which they were most likely to survive after implantation.
Each embryo was graded and, as soon as my womb lining was thick enough, the best was transferred, using a catheter, into my uterus. Two and a half weeks later, a urine test revealed I was pregnant.
But by six weeks, the foetus that had seemed so promising had stopped growing, and I was told I had no option but to miscarry.
I didn’t want to be awake when I lost my first chance of having a child, so I chose to have my womb
Being single and childless at the age of 42 was, to me, a source of great shame
scraped under general anaesthetic. When I came round, I was crazy with grief. So crazy, in fact, that I got in touch with my ex-boyfriend, hoping against hope that he might have changed his mind about having children and rescue me from this awful situation.
But, of course, it wasn’t to be. So back I went for another attempt.
This time, I threw everything at it: biopsy (to select the best embryo for transfer); embryo glue (to keep i t stuck to my womb); daily hormone injections, patches and suppositories (to thicken my womb lining and aid implantation and growth), and a course of acupuncture (to improve my chances).
On Boxing Day 2019, I discovered that, once again, I was pregnant. This time, at the six-week scan, I heard my baby’s heartbeat, as fast and loud as the hooves of a galloping horse.
Now, it was February half-term and I was supposed to be skiing in the Pyrenees. Except that I was 12 weeks pregnant, couldn’t ski and had been forced to tell my host.
Which is how it came about that he told Anthony.
As it happened, Anthony couldn’t ski either. Or, at least, he took one look at me and decided not to ski.
For five days, we went off walking while the rest of the party took to the slopes. It was bizarrely warm for February. The sun shone on our backs as we walked through woods and fields, climbed hills to look