‘Buy donor sperm or find a willing man?’

This was the dilemma that confronted playwright and theatre director Nina Raine at 39, when, suddenly single, she faced the ‘vertigo-inducing’ prospect of a life without children. Here she reveals how the twists and turns of her path to parenthood became

At 39, newly single and wanting children, playwright Nina Raine knew she had to make some difficult choices – and fast. Along the way, she wrote her latest play, Stories, about her experiences

Istarted writing my play Stories when I was three months pregnant with my first child. I was 41 and would be 42 when I gave birth. The sickness of the first trimester was just dispersing, and I was beginning to experience the surprising flood of energy, euphoria and dynamism that come (if you’re lucky) in the golden second trimester. The play took exactly three months to write. When the intense physical discomfort of the last trimester descended, it was written. At nine months pregnant, there was a reading of it at the National Theatre, shortly after which the National agreed to put it on. The play and the baby came to fruition at exactly the same time.

Like the character in my play, Anna, I had found myself suddenly single at 39. Like the character, I was left by my much younger boyfriend in the middle of IVF. Like the character, I was abruptly confronted with the vertigo-inducing prospect of a future without children. Like the character, slowly, I started to feel about myself for options.

I was terrified by the statistics. I’m even more terrified, now I look back, at the close call I had. I looked at the numbers for 39-year-olds, which were bleak. I felt I had literally no time. It wasn’t so much a ticking clock, as a stopwatch. I had to find a means of having a baby, and I reckoned I had about a year.

This doesn’t mean people don’t get pregnant after 40. They do. But I had never managed to get pregnant. I had to factor in time for treating a problem, if there was one.

I recently looked at the statistics for 43-yearolds (I have a friend going through IVF and wanted to give her encouragement). We know, because we are endlessly told, that our fertility sharply declines in our mid-30s. But I didn’t know it falls off a cliff yet again after 42. My clinic, the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre (ARGC), when I asked them, told me their success rate over 43 was about eight per cent. The NHS, in most areas, doesn’t even offer IVF over 40. In Oxfordshire, no IVF over 35.

I had already had my one free NHS go with the boyfriend. Now, stopwatch in hand, I dithered between two paths. Buy donor sperm and go it alone. Or, find a man who wanted to go it alone, but with me – co-parents embarking on a family, platonically, together. I felt I didn’t have time or the state of mind (relaxed, open, optimistic) to start searching for love again. I was frightened, sad, panicked. I didn’t want to adopt alone. I deeply admired the people I knew who had (mostly couples), but at this point I didn’t feel robust enough, didn’t feel certain enough that I would love a child not biologically my own. On the other hand, I didn’t feel good about donor sperm or co-parenting. They both felt like compromised alternatives.

So I did what I normally do when I start writing a play. I researched. I began, somewhat pessimistically, by looking online at sperm banks. I was helped in particular by my sweet and optimistic younger brother, who kept cheering me on, and also, by my mum and dad. I don’t know what it would have been like with a less supportive family around me. I would have felt desperate and alone. As it was, I still did at three in the morning.

I quickly discovered that sperm banks vary hugely. The ones in England and Denmark (which was recommended as one of the more evolved countries for the sperm donor scene) I found deeply dispiriting. There were no photographs of the donors. You had scarily little idea of who you were creating this hypothetical child with. The Danish one, at least, had a recording of the donor speaking. But I found this wasn’t enough for me. I discovered prejudices and gut instincts within myself that I clung to in the absence of any other

I felt I had literally no time. It wasn’t so much a ticking clock, as a stopwatch. I had to find a means of having a baby, and I reckoned I had about a year

certainties. I wanted the person, if possible, to be intelligent. I wanted to know what they looked like. In some atavistic way, I felt if I was going to create a child in this unnatural fashion, there should be some elements that were ‘natural’ – I should at least find the face of the donor attractive, since we mostly sleep with people we find attractive and so make the most successful genetic combinations.

By far the best banks were American and I paid the $200 registration fee to look at the donors on Xytex (it’s now free, as we discovered during research in rehearsal for Stories). Once you narrowed the search to donors who were UK compliant and open identity (where the donor is willing to be contacted by the child when it turns 18), there were only about 30 possibles. Then that number diminished yet again: I had a vague, rather depressing memory that research showed it was a bad idea to deviate from your own race in choosing a sperm donor. The thinking is that it is confusing for a child to look very different from their (one) parent.

Ifound a lovely looking 20-something-yearold. I cheered up. I ran him by my parents. They thought he looked great. It was going to be pricey – about a grand for the sperm, then a grand for the airfare to transport it, plus £300 for the minimum year’s storage in the fridges of the clinic. As my dad pointed out – weight for weight, more expensive than gold. But then, interestingly, so is printer ink. (Incidentally, one thing that irritates me is the view that buying expensive donor sperm makes a woman in the eyes of the world ‘entitled’. But I didn’t own a car. I live cheaply. I think what people object to about buying sperm is something much more primitive than the money. But the money is the stick they use to beat you with.)

Just before I bought the vials, I thought I should quickly research online whether there was a significant negative impact on children who were the offspring of donor sperm.

There was a website called anonymousus.org. The posters included adults conceived by donor sperm or egg. Most were deeply troubled. They were angry that they would never meet their biological mother/father, angry with the mother who had selfishly conceived them, filled with a daily ache and existential sadness, a feeling they did not know or understand half of themselves, their very being. In vain did my dad tell me most people who bother to write on the internet are angry rather than happy – the happy ones don’t need to. To me, it didn’t matter that the law in the UK is to use only open-identity donors. What about all those unhappy, troubled teenage years before they reach 18? Or what if the donor chose never to write back?

ARGC, where I would be haing my IVF (funded with the royalties from Tribes, a play of mine that found success in America), required that I do a counselling session to prove that I was of sound mind to go ahead with insemination using donor sperm. Great, I thought. I’ll ask the counsellor their views on this. Before my session, I googled the feedback from people who had had these sessions. Many said how much they had enjoyed it, but how they wished they had asked more. Emboldened, I asked lots of questions stemming from my anxieties about the welfare of a child born from donor sperm. She gave me some textbook answers: you tell the child from the beginning. There’s a storybook you can read them to help explain their genesis. So long as they have plenty of male role models in their life – uncles, grandparents – there shouldn’t be a problem. I carried on needling. But what about these desperately unhappy children I’d found on the internet?

I got back my counselling report. The counsellor had flunked me: I had too many questions and she recommended another session. But I didn’t book one. I realised I couldn’t do this without first asking some real men to donate – for the sake of a future child, so I could tell them I had at least tried.

So I started to ask men. I remember vividly the sweet man I first asked. I burst into tears. Because, listening to my wooden, rambling request as it came out of my mouth to this near-stranger, I

thought how pathetic it sounded. Luckily, he was warm, encouraging, kind. But, after some weeks of thought, he decided he didn’t want to do it. I tried to speed up the process. I asked more men, in tandem, to avoid wasting time. I literally looked through my phone. I avoided, for obvious reasons, straight men who were already in relationships (most of my friends), and this meant that the straight single men I did ask often had issues of their own to deal with; issues with women, with their own parents, with commitment. When you ask a man such a huge question, inevitably you hear their story. And each was so different. While still often feeling sad and desperate, I couldn’t help but be interested in all these different windows into what parenthood meant to people and the stories we tell ourselves about it: fate and providence versus free will. This one question opened up so many stories. I started to think this situation was, at least, great material for a play. I was also struck by its comic, ironic potential.

The most common response from these diverse men – different classes, different professions, some young, some older, some gay, some straight – was first, to be pleased and flattered. Actors in particular were open to the idea; I think because they’re used to considering roles. But, after varying degrees of mulling time, they all said no. Some presented me with a catch-22. They thought a father should be deeply involved in their child’s daily life – and they didn’t feel up to that commitment. With some straight men, the questions veered into ‘is this romantic?’ (no) – but taking away that pressure didn’t help. If it wasn’t romantic, then what was it?

I started to talk to people who had, somehow, managed to do it this way. I talked to two different lesbian couples. The dynamic was interesting; they seemed quite ruthless in their attitude towards the men, and considered themselves the primary parents. The (gay) men who had helped them become mothers got only as much father role as the women wanted to give them and no more. This seemed harsh. But although I had heard of some co-parenting relationships like this spectacularly breaking down, the couples I spoke to were all still functioning well. I was advised by a single straight woman, who had done it with a gay couple, that if I found a co-parent, not to sweat the small stuff: that you couldn’t be too sensitive as there would be ample opportunities for being offended; that a deal-breaker was often whether children would be privately or stateeducated. I also talked to a straight woman in her 50s who I regarded as a pioneer in this field. She had done it with a gay friend. She simply told me to go for it: because, if I could just find a willing man, I would always know there was someone in the world who loved that child as much as I did.

After about a year of asking men, letting them think about it, and wasting time on at least two who thought they were up for it and then changed their minds months down the line, I gave up hope.

I logged on again to buy the donor sperm. And discovered the sperm donor I liked before had sold out. I was disproportionately gutted. I chose another I felt less intensely about, bought the sperm, arranged the airfare.

Meanwhile, a friend had been bugging me to meet a well-adjusted acquaintance of hers who was conceived by donor sperm – to assuage my fears. I dutifully met him, the sperm already on its way to London. And again, everything turned upside down. I vividly remember the meeting, in a trendy café high up on a Shoreditch rooftop. He was softly spoken, slightly formal. But minutes into our conversation, he launched into a passionate attack on using donor sperm. At points, he had to stop, speechlessly fighting tears. He had been conceived by totally anonymous sperm – there was no way he would ever be able to trace his father. He told me: ‘It’s a uniquely bizarre and unsolvable set of circumstances. In some ways it’s like experiencing a death, but worse because one can never begin to grieve for the loss. It is a huge hole in my life and my identity that can never be filled. All through my life it has been a cause of very profound existential anxiety.’ I desperately probed him further – what about donor sperm that was open identity, so the child could contact its father on turning 18? His answer was firm. The best way forward would be to find someone who would agree for their identity to be known to the child and be a part of their life in some way. My heart sank.

I didn’t and don’t judge any woman who has used donor sperm. If things had worked out differently I would have used it. But listening to this man, I found I couldn’t go forward with a clear conscience. In fact, I gave the sperm to a friend who was in my predicament. But I had run out of options, and men, and time.

I went to a friend’s 40th party in east London, got drunk and stayed up all night. An old university friend, gay, was there. I talked to a lesbian acquaintance in the loos about my situation. She told me to ask him. A week later we met and he said yes.

And now he is the other person in the world who loves our child as much as I do.

The most common response from these men was first to be pleased and flattered. But they all said no

Nina Raine at home with her 22-month-old son Misha

Raine’s play Stories, starring Claudie Blakley, Sam Troughton (centre) and Brian Vernel