Your problems solved by The Midults

Annabel Rivkin and Emilie Mcmeekan

Q:Dear A&E, I’m a 40-year-old, single, solvent woman. I’ve spent the past few months largely alone in the house I worked hard to buy, running my business (which has been hit but not destroyed by Covid) and listening to my biological clock tick. I haven’t felt lonely so much as panicked about the passing of time. I desperately want a baby – I have done for 20 years – and I wonder if I should just go ahead and have one by myself ? But do you think that will stop me ever finding a man? — Yearning

Dear Yearning, how we understand the yearning… the feeling of being slightly poleaxed every time you see a pregnant woman on the street, the turning off of nappy adverts on the telly, the shutting down when friends talk about their seemingly bottomless fecundity. The yearning that veers towards grief as you stare at a potentially childless future.

First of all, 40 is a really good time to seriously consider your options. Too often we hear from women nearing 50 who have been in denial about their childbearing prospects and suddenly realise that things are now complicated. We need to remember in this day and age that, just because our bodies are honed by yoga (not ours by the way) and our faces are smoothed by Botox (no comment), it doesn’t mean that our ovaries are similarly holding back time.

Before you make any decisions or plans, we would strongly advise you get your hormones, follicles and egg reserves checked, so you have some idea about where you stand. Of course, one of the (many) frustrating and mystifying things about fertility is that, even with a healthy-looking egg count, you don’t know how those eggs will perform and do their job. Or they don’t. So there are never any guarantees.

Obviously there is the egg-freezing option. But eggs (particularly slightly more mature eggs) freeze less well than embryos. So one option could be to buy yourself some sperm (you can learn a fair amount about the donor’s appearance, intellect and medical history from a clinic), have your IVF and freeze any resulting embryos to be defrosted further down the line.

But, if you are ready, then you are ready. We are reassured to hear that your financial situation is solid and even more pleased to hear that you have a house. Because money is one of the scariest things about going it alone. Yes, it can be lonely. Yes, it can be stressful and tiring. But everything is exacerbated if you are simultaneously juggling monetary chaos. Also, some NHS trusts offer IVF to single women and some don’t, which is rubbish but that’s the bottom line.

Get a therapist if you don’t already have one. Because going it alone takes a great deal out of you and you will need to maintain perspective and create a safe space where you can find some solace when things get hairy or sad or too exhausting.

That said, you are so profoundly not alone. More and more women are choosing this path. Different-shaped families are all the rage and rightly so, as we have seen women doing magnificent jobs of bringing up babies they had by themselves or with a platonic co-parent, which is a beautiful option but also an incredibly grown-up one.

Men are often far more spooked by women who want babies than by women who have babies so, no, we do not think that becoming a solo mother will relegate you to the shelf for life. But it will certainly put the brakes on dating for a couple of years and, when you do start again, you are likely to be far more circumspect about quality control. You will not want your child to witness substandard behaviour.

When you have a baby by yourself you build a new life. Everything is ruined and, simultaneously, everything is enriched. Pursue the investigation, Yearning. Gather the knowledge, shore up the wisdom, get your team in place – we wish you all the luck and love.

You are so profoundly not alone. More and more women are choosing this path