Letter To My Embaby – Transfer Day

My little embaby.

It’s finally here, the day I meet you and welcome you to your hopeful home for the next 9 months. I want you to know how precious you already are to me, how much I have longed for you in my life. You will be my first child, my first everything, really. I hope you will stay in the cozy nook I have made for you. And that you will let me provide you with a safe and comfortable place to grow.

And if you choose to stay in your home until next Christmas, I will teach you how to navigate this crazy world with grace. You will have a mother who would go to the ends of the earth for you. A family that will be by your side to protect and support you. Your family might look different than others because you will get bonus … Continue reading

It’s the Village for Me

I have to say when I started this journey, I expected there would be times that I would feel lonely or miss not having a partner. And there have definitely been those moments where I felt that.

An Africans proverb that I love is “its takes a village to raise a child.” It shows that when communities are at its best, its a village. A close knit unit that helps, supports, gives feedback, provides structure, brings guidance, and love to all. The African American community has lived off this for so many years. And honestly I grew up this way as well. I have to say that, my village is awesome and has been essential throughout this journey!!!

Let me start from the beginning…. Earlier this week, I found myself in so much pain dealing with what the doctors have determined is sciatica (really sharp pain going from my lower … Continue reading

Why Your Family Doesn’t Want You to Have a Baby on Your Own

Becoming a single mother by choice goes against society’s script. When you announce that you are planning to start a family on your own, you might be disappointed by the response you receive.

Why don’t your friends and family want you to have a baby on your own? Can’t they see that having a child will be a wonderful and joyful addition to your life?

It’s a new concept to them

I still remember when I got my first tattoo as a teenager and my grandfather saw it. He was shocked, even horrified. In his generation a “good girl” would never dream of getting a tattoo. But you know what? He came around. He just needed a little time to adjust.

A similar pattern can occur when a woman tells members of previous generations that she is considering becoming a single mother by choice (SMC). SMCs are something that older … Continue reading

What Has Been My Favorite Part Of Pregnancy?

I have been asked this a handful of times. The immediate things that come to mind are the little flutters, especially when I first started feeling them. Like a little bird’s wing inside me. They gave me pure joy. He’s really in there. But more-so I think my true favorite thing about being pregnant has been the feeling of hope. The unknown, which surprisingly for someone like me who needs to feel in control, isn’t scary at all to me – it’s the kind of unknown that is like a spark, an excitement, an anticipation of getting to know him. My baby. Meeting him, seeing who he is and how our world will be.

I have all the hope in the world. That’s the thing about me – this shameless, undeterred, sometimes naive optimism that has carried me through the last 40 years and unchanged by disappointments and devastations, heartbreaks … Continue reading

T Minus 2 Weeks and 2 Days!

Two weeks and 2 days until my official due date! I can’t believe it. In many ways it’s gone so slowly… counting the weeks one by one. But in many ways, it’s gone so fast — a year ago I hadn’t even started trying to get pregnant yet! My life has turned upside down in the past year, and I know this past year is nothing compared to what I’m about to face

Am I feeling nervous? Yes, but it’s mostly focused on handling having a child on my own going forward, as opposed to childbirth or handling a newborn baby. Yes, I’m a bit apprehensive about childbirth itself, only because it’s not even close to anything I’ve ever experienced before. Sure, I haven’t experienced everything in life, but many things are gradual (i.e. aging), or I’ve had similar experiences (I haven’t been to Africa, but I have traveled a … Continue reading

An SMC via IVF

I waited for a long time to find Mr. Right and start a family but that never happened. Finally, I was at an age where I needed to make a choice. I investigated adoption and hit many barriers. So, I decided to see a fertility specialist. I decided against insemination because of my advanced maternal age (I was 45 at the time), but decided to go the IVF route. I initially wanted to use my own eggs, and according to my test results, I could have tried. However, after much research of my own, the percentages I was finding for successful term pregnancies using my own eggs vs. a donor egg were about 5% vs. 50%.

I thought and prayed about it and finally decided that if I was willing to adopt a child, a genetic connection wasn’t all that important to me. However, knowing that the fetus was well … Continue reading

Father’s Day Thoughts From a Teen SMC Child

Allow me to open by briefly introducing myself. My name is Jocelyn, I was born in San Francisco, California, I live in Florida.

I suppose you could say I was born because of a sperm donor. Biologically, that’s true. But the real REASON I’m here is because my mother wanted a child. To me, that’s all that matters and I could leave it at that. But because I enjoy this topic, I won’t.

So, maybe it’s how I was brought up. I knew my entire life I was the product of a sperm donor. No big deal. I have a vague recollection of my elementary-school Spanish teacher teaching me how to say “donor” in Spanish. My uncle’s a genealogist, so when family tree time came around, everyone was so absolutely stunned by just how far back it went on my mom’s side that they didn’t notice or care that I … Continue reading

I Found My Anonymous Sperm Donor. Now What?

In November of 1999, my mother was artificially inseminated. Twenty years later to the exact date, I found my sperm donor.

On the evening of November 3, 2019, I was doing homework when my mother messaged me. She said I had a DNA match on ancestry.com with someone that wasn’t related to her. I was confused. Then I realized: this was a relative on my donor’s side. I went to ancestry.com and looked at the match. It was a woman’s name, so it couldn’t have been my donor. However, it was a lead. I looked up her name and found her place of residence, her age, and her children. She was from the east coast, in her 70s, and she has 3 sons and 1 daughter. Based on her age, I assumed that she was a grandmother or great aunt.

I went to Spokeo.com for general information. There I found … Continue reading

Birth Plan B

All that I could say while being lifted into the ambulance was “she can’t come now, she can’t come now.” The doors closed and I could think of nothing but the little girl inside of me. I was in premature labor at 28 weeks pregnant.

When I arrived at the hospital the paramedics rushed me down the hallway. As I lay on my side on the gurney to ease the pain, the look of concern was reflected in the strange faces of people that lined the emergency room. I stopped briefly at a desk to receive a bracelet that simply said “Kim.”

A nurse and very young doctor were waiting in a room. As I answered their questions, more people and large machines arrived. They shouted at each other and to me. I was embarrassed. I apologized because I was not prepared. I told them that I was taking a … Continue reading

The Politics of SMCs

When I first joined the national Single Mothers by Choice (SMC) organization, and my local group, I assumed the other women I would meet – virtually and in person – would be fairly similar to me. I thought that making such an “unconventional” life choice would be a decision only left-leaning, primarily urban/coastal women would make. I could not have been more wrong.

What I’ve found instead is an amazingly diverse community of women. Our political affiliations are all across the spectrum. We are gay and straight, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and atheist. We are urban and rural, in the U.S. and Canada and Europe and Southeast Asia, and everywhere in-between. We are black, white, Asian, Hispanic, and of every possible ethnic mix. We are creative types and scientists who work from home and travel the world and are unemployed. We are biological and adoptive moms and waiting-to-be-moms and still-thinking-about-becoming-moms. … Continue reading