It is spring, which means everything is new again! In this issue we’re looking at making choices. Isn’t that what spring is about, after the dark days of winter, considering what is possible? If you have an article idea you would like to share, send an email to ctabel@hotmail.com. I am also looking for SMC members who would like to review books or family films and local chapters that would like to be profiled in upcoming newsletters.

Enjoy, Cheri

by Heather Van Looy

Before I had my son, I used to think of myself as a mother who didn’t have a baby yet. As a child I wanted to be a dancer, and then later that dream morphed into becoming a lawyer. In college my vision turned toward art therapy, and I finally ended up teaching in the classroom. Throughout my life my career ambitions have changed, but I have always known I wanted to be a mother. The thought of life without a child was simply unbearable and would bring me to tears.

In April 2011 I was blessed with the birth of my son Carter, and I am over the moon with happiness. That aching hole that longed for a baby to love is no longer there, and I feel complete. I am certain that Carter will grow up happy, healthy, and secure because he is loved beyond belief. I have a wonderful, supportive network of family and friends, who all adore my little guy! I don’t worry about whether or not he will be okay growing up in an SMC family. At the same time, though, all of the love in the world can’t change the fact that my decision to have a baby on my own means that he will deal with issues in his life that other kids just don’t have to consider. Even the word “family” is a complicated issue for my little boy.

Lately, it seems the media is filled with stories about sperm banks and donor conceived children. I recently watched the documentary, “Sperm Donor: 74 Kids and Counting” and it raised a lot of questions for me about who should be a part of Carter’s family. One segment of the program followed two girls who discovered each other on the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR) website. One of the girls was the daughter of a SMC who had passed away when she was a little girl. At the age of 18 she was living on her own and preparing for her Senior Prom. Her half-sister felt badly about the fact that her sister didn’t have a mother in her life with whom she could share her special day, and she wanted to do something to make it a memorable occasion. With that plan in mind, she decided to fly out to surprise her. The cameras were rolling for the big day as the girls met face to face for the first time.

What struck me most about the reunion was the instantaneous bond that these two girls shared. I was surprised to find that they related to each other as sisters, even though they were strangers for most of their lives. Their genetic connection and desire for family ties created a closeness and love for one another that I found unexpected. Of course, my thoughts turned immediately to my precious Carter. Would he long for sibling relationships that the DSR could provide for him? On the other hand, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the information that I might find on the DSR. I was afraid that I might find out Carter had “74 siblings and counting.” What would that mean for our little family? Would I be better off not knowing? I viewed the DSR a bit like Pandora’s Box; once it was opened, I wouldn’t be able to go back. With that said, I kept recalling the joy and sense of connection felt by those two girls. I decided that I would do anything for my baby boy, including putting aside my own uneasiness about the DSR. I logged-on and discovered that Carter has 4 half-siblings listed on the registry. All five babies were born between April and June 2011. I have been in contact with two of the families, and they have expressed an interest in having the kids meet each other. However, I’m still not sure what kind of relationship I ultimately want from these connections.

Should Carter and I meet his half siblings, as some of them would like? Should I wait to see if he expresses an interest before doing anything, or would he be better off just growing up knowing his “extended family?” What should I tell him about these other people that we share such a unique connection with? When should I tell him about them? Will he think of them as his brothers and sisters, or just as playmates?

In short, this article is about questions; questions that I don’t have the answer to. What I know for sure is this: Carter has a mommy who loves him and wants to provide him with the best. Since my need to have a baby has left him with a life bound to be full of questions, I feel a big responsibility to make sure that I carefully consider all of these concerns. I want to make sure that I give him tools that will empower him as he makes his way through life. These are questions that I will consider carefully with the love of a mother for her son, and I won’t act hastily as I think these things through.

For many of us, making the choice to become a single mother requires overcoming fear. In January there was a beautiful thread on the Forum regarding a member’s question: “I’ve thought, imagined, coveted others, wanted to pour my love, been sad I don’t have a child but somehow that leap is so hard to take – what is it that made you say ‘I’m doing it’ if you were fearful?” Over 20 of you responded with wonderful words of wisdom.

—The moment for me was the stark realization that my child was waiting for me to DO SOMETHING so she could be born.

—Realizing that being absolutely, positively, 100% certain I could do this wasn’t a requirement, but having faith that I wanted it enough that I would make it work and figure it out along the way.

— If it helps, I just started. I didn’t look at it as “this is going to result in a baby!” so much as “let me take it step by step and we’ll see what happens.”… Take little steps. Pause if you need to. But I think just getting started can help clear away some of the fog and help you know whether you’re moving in the right direction, or not. It’s easy to get frozen in place.

—Turning 40 and deciding I don’t want it to be all about me anymore. I want a family that’s me, my dog and a child.

—For me, the fear of taking the leap was outweighed by the fear of never being a mother, dying alone, never having grown children, and grandchildren. Of not having any of it.

—For me, it was when I realized the only thing holding me back was the fear that my family and friends wouldn’t be supportive or would think conceiving with a sperm donor was just too strange. So my taking the leap was telling my best friend. She was very supportive. So I told my sister.  Also supportive. Then I told my other sister. And my mom, and on and on… Of course they’re all supportive!

by Cheri Tabel 

This is one of my favorite pictures of Jackson. It was taken when he was three days old. He and I were both still in the hospital, me recovering from an emergency c-section and uncontrollable high blood pressure; him, needing to be “stabilized” before being released from the hospital. When I took this picture, it was just he and I in my hospital room. It was late afternoon and the sun hit his face just right. I love this picture for many reasons, but mainly I look at it and see perfection in everything about him that was meant to be.

My parents will tell you, I was never very good at decision-making. That everything was fine and dandy for me, as a child, up through my senior year of high school, because pretty much any decision-making was limited. My toughest choices were what to wear to school each day and who to go to the football game with on Friday nights.

After high school, I floundered. I went to three universities (one of them twice) before graduating. I changed jobs four times in the first two years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree. And relationships were never easy – one day I adored the guy, the next day I was afraid of committing.

But the choice to be a mom was one that never confounded me.   The decision to become a single mother by choice is not easy. Each of us consider single mother-hood differently as we reflect upon the multitudes of factors: finances, emotions, logistics, what will people think, what will my family think, work, relationships – the list goes on and on. And then once the decision is made, even more decisions are needed: to conceive on our own or adopt? Anonymous sperm donation, open ID or known donor? Deliver through natural childbirth or have an epidural? To circumcise or not? And I conquered each one like a champ. No one and nothing would get in the way of me and my dream. And then comes the easy part, right? A million little choices I thought once I had my child, the choosing part of the “single mother by choice” would be over. In the past seven and a half years since Jackson was born, my daily life has been nothing but choices:

Diapers, Daycares, Babysitters, Schools, Extracurricular activities, Doctors, Medications, Religion, Food, Clothing, Toys, Haircuts, Babysitters, Television viewing, Books to read, Movies to watch, Playdates, Birthday parties, Vacations

You name it, each day there are dozens of little decisions necessary for him, for me, for us, to get through the day.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Being a single mom by choice isn’t for everyone. Being a mother isn’t for everyone. We all have our own path. For me, though, making this choice and choosing this path was the right one. It has made me a better person.

I wish I could tell you that since having Jackson, choices are easier for me now, but they’re not. I’m still the last one to order in a restaurant, and I usually have to ask the waitperson’s opinion on what I should have. I can stand in the bread aisle for hours, comparing ingredients and nutritional value. And to alleviate my morning angst over what to wear, I limit my choices to what is clean and hanging in the closet.

I look at the photo and see validation of my choice. I have copies of this photo in many places at work and at home. Looking at it takes me back to when I took the photo on a sunny, September day, when my son and I were just starting our journey together and I’m reminded of the power of choice.

by Monie 

Explaining the minority experience is not easy when you aren’t a minority. I am a minority. My experience is directly attributed to the racial climate I grew up with, my family and education. How do I explain to my child why their donor is white? The age-old saying is, “if you have an ounce of black in you, you are black.” Interracial children can definitely have identity issues.

What if you look white and can be mistaken for white? This is not a new issue. It was very well depicted in the 1959 movie, “The Imitation of Life.” The black maid’s daughter looked white and was suffering with identity issues. She wanted to be white, because she saw that white people’s lives were better than blacks. If she separated herself from her mother, no one would know she was black. It was a very sad story.

This issue has been the topic amongst several of my minority single mothers by choice friends. Most of these women never thought they would ever have to make the choice to be a single mother. It was a long hard process for me to accept this option. I had to mourn the dream of having a marriage before the baby carriage.

Once I dealt with all the emotions and the choice made, one of the next steps was picking a sperm donor. There is a small percentage of minority sperm donors compared to the percentage of white donors — not a small percentage of any particular minority, but of all minorities in general. To me personally this is not a big issue as I had two interracial grandparents. My family will be more accepting of the race of the child then how the child was conceived.

I had a conversation about this when I was talking to other minority single mothers by choice and how they picked their donors. A Latina SMC mom was happy to get her hands on Latino sperm. Another African American woman was trying to hold on to her African American sperm because her donor was no longer donating. A friend and I went through many sperm banks trying to find her more African American open ID sperm.

The best explanation I’ve heard about this issue came from a woman in the movie “Plan B.” She was Caucasian and picked Caucasian sperm. She thought the child already didn’t have a father, and was conceived with donor sperm, and she didn’t want to give the child another issue to have to deal with.

I remember watching a discussion of this on “Donahue” years ago, which was one of the first talk shows to openly discuss it. There were black women on the panel that had children with white men. Their children looked white. One of the women talked about when her baby was in the hospital nursery, and she asked the nurse to bring her child to her, the nurse told her no black babies were born that day. Another woman told about a time when she was in the park with her children, and a woman came up to her and asked her about her nanny services.

This whole SMC process is a series of hard choices. It is a reality that this is one of them for minority SMCs.

On Saint Patrick’s Day two years ago, towards the end of a busy work day, my mother busted me for frozen sperm. I was moving around a lot at the time, and had had all my mail forwarded to her house. If there is one thing that my retired librarian mother is good at, it’s keeping track of things. So I get this email from her, quite different from her usual updates (for example, she inexplicably sends my brother and I detailed records of everything that she eats). She had meticulously typed out the entire contents of a document that had come for me in the mail, including a typo and the return address. It was a bill for the annual storage costs of a fairly large batch of frozen sperm. I had forgotten to contact them to change my mailing address to a friend’s, and mymother was now in possession of a highly incriminating document, and worst of all I had no one to blame but myself.

My staff was asking me all sorts of questions about a project, I’m trying to act normal, but I stare at the computer screen trying to figure out how on earth to respond. Total blank and I’d promised my running club to get to an Irish pub early and hijack a big table for everyone.

I decided to reply to my mother when I got home that evening, knowing what kind of shape I’d be in after a Saint Patrick’s Day pub crawl with the guys. So there I am parked at a huge empty table, with a cold Guinness and an extraordinarily awkward email to answer. The running club guys trickle in as they get off work and then finally, at last another woman shows up.

“Psst! Holly! I need to talk to you now!”

And I go on to explain that my mother has busted me for a stash of frozen sperm (who, helpfully, I’ve nicknamed Ace for “ace in the hole”). “Oh!” she squeaks. “Oh! These are Modern Girl Problems. You need another drink.”

I knew Holly would say just the right thing. We go back to the table and Holly cracks up hysterically every time she glances my way.

Okay, so now it’s 11 p.m., I’m actually not too worse for the wear, and I have an email to answer. I arrive home and discover I’ve managed to lose my keys, and my housemate Lisa isn’t home, nor is she answering her phone. Oh yeah, this night is getting better and better. I literally have nowhere to go, but to a party and further celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Lisa is totally incommunicado, but other friends are there who respond to my crisis by laughing and buying me more drinks.

Somewhere around 3 a.m. I finally manage to get a hold of Lisa to let me into the apartment. Morning comes. On autopilot while waiting for coffee to brew oh-so-painfully slowly, and before even showering I check my email. My computer is set to automatically log me into Skype, and before the screen even brightens my mother is calling me on it. She has clearly been parked in front of the computer, staring at it unmoving, like my cat does when there is a mouse behind the kitchen cupboard, waiting for my log-in so that she can POUNCE. And there I am onscreen, stumbling around with a raging hangover, hair like a hornet’s nest and that special slept-in smudged-mascara look. I think she could actually smell the stale mint beer on my breath over the internet. We are talking the model of responsible single motherhood here.

Becoming an SMC is an enormous decision that no one takes lightly; it is one born, so to speak, by the deepest of soul searches and painful stocktaking of your life, your options, your dreams, and your beliefs about yourself and others. And unlike for heterosexual married couples, it is not a decision that is automatically celebrated by others. How and when to tell your family about your decision to pursue this extraordinary path is sensitive, often loaded, and approached delicately. All of the SMC books discuss this at length, and it’s an endless topic of discussion on the members-only forum. My example is how not to go about it.

And here I am, two years later, expecting my baby girl any day now, and I’ve got my fingers crossed she’s a redhead like me and that anonymous Irish donor I bought online. I’m so very grateful to be part of the first generation of women with both the technology and the social space to pursue single motherhood on my own with integrity.

As you may know, I’ve been working with a TV documentary company to produce a show about the process of becoming an SMC, and things are moving along. I’ve met with the people involved several times now, and I’m very impressed with their plans for the show — they want to show several upbeat, positive thinkers who are celebrating their choice to become a single mom and who are involved with a supportive single mothers by choice community as they go through their journey — and I would like to help them in any way I can. To do that, I really need your help.

We’re currently working on the casting of the show, which is the most crucial part. A young woman from the production company would love to talk to you and/or come to visit some chapter meetings to talk to your chapter about the show. It would be wonderful if she could visit as many chapters as possible. She understands confidentiality and privacy, and will totally respect that. No one will be obligated to go beyond the point of an initial contact unless they are interested in doing so, and if you decide to participate, you will not have your identity revealed in any way until you actually become a mother. (Adoption or conception are both fine for the show.)

Can you help? I would really appreciate it, as this show is something that could really help us to educate the public about who we are. Let me know? mattes@pipeline.com is my email address. If you want to write to Becca directly, her email is Becca Mondshein becca@offthefence.com

The SMC Forum is an online discussion site for our members where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. Whether you are thinking about becoming a Single Mother by Choice or are trying to conceive or preparing to adopt; whether you are pregnant or are already a mother, you will find a welcoming community here.

Forum discussions include subjects dedicated to every aspect of the SMC journey. The messages are divided up into various sub-forums covering topics dedicated to all stages of parenting, as well as practical matters, like sharing tips on dating, budgeting, household maintenance, recipes, and much more. Within each sub-forum, members may start individual threads to ask questions or discuss issues of interest to them and other SMCs.

The Forum is a place to get 24/7 support and information from other members who are going through the same things, and from those who have been through them already. To protect your privacy, membership in the SMC Forum is restricted to those who are registered members of SMC.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR JOINING THE FORUM

In order to participate on the forums, you will need to create a new account.

To register, please go to http://forums. singlemothersbychoice.com. Click “register” and follow the directions.

Create a user name and password. Your user name will be visible on all of your posts. Write down your user name and password as you will need them.

To complete registration you must fill in the text box marked “address”. Your name and address cannot be seen by other members, but this information allows us in the SMC office to confirm your membership.

You will be notified by email when your account “goes live.” After you register, there will be a short delay in being able to access the boards until your request is processed, usually less than 24 hours. Once you get a second notice of activation from the forum, you’re good to go, and if you’d like to post an introduction, there is an Introductions thread under many of the topics where you can do that. Enjoy!

If you have trouble registering, please email the Listmamas at SMC-listmamas-all@yahoogroups. com and describe the problem.

SMC now has a blog! It can be found at: http://singlemothersbychoice.blogspot.com/

The posts are from members, me and interested others, so if there’s something you’d like to post, send it to me (mattes@pipeline.com) and let me know how you want it to be signed, or if you want it to be anonymous.The blog is public and available to be read by anyone, so keep that in mind. No particular length is required. And remember that we also would love to get newsletter articles from our members for the newsletter, which is aimed at our membership, rather than the general public.