Somewhere, in an isolated room in a London hospital, is a small, frozen container, stored within a nitrogen tank, which has my name on it. Whether my name appears in a literal sense is debatable. I have never seen it. Its hold over me, however, is personal and continuous. It contains the frozen sperm of an anonymous donor of my choice.
In autumn 2012, I began in earnest to consider becoming a single mother.
The container in the hospital is the outcome of months of deliberation and I have let vital years go by in my hesitation to take the next step. In short, I feel neither able to go ahead and use the sperm, nor to return it to the Danish sperm bank from which it was sent.
I had never made assumptions about my fertility, although I did count on my chance to have a baby with someone. But I fell in love with the “wrong” men in my 30s and had not been able to step back to evaluate those relationships in terms of where they would (or would not) lead. Now, keen to mimic as closely as possible a natural situation, I registered with a clinic for insemination, with no additional use of hormones. I didn’t want IVF – I was looking for the medical equivalent of a one-night stand.
I learned about how to choose a donor and the psychological weight of the many forms to fill in. I contrasted it with a random, shared moment with a partner. I compared the process to going to a bar in a deliberate quest for a one-night stand. I had considered the latter but found that with a baby in mind, I lost the flirtatious spirit that might have brought a result.
Instead, I cringed at the clinical details of height, colouring and qualifications before me. This was internet dating of the most consequential kind. I chose my donor and spent the next weeks getting used to the idea of him.
In the interval between Christmas and new year 2012, I arrived at the clinic to be directed to a small treatment room. I felt utterly alone. It was a loneliness particular to the knowledge that, however fond I had grown of the donor, he would not be sharing this moment or anything that followed. To create a child with a man I loved was the only scenario my mind would admit and its spirit was entirely absent from that room. I couldn’t follow through. I bottled out in a way that sees the trauma remain.
More than a year later, my longing retains its hold. I am seeking a sign. To go ahead still feels wrong. To not go ahead still feels unthinkable.
In this situation, sympathy is for those who have tried and failed, rather than those who cannot decide to try. The clinic, unhappy with my hesitation, withheld future treatment, confusing things further by taking the decision away from me. Even if it takes a long time, this still needs to be my decision. I will carry it into my future.
With each passing month it is less likely that any treatment will work. Sometimes I think allowing time to elapse is my only way of reaching the right outcome.
I walk along the river near my flat, telling myself I have gone ahead, and run a type of emotional excavation, to see how it feels. On other days I tell myself that I’ve decided against parenthood and I am free. I can travel and I can flirt (because this does feel like a choice between a child and a relationship, however much I am assured of the contrary). In this version of the future I am an adventurer, I indulge my love of open-water swimming, I work in Africa rather than at a desk. I glimpse this other me. But although I can picture two roads clearly, I can’t envisage life beyond this vision any more than I can imagine two clear lines on a pregnancy test.
I have found a new clinic in Denmark and chosen a new donor. The Cryos bank, one of the largest in Europe, has a disconcerting name. I tell myself I will bring my Jewish humour to unfreeze its Nordic, literal label. Things have changed; it is even possible to hear donors interviewed.
The widespread appeal of Scandinavian fertility clinics led a recent radio programme to identify a “new Viking invasion” but the fact that my donor is a Dane has particular resonance for me because my mother is Danish. As a child, I recognised a brand of humour and directness visiting my grandparents in Denmark, which only increased as an adult. I could meet my future son or daughter half way, something of its heritage already part of me.
My donor is married. He is kind and his training to be a marine engineer echoes my love of the sea and my late father’s profession. I cannot romanticise him and yet I have to be a little in love with him in order to go ahead with the treatment. My fear is of the choice now. Somehow a feeling of guilt clings to it. I have tended to be consoled by the idea of fate but I am being selective about where it begins. My younger self pursued love and the shared life that comes with a partner, and I am staggered that people manage to find each other in time to fall in love and create another person.
Sometimes I imagine a little boy, in the embrace of my family and friends. How I am about this decision is not how I would be about the child. I have steered my life based on actual connections and once a baby existed I would feel the weight of accountability, but also joy. I could provide a stable home and I know the donor is happy for the child to get in touch with him at 18. I can make things work financially and I have much love to give. It is as if it is consuming itself.
On holiday recently, I noticed a mother swimming in an apparent race with her child. She let him win, with a sufficient show of energy to convince him it had been a genuine competition. It is what any parent does. I long to be inside this equation.
Today is a “no” day. To return the tiny possibility of life in the container requires a simple email. My no to having children. To cancel means choosing an existence without punctuation, where adulthood segues to old age without the lifelong stage that is children. It still feels wrong not to roll the dice but I’m exhausted by how relentlessly big all this is. At moments, I think the best outcome, if I put an end to this idea, is that sometimes I will regret it and sometimes I won’t.
With my 48th birthday in sight, everything contrives against pregnancy. But I am trying to shore myself up against regret. How will I address my 50-year-old self, when, with fertility definitively behind me, I never tried? To try and fail would make me a different person from the one who has not tried at all.
A dear friend, who is 93, tells me all life is decisions, the big ones and the little ones. I need to make this one and have the courage to stick with it. He doesn’t think I will, though, rather that I will keep peeling back the plaster, peering at destiny, until, little by little, I arrive at a fait accompli.
The writer’s name has been changed
