Save The Date

No more obsessing. If I set the date, then it's just planning. So, my Yule gift to myself in December of 2012, when I am 33, will be my first at home insemination. Lots to do before then but having that date set, the decision made, is a relief, a weight off my shoulders. I'm really going to do this thing.


I can't wait to be a mommy.

Obsession

I'd just like to say that for the past couple hours I've sat in front of my calculator, pen in hand and figured out how old I will be during different stages of my college career and when it would be best to start the process of trying to conceive. Do I wait till I graduate with my Masters at 34? Do I start the testing and donor research at 33? Do I start the testing at 32 and start trying to conceive at 33 so that (hopefully) I'm expecting by the time I graduate?

Then I went into the money part. How much should I be saving? How much into retirement, saving for a home, for ttc, for travel? How much can I save up now before I have a baby to worry about and astronomical childcare costs?

And what about multiple children? I'd like to have three. If that's the case, do I start earlier, do I use fertility drugs so my chances of more than one at a time are higher? How many years between each child should I have? Can I wait till each is in kindergarten before having the next, or will that put my in my 40's ttc? A big yes on that one. Will I be able to afford childcare for more than one child at a time?

So many numbers I can punch into my calculator. But do any of them really give me an accurate portrayal of my life as a single mother? No. I keep going back to this argument that I often hear. It will never be the "right" time and you will never have the "right" amount of money. This brings me to my fears, and here they are in no particular order. Of course I have many more fears but these all pertain to money and timing.

1. I'm afraid that I will have to live off government money in some fashion.
(But isn't that what that money is there for, to help families through tough times?)
2. I'm afraid that I will have to drop out of college.
(Yet, my financial contribution has been very little since I started college again and with a child I'm likely to get more.)
3. I'm afraid I won't be able to afford child care.
(I know there is government funded help in this area as well.)
4. I'm afraid I will wait too long and it will be very hard to conceive. And since I don't use credit cards I will deplete my savings ttc and have nothing left.
(So don't wait so long!)

Ok, that's enough for today. As you can see this is very much on my mind today. Two posts in one day! I must return my thoughts to the present!

Father's Day

I didn't grow up with a single mom, so I know little about that lifestyle. I had a loving, doting father. He'd had sons in his previous marriage and I was his only daughter. I was definitely Daddy's little girl. And since my half brothers never lived with us I was totally an only child. Now, how does a woman who adores her father so completely make the decision to create a family of her own without one?

I have been seeing(online) a guy. He seems great and already has two kids of his own. But I find myself bored with the prospect of trying with him. I have no issues dating a man with kids, I adore kids. I've simply started to change my dream. I do want a large family, extended and/or my own. But unless the guy I'm with is super special, I would just rather be a single mom. The dream is changing. I don't want to settle for a guy I "sorta" click with just because I desperately want a family. That's just asking for trouble. But, since I am open to the idea of marrying into a ready made family, why wouldn't a guy be open to the same idea? I guess I'm a little fed up with chasing a dream I have no control over. Choosing single motherhood is a dream I have much more control of. Perhaps not the outcome of the persuit, but in choosing I'm not waiting for someone else to tell me I can start a family, I'm only waiting for myself.

Well anyhow, it's Father's Day and I just wanted to say that I love my Daddy, and the idea of Daddy's in general. I do hope I get lucky and find the right man to be Daddy to my children. However, I hope that when/if I go it alone, I will be able to find male role models to fill that gap.

Back and Forth

I go through a constant tug of war in my head. One part of me says, why wait, start now and things will fall into place. Another part of me says, wait for a few years to give love a chance and get all your ducks in a row. There are so many reasons NOT to start trying right now and very few reasons to. But those few reasons to, are so compelling that often they outweigh the sensible reasons to wait. So, I thought today I would make a nice list to remind me why I need to wait till my life is more organized to fit a child into it.

1. I don't have health insurance
2. I have little savings and no credit card for emergencies
3. I don't have my own place, I live with/care for, my elderly father and my mother
4. I work over 50 hours a week and go to school full time as well
5. I'm quite overweight and this could lead to pregnancy issues like gestational diabetes

Really, I think those five reasons are enough to deter me and certainly enough to make my life with a baby very difficult. Although living with my parents is a necessity, my mother needs the help and it helps me out financially, it could also be a plus in the parenting situation. I would have support from my mother and we were thinking about buying a new home with a mother-in-law apartment or a duplex together so that I'd have my own space but still be there to help her with Dad and if I had a child I would have her right there to help me out. This idea I like better than living directly with them as I am right now, I love my mother, but I don't want to coparent with her. So this is a reason to wait. But then again, in those first couple years, baby years, there is less "parenting" and more just "tending" to the child. So I don't think I'd feel like she was intruding on my parenting style. I know my mother will be unhappy if I decide to get pregnant now. She approves of me going it alone but thinks I should wait till I'm making more money.

Ok, so here are the reasons, the mostly illogical reasons, I should start trying now.

1. I am young still and if I start trying now I will discover if I have any infertility issues before it's too late.
2. It's never going to be "the right time" to have a child and every single parent I know struggles with money issues but adores their child to no end and tells me how much it's worth the stress.
3. This is a silly one, but, I want my kids to be near the age of my friends kids.
4. I want my father to know his grandchild. It makes me sad to think that he may never see me get married, but sadder that he will never be close to his grandchildren.
5. I want to have more than one, hopefully three children and the later I start the harder it will become.
6. I desperately want to be a mother, so much it hurts. And isn't that the best reason?

Mourning

How can you mourn something you never had? How can you mourn something that you aren't sure is gone? How do you let go of a dream? Slowly.

In order to move on, it is imperative to let go, let other things fall away. In the light of day I often feel strong, wise, steadfast in my desire to take the next step toward single motherhood. But as the sun falls I find myself mourning the dream that this decision will bury. Last night I was about to fall asleep, this is prime daydreaming time for me and so I brought up my usual visualization of "the one". You know, the guy who loves me just as I am, encourages my strong traits and gracefully ignores my failings. The guy who holds me just the way I want to be held and touches my face when he kisses me. He knows all the right moves, all the right words. He's funny, he likes to tease me. We play well together. But last night, I couldn't even bring up the visual. It was like my dream was slipping away. So I started to cry. It's been a while. And it was a little scary.

I know how it goes. In order to let something new into your life sometimes you have to let go of old beliefs, old dreams that no longer service. This is hard work. These dreams have been my security blanket. I have very specific visualizations that were intended to serve as intentions in the law of attraction sense. Obviously something was missing. My intentions have left me following my career goals and my goals of love and family remain in the realm of the imaginary. They used to feel so real to me. I knew this man's touch, I knew what our private jokes and nicknames for each other would be. I have trouble putting myself there now. It no longer feels real. It has become a farce.

I'm not saying I'm letting go of the idea of love. Perhaps I'm meant to find it in my golden years. I just feel that in making the decision to pursue single motherhood I am stating to the universe that I have given up on my dream, and for the foreseeable future I will forget what a man's touch feels like, what passion twists in my stomach, what tenderness and partnership can achieve.

I have read about this in my books on choice motherhood. It's almost a threshold to cross and often time it is the reason women wait so long to start trying to conceive or adopt. Women don't want to let go of the dream of true love or the traditional progression of creating a family. But in order to transform, to create the butterfly of family, I must shed this skin that is keeping me trapped in my cocoon.

I often employ the opinions of my friends on this topic, and they all agree that I am too young to give up. But is that what these older single mothers by choice did, waited till the were 37, 38 or 40 and then had to spend thousands of dollars on fertility treatments? Perhaps my friends are right and I should not give up so quickly. But I don't see the situation changing anytime soon. I plan to be working full time, going to school full time and taking care of my elder family member for quite some time, which leaves little room for a love life, let alone a social life. The sad truth is that I haven't had a date in three years. I haven't even had a crush on a guy because there are no men in my life to have a crush on. I have so much love to give and I give it freely to my parents, my friends and their children.

Maybe I just need to take this dream of mine down to it's basic roots. In a love relationship I wanted to be with someone I could love and who would love me back. I wanted to be with someone who brought out the best in me and who I could in return nurture their passions, and of course, physical affection. Aren't these things attainable in a parent child relationship? I fully expect that having a child will slow me down, make me appreciate the little moments, bring the wonder out in me. And I have so much anticipation and excitement when I think about what my unborn children will be like, what they will have passion for, what they will accomplish and how I can encourage them to reach for their dreams.

Dream change, whether by chance or circumstance. Is letting go of my dreams of true love giving up, or is it the painful process of mourning and transformation?

In the beginning...

Life is a funny, unpredictable thing. Most of us, when we remember what we pictured our life to be when we "grew up" envisioned something vastly different from what we now experience. For me, I grew up visualizing a world of travel to exotic lands. I was either singing Tosca in the finest opera houses in Europe or playing Jane Goodall in some deep dark jungle. Once in a while I'd have a little wedding fantasy. The man, the dress, the party, mostly the dress. But a family was not my main concern. I knew I wanted travel and Independence and an illustrious career.

This year I turned thirty and my world somehow became a frantic race to an imaginary finish line. I left high school to become that opera singer and dropped out to become somebodies girlfriend. I spent the majority of my twenties being just that. I was not myself, I became what I thought I should be for another. Three years after our split and I still occasionally use the phrase "we" when talking about some memory of my life back then. It is a scary and liberating thing to discover who you really are. I have become a student of psychology, a caretaker to an elderly family member, a devoted daughter, a mentally healthy, strong and independent woman with a wide variety of interests and skills. But now I seem to have gone too far as I try to make up for the time I "lost". I've become involved in so much that I often feel overwhelmed. I jump from obsession to obsession, unable to focus on what I know are my priorities.

Now, lets go back. Remember the young me who wanted nothing but to be an independent, worldly career woman? Well she's still there. And those goals are in progress, but they are mutating. Now, when I look ahead I see independent, worldly, career driven...Mom.
But wait! Did I skip something? What about the man, the wedding, the husband. Recently I have started to reconcile myself to the very real possibility that love and marriage may be beyond my grasp within the time constraints of female fertility.

After I left my boyfriend of eight years I was glad to be free. The freedom was exhilarating. This feeling has started to give way recently to loneliness since I have noticed a complete lack of male energy in my life. I work with women. I take classes with women. I live with women. There is a palpable and often painful absence of male contact and in turn, seemingly no prospects for creating the new vision I have of my future.

In my mind there is a sprawling ranch house in a field with horses and a small barn. Drowsy with jet lag, I sit on the pateo until my eldest daughter comes out with two glasses of orange juice. I thank her and we sit in silence until my middle child, my son, comes out bleary eyed looking for breakfast. The three of us head to the kitchen and go about the business of making pancakes. As we cook, and set the table, my husband comes into the kitchen holding our youngest child, who grapples onto me and refuses to let go as I flip pancakes high in the air for her amusement. My husband wraps his arms around me and kisses me on the neck, whispering in my ear that I have been missed while I was away on business. And breakfast continues, blissfully normal and serene.

And now, the panic sets in. If I haven't been able to even go on a date in three years, how am I ever going to find "the one" in time to get married, get settled and have babies before my ovaries shrivel up and die? At age thirty, many a friend has laughed at my dismay. Nobody believes I will remain single and childless. After all, I'm an intelligent, averagely attractive(if not overweight), fun, interesting woman. But I am beginning to see that this is not necessarily a guarantee of finding love, success in love or even success in securing a first date. If I am never successful in securing a loving partnership, does this mean that I forfeit my chance to have a family, to hold a child in my arms, to nurture new life? This is the right of every woman. This is the purpose of every womb! If I choose to be a mother, why should poor luck in love dictate my primal need to bring life into this world?

Enter my discovery of Choice Motherhood. There are women; successful, intelligent, emotionally, physically, financially stable women, who have chosen to become single mothers. Could I be one of these women? Could I modify this dream of mine? Would I be content to live childless if love never came my way, or if it came too late? No. I know now that I will not be satisfied to live without the experience of being a mother.

And so, with this knowledge of myself I have entered into what Mikki Morrissette of Choosing Single Motherhood calls the "thinking" stage of Choice Motherhood. The questions to ponder now are vague, but as time goes on they will become more pointed. Right now I wonder; How long do I wait before trying to conceive? Do I give "the one" 1,2 or 3 years to show up at my doorstep? Do I get a jump on my fertility and conceive now? How much should I save for this endeavor? Should I wait till I'm in grad school? When I have children will I lose any possibility of overseas travel? Do I wait till after I've accomplished my major career goals, goals which are only in their germination stage?

This blog is an attempt to anonymously explore the journey towards Choice Motherhood. I know there are so many others exploring this path. Since I've started my research I've felt like I was on the outside looking in. With this blog I want to jump into the community, to be enriched by its sense of unity. There is an element to Choice Motherhood of community that I feel a strong magnetism with. It takes a village to raise a child. As a single mother, this mantra seems to have a deeper meaning. Single, independent, intelligent women can raise a child, but they cannot do it alone. Children need support, nurturing, safety, role models from the people that love them. People, not person. Being a single mother encourages community and that is what I wish to embrace through this blog, a sense of community that I will hopefully carry into my role as a mother. Weather that be a single mother, a married mother, a mother at forty or thirty two, a mother of biological child or an adopted child.

"Above all we need, particularly as children, the reassuring presence of a visible community, an intimate group that enfolds us with understanding and love, and that becomes an object of our spontaneous loyalty, as a criterion and point of reference for the rest of the human race."
Lewis Mumford