PALIN MITENK BLOG

By Louise Janson

Hugs and heartache: Louise Janson and her daughter Millie


A couple of nights ago, I tiptoed out of my two-year-old daughter's bedroom, having tucked her up with her beloved Doggy - a revolting scrap of balding fur with a torn nose and one eye - pressed up against her cheek.

Millie had warm milk in her tummy and there were endless verses of The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round spinning in the air.

I was stopped short in the doorway by a chirpy call of: 'Goodnight, Mama!'

Granted, it wasn't a quotation from Hamlet, but when it's your first child wishing you goodnight for the first time in her 24-month existence, having heard you whisper it to her with your every goodnight kiss, it generates an exquisite flutter of delight and the mad desire to run and share it with someone special.

In my case, that was my mum. And then my best friend Christine. And then my other best friend Adam. They were all out, so they heard my news by voicemail several hours later.

Not for the first time, as I sat on the sofa, hugging my knees to my chest, bursting with pride and dripping with tears of joy, I wished my daughter's father could be by my side, to gasp and coo with me at yet another tiny, but momentous, development in our daughter's life.

But that's never going to happen, because my daughter hasn't got a father.

She's the donor- conceived child of a single mother, the result of an agonising decision I made some years ago, complete with its intricately complex and agonising repercussions.

So, when I read Zoe Lewis's poignant and admirably honest description in Saturday's Daily Mail of her fears and doubts about her decision to go it alone as a single mother, I understood her turmoil better than most people.

And it made me want to give her a hug and tell her that everything is going to be fine. Tiring, but fine. Because I've been there, felt that, doubted that, feared that and lived to tell the tale with ceaseless delight and a lot of pride, however difficult I've found it at times.

For all the joy a new life brings, it's going to be a tough road ahead for Zoe, whether it's the practical hardships you think you can prepare for or those emotional bombshells that explode when you least expect them.

Two years and two months ago, I gave birth to my beautiful baby girl, conceived after five gruelling cycles of IVF using donor sperm.

It was, and remains, the most spectacular experience of my life, the achievement of which I am most proud, the moment when I felt I truly became who I was destined to be. But it so very nearly did not happen.

Unlike my core group of friends, I had remained single throughout my 30s - my biological clock shrieking, my options diminishing, anxiety and depression clouding my days.
Getting married and having children, that most common of experiences, seemed to be slipping out of my grasp.

With great reluctance, I was forced to confront a terrifyingly stark choice: live the rest of my life childless; just hope Mr Right-ish would turn up at some point; or seize control of my future and try for a baby on my own.

Like Zoe, being a single mother wasn't what I wanted, or hoped for, or dreamt of. But not being a mother was unendurable.

I steeled myself for tough times ahead, and I certainly got them. Four years of fertility treatment, five cycles of IVF, three failed pregnancies and a bill for £42,000.



The cost to my emotional, psychological and physical well-being was inestimable.

But so was the joy of my daughter's arrival. There aren't sufficient words in the English language to express its magnitude. Euphoria doesn't even come close. And it's a feeling that's remained with me ever since.

'I love you all the way to the Moon and back,' I croon to her, countless times a day.

'I love you all the way to Africa and back, and all around the world and back again 50,000 times.'

But my distances are never long enough, wide enough, deep enough to express how much I really do love my daughter. Because for as long as I can remember I've wanted to be a mother, and it is the most fantastic feeling imaginable.

A little less fantastic, of course, is being a mother with the prefix 'single'.

For while I am ecstatic, awestruck, privileged and humbled on a daily basis, I am also semi-comatose with exhaustion and permanently worried about money and my ability to earn enough of it.

I am frustrated at being stuck in a small flat without a garden and a teensy bit tired of borrowing other people's husbands to put up shelves, assemble furniture and untangle my computer malfunctions.

Single motherhood, I have found, for all its walks in the park, is not a walk in the park.

My daily routine is probably similar to those of married working mothers everywhere: get up in the morning, make a frantic dash to the bathroom, slap on some moisturiser and throw on any item of clothing not soiled or scrunched into a ball on the floor.

Often, there's no time even to brush my hair before it's straight into the getting-toddler-up-and-cleaned-and-fed-and nose-wiped-and-dressed routine. Then it's a rush to the nursery in time to start my own working day as a writer, by 9am.

Where my routine diverges significantly is around the 7pm mark, when no male soul-mate of dashing disposition strides through the front door to take over the bath-time or bedtime story-reading slot, or simply to hear about my day.

It's just me, a toddler and Bob The Builder.

And then I've got the dinner to prepare, the dishwasher to unload, the washing to hang out, the spaghetti to scoop up off the floor, the yoghurt to wipe off the table-top, the washing-up to do, the remote control to retrieve from under the sofa, the freelance commission to chase by email at 9pm when I'm so tired I can't even see the words on the computer let alone spell them and, oh yes, a husband to find


Missing person: Louise admits to being lonely, and has not given up on finding a soulmate and father-figure for her daughter (posed by models)


I haven't given up on finding a soulmate, and I can't deny there are times when I feel incredibly lonely. But for now, other priorities prevail.

As a financially independent, single, thirty-something gal about town, my pre-pregnancy social life could well have been a riot of nightclub-hopping, drunken gatherings in trendy bars and thrilling liaisons with the opposite sex.

But, in fact, it was a more modest mix of cinema outings and quiet dinners with close friends, topped up with a good Philip Roth or IanMcEwan book before bedtime.

Now? By 7.30pm, I'm prostrate on the sofa nursing a cup of green tea, a migraine and a giant bar of Toblerone, speechless with exhaustion and barely able to cope with flicking through a glossy magazine.

Single motherhood is not for the faint-hearted nor the fickle. To conceive, let alone give birth to, a child through donor insemination takes resolve, resourcefulness, commitment, determination, focus and courage (qualities, incidentally, extremely useful in the practice of successful mothering.)

You have to stand your ground in the face of repeated failure, relentless anxiety and a devastating drain on your finances. It's tough.

It also takes its toll on those around you. I used to observe wryly that for any semblance of sanity and civility to prevail in the single mother's household, what's needed is 'money and a mummy'; a plentiful supply of the former and preferably a loving and local version of the latter.

Fortunately, I'm blessed with the best of mothers, and the presence of my parents in the family home around the corner from my flat was a significant factor in my decision to go it alone.

Two years into the messy reality of single mothering, I confess I could never have coped without them.

I genuinely hadn't wanted to rely on them to anywhere near the extent I've ended up doing, and I thank God, and them, for their love and support.


Just this week, they had to be summoned to the rescue yet again. My daughter's nursery called to report that Millie had a fever and was vomiting. I was stuck at a work meeting, so poor old Mum and Dad were dispatched to collect her. Managing to keep all the balls in the air all of the time takes tremendous energy and planning.

One of my Single Mother Survival Strategies is to have an army of good friends, family and neighbours on whom I can call at a moment's notice.

Over time, I've managed to generate my own Team Testosterone for all those occasions when the absence of a partner/husband feels most acute.

My brothers attend the nursery's nativity play with me, I have found a reliable builder for the heavy- duty interior work, and Paul Across The Road was happy to assemble the Ikea cot and toddler table and chairs.

My merry band of men has helped me keep our show on the road, but, of course, none of them can fill the main vacancy - a dad.

I made a decision to deny my child a father, and we live with the - at times unbearable - consequences of that decision every day.

One morning last week, we arrived a little late at nursery. My daughter's class was in the middle of a play session and the teacher was holding up a series of pictures of activities - a man raking leaves, a woman baking a cake - and asking the children to identify them.

As I took off my daughter's coat and started changing her shoes, the teacher held up a picture of a man shaving and asked: 'Whose daddy shaves in the morning?'

The entire class shouted back 'My daddy does! My daddy does!', while my little girl looked on bewildered.

Blinking back my tears, I gave her a massive cuddle, praying she hadn't fully understood the question, and whispered into her neck 'I love you', as I picked up my coat to leave.

'I ruff oo!' she called back cheerfully, as I reached the door, beaming for all her worth.

I dissolved into tears in the car and sobbed for most of the day. I've put us into this delicate and complex situation, it's my responsibility to deal with it, but it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

No single woman I know who has followed the same path as me has done so lightly or without a considerable battle with her conscience.

My feeling is that we didn't actively choose to become 'single mothers'; we actively chose not to be childless. And I believe there's a profound and easily ignored difference.

I would never advocate single motherhood as a lifestyle option; it's tougher than you could ever imagine, stressful, exhausting, expensive and fraught with complications, both obvious and subtle.

But what I would clamour for, loud and hard, is the single woman's right to respect and support for her decision to go it alone.

Embrace that decision, Zoe. If you are lucky enough to have a baby, joy is on its way. Joy and chaos and exhaustion and despair, but ceaseless, wonderful joy.

You'll love your little child and she or he will 'ruff oo' right back. And that's the best thing in the world.


source: dailymail