Solo:1
Solo is my choice to be a solo parent after 10 years traveling the world solo
“Solo” will be a sereis of articles. It is to support other females live a solo life that is free, happy and in their feminine energy; free from the invisible strings that tie us to corporate jobs, unhealthy relationships and misinformed health choices. I promote taking sabbatical, living off grid, connecting to nature, somatic practise and education in neuroscience.
This is my ongoing solo journey. The journey started around the world, traveling for 10 years after quitting corporate. I lived van life, boat life, became a yogi, surfer, entrepreneur, now artist and a recent wanna be solo mama.
I’m increasingly becoming a feminist activist challenging the large macro structures the govern humanity such as; normalcy of family units, gender, legal justice for rape, heteronormativity in economic financial models and family financial support systems, sexism in corporate organisations and inclusion of nature’s health in financial resource modelling.
This first article is my first journey into the fertility clinic. It covers:
- Taboo
- Medical ethics
- Asking for sperm
- Knowing the donor
- Holding space for big “conversations” (on your own)
- Costs
- Wealth and politics
- Macro-economic control
It looks very nice when you walk in. Expensive, warm minimalist.
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It’s something that’s often kept secret or taboo. I don’t see why. I am manifesting a child. It’s my body and my manifestation. What influence can anyone outside of my influence have on this matter?
To be honest I naturally did not want to go down this route. I am a scientist (Cambridge undergrad, Chemistry Masters and professionally chartered) and unlike many I see the limits of what science is not, as opposed to the answer to everything. I don’t need data to know something. I have a body and my intuition to collect information. That is information for which there is no capacity to hold currently in modern science. Intuitively I know that we don’t know enough about the impact of IVF on the developing fetus in ways we don’t scientifically know to measure. We’d have to ask the IVF babies about their somatic experiences. I know my first two weeks were spent in an incubator with no touch. Although I don’t remember visual details, I do remember.
I believe natural conception is best. However I find myself entertaining egg/ embryo freezing because there are so many unknowns and with no definitive answer, I’m keeping the possibility open. I don’t have enough information to rule it out. There’s also the factor of time I have time to conceive naturally. However this option is sold to remove the time pressure. Here is where I catch myself. I’m conscious of scarcity mindset about time and how the apparent scarcity is driving a demand for this expensive procedure. My mindset however is within my control. There are countless possibilities even in finite time where I can shift my mindset to a natural alignment. Entertaining this option is allowing me to see where I personally have more leverage by sharpening my focus to how I want this solo journey to feel. The second catch is that since I have opened up the initial conversation (30 mins for $400) I’ve learned there are further manufactured time constraints imposing more scarcity and driving pressure to act soon. These constraints are in no doubt aggressive price models first and foremost. They are linked to health statistics of the general population and not based on an individual’s personal health, which you would think a private personal consultation could be more tailored to. Although IVF is an interesting option to consider, I’m aware how crooked the system is.
I’m entertaining possibilities and I know insemination from an anonymous donor makes me recoil. An anonymous man’s semen in my body feels like a violation. I wonder who developed this procedure and entertained it as an option? We need to bring feminine energy back into the governing institutions that develop and sign-off such procedures. In other options, I am considering both egg freezing and embryo freezing. I was informed that for these options I should aim for three rounds and expect a 50:50 success rate. Breaking that down its three times two weeks of feeling aggy and bloated for $60k and the odds are no better than naturally — it might happen/ it might not.
Hence I’m feeling much more invested in taking aligned real world action to honing my signal to exactly what I want to attract for a natural conception. The thing is I actually do have time too. The whole point of egg freezing is because I don’t want to be pregnant quite yet. Another framing would be, look how much time I still have — lets dance in the magic! The reason I haven’t entertained this before is because I wasn’t interested and believed my eggs are healthier in my body where they belong. The only thing that’s shifted is that I’ve actually started thinking about it, which is a positive step in the law of attraction.
Clearly since my appointment on Monday and getting back to writing this on Wednesday, the influence of time pressure is wearing off and I’m feeling less likely to invest in the dubious process. However I have started conversations about sperm donation which I want to bring up. For me it is absolutely essential to know the donor as someone you welcome into your life as a friend. There needs to be that level of alignment. Such alignment is highly refined in ways words can’t explain but it is so important to acknowledge these subtle ways that people come together. It’s the same delicacy of trust building common through the animal kingdom. We are souls not data points.
So I did a weird thing and went through my male friends and assessed if I’d be comfortable with their sperm cell in my body, making my child. It feels like something you shouldn’t do. It feels weird to think of someone like that when there’s no romantic or sexual connection. I had the phone call scheduled to make my first ask. I framed it as a catch up from overseas. The line wasn’t great and they were drunk. The polarisation was stark. Although I have no issue with their drunkenness, I had my answer and it felt so ridiculous to have even seeded that thought in the first place. Others on the list are a gay only child but they’d have to fly to the other side of the world for a very expensive wank. Turning to local guys, the chance of running into them once the child is born needs more careful consideration than the single compulsory counselling session which is part of the IVF process. Legally the child would be mine but they would also have a right to know who their father is if they wanted. Navigating the social dynamics if the father took more interest than expected is challenging. Most fathers are hands-off. I wouldn’t want to encourage more light touch/ minimal effort behaviour from men regarding child care. Sending a birthday card is more than some kids get from their fathers. This makes me reflect on whether forking out on IVF to be a solo parent is making the system even more lopsided, creating more light touch peripheral fathers. I wouldn’t want that personally nor out of social responsibility. Besides the crumb of sperm cell, if I’m going solo, I’m going solo . I don’t want any other crumbs from the father. In that respect a remote donor would be preferred.
The yin and yang of masculine and feminine has swung so hard to the yang, the masculine, that we need to be inviting men into their feminine to rebalance the system. That is women need to be teaching men to learn to mother. I’ve noticed a masculine response to feminism where men want to teach men how to be fathers. That is creating more of what already is too much. Learning to surrender rather than stage a new presence is how balance can be regained — that is males inhabiting their yin energy, guided by those who know it best, women. If the world went too far into the yin, would women stand up and create more from their yin or would they seek out the yang?
Holding space for big conversations on your own is also an odd thing to carve the space and time to do. Normally you’d have the physical presence of other stakeholders to talk out your thoughts and feelings. Giving your thoughts and feelings time and space is still absolutely necessary solo. I learned this as a solo entrepreneur first. I spent Monday and Tuesday night holding space by myself, candles burning, listening to the rain, tuning in, listening inwards. I’m a big believer in the power of heart coherence. I asked my heart what it wanted as answers to specific questions. I listened to what my body knew and although it wasn’t a definitive answer straight away, noticing what was specific even if it wasn’t immediately logical as well as noticing also what wasn’t said. There was so much swimming around my head it took me a while to remember to do this. I noticed I was pottering because my brain was busy trying to think my way through it. I needed to be still and feel into it.
Coming back to my first question, what influence can anyone else have on this matter? Even though it is my body, costs are exclusively high. The cost is set at an upward stretch of generally affordable. When you think about what else you could do, it’s rather exciting. (Some of these other options could also lead to natural conception too!) It’s not that the cost buys any certainty anyway. The IVF business has been set up with price models designed to capitalise on apparent scarcity of time. That’s an influence I don’t want. My personal good health has been rolled into a shabby average representative for the general population which makes matters artificially worse. Despite my personal tests coming back really good, the cut offs are designed around age, based on average population health not individual health. This again diminishes personal influence.
Looking deeper into the government policies underpinning the system, it favours heteronormativity. This needs to change. The system favours heteronormative couples over singles and gay couples. Singles and gay couples will not be considered for public funding and neither will women 40 and over. Looking ahead, schools will by design have a misrepresentation of heteronormative families, which makes me pull out of socialising in those spheres. Parenthood should not compromise diversity. Moreover, even with this policy changed, access to wealth to cover the high costs is discriminative against other social-economic factors. This particularly is the case for singles, who by default have no double income. It comes down to wealth and politics.
To summarise the government policies are biased to give certain social groups access to IVF. This encourages population growth in heteronormative families and those who already have access to wealth. There is a financial bias to making the IVF industry profitable rather than IVF as a service for all. The macro-economic politics behind this industry is alarming and calls for tighter regulation in its ability to control growth of certain socioeconomic communities more so than in others. This is happening directly by policy and indirectly through costs and price models. Population growth in the West has slowed as women are educated and liberated. It feels like policies around IVF are driving growth of wealthy populations rather than supporting all people with fertility health. It also feels that policies supporting heteronormative couples over single and gay women is favouring the presence of males in a place where they are no longer needed or wanted by single and gay women.
Overall I would love to embark on a parenting journey free from patriarchal entanglement or male presence. However the industry that would support me on this journey has questionable ethics. I don’t know what my answer is yet, I’m right at the start but I have trust in nature and trust in myself.
