Nobody hands you a roadmap for this. So here's mine.

I want to tell you about the moment I decided to do this alone.

It wasn't dramatic. There was no breakup, no ticking-clock epiphany in a doctor's office, no movie montage of me staring wistfully at babies in a park. It was February 2023, I was sitting at my kitchen table with a glass of wine and my laptop, and I just... knew. I was 30. I had an autoimmune illness that was already affecting my ovarian reserve. I had a career I'd built from the ground up — and I had the financial means to make this happen. What I didn't have was a partner. And I was done waiting for one.

So I typed "IVF single mother by choice" into Google and fell down a rabbit hole that would eventually cost me $30,000, land me in the hospital with OHSS, break my heart twice, and give me the greatest love of my life.

Here's everything I wish someone had told me before I started.

"Single mother by choice" — let's talk about that phrase

First, I want to address the term itself, because it matters. "Single mother by choice" — SMBC in the fertility community — means exactly what it sounds like: a woman who intentionally chooses to become a mother without a partner. Not a woman who was left. Not a woman whose relationship fell apart during pregnancy. A woman who looked at her life, looked at what she wanted, and decided to go get it.

I love the term and I also hate it. I love it because it's accurate — this was my choice, fully and completely, and that agency matters. I hate it because it implies other single mothers didn't choose, which isn't always fair, and because it sometimes gets wielded as a class marker. "Oh, she's a single mother by choice" — as if that makes it more legitimate than any other kind of single motherhood. Let's be real: all single mothers are doing the hardest job in the world. The "by choice" part just means I had the privilege of planning for it.

But I digress.

The insurance fight that radicalized me

Here's the thing nobody warns you about when you're a single woman pursuing IVF: the system is not built for you.

I had Aetna. Good insurance. The kind of insurance you feel good about. And when I called to check my fertility coverage, they told me IVF was covered — with a caveat. I needed to demonstrate 12 months of failed "sperm/egg contact" before they'd authorize treatment.

Let me just... let that sink in for a second.

Twelve months of sperm/egg contact. For a single woman. Without a partner. They were essentially saying: go find someone to have sex with for a year, fail to get pregnant, and then we'll help you. My dream of motherhood wasn't as valid as a married person's unless I could prove I'd tried the "natural" way first — which, for me, wasn't an option.

I called it what it was: discriminatory. And I wasn't alone — LGBTQ+ couples face the exact same barrier. If two women want IVF, they're told to attempt sperm/egg contact for 12 months first? It's absurd. It's a policy designed for heterosexual married couples and everyone else gets penalized.

I reached out to the National Women's Law Center. I explored my options. And ultimately, I paid out of pocket — because I wasn't going to let a bureaucratic definition of who "deserves" fertility treatment stop me from having my baby.

$30,000. Out of pocket. For a medical procedure that my insurance technically covered — just not for someone like me.

If you're an SMBC reading this and dealing with insurance denial: fight it. Appeal it. Document everything. Call the NWLC. Contact your state insurance commissioner. And know that this is changing — slowly, painfully slowly, but it's changing. More states are passing fertility coverage mandates that include single women and LGBTQ+ families. But we're not there yet, and the gap between the policy and the reality is where women like us fall.

Choosing a sperm donor is the strangest shopping experience of your life

I was not prepared for this part. At all.

You go on a cryobank website, and suddenly you're browsing human genetics like you're on Amazon. Height. Eye color. Hair color. Ethnicity. Education level. Medical history. Some banks let you hear an audio interview with the donor. Some include baby photos. Some have handwriting samples, which — what am I supposed to do with a handwriting sample? Assess his penmanship before he fathers my child?

It's surreal. And it's weirdly high-stakes while also feeling completely absurd. I spent an evening with my best friend drinking wine and scrolling through donor profiles like we were on a dating app. "Ooh, this one's 6'2" and played lacrosse." "This one's a software engineer and his baby photo is adorable." "Wait — this one listed his favorite book as Atlas Shrugged. Hard pass." (I'm sorry, I have opinions about Ayn Rand and I don't want to pass them on genetically. I know that's not how genetics works. I don't care.)

In the end, I chose someone whose medical history was clean, whose donor essay was thoughtful and kind, and who felt — in the most unscientific way possible — like a good person. You can't know. You'll never know. You pick the best option with the information available and you move forward.

The cost of sperm, by the way, is wild. A single vial can run $500–$1,200+ depending on the bank and the type (ICI vs. IUI-ready vs. washed). And you'll want to buy multiple vials in case you need more than one cycle. I bought enough for eight attempts. Add that to the $30K I was already paying out of pocket and — yeah. This is an expensive dream.

Going through IVF without a partner

Let's talk about the actual day-to-day of doing IVF solo.

The shots. Someone has to give you the ones you can't reach. Or you have to get creative. My mom was my injection partner — she helped with my stims cycle and retrieval, and she administered my trigger shot at exactly 11:30 PM while we both nervously laughed about the fact that neither of us had any medical training. If you don't have a parent or friend who can help, YouTube is surprisingly good at teaching you how to give yourself intramuscular injections. It's doable alone. It's just lonely.

The appointments. So many appointments. Monitoring every other day during stims. Blood draws at 7 AM. Ultrasounds where they count your follicles while you lie there trying to interpret the ultrasound tech's facial expression for clues about whether things are going well. I drove myself to every single one. I sat in waiting rooms full of couples and I was the only one there alone. I'm not going to pretend that didn't sting sometimes.

The emotional weight. This is the hardest part of doing IVF as an SMBC, and nobody can fully prepare you for it. When you have a partner, you can split the grief. You can cry together after a bad beta. You can hold each other in bed at 2 AM when the anxiety is eating you alive. When it's just you — you carry all of it. Every fear, every hope, every devastating phone call from the clinic. It's all on your shoulders.

After my first transfer failed — BFN, straight negative — I went home to an empty home and sat on the floor of my shower and cried. There was nobody to tell me it was going to be okay. There was nobody to hold me. It was just me, the water, and the knowledge that I was going to have to do this again.

And I did. I did it two more times. Because giving up was never an option.

The practical stuff nobody mentions. Who's your emergency contact at the clinic? Who's picking you up from retrieval (you're sedated — you can't drive)? Who's bringing you food when you're recovering from OHSS and can barely stand? Who's taking care of your animals while you're at the hospital? As a single person, you need to plan all of this in advance. I was lucky — my mom and my aunt were incredible. But not everyone has that, and the fertility world assumes a partner by default. The intake forms have a space for "partner name." The consent forms reference "both intended parents." The post-retrieval instructions say "have your partner drive you home." Every single touchpoint reminds you that you're doing this differently.

The question everyone asks (and how to deal with it)

"What about the dad?"

You will hear this. From family, from friends, from well-meaning strangers, from the ultrasound tech making conversation, from your own brain at 3 AM. And you need a response you feel good about, because this question is going to follow you from conception through pregnancy through parenthood.

Here's what I say: "She was very much wanted and very much planned for. She's donor-conceived. I chose to become a mom on my own."

That's it. I don't apologize. I don't over-explain. I don't defend my choice to anyone who didn't write a $30,000 check and spend six months stabbing themselves with needles.

Some people will be weird about it. Some people will be amazing about it. My advice: take note of who falls into which category and adjust your inner circle accordingly.

For Sadie — when she's old enough — I plan to be completely honest and age-appropriate about her story. She was wanted. She was fought for. She has a donor, and that's a normal and beautiful way to come into the world. There are incredible children's books about donor conception that I'm already collecting. And the SMBC community online is full of families navigating this exact conversation — I've learned so much from them.

What I know now that I didn't know then

If I could go back to February 2023 me — the woman with the wine and the laptop and the Google search — here's what I'd tell her:

It will take longer than you think. I thought I'd be pregnant by summer 2023. Instead, I had three transfers, one BFN, one miscarriage, and finally got pregnant in August 2023. My daughter was born in July 2024. The timeline is not yours to control, and the sooner you make peace with that, the less it will destroy you.

It will cost more than you think. Medication, monitoring, donor sperm, storage fees, the retrieval, the transfer, the OHSS hospitalization, the blood thinners for my autoimmune disorder, the intralipid infusions, the follow-up appointments — all of it adds up to a number that would make most people's eyes water. Budget for more than the clinic quotes you. Then add 30%.

You are not less of a mother because you did this alone. Not less valid. Not less "real." Not less anything. You are, in fact, kind of a badass — you saw what you wanted and you went and got it with no safety net and no one to split the bill.

Your kid will be fine. I know the worry. Will she be okay without a dad? Am I being selfish? Is this fair to her? I spent months agonizing over this. And then Sadie was born, and she was perfect, and she was loved by so many people — my mom, my aunt, my friends, my community — and I realized that what matters isn't the structure of your family. It's the love in it. Sadie has more love than she knows what to do with. She's going to be great.

Find your people. The SMBC community online — Reddit, Instagram, Discord, Facebook groups — was my lifeline. These are women who get it. Who don't ask "but what about the dad" because they've heard it a thousand times. Who celebrate your betas and mourn your losses and send you voice memos at midnight when you can't sleep before a transfer. I couldn't have done this without them.

The part where I'm honest about the hard stuff

Being a single mom is hard. I'm not going to Instagram-filter that for you.

Sadie has been diagnosed with autism. I'm running a company. I'm doing all of it alone. There are days when I am so tired that I forget to eat. There are nights when Sadie won't sleep and I stand in her room at 4 AM thinking I chose this — and meaning it in every possible way that sentence can be meant, the proud way and the exhausted way simultaneously.

But here's what I know: I would do every single part of it again. The insurance fight. The $30K. The OHSS. The BFN. The miscarriage. The Ganirelix welts. All of it. Because on July 9, 2024, at LR Hospital, I pushed four times and met my daughter. And what was, to nearly every reasonable person, a potato-shaped human with a gnarly shriek and a scrunched face, had just stopped my world on its axis.

She's my person. And she was worth every needle, every tear, and every cent.

If you're thinking about doing this — if you're the woman with the wine and the laptop and the Google search — I see you. And I'm telling you: you can do this.

I'm not a doctor — I'm a woman who's been through this. This article reflects my personal experience as a single mother by choice pursuing IVF. Your path will look different, and that's okay. Talk to your RE, your financial advisor, and — maybe most importantly — your people. You've got this.

Resources that helped me:

A few of these are affiliate links — they help support Babiedust at no extra cost to you.

"It Starts with the Egg" by Rebecca Fett — Required reading before any IVF cycle. Gave me a sense of control during a process that strips you of it.

Easy@Home test strips (bulk pack) — The 50-pack combo OPK + HCG strips. You'll use the HCG strips obsessively during your TWW. Don't waste money on $18 single tests for daily testing.

CoQ10 (Ubiquinol, 400mg daily) — My RE recommended this 3 months before retrieval for egg quality. Part of my protocol that I wish I'd started even sooner.

The Single Mother by Choice subreddit — Free, anonymous, and full of women who have been exactly where you are. Lurk first. Then join. These women will change your life.

The Single Mother by Choice Discord — An incredible resource and community with like-minded individuals.