Latest / The Raising Emotionally Intelligent Humans Podcast / Mini Series: Ep 1: Single Mom by Choice...How'd that Happen?
Transcript
- Heidi Lindeman: Hello and welcome back to the Raising Emotionally Intelligent Humans podcast. I'm Heidi Lindeman, your host. I'm a single mom by choice. I'm a therapist and a lover of emotions and feelings. And I decided that I wanted to do a little series, not sure how many podcasts, maybe nine or so, on the beginning of motherhood. So I'm going to talk about my journey to become a single mom. That's what this one is going to be about, that how I got to become a single mom by choice. How did that even happen? And then talking about pregnancies and birth and then the early postpartum days for both my kiddos and how they were similar and different. So that's going to be the series that I'm going to share in the next several episodes. All right. OK, so we're going to go into becoming a single mom by choice. How did that happen? What was it like? and in just that process of making that choice and then getting pregnant. Okay. So I'm going to start with, it's going to be a couple different stories. When I was about 12. I knew that I wanted to be a mom, for sure. I remember a moment of sitting with my mom. We were rocking on our rocking, swinging bench that was on our porch. And we were talking about kids and it's talking about how I would love for her to have another kid, have a baby. And wanted to like really convince her, let's do it, I'll help you, I'll help raise a baby. My mom was actually totally on board. She went and had six, she only had two. It was my dad who was like, no, we're not doing that. We are not having more children. He was good with two. I was like, that's enough. But I remember having that conversation because I wanted inside, just had this knowing this desire of like how much I love babies and how much I wanted to be around a baby. So I just really wanted my mom to have a baby because I knew I was too young to have a baby when I'm 12. You know, yeah. So that's where my motherhood journey like. really starts is just this knowing from being a kid that I was always going to be a mom. I always wanted to be a mom. It was a certain thing I just knew was going to happen at some point. When I was a little bit of an older teenager, know, 16-ish around there, there was one Thanksgiving we were sitting around the table with our family friends. We would get together with friends because ⁓ our extended family didn't live near us. We gathered with these same people every Thanksgiving. And this one particular Thanksgiving, we were talking about kids, I have no idea how we got on the topic of talking about that, but there was another, the family's friend, had a girl and a boy as well, and then I have me and my brother. And so we were talking about being parents or getting older. getting close to graduation or something, maybe one of them was close to graduation or something like that, and distinctly remember the conversation around how absolutely neither one of us, me or the other friend, wanted to have babies come out of us. Like, God no. That sounds painful and terrible and no thank you. And... I though said, but I do want to be a mom. I'm just going to adopt them. I'm going to adopt kids. I'll just do that. I don't want them to come out of me. That's like, scary. Don't want to be in pain. Why would I ever want to have a kid come out of me? That was my teenage world. And our friend, she was in the life now, just like I have kids. She now has two. So we all kind of changed as we grew up. Our parents also told us that they were like, ⁓ just wait, just wait until you're you know, 30 or so. Then here we are, both having children. Okay, so that, the fact that I wanted to adopt a kid is an important thing, because that to me was that my mind was open to a different way of becoming a parent since I was, since I've been a teenager. It wasn't important to me that the child or the baby be my biological. because I knew that I could love a kid no matter where it came from, who, where it, what its genes were. I love children. I was a nanny for a long time. I was a babysitter when I was in high school. I love kids, love them. Little kids love them, adore them. So being open to having a adopting, I knew that I could make that, I would feel like that child was mine, regardless of how it came into the world. Okay, so then. Fast forward a little bit, those are just some background context. I was in a relationship when I was in my mid-20s. And it was a six year relationship and I was pretty convinced that he and I would end up getting married and having kids. I was like, sweet, everything, life is on track, it's going well. There was a lot of other stuff happening too. But I was in seminary, getting my seminary degree. I was living in Chicago at this time. and had told myself for a long time before that that if I didn't have kids by the time I was 30, I was going to figure out how to adopt. But then I was in this relationship and I was like, oh, well, we'll just have kids soon. He was very sad. I'm like, no, he's not going have kids until he's 30. He was like, that's fine. Whatever. But then we ended up breaking up before either one of us was 30. So then I'm sitting in Chicago one day and I was in seminary. So I had been writing a lot of papers and I was sitting in my computer and I started typing an email to a pastor, to my pastor in Grand Junction. who I adore. And in that email I wrote to her saying that I had decided that when I become 30, I think that was like the next, it was still a couple years off because I graduated. Yeah, I was 27 or so, 26, 27, when I graduated seminary. So it still a couple years off, but I distinctly remember being in Chicago, writing that letter after I had broken up and saying, I've decided I'm going to adopt a kid when I'm 30. It's just a few years away. And she, I don't know if I totally remembers what she said back, it feels like there's this memory of she said like, might want to ⁓ think about that, really consider. Do you really want to do that by yourself kind of response? And I was like, yeah, no, I'm going to do it by myself. I do not care. At that point, the need to have a child was way up high, like way, I'm using my hands if you're not watching this, above my head, importance was like, that's the most important thing I do in my life. I must become a mother. Being in a relationship was much lower. It's like that second, third, fourth on the tier of important things. It just literally in my body did not. feel that important to me. did not feel like this intent to draw or desire or certainty that I needed to be in a relationship. was like, if it happens, cool, that's great. But I don't need that. But I have to be a mom. Like, it felt like I would be devastated if I was not able to become a mother. So I wrote that email when I was 27-ish. So then fast forward a few more years and I turned 30. I'm like, huh, what are we going to do? How are we going to make this baby happen? And then the time I turned 30, wasn't in a, say, the best space financially or many other things to have a child on my own. I was in school getting my graduate. graduate degree in counseling. So I was like, I don't know if I can really have a baby in the middle of a semester. I don't think it's going to work so very well. So then I, but I did start looking. I was looking up, how do you have a baby by yourself? What are the options? And there's many options. Of course you can adopt. I went into adoption, was like, I don't think that's going to happen. I didn't look very deeply into it because I was like, I don't. I have enough money to adopt. I don't really think that they're going to pick a single mom to adopt. Because I had all these assumptions in my head that that's not true. They will absolutely let you let a single parent adopt a child. I have not looked into the entire details of what that is like, but my mind told me they wouldn't pick me. So I didn't even really try. So like, okay, so what other ways can I have a kid? I guess I'm going to have to do this. using myself and then I looked into sperm banks because that seemed like the first logical option and was looking at profiles of men who donated sperm and I mean it felt okay but it also felt like it was kind of expensive. There's a whole lot of other stuff that comes into going through that route. ⁓ Which a lot of single moms by choice go that way. There's more legal protection if you go through sperm bank. And I just was like, I don't know that I can make that happen. And it felt... confusing, a little hard, felt sad, frustrating. And then I found some other places to try to find a known donor. So like, okay, so what about this known donor? And a known donor, that is somebody you know, obviously they're known, who gives, who donates their sperm to you. And then they are not the father. They're just the biological. There's just a known donor. And then ⁓ you can have all kinds of relationships with them based off of, so you would, the two of you would discuss, to discuss and figure out. What is that relationship going to look like between the two of you, between the donor and the child? Is that person going to be in the child's life? And some single moms really want that. They want the donor to be like a good uncle or a friend or mom's good guy friend, maybe even knowing that that's their biological dad potentially, but there's some kind of connection. But the donor doesn't have any legal... parental obligations and ⁓ they're not their parent, they're just their biological father. And some people go like, well I'm not gonna let the known donor know them until they're 18. Another choice. ⁓ If they want to, because it's the kids choice. That's what I am doing. ⁓ They know, both my children know that they come from a known donor. They have a picture of what he looks like. They have information on him that I asked him if I could, I got his information, some medical information, some stuff about him so that they have some kind of connection to him. So they know, they're very aware. I'm not hiding anything from them. They know. They, he's just not in our life. Okay. Anyway, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. So I was looking up online. known donors and finding these really sketchy websites and I thought that I had found not only somebody who could who wanted to donate but like maybe the person I love legit thought that I was lonely but I was caught up in talking texting with this person and then one day he just stopped talking to me stopped texting to me and I was so hurt and sad and spent time just taking care of myself. I talked to my friends about this. I talked to the admin at Regis. She knows the whole story. ⁓ And Noah's sad. So I was like, huh. I learned something in that. I learned the importance of actually meeting somebody in person and knowing them and being able to really talk to and... form some trust and some knowing what their intention is, what is the intention of the person. And I started to find out that a lot of men on these random websites that I was on are there because they want to do what's called natural insemination. Meaning they want to have sex. I did not want to have sex with anybody. Not at all. I had zero interest in that. So I was looking for somebody who wanted to do what's called AI. artificial insemination. And that was probably to be a bit of a challenge. And then there was this one day, I was hanging out with my friend. And she said, hey, have you heard of this app called Just the Baby? I was like, what's this? And it is an app that is like Tinder, but for finding sperm and egg donors. And it's freaking awesome. Anyway, so then I got it. sucked into this app and I was You create your own profile and what you're looking for and then you can circle ⁓ Swipe right or left for yes or no or whatever just try to find people and then you can reach that to them and kind of contact them and they have the men have to list how they what kinds of Donation they're open to like are they gonna do artificial insemination do they would do natural insemination? Will they ship their sperm will they? There's just a whole bunch of stuff. So I just immersed myself in it. I left out a part of the story though. Okay, so there is this app called Just a Baby, before that happened, I totally forgot that this happened. I happened to be talking about, to this, to one of my male friends, and he offered to be a known donor. I was like, oh my God, that'd be kind of cool. And we didn't live super close together, so there was a, he wouldn't be right near me. I was like, oh my goodness, that'd be so cool. So we tried. and I got pregnant. and then I had a miscarriage. And there's. Many feelings I have around the miscarriage, but I'm going to use talk about the miscarriage, the depths of that in a different episode because I have a lot to share about miscarriages. But I had a miscarriage. I was very sad. But then I also got to this place of like, I'm kind of glad that didn't happen because of the relationship I had with him. And then I found that just a baby app. And the person I found on there I had not known before. So he's still a known donor because I found him through this app. know who he is. But he didn't have a previous relationship with me. And for me that made, settled my anxiety around how my relationship with my friend would change if he was the biological father of my children. And I thought I had thought it all through before. trying with him, but then once I got pregnant and then had the miscarriage, was like, ⁓ there's a lot more there that I didn't realize was there. So, okay, so then I find just the baby and I finally found somebody and we decided to meet. Then we met in a Starbucks that I thought was a standalone Starbucks, but it's a Starbucks inside a Target. I thought it was so funny when I pulled up, I like, where's the Starbucks? I'm like, ⁓ it's in Target, huh? Okay. And I had decided that that's the place we were going to meet. It was kind of in between the two of us. ⁓ So we meet there and he was just so sweet. And the I was asking him about like, why does he want to do this? Has he done this before? How many times have he done this before? And he answered so honestly. And his intention for being a donor was because he wanted to give the gift of family to other people because his story with his mother was a story where there was a gift given essentially. I'm not going to tell this story. And the fact that he just wanted to give to other people. I could feel the genuineness in him and this sense of, I had a sense of ease and like, oh goodness, this is it. And he didn't, and he was very also professional, if you want to say, with, he was like, no, we're going to have a contract. Like that came up right away to have a contract between the two of us that he wanted to get notarized. And the fact that he wanted it notarized for me was another great green sign, green flag, I guess. Because he was taking that into consideration. He doesn't want to be responsible for these children, but he does want to give the gift of life and family to women who need that help. And it just, it so, it so great. Just even talking about it now, I can feel the warmth in my heart and the gratitude that I have for him. and how easy and simple he made the process. And that he was willing to be there and donate as many times as needed until I got pregnant. and it just felt relatively easy. So then there were some donations. Donations are a little bit, they're a little, it's interesting how you make a baby by yourself with a donor sperm. There was definitely some moments that felt a little awkward where, okay, ⁓ slowing my brain now. ⁓ often he would come to my house or close to my house. so that he could donate and then he could leave and then I could do my part in my own bed, which felt great. But there was this one time where the circumstances just worked out that I needed to go meet him closer to where he was and ended up in a bathroom. I was in the bathroom. He went into the bathroom and did his thing and then came out and gave it to me and then I went into the bathroom and did my thing. And it is so weird to be in a bathroom with a syringe and a cup of sperm and then to just put it inside you without any like sexual anything there. Very weird. Anyway, felt awkward, felt strange. Definitely walk out there and like, nobody knows what just happened. Whoa, there's sperm inside of me. This is weird. This is just very weird. But that's like, that's what happened. And so I did get pregnant with him, from him, and then I a miscarriage. So I've had two miscarriages at this point, and then I got pregnant again from him, and then I had my first. And then I knew when I was going to have a second kid that I was going to use the same person. So I reached out to him again to see if he was available. He still was. That was great. We tried. I got pregnant and I had a miscarriage. So I've had three miscarriages and then we tried again and then I got pregnant and had my second. So it's three miscarriages. They've been pregnant fave tapes. And that's the story, a very odd, random story about how I became a single mother by choice and some very weird, turny things within there. The whole process I think there's the undercurrent of it was that I always knew that I wanted to be a mom And then I was going to figure out how to do that no matter what my life circumstances were I Learned through this whole process I learned a lot more about how to trust myself and how to feel into other people and then decide what level of trust to offer that other person and I ended with, through the entire process, once I got pregnant with my first daughter and had her, a deep settling and certainty that this was the right path for me. That I had found the person that was the best person to make my kid. And I adore my children. They're so good. I'm clearly biased, but I think they're some of the coolest kids ever. And they're both very different, but they're both very fun. And yeah, so that's what I'm left with. And that was a long time ago because my oldest is now five. My youngest is two and a half. But that's the beginnings of having babies, of how to become a mom by choice. And I decided to do that because having a kid was more important to me than being in a relationship. And I said that so many times to my mom. It's more important for me to be a mother than to be in a relationship. So put my energy into making sure I was a mom instead of trying to find the person to have a baby with and then go through the whole process with that. Yeah, so that's that. Next time, I'm going to talk about miscarriages and pregnancies. Pregnancy with my first. We'll see. It might just be the miscarriages and then pregnancy will be the next one, potentially. So I hope that that was insightful or helpful or something to anybody. I know being a single mom by choice is becoming more a more common, but it's still not the most common thing, most common way to have children. And sometimes I just think it's helpful to hear journeys and how that happens. There's also a group called the Single Mother by Choice group that was created by, oh, her name starts with a J, forgetting her name. But that's a group that I got a membership to so that I was able to talk to a lot of other single moms by choice. And there's a Facebook group, Single Moms by Choice Colorado. There's probably a bunch of different chapters for based off where you are. And those were also very helpful spaces as I was trying, as I was thinking about it to. gather more information of like, what does this mean? What does this look like? How do you do this? How do you choose the right path? And it all came down to whatever information anybody gave to me. I just kept coming back to myself and be like, does that feel right to me? And I just kept going with what felt right. And I'm glad I did. Yeah. All right. So I will chat next time about miscarriages. and that journey in my life.