My entire adult life, I have felt like there has been something missing. I had always assumed it was the death of my parents when I was a teenager, that was casting large shadows where I assumed love should be. Yet the deeper I submerged myself into adult life the more those shadows felt like they were morphing into different shapes entirely. The invisible line of segregation at school discos of girls on one side and boys on the other, slowly ebbs away with time. Hands become lovingly outstretched across that covert divide to gently pull each other into the middle, together, to create exciting new adventures. That is, unless you are still metaphorically waiting on that springy wooden school gym bench for someone to offer you their hand.
Giggly conversations about how much you detest boys mysteriously evolve somewhere in your early twenties, into attending hen parties, weddings and christenings. We may have detested boys then but it transpires that we bloody love men now!
Yet I eventually realised that it wasn’t the chime of other people’s wedding bells that made me feel like I was being left behind, it was in fact the shrill piercing screech of a young baby desperate for solace in its mother's arms, that was making me want to weep with every pregnancy announcement. I discovered it wasn’t my hand that I longed to be held, but my arms that I longed to be full. I no longer glorified marriage. My happiness did not need to start, nor end with being a wife. My heart was actually longing, truly deeply longing to become a Mum.
Nothing could have prepared me for how absolutely bloody glorious it is.
So there I was, aged 35, terrified to go on dates for fear that my cover would be blown, because whilst I would love to be in love, what I ached for was much more maternal. The thundering klaxon call of my biological clock, would have drowned out any blithe chat recounting what my favourite hobbies were. So I made the somewhat Herculean decision to go it alone. To literally cut out the middle man. I was going to do everything in my power to become a Mum, via donor sperm.
Sure, this absolutely isn’t how I thought my life would look. I didn’t envisage anxious trips to fertility clinics alone, I had no concept that sperm had a currency, I hadn’t once anticipated that I would have to walk through the doors of NCT classes solo, or ask loving friends and deeply supportive relatives to be my birth partners, I had never entertained having to go through night feeds with just my beautiful snuffling baby for company.
However, even though this unfolding reality was a far cry from every single maternal narrative I had ever encountered, nothing could have prepared me for how absolutely bloody glorious it is. Each hug, each I love you, each knee graze repair, each tantrum, each giggle, each hand hold is so very much sweeter for the fact I created this wonderful reality alone.
Being a mother has totally allowed me to find my own ease within the world. Sure it is not what I had expected, it is not the 2.4 of yore, but it is my very own version of a brilliant otherhood.
Liv’s Alone by Liv Thorne is published by Hodder & Stoughton, out now, £16.99