/ 23 February 2011

Doing babies the Danish way

Doing Babies The Danish Way

There was no desperation for a baby, just a sensation, a constant presence that grew over the years. When I was younger, I didn’t give children much thought.

Neither did most of my friends, so a lot of us were amused when, around our early 20s, we suddenly started noticing babies, imagining motherhood, having dreams about being pregnant.

We put it down to biology and then put it out of our minds, knowing our biological clocks had plenty of time to run. We assumed men, relationships, maybe marriage, would come along. If not, something else would. There are always ways of having children, we reasoned, and got on with all the other things in life.

For me, however, the men, the relationships and the marriage didn’t materialise. My romantic relationships have always been ambiguous and problematic. I’ve spent most of my life single and have been in love only once.

There was a time when it caused me some distress, but that hasn’t been the case for years. As I entered my early and then mid-30s, I came to value my singleness. In recent years, for a variety of reasons, I’ve become drawn to the idea of celibacy.

But as the interest in relationships waned, so the desire to have children grew. It was more than four years ago, when I was 32, that I first started to think seriously about having children on my own. I’ll have my first baby by the time I’m 35, I thought, but soon realised that unless I was willing to consider one-night stands or tricking someone — neither of which appealed in the slightest — my options were limited.

I considered fostering or adoption, but decided to take a resigned approach. If it happens, it happens, if not, make the most of everything else life has to offer.

A few years passed, thoughts about motherhood remained and I not only reached my benchmark age of 35 but also started reading about research that had found that fertility begins to decline rapidly thereafter. I’d always had 40 in mind as the fertility danger age. It was then that something a Danish friend told me about sperm banks in Denmark kept creeping back into my consciousness.

In 2005 British sperm donors lost the right to anonymity and children can now contact their biological father once they reach 18. Some people say this led to a drop in the number of men willing to donate sperm. Others argue that there is plenty of British sperm available, it’s just badly managed by fertility clinics and thus not always made available to people who want it.

Travelling to Denmark
Either way, getting British-donated sperm is not particularly straightforward and, as a result, British women are increasingly travelling to Denmark for insemination. In fact, fertility is something of a booming industry in Denmark, with clinics not only treating foreign women but also exporting sperm around the world.

Danish donors still have anonymity and this, combined with a cultural outlook supportive of donating sperm, means there is no shortage of deposits, so to speak. They also have strict quality control, only selling high-quality, fast-swimming sperm, mainly from twentysomething men.

We giggled over the fact that one clinic had used the marketing slogan “Congratulations, it’s a Viking”, but I had to admit that the Viking aspect had a certain appeal. My family’s origins lie in the north of England and the Celtic fringe, all areas conquered by the Norsemen, so it’s reasonable to assume we have Scandinavian blood. Certainly, many of us are tall, broad and fair.

A child conceived with Danish sperm would thus have more chance of looking like me and my relatives. Also, I’d moved around a lot growing up and had met many Scandinavians along the way. We’d usually got along and there were many aspects of the Nordic way of living and thinking that appealed.

I don’t think culture is transmitted by DNA, but this added a pleasant association. As an amusing aside, I’ve also made my home in a part of London called Denmark Hill.

Things came to a head one night in February last year. I’d spent a lovely day with a good friend and we were finishing it off with a few too many drinks in a pub. He’s older than me, a father himself. He knew I wanted children and raised the issue. I told him about the Danish option and about my only serious reservation: that the child would never know who its father was. My concern was that the need to know who your father seems, even if you hate him, even if he has no meaningful role in your life, pretty deep-seated.

My friend is the kind of person who knows how to listen, but also how to question in a way that helps you come to truly understand your own mind. Over the course of the evening, we discussed every possible ramification of the anonymous donor route and by the time we left the pub my mind was essentially made up.

I’d finally accepted something I had been quashing, that not having a child — or at least trying — would be something I would almost certainly regret. I’m not that career-focused, not that bothered about money or possessions. Life, to me, is about people, living creatures, lived experiences — and none is as fundamental as procreation.

Support
I discussed the idea with my parents. They have five children and want as many grandchildren as possible. They’d been pondering where to retire and said they would move somewhere near me to help with the baby. That resolved concerns about how I would cope on my own. Close friends were also overwhelmingly supportive.

I’d expected certain reservations about the lack of a father and so was surprised that I didn’t really encounter any. Most thought I was focusing on the issue too much. Only one friend was outright negative.

A gay friend and an ex-boyfriend both expressed an interest in being the donor. I considered the offers, but neither had a clear idea of the role they would want in the child’s life and so decided against both. In fact, my conversations with them solidified my sense that doing it alone was right for me.

Talking to women who had taken the Danish route put paid to residual concerns. We chatted about introducing our children to one another so they would know other people of similar parentage.

I researched the practicalities. The clinics needed proof that I didn’t have certain diseases, so I had the tests done. They then conducted a telephone interview, probing my motivation. Once they were satisfied that all was in order, it was simply up to me to fly to Copenhagen when I was ovulating, specify any racial characteristics I wanted from the donor and hand over the money. The clinic I’d chosen charged about £460 a go.

I tracked my menstrual cycle for a few months using an over-the-counter ovulation predictor kit and decided on June 2010 for my first attempt. It was the month of my 36th birthday. It would be a present to myself. On my first morning in Copenhagen the predictor kit indicated that ovulation was imminent.

I phoned the clinic and arranged to go in the early afternoon. Insemination took about five minutes. The sperm is deposited inside the uterus through a small catheter to maximise its chances of reaching the egg. A leg up, a friend joked, if not a leg over.

The statistics for my age group suggested I had just a 17% chance of each insemination resulting in pregnancy. I knew I shouldn’t raise my hopes and be prepared to have to return to Copenhagen in the following months. But somehow I knew it had worked. As I’d waited for the procedure, I’d felt a small snap over one of my ovaries, an indication that ovulation had actually occurred, so I knew my egg would be waiting for the sperm to swim up to it.

Afterwards, as I wandered the streets on a glorious sunny day, I realised it was June 21 — midsummer — a day pagan northern Europeans have long associated with fertility. A good omen, I decided. Over the next two weeks, as I waited to see if my period would arrive, I felt tingling sensations in my womb — implantation twinges that some women feel as the egg attaches to the wall of the uterus — so I wasn’t surprised, though I was overjoyed, when the pregnancy test was positive.

There have been some unpleasant occurrences during the pregnancy. I had a rather vicious and frightening episode of prenatal depression in the first few months, which prompted some unpleasant events with my family. The medical response was admirable and everything is now happily under control. It did not, however, for one moment, make me regret my decision or change my parents’ delight in their grandchild.

My daughter is due in mid-March. I’m going to call her Freya, a name I’ve always loved but the only real candidate once I realised that it’s the name of the Viking goddess of, among other things, fertility. — Guardian News & Media 2011