Alexandra Collier: The moment I realised I wasn’t ready to be a solo mother yet

One September morning in 2018, without telling a soul where I was going, I rode my bike through the drizzle, up a church-spired hill in the inner city. I finally crested the hill, panting and frazzled, both sweaty and cold, and locked up my bike.

The church hall was draughty, filled with the kind of chill that Melbourne spring had perfected. In a wonky circle sat a group of 20 women. The facilitator smiled at me kindly as I took a seat.

After attending a support group for solo mothers by choice, Alexandra Collier realised she wasn’t ready to be a solo parent yet.

Down one end of the circle were women with babies and toddlers, their offspring obliviously babbling and squalling. At the other end were the rest of us: single women who were considering having a baby or were trying to conceive. The meeting, a support group for solo mothers by choice, was run by the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority. I felt like an imposter, a tourist. What was I even doing here?

A brunette with a wry sense of humour who I decided could be a future friend was telling a story that was the inverse of a romantic narrative. Her name was Mara and she had a six-month-old baby girl, Rose, who had Mara’s startling blue eyes.

When Mara started IVF, it had coincided with the start of a new relationship. “He was on board with what I was doing but I couldn’t figure out how to let the relationship unfold naturally while I tried to get pregnant artificially,” she shrugged. The relationship had petered out as Mara went through many rounds of treatment until she eventually got pregnant.

Another mother in the circle laughingly confessed, “I used to date for sperm.” The phrase chimed in my head with a ding of recognition. She was, essentially, looking for a man to have a baby with but she realised it was an impossible pressure to put on her romantic life.

One woman with a toddler told us how she’d recently met her girlfriend. She’d made the decision to be a solo mum at 25. “All I wanted was to be a mum and I knew that, being gay, one day I’d have to have a donor,” she said.

When she went to a fertility clinic, though, she encountered opposition. The clinic made her apply to the board to be approved for fertility treatment because, they said, she was too young to know her mind. “They made me write a letter,” she told us with fury in her voice.