On a recent holiday in the Canaries, I perched on the edge of the hotel pool utterly mesmerised by my eight-year-old son, Isaac. As he splashed around, I was thrilled to reflect that he shares my smile and face shape.
I can only assume that his beautiful brown skin, dark eyes and hair come from his donor. I’m careful never to use the words ‘father’ or ‘daddy’, for Isaac is the much-wanted child I had through IVF when I was 39 and single.
But while I’ll almost certainly never meet my child’s donor, I feel so grateful to him. If the decision was mine, I would jump at the chance to give him a hug and thank him.
Tracey Bravo with her son Isaac, who was conceived via solo IVF
Since he donated anonymously, I don’t even know his name or age, only that he’s a head of operations in the corporate world, with a love of tennis, cycling and skiing. I chose him based on those attributes from a shortlist of around 40 sperm donors at the London clinic where I had IVF in November 2015.
I never dreamed I’d one day raise a child alone. And while Isaac is everything I hoped for and more, I admit that, at first, I felt unexpectedly ashamed to have chosen the life of a single mum, as though I’d failed because I didn’t have a partner.
I started IVF treatment at the age of 38. Fearing judgment, for months I kept my pregnancy a secret from everyone bar my very closest family and friends.
Yet far from being a social anomaly, recent statistics show I was merely ahead of what has become a soaring upward curve. According to the fertility regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), between 2019 and 2022 there was an 82 per cent jump in the number of single patients undergoing IVF, from 1,953 to 3,548 – although this spike can be partially attributed to a Covid backlog.
Half of patients who underwent donor insemination were also single, while the average age of women starting IVF treatment has passed 35.
Those figures make sense to me. For as long as I can remember, I’d imagined a future where I’d be happily married with 2.4 children. Yet, like so many women, I spent my 20s and 30s living in a way that meant I had next to no chance of meeting the right man and settling down.
Tracey with a baby Isaac, who was born when she was 39 and single
For more than a decade, I worked as a communications manager for global sporting events, including the opening and closing ceremonies for several Olympic and Commonwealth Games, from Sydney 2000 to London 2012.
Come my mid-30s, my mum jokingly threatened to confiscate my passport, since my biological clock was clearly at war with my wanderlust. Mum also asked if I’d ever thought about freezing my eggs – she was worried that, like her, I might go through the menopause in my early 40s.
Meanwhile, every pregnancy announcement from friends made my heart break a little.
So when, a year or so later – and by now 37 – I spotted a poster on the London Underground advertising The Fertility Show, I asked Mum to go with me. We met countless experts who advised paying for a fertility MOT, to check my egg reserves.
The results came back that my fertility was healthy, but with a caveat that this could change at any time given my age.
Now I knew I could, in theory, conceive I was keener than ever… but I was missing one vital ingredient.
I began dating an Australian chap and, perhaps foolishly, asked if he might like to be involved in my plans to have a baby. It’s not your average conversation for early on in a relationship. Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t give me an answer, which I knew meant no.
Still, I worried about whether having a baby totally alone was selfish, and what other people might think.
Then, in 2015, I learned of a London fertility clinic where 30 per cent of patients were single women. Eventually, I decided I had to take what might be my only chance to be a mother.
So I invited my friends to a party to help me choose my sperm donor from a shortlist of 40 I’d compiled from the sperm bank linked to my clinic. There were eight of us, including my mum, sister and five close friends. Mum was very supportive of my decision as she’s an avid listener of The Archers which, by coincidence, was running a storyline about a woman having solo IVF at the time.
Over lots of wine and good food, we deliberated. If I chose a donor with ginger hair, might my child have gorgeous freckles? I’ve always been attracted to men with bigger builds, but I was paranoid about my weight as a teenager so reasoned a skinny donor might prevent a child from having similar issues.
Tracey on holiday with a cheeky IsaacÂ
Among the donors we scrutinised were a musician, a diamond driller, lawyers, doctors, stuntmen, editors and teachers.
We finally picked one – but later, panicked about the allergies he’d listed on his profile, I changed my mind and made a different choice.
By the end of that week I had paid the clinic £12,000 using interest-free credit cards (which I then worked incredibly hard to pay off) and had IVF using donor sperm in November 2015. I assumed it wouldn’t work first time and questioned whether I’d be able to cope with a long process.
There was guilt that if it did work I’d be bringing a fatherless child into the world, but also excitement, and daydreaming every time I walked anywhere of one day having a tiny hand to hold in mine.
Just a few weeks later, while working at an event in Watford, I felt a bit odd. Just inexplicably different and excited. I took a pregnancy test the following day, which was positive. Incredibly, IVF had worked the first time.
For myself, I felt pure elation and joy. But when it came to telling others, my feelings were still mixed. While friends shared glowing pregnancy photos on social media, I chose to wait several months and then tell loved ones in person, as I saw them. Meanwhile, Mum chose to email her friends the news rather than telling them in person, to avoid difficult conversations.
Happening upon a Facebook post from an old friend when I was seven weeks pregnant was a game-changer for me. She’d announced the birth of her baby but I noticed it was carefully worded with no mention of a partner – and her newborn had her surname. Suspecting that she’d also had IVF alone, I sent her a message. She quickly replied saying I was right – and she then introduced me to the most amazing network of other solo mums.
When Isaac was born in August 2016, I put an announcement on Facebook with the caption ‘Welcome to the world’ so it wasn’t obvious that I’d done it on my own. Having hidden my pregnancy from many friends, there were some responses saying ‘Congratulations to the three of you!’, with people assuming I had a partner.
Tracey and son Isaac on a picnic when he was younger
But by then, all I cared about was Isaac, and the incredible privilege of being his mother.
It’s true that in those first few months I felt utterly wrung out, with no partner to help tidy the house or make dinner while I tended to my baby son. Although I live close to my family in Hertfordshire, I rarely ask for help as I don’t like to bother anyone. And I do miss the practical and financial backup another parent could provide.
But don’t misread this as a sob story. On the contrary, I don’t regret my decision to go it alone one bit. Isaac is a beautiful eight-year-old with a fabulous smile and an infectious laugh, who loves riding his bike – it’s tempting to imagine he’s inherited this trait from his cycling-enthusiast donor.
It helps that I now have the most amazing support group of other mothers who’ve done IVF by themselves, while Isaac has donor-conceived friends to play with as a result.
He knows you need an egg and a sperm to make a baby and that in his case it was my egg and sperm from a donor.
As for romance, well, it hasn’t really been on the cards since Isaac was born. Besides, I have found that even men with kids tend not to understand what caring full-time for a child is really like. I routinely see comments on dating site profiles such as, ‘Ideally you will have children, too, and we would have the same weekends off parenting as each other’. There are, of course, no weekends off for me.
But the truth is, meeting someone is much less important to me than it used to be.
Once I dreamed of marriage because I was desperate to have a child. Now, I know that my family is complete with just me and my wonderful son, with his gorgeous, cheeky smile and love of bombing into swimming pools on holiday.
As told to Sadie Nicholas
