I grew up in a traditional two-parent household, with a dad who worked and a stay-at-home mum. It was the late 1980s and the wilder fringes of feminism had yet to reach central Buckinghamshire. In secondary school I can recall a single kid whose parents were divorced, and no one's mother did anything as bizarre as working full-time or travelling down to London on business. We were, nonetheless, encouraged to look beyond marriage as a goal.
Twenty years later I found myself, at the age of 37, single (or sort-of-single) and it didn't seem like a big deal at all. Most of my friends were single professional women and although the dating scene in New York was the stuff of horror movies (men didn't so much date women as audition them for the star role in their future) I didn't care. I had a good job, good friends and a good life. But then suddenly, none of that mattered.
Of all the surprising things that have happened to me in the last five years, starting with conceiving twins and ending with the discovery that single parenthood is, in some ways, easier than the alternative, the thing that still surprises me most is the shame.
I felt ashamed of wanting children; it felt like a feminist failure. I felt ashamed of looking at a childless future and feeling horrified. I felt ashamed of my secret belief that having kids alone was preferable to having them with the person I was seeing. And when all this shame got too much for me, I felt ashamed of the way I consoled myself, looking around for people in worse situations than mine and telling myself at least I'm not them.
With any luck, I thought I'd squeak in with a baby at just under 40 - good. But I was a single woman - bad. I was in a sort-of relationship - good. But we didn't want to do it together - weird. Also, it was same sex - bad. On the other hand, having a kid via sperm donor was more 'natural' than an egg donor, which was more 'natural' than surrogacy, which was more 'natural' than adoption, which was more 'natural' than no children at all - a domino run that ended at the foot of a towering black tombstone marked 'childless spinster'.
I knew these comparisons were spiteful, just as I knew that by focusing on them I was appealing for relief from the very thing that was causing me harm. But still I kept doing it.
It all seems completely irrational to me now, as does worrying about picking the 'right' sperm donor - how would picking the 'wrong' one be provable, unless one really didn't take to one's child? Then there was the fear that I wouldn't be able to cope alone with a baby. Would it be too hard or too weird or too stigmatising? What if it didn't work? What if it did work? Looking back, I realise that the hardest thing about having a baby alone isn't doing it, but deciding to do it.
And so here I am: a single mother of twins, conceived after taking too many drugs on the fifth cycle of IUI (that's results-driven American healthcare for you), either a role model for women wanting to have kids alone, or a walking example of be careful what you wish for. And if it is nothing like I imagined, it's not because it's hard or terrifying, or wonderful or infuriating, but because it's all these things and therefore miraculously ordinary.
I also know I'm extremely privileged. There is nothing in the data to suggest that children of single mothers by choice turn out any less happy or well-adjusted than those from traditional two-parent families. That is almost certainly down to the fact that women electing to have kids on their own tend to come from relatively prosperous households. I am always exhausted and frequently broke, but I can just about afford enough help to allow me to work to pay for that help, and as such know how lucky I am.
There are things I'll never have. I'll never have to deal with a trailing ex-spouse. I'll never have a custody suit. I'll never have to balance my baggage from childhood with his or her baggage from their childhood as it pertains to the way we raise our children. I will never have the joy of looking into my child's face and seeing reflected in it the face of the man I love, or feel the deep satisfaction of raising a child with a woman whose investment in the outcome is equal to mine.
And while it is a truism of single motherhood by choice that there is no one to resent - in my experience there is always someone to resent - doing it alone does make life easier in some ways. I can make up my mind more quickly. There's nothing more pleasing to single parents than watching a couple with a baby try to arrive at a decision: ''Should we take his temperature? What do you think? No, what do you think?'' There is a satisfaction to be had in doing something hard and doing it well. And because it was a struggle to have my girls, not medically so much as existentially and emotionally, I am never not grateful or amazed.
Besides which, 'alone' isn't quite the right word. Without a co-parent by one's side, you tend to curate your support network - friends, parents, neighbours - with much more care and attention, and these people have become family in ways they might not have done had I had kids in a couple.
Thank God I live in an age in which these things are possible. Thank God I got the juice up to act, and thank God the drugs worked. The idea that it might not have happened because I was too frightened or inhibited or hung up on what other people might think strikes me like a shard of glass to the heart. There are lots of things to say about having kids on one's own, but I look at my children and it comes down to this: thank God, thank God, thank God.''
Emma Brockes is the author of An Excellent Choice: Panic and Joy on My Solo Path to Motherhood (Faber, £16.99 hardback). She joins us here on the bottom of this guest post for a webchat on Thursday 9th August at 9pm. Post your questions here in advance if you can’t make it on the day.