Until the moment I met my husband I was child-free. In that I knew I wanted children some day, but had never yet met anyone I wanted to have them with. An abortion at 20, just as I was starting university, floored me for a while but I remember whispering to my belly the night before “not now, not yet”. I knew I didn’t want to be tied to my child-like and chaotic boyfriend, and I wanted to get my degree first. Through what I now understand to be my lack of self esteem, I met other chaotic boyfriends. I got my degree and my career. I talked about wanting kids, but not yet.
Single in my early 30s I started thinking about doing it myself. I’d read about a clinic in Denmark that give fertility treatment to single women and I thought this was an inspiring feminist concept. Even though my memory of it still has a gauzy soft light around it like the marketing materials IVF clinics use. Clean, pristine, smiling babies. Feminine hope. But it was still a far away backup plan.
D and I were 35 when we met. He told me about his four-year-old who was about to start school. After our second date he told me about his vasectomy. “Ach you can get those reversed” I said, and he said he’d do it for me. He made an appointment with his GP before I’d even moved in. It felt like such a sign of commitment, I couldn’t believe my luck.
I met G as a 4-and-a-half-year-old. She was indifferent at first then started trying to impress me by telling me things she had learned at nursery. She held my hand, she squished in between us on the couch and cuddled into bed with us in the morning. She was totally accepting. It took me a long time to think of myself as her stepmother. All I could think of was having our own baby.
The reversal cost nearly £4000 and didn’t work. We were so angry with the clinic because they botched the communication around the results and D ended up being told matter-of-factly over the phone by an untrained GP that his three hour operation that had permanently disfigured him had made no difference and the chances of us being able to conceive was zero. We felt humiliated.
We bought frozen sperm from Denmark. It got delivered to our door in a box of dry ice. My anxiety around getting the timing right was intense. This was how we spent our weekends when G was at her mother’s. That cost £700 and didn’t work. We got married talked a bit about adoption but didn’t really mean it. G told me that I was her stepmum. I couldn’t believe she and her parents were putting so much trust in me.
I was overwhelmed by grief and panic that my life was slipping away. I would wake up with my heart pounding and feel nothing but blackness. I tracked my cycle. I tracked my temperature. I got to know every tiny feeling in my body. I nagged D to stop smoking. I made sure we had sex every time I ovulated even though I knew it was hopeless. I got angry and resentful.
I asked D to do IVF, or ICSI as it was for us. We were in it together. This was going to be pricey - £7000. But I had to try, otherwise surely I didn’t want it enough. We went to another city to avoid our local clinic that had let us down so badly. They fertilised three eggs and gave me two back. It didn’t work. We quietly gave up.
Neither of us really wanted to spend another £2000 only for the last one to fail so when it came time 12 months later to let it go we just did. We signed a form and told them to destroy our little blastocyst of dubious quality. D moved on and I felt abandoned.
I can’t tell you the complexity of emotions around being a childless stepmother. Both words are draped in such negativity, and I’ve got the pair. Somehow, I’ve managed to be a good parent. We love each other fiercely and she doesn’t see me as any different to her mum and dad. It’s always my struggle that causes misunderstanding or upset. I don’t know where to sit, because to the childless community I have the opportunity to mother, but to the parenting community I’m not one. I can take part in both conversations and fit in, but I work hard not to feel like a fraud to everyone.
G has three parents who get along, we focus on her, we always make it work. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like the least important person in a room. I can’t make decisions about where we live, or where she goes to school, or whether she gets a mobile phone, or gets her nose pierced. I accept that she will probably always come to me last. But I will be here for her always.
I am the second most important person in my husband’s life, and that’s how it should be, at least until she’s grown. He has given me his child. She is learning how to be loved, she will not lack self-esteem. I don’t think I was put first much as a child. My unborn babies are getting further away now. I’m nearly 44. I don’t think I ever dreamt of them enough to picture their faces or think of their names, so I don’t even know who I’m letting go of. I do know what I’ve got, and eight years is a long time to be sad about something.
So I am holding my grief but making it small. Being a childless stepmother is my superpower. I don’t want my stepdaughter to feel like her only way to fulfilment is through having a baby, I want her to know there are other ways to love and nurture and grow. And the amazing thing is that I think she already does. She taught me that.
Anna Ashton Scott