It was when dating started to feel like a series of parenting aptitude interviews that Lauren O'Neill realised she wanted to take a less traditional path to becoming a mum.
"I just found myself pretty much on a mission to find someone who I could have children with, and the pressure of that was so much that I just wasn't even enjoying going out on dates anymore," she said.
"Realising that there was another path, just the relief that brought was amazing."
The single 37-year-old gave birth to her first daughter Daisy in August, via sperm donation.
Ms O'Neill is one of a growing number of women who have decided to have children on their own.
While national data is hard to come by, figures from the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority show the number of single parents who gave birth via a sperm donor in one of the state's fertility clinics has grown over the previous decade.
In Victoria, 804 single women gave birth via donor in 2022, up 15 per cent since 2015.
But those figures do not include the rate of single women having babies via private donor.
Data from private Facebook page Sperm Donation Australia shows that number has also grown, with 692 births reported across the country in 2022, up more than 20 per cent on 2021.
Ms O'Neill's baby was one of those births and she said she experienced a "roller coaster of emotions" on her journey to be a solo mum.
Ms O'Neill said it was the best decision she had ever made despite the added time and financial pressures of having a baby on her own.
"One of the things that helped me make my decision is that I can be 50 and get married," she said.
"I can't or would not want to be 50 and having a child."
Finding a donor
After deciding to use a sperm donor, Ms O'Neill investigated using a commercial fertility clinic.
While many women use those services, the clinic she contacted told her that due to a national sperm donor shortage, she would need to find her own donor.
"I was quoted $5,000 or $6,000, just for me bringing a donor and to have the intra-uterine insemination," she said.
"I knew I would need that money to provide for my child."
So Ms O'Neill found a private sperm donor and conceived using a home insemination kit.
After posting on a Facebook page which connects donors with prospective parents, she had a coffee with one that felt like a good fit.
"It was really important to meet the donor and actually be able to have a chat," she said.
They signed an agreement that he would not be financially or emotionally liable for the child, and she was given access to his genetic testing results.
While the agreement is not legally binding, Ms O'Neill said she felt comfortable her donor did not want to be involved in the child's life, unless the child wanted that when they were older.
"What I liked about my donor was that he looked at it just purely as a donation to help someone, the same as donating blood," she said.
Ms O'Neill then bought a home insemination kit online, and became pregnant on her second attempt, aged 36.
"I think I felt every different emotion under the sun that you could feel," she said.
"My parents and my sister and her family, they're very close by and I knew they would be there to support me."
But she said she still experienced moments of doubt, particularly when seeing couples going through pregnancy on social media.
"There was a little part of me that was feeling like I was missing out but again, I just kept coming back to why I was doing this — I didn't want to continue wasting time trying to meet someone," she said.
"Even if you find someone and you think it's the right relationship, after children come along, the dynamics can change."
The donor path
Fertility researcher Karin Hammarberg said the rise in women choosing to have babies alone made sense given the growing awareness around IVF's limitations.
"IVF is not a solution for age-related infertility, so women have taken on board the biological reality that fertility is here today, but maybe not tomorrow," she said.
Dr Hammarberg also said there was no evidence donor-conceived people had worse outcomes than any other cohort.
"There is a lot of research on the welfare of donor-conceived people in different scenarios: people who've been conceived in heterosexual couples, same sex couples, and single mothers, and they all seem to be doing very well," she said.
"Their parents have gone through an awful lot of effort to get the baby."
Dr Hammarberg said there were exceptions; she said it could be traumatic when people discovered they were donor-conceived later in life, and those who could not identify or contact the donor sometimes experienced ongoing mental health issues.
There were also extra health and legal risks for mums who used private sperm donors instead of going through a clinic, she said.
"In the clinic environment, there's obviously a lot of testing of the sperm and there's also very formalised arrangements in terms of consent," she said.
"So it's very clear that the donor has no kind of role as a father, and he's not obliged to provide for the child."
She said private agreements between the mother and donor could be disputed in the courts, even if they were drawn up by lawyers.
"All these things can be challenged in time, and what kind of seems to be a good agreement at the time, might not be if people change their minds," she said.
"There can be a lot of legal challenges, and there can be situations that really couldn't be foreseen at the time."
Donor-conceived people express concern
In addition to those issues, many donor-conceived people say unregulated sperm donation can prevent them from accessing information about their genetic family.
Donor Conceived Australia national director Aimee Shackleton said the not-for-profit advocated for and supported donor-conceived people around Australia, and many chose to contact a donor.
"Donor-conceived people often have issues around their identity and would like to find out their genetic and family history," she said.
"Sometimes they want to connect with siblings, or with a donor, or just find out where they came from."
She said unregulated sperm donation meant even if that information was recorded, it could be lost over time.
"It's either not recorded or it's recorded on an online database, or someone's computer in someone's garage, and that's not going to be there forever," she said.
"If someone passes away, or the parent[s] are no longer in contact with the donor, they just have no chance to find that information."
The Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA) said informal sperm donation could put donors, recipients, and children at risk.
In a clinic setting, in addition to mandatory counselling and extensive health screenings, donor-conceived people can access the genetic information and details of any sperm donors.
VARTA has also raised concerns that informal donors could exceed a legal limit on the number of children they can create.
In Victoria a donor's sperm can only be used to start 10 families, including the donor's own family – in Western Australia, it's capped at five families.
Ms Shackleton said there were significant psychological impacts to being donor-conceived.
"Many of our members have over 100 siblings, which is a very overwhelming thing to find out," she said.
"It is also difficult for anyone to have a meaningful relationship with that many siblings."
Ms Shackleton said adults who discover later in life that they're donor-conceived often suffer significant trauma when it comes to trying to understand their identity.
Even donor-conceived people who have known their whole life can experience grief about their conception status as they move through different life stages, she said.
As a donor-conceived person herself, Ms Shackleton said meeting her biological father was a turning point in her life.
"It answered so many questions for me about why I am the way I am," she said.
'It felt strange'
Shae Hourigan is in her second trimester, having conceived using a private donor she found on social media.
The 30-year-old medical student said she also chose that path due to the costs associated with going through a clinic.
Ms Hourigan said she and her donor signed a written agreement about respective responsibilities once the baby is born, including that they could make contact with them when they came of age.
"It's probably not watertight, but it's just a little bit of extra protection," she said.
"Honestly, it felt very strange, it felt like doing a weird back alley kind of deal," she said, of finding her prospective donor.
Adam Hooper, who runs the Facebook page both Ms Hourigan and Ms O'Neill used to connect with a donor, Sperm Donation Australia, said he did not believe clinics were any less legally risky than using a private donor.
"We're halfway into our eighth year and we have had zero court cases," he said.
He said its track record could be attributed to the way it connected people with clear wants and expectations.
"There are men and women looking to co-parent and there are men looking to be strictly donors and women strictly wanting donors, and we connect them transparently," he said.
He also said given there had been court cases over clinic sperm donor children, as well as the prevalence of custody battles if parents who conceive naturally split, private donation did not pose excessive risks.
No regrets
Ms O'Neill said she had zero regrets now that she has her daughter Daisy.
"I couldn't imagine life without her now," she said.
"It hurts how much I love her, nothing prepared me for that."
Having taken maternity leave from her work as a counsellor, she said she was managing financially, and emotionally.
"I still have an amazing career, which I will be going back to," she said.
"I'm so happy that I made this decision, because if I hadn't, I don't even know where I'd be with regards to dating and finding a partner."
If this story has raised concerns for you, you can be put in touch with support at donorconceivedaustralia.org.au.
Editor's note 09/01/23: The original version of this story did not include the voices of donor-conceived people. Quotes from Aimee Shackleton of Donor Conceived Australia have been added to the story.
