"This was something I had wanted for my entire life'

With thousands of women opting to bring children into the world using solo fertility treatments, Zoé Beaty learns more about the hardships and happiness of those who go it alone

- Zoé Beaty

The process begins with some simple selections, Liv Thorne explains. On the sperm donor website, there are several filters, including height, weight and hair colour. Should you choose blue or brown eyes for the father of your unborn child? What’s this man’s favourite colour? “And you scroll through, and then at some point you make your choice,” she says. “Fingers crossed – add to basket.

“Oh,” she continues. “And the ‘basket’ is a pram.”

Liv is one of a growing number of single women in the UK opting to become a solo parent via in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or artificial insemination. Over the last decade, the number has tripled, according to data published this week by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Its latest report showed that in 2022, 4,800 single women used donor insemination in an effort to have a child, up from 1,400 12 years earlier.

The average age of women seeking this treatment is 36 – which is exactly the age at which Liv started her journey, on Google. The first thing she searched for was “sperm donor” and then “fertility clinics”, but she was quickly overwhelmed. She sought a bit of advice from a friend working in that sector, and had a few blood tests with her local GP. But it wasn’t long before she took the plunge. “I chose the first fertility clinic in London that came up,” Liv says.

She made decisions quickly – like which clinic to use, and which sperm donor (from a bank in Europe) – because it would have been all too easy to overthink. “There’s so much to think about and there are no right answers. Have I chosen the right donor? Who knows. It’s not like you ‘add to basket’ and there’s confetti and a big ‘Well done, it’s a match!’”