I had a baby at 42... WITH A STRANGER

Desperate for a baby, Blanche Girouard decided to go it alone, but she wasn’t expecting to find love along the way

- BLANCHE GIROUARD

Anthony had arrived late, keeping us all waiting at the dinner table, and I was tired, grumpy, and longing to go to bed. It was the first evening of my holiday in France, so as soon as I could, I made my excuses to leave the room. And that’s when I heard the dreaded sentence, murmured by my host as I closed the door. ‘Her name is Blanche and she is 12 weeks pregnant,’ he said, leaving me spitting with anger that my secret had been revealed to a complete stranger.

The fact that I was having a baby on my own, by means of a sperm donor, wasn’t something that I felt ready to talk about. Being single and childless at the age of 42 was, to me, a source of great shame.

Growing up, I had it all worked out. At 30, I was going to have my first child and then, shortly afterward, my second.

Getting married at 31, I was a little off the mark but the situation still seemed promising. However, all too soon, my marriage hit the rocks and, by the time I was 35, we had filed for divorce.

At 35, female fertility starts to rapidly decline; I couldn’t have been more conscious of the fact. By 42, with a string of unsuccessful liaisons behind me, I was growing desperate.

I could no longer visit friends with young children and I couldn’t even stand by the photocopier at work because it looked onto a noticeboard announcing new births.

The last resort

I had always wanted to have children and I would not be having them. Not, that is, unless I braved it on my own and used a donor.

Fortunately, I had one thing on my side: I had frozen eggs. Soon after my divorce came through, at the age of 37, I had my eggs ‘harvested’.

Every year since then, I’d paid £300 to have them stored — and now 16 of them sat ready to be defrosted and fertilized.