More Single Women Having Babies Alone

More number of single professional women in their 30s are choosing to start a family on their own and planning to have babies through in-vitro methods, says expert.

"The numbers are creeping up. Compared to 20 years ago, [this trend] has dramatically increased," Brisbane Times quoted Professor Michael Chapman, of IVF Australia, as saying.

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Di Morgan, 42, is single, but that did not stop her from having a baby.

She is expecting her first baby next month after receiving a sperm donation from a 24-year-old in the US.

Morgan estimates she spent more than 100,000 dollars on seven rounds of IVF treatment, a swag of natural therapies and treatment for endometriosis over two years in her quest to get pregnant.

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"I had always wanted children in my early to mid-30s," said Morgan. "There was this guy and it didn't work out ... By the time I turned 39 I thought, 'Right I am going to do this."

Caroline Lowther, 41, a business consultant from Melbourne, was also 39 when she wanted to start a family, but had no partner.

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Rather than spending thousands on IVF, she became pregnant via a "friend with benefits" - a choice she described as "a lot more complicated and emotionally tied up".

Lowther, however, admits that being a single mother to a daughter, now 2, was "the most confronting and difficult thing" she had ever done.

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The medical director of Fertility First, Anne Clarke, said single women now made up 4 per cent of her patients. Ten years ago it was "negligible".

"There has been a massive trend of partnering later and a lot more education about a woman's fertility," Dr Clarke said.

A gynaecologist with Sydney IVF, Devora Lieberman, said she was seeing a "small, steady stream" of single women, although lesbian couples were far more common.

Source-ANI