Show Notes
She does both, and solo is easier. Merryn grew up thinking life would look a certain way. Her parents together, her aunties and uncles together, everyone partnered, everyone staying. She figured the same would happen for her. She spent her 20s travelling Europe, living in Perth, playing football, nursing, having classic terrible dating stories. She moved back to Victoria at 30, booked a fertility check just to see where things stood, and met someone through a friend from work. She thought she’d finally got it right. Two weeks after her son Sully was born, her best friend took her for a walk and told her she’d been contacted by the ex. It turned out Merryn’s partner had been regularly visiting his ex-girlfriend during night shifts and coming home to her while she was pregnant. She kicked him out. She tried to make it work for Sully’s sake. She eventually couldn’t. By the time Sully was 18 months, Merryn had gone back to the fertility clinic. She did two IUIs that didn’t work, then IVF — 22 eggs at 36 and a half, eight embryos. First frozen transfer. Positive. What followed was a pregnancy that started beautifully and got complicated — placenta previa diagnosed at 20 weeks, a bleed at 25 weeks, waters breaking at 33 weeks, and then at 36 weeks an emergency caesarean under general anaesthetic for a placental abruption. Sinclair came out at 2.4 kilograms. Merryn’s best friend was in the waiting room because they couldn’t have a support person under general anaesthetic. Sinclair spent three days in NICU, Merryn got a hotel near the hospital so she could feed him every four hours, and they went home. He is now 19 months old, platinum blonde, cheeky, a watcher, doesn’t talk much but is doing things the whole time. The Dennis the Menace of the family. Merryn is now 20 weeks pregnant with a girl — same donor, same clinic, first transfer again. Sully is six and has strong opinions about gender reveals. Sinclair has no idea what’s coming and is currently learning not to hit babies. And two months ago, Merryn moved into a duplex she built next door to another solo mum. Shared backyard, no fence, kids running free, baby monitor working across the wall, dropping each other’s kids at school, nipping to the shops while the other one watches them. Six weeks in and she says it’s already a game changer. She also does both — co-parenting Sully with his dad, and raising Sinclair and her daughter on her own. And she says, unprompted and clearly: solo is easier. In this episode:
Travelling, nursing, Perth, football — and a decade of dating that never led anywhere serious
Getting a fertility check at 31 out of curiosity — not yet ready to go solo
Meeting someone through a colleague, getting accidentally pregnant with Sully at 32, and thinking she’d finally got her life plan back on track
Finding out two weeks postpartum that her partner had been sleeping with his ex throughout the pregnancy
Staying civil for Sully’s sake and the strength that took — then finding her feet as a solo mum
Going back to the clinic when Sully was 18 months old: two failed IUIs, then IVF at 36 with Dr David Wilkinson at City Fertility
22 eggs, 8 embryos, a first frozen transfer that worked
Placenta previa at 20 weeks, a bleed at 25 weeks, waters breaking at 33 weeks and then an emergency caesarean with general anaesthetic at 36+4
Her best friend waiting outside the theatre — and getting Sinclair’s first cuddle because Merryn couldn’t
Three days in NICU, a hotel near the hospital, and coming home
Sinclair at 19 months: platinum blonde, a watcher, the Dennis the Menace stage
Telling Sully about donor conception — “you’ve got a dad, this one’s got a donor” — and him accepting it completely because his best friend’s family looks similar
Going back for number three — same donor, same clinic, first transfer, 20 weeks pregnant with a girl
What it’s actually like to do both — co-parenting Sully and solo-parenting the younger two
Building a
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She always knew Sam walked into a fertility clinic at 24 with her friend as her fake partner, because she assumed single women weren't allowed to do this alone. When the counsellor handed her a booklet with a section on solo mums, she had a quiet revelation: she didn't need to pretend anything. She went on the donor waitlist that day. Then she waited three years. Sam is an emergency department nurse in Canterbury, New Zealand, who grew up in a family with a cycle of difficult relationships and decided early that the best thing she could do for herself — and for a future child — was to do it differently. When she realised donor conception meant she could have a baby without any of that cycle attached to it, she felt, as she describes it, delighted. She was 28 when she finally got the call that a donor was available. She was 29 when she fell pregnant — on her first frozen transfer, the one she called the Easter transfer, the favourite egg that ever existed. She named him Dandy Lion while he was still in her uterus, because dandelions are resilient and they symbolise the sun, moon, and stars. She did her injection in the back of an ambulance. She showed everyone at work a weekly ultrasound. She threw herself a gender reveal party in the emergency department with blue lollies and a balloon pop. She found out she was pregnant on Mother's Day. Her son is now eight months old. Sam recently got back from Fiji — terrible weather, little shacks in the middle of nowhere, best memories she's ever made. She’s found a beautiful Canterbury solo mum community from a Facebook post. She goes to the Solo Mum Society book club at one in the morning NZ time. She's one and only, by choice, and completely at peace with it. This is one of the most joyful episodes I've recorded in five seasons. In this episode:
Every woman going through donor conception at a fertility clinic in Australia is required to attend implications counselling. And almost every one of them turns up expecting to be assessed, judged, and told whether they're worthy enough to be a mum. Narelle Dickinson has been working in this space for 30 years. She finds that deeply sad. Narelle is a reproductive psychologist, fertility counsellor, and the director of Lotus Health and Psychology in Brisbane. She specialises in the prenatal and perinatal field, works in the surrogacy space, supports families through birth trauma and pregnancy loss, and has spent 25 years doing donor conception counselling — watching the landscape shift from almost exclusively heterosexual couples to a community that now includes far more single women choosing this path as a first option, not a last resort. In this episode she explains what implications counselling actually is, what it's actually for, and how to get the most out of it rather than treating it as a tick-box exercise. She talks about what changes when you're using a known or recruited donor rather than a clinic donor. She explains why people who are using an unregulated recruited donor without going through a clinic should consider seeing a counsellor anyway — and what a donor who refuses to sit in a counselling room should tell you. She talks about the unexpected emotional waves that can come after a positive test, after the baby arrives, and years later when your child starts asking harder questions. And she closes with something worth carrying: the goal of donor conception counselling isn't getting you pregnant. It's helping you build a family. Those are very different things. Narelle and her team offer telehealth across Australia. If you're looking for an implications counsellor, make sure you're using an ANZICA-accredited practitioner — the Australia and New Zealand Infertility Counselors Association — whose reports will be accepted by any clinic. Find Narelle at: Website - lotushp.com.au. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lotushealthandpsychology/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/LotusHealthPsychology/
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