I’ll be 48 this week and have never felt so happy and fulfilled as I have during the past 21 months.  It took quite a few different roads to get here…

Firstly the long road of my 30s, forging a career in facilities management but waiting, nevertheless, for the husband, the babies, the ‘whole package’.  It was quite an up and down road!

At the start of my 40s I shook myself up, changed jobs, tried a different tack… but found myself pretty much back where I started, until I realised I could of course have a family on my own! I always really knew I could, particularly being super independent and having spent much of my adult life as a single person (by choice that is, just too fussy I’m told!).

Here the road branched off into various directions, including quite a few ‘culs-de-sac’ and dead ends.

At almost 44, I went to a clinic to enquire about IUI but was told that due to my age, I would have to have IVF.  At the time, I didn’t want IVF.

Then I went down the adoption route. This was interesting and challenging and I got to Stage Two, but couldn’t shake the idea of carrying my own child…

Then the ‘turkey baster’ path presented itself, with a friend of a friend. Up and down on this path I went for the next nine months, only to come to another dead end.

So back to the clinic I went, aged 45, only to be told that at this point, I was too late for IVF with my own eggs, but was offered double donation instead.  ‘Oh,’ I thought, as the road in front of me suddenly stopped short… but only for a very short period of time, then I thought, ‘Let’s do it!’. I spoke to a friend of a friend of a friend who had had treatment at a clinic in the Czech Republic. She recommended doing it abroad as it would be much quicker than in the UK (I was told 12-18 months here) and suggested the Czech Republic or Spain. As I had studied Spanish, and had lived and worked there, Spain seemed the obvious choice. Everything was telling me this was the right path, so off I went to a clinic in Alicante in September 2015 and got pregnant!

I was finally on the right path, although initially it felt a bit scary – thank goodness I had my ever-supportive mum by my side – so by the time my beautiful little girl Edie was born, when I was 46, I knew it was simply the best thing I’d ever done. I can’t wait to see what the road ahead brings us!