
When Janelle was provided a list of 25 sperm donors to choose from, it took her just half an hour to decide.
By the time she had read through the third profile, she was confident she had found "the one".
"I had an intuitive gut feeling," she told Mamamia.
"I really had a strong affinity for him in terms of the words he used to describe himself as a child and his upbringing. And his values were very much aligned to my own... I remember my mum reading the profile and just saying 'he's a bit like a male version of you'."
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Janelle, an anaesthetist from Melbourne, only began to consider IVF after her 12 year relationship came to an abrupt end.
She found herself thrown into the deep end of the dating world - and as a busy doctor she struggled to schedule in dates, let alone find someone who wanted to start a family.
"I really noticed how much pressure it was putting on the dating situation. When you [want] to become a mother... it's not the first conversation you have, but it's something that comes up very early in the act of dating."
So at 37, she turned to egg freezing to "take the pressure off" her dating life.
"I saw egg freezing as more of an insurance policy to buy me a bit more time to hopefully meet someone and date."
"When I froze my eggs, I was really, really fortunate that I was quite fertile, and only had to do one cycle of IVF. And then I sort of forgot about it for a while."
But 'a while' turned into years, and after hitting 40, Janelle said she started feeling the "baby panic".
"It started to dawn on me that one of the strongest drivers in my life was that I had always wanted to become a mum. And as turning 40 came and went, I realised maybe that wasn't going to happen for me."
"The tragic death of a friend also triggered me into action to physically start the process... It really made me realise life is short and you need to just go for the things that you want."
At 42, she made the decision to go through the "daunting" process of IVF alone, as a solo mum. That was back in March 2018.
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