by Sami Lukis
I met my first ‘One’ at the wise old age of nine.
I’d just moved to a new school and I was terrified of turning up on day one and not knowing a soul, but the moment I walked through the gates and laid eyes on Paul, I knew everything was going to be okay. He had the cutest dimples I’d ever seen. Big, round dimples that turned his cute little baby face into a ball of joy (and made my heart melt) whenever he smiled.
We were ‘dating’ before either of us knew what that even meant.
I had friends who were girls, but this was different. Being with this boy made me so happy and Paul was the one person I wanted to hang around, more than anyone else on the planet. And not just at school. We had weekend play dates and afternoon swimming dates and beach dates and bushwalking dates and movie dates with our mums. We bought matching his and hers terry-towelling shorts (that’s kind of bizarre, right?) and we even had regular sleepovers. Our parents must have known it was all totally innocent, because they even let us sleep in the same bed.
There was no hanky panky going on. None whatsoever. No kissing. No hand-holding. No touching of any kind. I remember thinking he was a major cutie pie – oh Lord, those dimples! – and I knew some of the other girls thought he was spunkarific. I certainly felt an attraction to him, but I guess I just didn’t know what to do with it. We hadn’t even heard of the word ‘sex’ back then. But I knew I loved him. And he loved me.
Sadly, Paul was also the first guy who broke my heart. And it wasn’t even his fault.
I was beyond distraught – beyond! – when, about six months after we met, he told me his family was moving overseas. This news hit me hard. I simply could not imagine my life without Paul in it.
He used every cent of his pocket money to buy me a parting gift, something to remember him by. It was a delicate sterling silver double heart bracelet with ‘Samantha’ and ‘Paul’ engraved on the back. So, so precious. Just thinking about it brings a tear to my eye, even today.
I still have that bracelet too. It was the first gift I’d ever received from a boy – a symbol of our two hearts, joined, despite the challenges of time and distance. It probably cost Paul about fifteen bucks at Michael Hill at the time but, to me, it’s priceless. It will always be a reminder of the most pure romantic love I ever felt.
Paul was perfect. Together, we were perfect. And I know I’ll never experience the purity of young love ever again. A love that isn’t affected by all the crazy external pressures of adult life: family dramas, financial worries, job issues, health concerns, sex. Sex really has a way of messing things up, doesn’t it? Once your bits have touched, your emotional investment in that relationship moves to a whole new, often intensely complicated, level.
Paul moved back to Brisbane a couple of years later, but things were never the same. I’d already moved on with a new ‘boyfriend’, and we were French kissing. Yep, with an open mouth . . . and tongues.
So, basically, I thought I was too cool for school. And way too cool for poor old Paul.
But I do wonder if that experience with Paul is somehow partly responsible for my eternally single status. After three decades of bad dates and frog-kissing and fucked-up, failed relationships, I’ve never been able to find a love as pure as I had with Pure Love Paul.
‘First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Sami with a baby carriage.’
I loved that cute little rhyme, conditioning me to believe, from a young age, that the equation of life really is that simple. Love + Marriage = Baby.
No wonder it turns into total mind fuckery for those us who discover, as adults, that the equation doesn’t always add up. Because love doesn’t necessarily lead to marriage. And marriage doesn’t guarantee babies. Sometimes the baby comes before love, or without love even. And what if marriage doesn’t even enter the friggin’ equation?
I guess I always just trusted the Universe to deliver on marriage and motherhood when the time was right. But when she didn’t, I decided to rewrite the baby rhyme.
‘First comes “I’m forty” then comes “and single”, then comes a very different ending to this jingle’. No bugaboo in my little ditty. Just a trip to the gyno to test my ovarian reserves.
An ovarian reserves test is supposed to give you an accurate indication of your current reproductive potential – it’s like a stocktake on your eggs. So, clever me, I decided forty was the perfect age to reasses how much time I had left to find a bloke and get knocked up. I honestly expected to find out that my ovaries were high-powered egg-making machines. ‘Go away and stop stressing about it, you lunatic’ the doctor would laugh, as he looked at my results. ‘You’ve got plenty of time to get pregnant. Come back and see me when you’re fifty!’
But that’s not what happened.
The doctor told me, in a gravely clinical manner, that my ovarian reserves were frighteningly low and that my fertility was in a stage of rapid decline. And if I wanted to have a biological child, I should do something about it, stat.
So, here’s the thing: ‘Your fertility is in rapid decline’ is one of the most terrifying things you can possibly say to a single forty-year-old woman who has never seriously contemplated the thought of a life without children. (My friend Megs was told by a doctor, at the age of thirty-eight, that she had ‘lazy, ageing ovaries’. That’s not fun, either.)
It was a life-changing moment for me, sitting there, alone, in my gyno’s office in the Sydney CBD. It hadn’t occurred to me to bring anyone along that day for emotional support. I couldn’t even begin to fathom that the results would be so shocking. But there it was. The scientific proof, all neatly presented on a spreadsheet, sitting on the desk in front of me.
My biological clock had suddenly become a biological time bomb. And, at my age, my options for having a biological child were limited. I assumed freezing my eggs would be the best plan of attack. I’d just put some of those little suckers on ice until I found a bloke, thanks very much, modern technology! But the doc said egg freezing wasn’t really viable for a woman ‘of my age’, because my eggs were possibly past their use-by date already and all that fussing about would just make them deteriorate even further. Plus, any complications with the retrieval process could result in the loss of one or both ovaries, which would mean lights out completely on the pregnancy front. While I still had the other important baby-making bits, I could at least try to get pregnant using an egg donor. I’d just have to find a super fertile young lady willing to hand over some of her super fertile young eggs.
The doc talked a bit about IUI and ICSI and embryo transfers and live birth rates. And then he told me, quite frankly, that the best option, ‘at my age’, was to simply get myself knocked up the old-fashioned way. My eggs were probably too fragile to deal with the trauma of IVF. So I really just needed a bit of the old in and out. Well, lots of it, actually. As soon as possible.
How ironic. I was prepared to spend thousands of dollars on the most advanced assisted reproduction technology available, but my best shot at having a baby was the one option that wouldn’t cost me a cent. Not even the cost of a condom.
I drove home in a daze, trying to digest what had just happened. Why didn’t I get onto this whole baby business in my thirties? Had I been so focused on my career that I forgot to have kids? Why did I waste so much time with the wrong men in dysfunctional relationships? How the hell had I fucked this up so royally?
For the love of god, why couldn’t I just meet a nice guy, fall in love, get married and buy the friggin’ baby carriage?
I got home, parked my car, and then sat there in the driver’s seat and sobbed. It’s a confronting reality check when you’re forced to accept that there’s absolutely nothing you can do to slow down or turn back your biological clock. And it’s an especially tough pill to swallow for a woman who grew up being told she could achieve anything if she just tried hard enough or studied hard enough or worked hard enough. But there was no way to fix this. I could not simply facilitate a fertility do-over. The female reproductive sys
tem is a law unto itself.
And then it dawned on me. I was in the driver’s seat here, literally and metaphorically. I had no other choice, but to face up to the reality and seriousness of my situation and decide what I wanted my future to look like. Were kids a must? Or was I willing to risk a life without them?
Everyone I knew with kids said it’s the best thing they ever did. They all wish they’d popped one out sooner. They all said, ‘You know, Sam, your life doesn’t really start until you have children.’ Which was a little difficult to comprehend, to be honest. My life already felt like it was enjoyable and fulfilling and pretty damn exciting. I actually didn’t feel like anything was missing.
Plus, I’d never been the obsessively clucky type. Sure, I go all goo-goo gaa-gaa over every cute, chubby, gurgling baby I see, but I’d never felt that intense urge to grow one in my own belly. Had I somehow been conditioned into thinking I wanted kids because I’d been led to believe, from the moment I was born, that my most important role in life is supposed to be . . . Mum? Still, I kept asking myself the same question: will I wake up in ten years and regret not having a baby?
I decided that a life without kids was simply not an option. I did not want to live my entire life without having someone to call me Mum.
And that’s when my serious quest to have a baby began. I was about to turn forty-one.
With only a narrow window of time left to find new love and a baby daddy, I embarked on what I now refer to as my ‘desperation dating period’. This was just before online dating really took off, so it was still old-school dating. I told everyone I knew it was all hands on deck. I was open to anything – blind dates, double dates, set-ups, dates with men I wouldn’t have been open to meeting in the past. I tried to be more social. I accepted every invitation, to everything. And the whole time I could hear my doctor’s voice: ‘The best option, at your age, is to get yourself knocked up, the old-fashioned way.’ I was a sperm-seeking missile with a very clear mission.
Unfortunately, my biological time bomb was a serious dating hazard. Meeting men in that mindset wasn’t healthy or productive. From the moment I’d meet a new guy, he was immediately assessed as baby daddy material first, everything else second. It wasn’t fair on him. And it certainly didn’t give any potential relationships a fair chance of developing naturally.
My desperation dating phase lasted about six months, until I reached a point where I knew it was ludicrous to keep hoping Mr Where-the-fuck-have-you-been-all-my-life would suddenly show up, just in the nick of time. The simple fact is, there’s no time limit when it comes to finding love, but I had very little (if any) time left to have a baby. Even if I had to do it on my own.
So I decided it was time to stop searching for Mr Right and start researching ways to become Miss Mum. Just because I hadn’t succeeded in the game of love didn’t mean I should miss out on motherhood as well.
With my biological time bomb ticking faster and louder each day, I started booking into viable options for single women wanting to have a baby. And that’s when I came up with the idea for the television documentary, Sami’s Baby.
I knew there were plenty of other woman in this situation, but very few people were talking openly and publicly about it. I hoped a program about my experience might elicit conversation about an issue that was affecting so many women of my generation. I approached Foxtel with my idea for the show and they loved it. We started shooting immediately. I agreed to let the cameras follow me as I searched for the best way to become a mum. I promised to be completely honest and open about my journey and the roller-coaster of emotions I felt along the way. Of course, it was a confronting experience for me. I’d been a TV presenter for almost twenty years, so I was super comfortable having a camera in my face. But this wasn’t just another job, or some fake, scripted ‘reality’ show. This was my life.
On the first day of the shoot, I had to re-enact the moment I received the results of my ovarian reserves test and even though months had passed since I received the shocking news, it was just as hideous and no less painful hearing it from the doc again.
The most confronting moment of the shoot was when I asked my flatmate and one of my closest friends, Steven, if he would be my baby daddy. With no romantic interest on the scene, I figured my number-one option would be to have a child with someone I at least knew and respected. Steven was also in his forties and single. We’d been friends for more than a decade and flatmates for about six years. He’s a smart guy who has a good job and he’s endearingly kooky (in a charming way). He’s a good man with a good heart and I thought he’d be a fine father figure for my child. I suggested that we would be able to raise the kid together in a super cool, incredibly mature and responsible co-parenting type situation. But there was absolutely no pressure if he didn’t want to be involved after the bub was born.
He said no. To both options.
He definitely wanted kids, but he would prefer to save his swimmers for the right girl. Of course, I understood and respected his decision, but it still felt like the ultimate rejection. And it was pretty horrific having that moment caught on camera. So. Think of the most brutal ‘final two’ rose ceremony you’ve ever seen in the history of The Bachelor. That moment of rejection felt about as humilating for me as I imagine it was for the poor lass being dumped by Bachie on national telly.
Sadly, Gusband Tim was also a non-starter. He was the perfect candidate, but the timing was all wrong. He’d only emerged from the cosy confines of his heterosexual closet the year before and was still coming to terms with his new-found homosexuality. So boo had his hands full dealing with his own issssuuues. My bestie Galeb had just become a father to twins, so he wasn’t an option either.
A friend suggested that his gay brother might be keen. He and his long-time boyfriend were desperate to become dads and share the parenting duties with a baby mama. So I was invited to a family dinner, where I met the lovely couple and we all politely discussed the very real possibility of the three of us having a baby together, even though we’d only just met thirty minutes earlier. They were both absolutely gorgeous and intelligent and successful, and they were 100 per cent committed to the cause. It appeared to be the perfect remedy for our combined baby fever. I left that dinner feeling excited that I may have finally found my baby daddy(s) and I was thrilled to know that our baby would have one loving mother, two doting dads and three sets of grandparents. Had I finally found a happy ending to my unconventional fairytale? Omigod the three of us would create one of those ultra modern parenting arrangements that’s so damn hip it hurts.
But the more I thought about it, the more unrealistic it became. There wasn’t enough time to really get to know these guys before embarking on one of life’s greatest and most important journeys together. Mum gave me some sound advice on this one too. She warned me that three parents wasn’t necessarily as wonderful as it sounded. When we encountered the inevitable disagreements about raising our child, it would always end up being two against one. So there was a good chance I’d always be outvoted when it came to the really big decisions in my child’s life. My gut told me to listen to Mum on this one so I respectfully declined on the dual baby daddy idea. Good on you Mum – coming in strong with the vital life advice again, when I really needed it.
Somewhere along the way, I had become surprisingly comfortable with the idea of being a single mum. I just knew I would be okay if I did this on my own. With divorce rates soaring, the odds of ending up as a single mum are pretty high these days anyway. Plus, I’d seen so many of my friends marry Mr Perfect and then end up trapped in miserable marriages with men they couldn’t stand. I realised I could do much worse than to choose life as a single mum.
However, I was shocked to discover the harsh criticism surrounding parents who are single by choice. Some folks say it’s the most selfish thing you could possibly do. But I can’t comprehend how it could be considered selfish to give up your freedom, time, money and pretty much your whole life in order to care for
and raise another human being. Surely that’s the least selfish thing in the world.
Also, why shouldn’t a single person be able to fulfil one of the most basic human needs in life – to create a family? Married people aren’t asked why they want to become parents. So why should a single person have to justify their desire to have a child?
I signed up with some local sperm banks and started the search for my donor, which added an entirely new level of anguish to the whole situation. The information available on each sperm donor is extensive. I found it impossible to pick a winner. I couldn’t decide which of the donor’s qualities I most wanted to pass on to my child: race, nationality, education, intellect, height, looks, eye colour, hair colour. It was like the best hotel breakfast buffet you’ve ever been to, where there’s fresh fruit and five different cereals and bircher muesli and muffins and waffles and pancakes and hash browns and a chef making eggs exactly the way you want them and you’re so overwhelmed by the choice that you end up just standing there, with your plate in hand, bamboozled by the plethora of enticing options before you.
It was frustrating to have so much information about the donor on paper, but still feel like I didn’t know the man at all. The biggest hurdle was overcoming the fact that I was choosing to have a baby with someone I’d never met. I always imagined that making a baby and creating life would be an intimate process with someone I at least cared about. Not the result of a credit card transaction with a stranger. I wished I could have been more desensitised to the weirdness of the whole process. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that it just didn’t feel right.
And then, the unexpected happened.
I met a potential baby daddy while I was shooting pool with friends at a Sydney pub on a Sunday afternoon.
And so began my ‘extreme dating period’.