I always knew that I wanted to be someone’s mama.

At every age that I can remember, thoughts about my future always involved children. Most of the time, those thoughts meant picturing myself at twenty-five, “old” and coupled up, my life completely together, with the perfect job, the perfect house and at least one perfect baby.

The goal line stretched as I grew up and realized that twenty-five isn’t old, that no one has it totally together at that age. It was moved further when I hit thirty as a singleton with no prospects in sight. I had a home, a job, none of it perfect, but all of it mine, but it wasn’t enough. At around thirty-two the ache began to settle in to stay. I was the oldest of my friends without children.

The world was filled with babies that I could hold, but none that I could keep.

Seeing someone in the office on their obligatory trip to show off their newborn was enough to reduce me to tears, even if the mother in question was just an acquaintance. I covered my tears by making a joke (the coping mechanism I’ve used for most of my life), blaming my wet lashes on a severe case of “baby rabies,” joking about picking up a stranger in a bar for one purpose alone. In public, I could laugh as I cried, and in private I began to think it would never happen to me.

Adoption, foster care, foster to adopt, all things that I considered, options that I weighed as a single woman. Insemination seemed so risky, and I was sure it wouldn’t work. I was sure that I was too old, too fat, too poor (because the money goes quickly when you’re trying to buy the “ingredients” to make a baby that boys the world over have been abandoning in their socks and sheets for years) to make it happen.

I never let myself imagine what it might be like to be pregnant, because it seemed like such an impossibility.

It took a conversation with my father to shake me out of my indecision, when he looked at me after listening to my fears about adoption and foster care and said, in his simple way – do you want to be pregnant? Suddenly, this thing hat had seemed so impossible turned into a maybe, and that maybe turned into a plan. Three attempts, and then on to something else.

That plan gave way to peeing on sticks (so much peeing on sticks), waiting to see an indicator of ovulation, of proof that my body was doing its part to make this dream a reality. The plan essentially became wake up, pee, then hurry up and wait, because nothing in the world is quick when you’re wanting and trying for a baby.

I spent that time waiting shopping for the goods online, the sea of options apparently endless when searching for a sperm donor. Anonymous, open ID, ethnicity, height, and the boxes to check went on, each thing feeling less important than the next, because all I wanted was the good stuff. Grade A, top of the line semen, and yet none of the banks made their offerings that clear.

Somehow, I made a decision – a tall, nameless guy with a baby picture that looked like he could belong in my extended family. Brown hair, brown eyes, ears that stuck out just a little too far, and that was enough. Baby batter purchased, right before a hurricane, and the waiting started all over again.