What is a single mother by choice?

This question has been bugging me a lot lately. The "standard" definition of an SMC is that she is a woman who chooses motherhood intentionally, while single. That's all fine and dandy. But most SMC support groups or web boards are at pains to include single women who get pregnant accidentally but decide to keep the baby, or who get pregnant while in a relationship and then the dad clears off before birth. I'm sure that while in the 60's and 70's, the act of choosing to deliver the baby and parent on your own was a formidable choice, and not one that was entered into lightly, it seems to me that these days it is pretty much a norm in many parts of our society. It is no longer a scandalous option in many areas. Ending up pregnant as a single woman when you did not choose to be pregnant or when your partner does not support you, is a scary and difficult prospect whatever the woman decides to do. Any of the choices available, including parenting alone, abortion and giving the child up for adoption, require heart-wrenching decisions to be made, and every single woman who makes a decision and goes forward with it is making a brave choice. But these days, unless you live in a very conservative community, no-one really bats an eye at the choice to parent alone. That doesn't mean it's not really difficult to do, but do women who get pregnant accidentally get more sympathy from society and their families? Are they told they brought this upon themselves so they shouldn't complain if the going gets tough? Maybe, I don't know.

I suppose what has really been bugging me lately is that these women are not like me at this moment in my life. I think there is a huge gaping chasm between finding yourself pregnant, and deliberately choosing to become pregnant or adopting on your own as a single woman. That gap is thrown into sharper and sharper relief for me with each failed month that goes by. With each increment of a thousand dollars that I spend on trying to get knocked up. With everything I can't afford to do because I spent that money on drugs or IVF or frozen sperm. Every single time, I have to ask myself if I am prepared to continue. If I am willing to keep going forward on the fertility rollercoaster alone and unsupported. I feel the need to justify my choice to myself. To tell myself I'm not crazy, that I can do this on my own, that I can give a child or children a good home. To tell myself that I'm not entirely giving up on finding a mate of my own, but that my focus has to be elsewhere at the moment.

And IVF (and adoption) ups the ante considerably. There is so much money and emotional energy invested into this. So many hopes and dreams ride on these moments in our lives. Women who got pregnant accidentally just don't experience and probably don't appreciate this deliberate act of conception, particularly when it gets difficult. This phenomenally expensive, all consuming, very deliberate act to radically change our lives.

Am I saying that I think SMC support groups should exclude women who became pregnant accidentally? No, not really, because I think anyone who self-identifies as an SMC should have the right to a support group. There also aren't enough of us around at the moment to splinter into many different factions – I'd hate to have separate "communities" of single adoptive moms, donor egg moms, IVF moms, IUI moms, known donor moms, relationship moms, etc. But then again, they didn't make that deliberate choice to conceive or adopt, nor did they struggle or are struggling to get there. I know, if/when I get to having a 10 year old child, I'll look back and say that parenting isn't about how you got there, and as an SMC it's about being totally there for your child, being the one that has sole responsibility for everything, and about understanding that choice from the get-go. I really hope I can get to that point, but for now, there's this bitter seed inside of me that's growing. That says these women aren't really SMC's. They don't know the angst and the pain of planning for this, and having even one failed cycle. I guess I just feel a bit weird about this because the whole SMC label is defined by the word "choice". I keep thinking it might be better to be defined by the word "planned" or something similar. But then that's not very inclusive and politically correct I suppose, so I should just shut up about it.

In other news, no sign of Aunt Flo yet. I hope she hurries up and arrives so that I can get on with this cycle. I feel like I've been waiting for it forever, so I'm already sick of it, and I want to be on the other side quickly so I can get on with my life. Whatever direction that life takes.