Single Infertile Female Meets Her Perfect Man, Gets Pregnant via Anonymous-Donor Insemination Nine Days Later

Jennifer Girard Photography

I am currently writing the manuscript for Nine Days: An Unconventional Love Story, my story of deciding to be a single mother as I hit “advanced maternal age,” suffering through infertility solo, then falling in love with my future husband in the nine days before I conceived my son during my seventh anonymous-donor insemination cycle.

Nine Days is a story of personal empowerment leading to personal fulfillment.  Nine Days celebrates the fact that I took responsibility for fulfilling my own dreams, rather than waiting for some “Knight in Shining Armor” to show up and jumpstart the process.  As a result, I ended up with the family I had longed for, albeit one formed in an unconventional way.

Jennifer Girard Photography

Nine Days is a love story—one of loving myself enough to pursue my goal of being a parent, even though I was single; my pure, unselfish love for my then-boyfriend/now-husband, whom I repeatedly tried to set free during my pregnancy; his unconditional love for me, a woman carrying a donor-conceived child; and our beyond-biological love for our four sons, my stepsons, ages sixteen and fourteen; my son, whom my husband adopted, now five; and our newborn.

Nine Days will explore my husband’s and my relationship, showing how our pasts, our unprecedented initial connection, our priorities for our futures—and, above all, our ability to follow our own instincts, rather than be influenced by others—contributed to our brand-new relationship surviving my high-risk pregnancy, culminating in marriage and the blending of our two families into one.

To read a chapter of Nine Days, click here.