Going it Alone

• The Thin Blue line
• Bridget Jones + Baby=?
• The Decision That Made Itself…
• "You're WHAT?"
• Being a grown-up
• Reality bites
• Return to Oz
• Meeting Noah
• So, is it tough going it alone?
• Read Natascha's book

"Two blue lines mean negative right?" I could tell from my friend Maya's face that it didn't, as she wordlessly handed me the instructions for the pregnancy test I was holding. I was 32 years old, single and very definitely pregnant.

A month before, I had been getting in touch with my inner-being in an alternate holiday centre on a Greek island, in one of those dream assignments every writer longs for. I had danced in a 'magic circle' under a full moon, chanted self-consciously to the dawn, wobbled my way through yoga poses and watched the sun set over the Aegean with a G&T. Now I was back in my grey north London studio flat contemplating a future of single motherhood.

The next few weeks passed in a blur of vomiting, crying and booking and canceling terminations. I would buy baby magazines in a fit of optimism, then feel it all crashing down as I contemplated my boozy Bridget Jones lifestyle; the fridge where notices of disconnection from utility companies fluttered in the draught, the always half-packed suitcase on the floor- my constant bad choices with unreliable men.

My disorganised messy world seemed no place to bring a baby and I continued putting off any decision. I justified it by the fact I couldn't have an abortion for another few weeks anyway but the truth was I had no idea what I was going to and was terrified of making a decision. I wrote to the father, a local with whom I'd had a sun-fuelled holiday romance and heard nothing.

I don't actually remember ever making a decision. The date for the termination came and went and I was still pregnant, sick and confused. Then one night in my 13th week, I awoke to find I was bleeding. A doctor came, shook his head, told me to keep an eye on it, if it got to heavy to call him back. "I'm very sorry, but these things happen" he said. I lay awake all night, my legs up, thighs squeezed tightly together as if I could keep the baby in by sheer muscle power. By morning the bleeding had stopped and I was sent for a scan. I lay and sobbed as I saw my little alien baby floating gently in his amniotic fluid, the regular, unmistakable beat of his heart and knew without another second's doubt that I had done the right thing. I desperately wanted this baby and was going to figure out some way to take care of us both.

"Guess what?" Said my mother gleefully in her regular Sunday morning phone call from Australia. "Caren (my sister in law) is pregnant! It was to be my parent's first grandchild. I took a deep breath. "Wow, that's a coincidence'. There was silence from Australia. "Hmm?" said my mother. "Me too"! I declared trying to pretend that the bottom hadn't just fallen out of her well-ordered, conservative world. "What!! How did that happen?" I suppressed the desire to tell her precisely and in graphic detail how it had happened. ("Well Mum, it all started with a bottle of retsina…") "Wellllllllllll" she said. "I guess you'll be coming home then". Suddenly, it all fell into place. Yes! I would go home to the laid-back, sunny city I hadn't called home for the last 11 years. I would bring my child up in a place where our poverty would matter much less under perennially warm, blue skies. I would work for as long as I could here though and make as much money as I could before I left.

However, being a self-employed feature writer was neither lucrative nor stable and I couldn't rely on it to provide me with the wherewithal for all that stuff it seemed a tiny being needed.

Luck came in the shape of a long-term temping job. Not a well-paid one, but for the first time in many years a regular 9-5, Monday - Friday gig. By this time, my morning sickness had kicked in with a vengeance, laughing meanly at the herbal teas and the ginger sweets I tried to pacify it with. It had been almost three months now of waking every morning feeling I was on a tiny boat pitching around in a huge swell with the world's worst hangover and Delhi belly.

My morning sickness monster loved salt and vinegar crisps and made me eat them till my tongue blistered, but the relief was always short-lived.

Reality bites

Eventually, I threw the pregnancy magazines away. They caused me too much pain, they intruded on my beautiful 'baby and me' bliss when I realised that I would never be half of a loving couple staring adoringly at our newborn, that I wouldn't have a partner to hold my hand and rub my back in antenatal classes. I haunted the bookstores on Charing Cross road looking for books for pregnant singletons and found most paid no more than lip-service, a teeny paragraph or so at best. I ordered one from the US and found it the biggest piece of unrealistic crap I had ever read, the glamorous Jane Seymour look alike on the front cover more concerned with dating than birthing. I decided then and there one day to write my own, something that would help women in my situation feel less isolated and different.

I heard from Greece. Theo's response was that I should have had an abortion. He wasn't ready to be a father, he had no money etc etc. All pretty much what I expected. I really was on my own. I got reacquainted with my baby at my twenty-week scan. 'Do you want to know the sex?" the ultra scan operator enquired. Yes I did. It was, as I had long suspected, a boy.

I loved watching my body change, the traces of blue veins underneath the tightening skin of my tummy, my breasts growing, the nipples darkening and Oh, that first amazing fluttering that would later turn into fully fledged kicks! I was in an earth-mother bliss. I felt powerful, very very sexy calm and happy. Before I knew it, it was time to go. I left England, weighed down by my 32-week belly and bags of tiny baby presents, infinitely sad. I had wonderful friends and loved living in London. Now, I was going back to friends who would have moved on, and the intimidating prospect of living with my parents, something I hadn't done since my late teens.

At the end of my long and thankfully uneventful trip I stepped outside the airport to the brilliant clear light of Australia and into the arms of my not altogether thrilled, but stiff upper-lipped family. They asked me no questions and I gave them no answers. Others who did dare were snapped at or replied to with icy-cold monosyllables, which discouraged further enquiry. I refused to think about the future beyond my baby. I had occasional moments of panic but pushed them fiercely into my subconscious. I was filled with energy, overcome by the nesting instinct as I went off on a baby-buying spree. I booked in to the hospital, shopped more, waited and waited. My baby, huge by now kicked me in the ribs, made my tummy ripple as he moved around, obviously as uncomfortable as I was.

Two days after my due date in the presence of most of the female members of my family, I gave birth to Noah Thomas, after a short, bloody and bloody painful labour. He was a big 9 lbs7oz, very yellow with an odd conical shape head and squashed face from the birth but he was beautiful. I sobbed, held him to my breast and didn't sleep for two days.

I went home and learned what sleep deprivation was and how badly I coped with it. It wasn't like the old days of no sleep where I went out and partied all night and slept all the next day. There was this little being who screamed to be fed every three hours! I cried for my aloneness, the fear of the huge responsibility I had undertaken.

I was an automaton; I followed every piece of unasked for advice I was given until I learned to trust my own instincts. Then despite my mother's mutters of "making a rod for your own back" I slept with Noah in my bed. I picked him up and fed and cuddled him when he cried and learnt to let go of my fear that I was going to be a shocking mother.

My 'baby blues' lifted, my confidence returned and when Noah was 6 months old, I moved into my own place and wrote the book I had sworn I would. I also began uni part time in order to be able to provide a more secure future for us. I have heard from his father a couple of times, but it seems he is not ready to play a part in his life. Do I get comments about my single status? Rarely, but I admit to trying that little bit more in my quest to disprove the outdated stereotype of the single mother. Noah is a happy confident, articulate child surrounded by adoring family and friends. Is it tough going it alone?

Actually, my single mother friends and I both pity and admire mothers who are partnered! How on earth do they find time to have a relationship, how do they share child-time, how do they solve the parenting-style clashes? In the final analysis, single parenthood doesn't present any more problems than in two-parent families, only different ones.

Read Natascha's book

Natascha has written a book to help women in her situation feel less isolated and different. She has also launched a website.Visit Going it Alone or read her book Going it Alone available at all good bookshops at £8.99 or through Amazon.