Katie Bryan on Pursuing Solo Motherhood by Choice

As a childless woman dating in her thirties, there comes a time when you find yourself wondering how much motherhood really means to you. And what kind of motherhood? Does it exclusively have to be in a marriage with your ideal partner? In a marriage with a suitable enough partner? Ideal partner and no marriage? None of the above? From frozen eggs? Would the baby even have to be from your egg? What about adoption? Could being the “cool, rich auntie” be enough? Sadly, I don’t think men even ask themselves these questions since they’re unburdened by a limited supply of sperm. They can date endlessly, make mistakes, waste their time and yours and still end up fathers well into their 90’s. They can start families over and over again. We women have to consider these questions.

It’s unfashionable to tell women that they have a limited fertility window. Janet Jackson had a baby at 50 after all! The harsh truth is that declining egg reserves and quality, not to mention, menopause, are real things that come for all of us. We also want to become mothers when we have the energy to give it what it requires and with the ideal partner. Speaking of partners, if you’re in your mid thirties and currently dealing with a man who is very clearly not ready to be the kind of father that you would want for your child, do you quit the relationship and start afresh? How would child bearing and rearing, affect your career track? If we want to be mothers, we have to factor our age into all of our decision making. Daunting as it all may sound, not living in fear and avoidance but facing these facts head on is actually empowering. We should not be held hostage to our biology or to father time. It is empowering to admit to ourselves: if you want this thing, these are the obstacles you will likely face and these are your options. Because darling, there are options. There are options that many women are choosing but that they don’t speak about as freely as we need to hear. The first step is doing the deep work of deciding how badly you want to become a mother.

Katie with her son. Image courtesy of Katie Bryan.

My In Vibrant Company feature guest is a woman who grappled with all of these questions, took it upon herself to search out solutions and is now educating and empowering other women to consider doing the same. Katie Bryan is a department head at a very large public school district in Texas. Four years ago, she decided that she “didn’t have the bandwidth” to continue to search for the right partner, hope that the relationship would work and then embark on a fertility journey together.

“It was like, even if I meet someone, I'm not going to have a baby in a year or six months. Even two years felt really fast and being 37, 38, 39, it was like, I don't have the time. And so for me, the choice was really about, I'm not going to settle. I'm not going to lower the bar and settle for a guy that is good enough to pop out some babies and then the relationship likely wouldn't last. I'm not going to compromise my potential lifelong happiness by gambling on if this guy seems great. I could have met Mr. Right and I kind of sort of did at the last minute, but I just realized, I don't have enough time to figure out for sure if this is a person I want to do this baby thing with.”

The beginning of her motherhood journey was bumpy. While still in a relationship she pursued egg freezing. She was working with a doctor who didn’t explain what her results meant and what her options were. After her first egg freezing cycle, she produced only seven eggs and was told that wasn’t enough to attain a live birth. She wasn’t told to undergo another cycle to obtain more eggs and that to bank eggs for the future she would have to undergo multiple cycles. She also wasn’t told that she could make embryos and not transfer them. The confusion, disappointment and lack of solid direction put some strain on her relationship and so she ended it. Three months later, she left those seven frozen eggs and began pursuing IUIs with donor sperm. An intrauterine insemination (IUI) procedure, places sperm directly into the uterus in order to fertilize and make an embryo. Katie felt rushed! She went so quickly from egg freezing to trying to getting pregnant and realized she wasn’t even ready to be a solo mom.

“the relationship kind of imploded. It was not necessarily my decision to end it, but I just couldn't continue because of all the fertility stress. And so I moved forward with trying to conceive on my own. I was absolutely not ready, but it just felt like it's now or never. And so that's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about working with women who are in that place, because I didn't understand truly how fertility worked, how my body worked, what my options were, what it meant that I had gotten seven eggs. I thought that was terrible. And it was. You can't tell much about what seven eggs means. You really have to have more information.”

Despite the rushed and confused start to her journey, all the learnings did in the end lead her to her son, who is now a toddler, and she is planning for her next baby. In our interview Katie is refreshingly frank about her fears, the financial implications, the judgment and support of others, choosing a sperm donor, what she told her colleagues, what she tells her son and so much more. Katie runs a website called singlegreatestchoice.com. She has a podcast and a coaching business to help support and provide community to other women who are pursuing single motherhood. If you are considering egg freezing, solo motherhood or just want to understand what your choices may be you should keep reading. This interview should leave you feeling empowered and with the tools to go about achieving your motherhood dreams whether you have found the right partner or not.

You can watch our full video interview on Youtube.

Katie with her son. Image courtesy of Katie Bryan

Nony: So you felt like the information you got was: you got seven eggs in the process of trying to freeze eggs. Let's not do that, go straight to IUI. And you didn't feel like you were walked through all of the options before even arriving at IUI.

Katie: Right. What I would advise my 2018, 2019 self would be to do another round of egg freezing and fertilize all or half of those to kind of get an idea of my egg quality and to not try to get pregnant immediately because I really wasn't ready. And thank goodness it didn't work. I tried to get pregnant by IUI for six cycles and it didn't work and that's exactly what I needed. I needed to not get pregnant in that time because I still had a lot of growth in terms of my own personal development, but also just my understanding of my options and what it was that I was doing. Because ultimately, I want to have two children. And if any of those IUI cycles had worked, I would have been pregnant at 38, 39 with no... I mean, I would have had those seven eggs frozen, but I didn't know yet of their quality. And so I would have felt just as much pressure to get going on having that second child because I really didn't have a good plan.

I want to understand, if you had to do it over again, do you feel that rush that you felt at 37 and 38 was justified? Like now with everything you know about fertility, because I think that we get a lot of confusing information. Like you said on your website, you hear that Halle Berry had a baby at 47, so what's the big deal? But then you also hear at 35, you're getting too old. So now that you've been through all of it, do you still feel that at 37, 38, that was a time to really go full head into this? Or do you think that a woman at that age could still wait a little longer?

I think it's impossible to know. I think, you know, we can look at the statistics and try to make them mean something about our own bodies, but we just really have no idea. And so I think if what you can do is freeze your eggs, like absolutely do that, do as many rounds as you can logistically and financially make happen.

If you're close enough to maybe choosing to pursue solo motherhood and you can fertilize some of your eggs, it just gives you really good information about your egg quality. Almost exactly a year [after the first egg retrieval] I did another round [of egg retrieval] and this time I knew I was going to fertilize the eggs right away with donor sperm. When I talked with my doctor about the cost analysis of how to do all of the different things, she was like, I really think depending on how many eggs we get that we should defrost those original eggs and literally put all your eggs in one basket. Remember I had seven from that original round and two of those did not thaw appropriately. So I had five left and then I got another seven. So that was only twelve total and statistically I maybe was going to get one good embryo, but probably not out of 12 eggs because at this point I was 38, 39. So we [fertilized the 12] and moved forward. And what we learned was I have really good egg quality! I had lower quantity maybe than other women my age, but high quality. So I ended up with five high quality embryos, which was far more than enough.

So that gave me really good information to then take another step. I did a third egg retrieval round after that and didn't fertilize those eggs. So that created a scenario where, when I was ready, I could transfer an embryo that was created with donor sperm and become a single mother by choice. I didn't feel rushed about that. It was about seven months between creating those embryos and actually getting pregnant. I got to get pregnant when I was ready, emotionally, financially. I have four more embryos that are full biological siblings to my son when I'm ready to have a second child. And I did that step of doing [the third] egg retrieval so that if I met Mr. Perfect tomorrow, I could have a baby with him. Even if I was 45, 46, I've left that door open by freezing that additional round of eggs. And I can feel good about the quality of those eggs because I fertilized [the initial]twelve eggs and the retrievals were only months apart. So I feel certain that if I wanted to utilize those [twelve new eggs] later in life, that I would probably get at least one good embryo out of that.

You're saying that when you made the embryos and you saw how many good ones you got, it informed you that the future eggs that you took out were likely to be healthy ones.

Yes, and it sucks that we have to put like numbers to this, but I thought the investment of going through all of this, putting my body through this and my finances through this a third time was worth it because now I have information about the quality. If nothing had come of the two previous retrievals, if I'd gotten no embryos or one embryo or whatever, like maybe I would have had different thoughts and would have looked at egg donor or something like that. But I think fertilizing the eggs is the best thing that you can do to know the egg quality. It's the only thing you can really do to know your egg quality. And yet you may not be ready to, that means you have to choose sperm and that's a huge deal, right?

That's my next question. How did you go about researching sperm donation?

There are multiple large banks and I did end up going with one of the major banks. There are pros and cons. There are a few smaller banks that are run a little bit differently but there's not as much selection and there's more of a wait. It's just really unfortunate that there really aren't [more] avenues available. It kind of feels like [shopping on] Amazon.com. Like you can shop other places, but at the end of the day, you're going to have to order some shit from Amazon because… there's just no avoiding it.

I first started with the idea of a known donor and I talked to, uh, actually, I was planning to talk to a good friend and then he brought it up. And so he was open, but the more we talked about it, the more I was like, I feel like that's going to be emotionally confusing for me. Not so much that I would like fall in love with him because I knew I wasn't attracted to him, but I thought resentment would creep in because it would feel like he should be helping. Part of what I love about being a solo mom is that I have a hundred percent responsibility and zero percent resentment. And that just works really well for me. So I ultimately decided against that. There was a little bit of conversation with the guy I had been dating and then we like, we were no longer dating at this point, but we were like maybe we would work if we took some of that pressure off. So maybe he would be the donor and we would decide along the way if we were a couple or if we were just kind of platonically co-parenting but that also had its complications. Ultimately, I just decided there were so many reasons why it made sense to do it on my own. And I just didn't want to muddy the waters, which meant I had to go, if I wanted it to happen anytime soon, I had to go with one of the major banks.

It sounds like you really have to know yourself to go through this because what you just said about a friend, I would have thought of a million reasons why going to a friend might be challenging, but the resentment part didn't even occur to me. You know, because I remember when I was thinking about these things too, I had a friend that's, he's gay and he doesn't want children of his own, but he was like, yes, I would totally do it for a really good friend of mine. And there's the complication of your kid seeing their dad, but not knowing it's their dad. And will it affect the friendship? Will I get weird and not want to be around him? There's so much to think about in doing it with someone you know, which sounds comforting to a lot of people. Like you said, sometimes it's better to just do it completely independently.

Right, right. Because even though you're not in a romantic relationship with that person, it still is a relationship. And you just like any relationship, you will have expectations, whether you've named them or not, about what it means for that person to be your donor or to be the biological parent to your child. And you have to be willing and ready to kind of renegotiate that over and over and over throughout your child's life, because you don't know how you're going to feel if that person does want to come to your kid's fifth birthday party and you don't want them there, or you want them there and they don't want to come. I mean what about his mom? Like, does his mom think that she's the grandma? Do you want her to think she's the grandma? Like, just so many complications. I think there are massive benefits as well, and especially for the child to like be able to know and see and name their roots and that identity piece, but there's not a lot of legal protections.

There's just a lot of gray area. And I think for many of us, when we feel in a hurry, it just feels safer to go with a sperm bank, which has its issues as well. Many of them. Like my son has roughly, I don't even know the number, but I would guess seventy half siblings, somewhere around there. And I just don't think that that's good for anyone. We are in touch with his donor, which was not something that was offered through the bank, but he reached out to me. You can kind of communicate anonymously with other people who are in your pod, which would be the donor if he wants to participate and then families who have used the same donor. And it's meant to connect over like if there are any medical concerns or, you know, just kind of general developmental type things. So our donor made it known that he was open to communication as much or as little and totally left it on the side of the receiving family. And so I did get in touch with him, and have been in touch with him. And he is a lovely person. I have just been really impressed with the way he conducts himself and his level of respect for the various desires of different receiving families. And If he wanted to, which I think he's certainly open to, developing relationships at whatever level of comfort each family is interested in. [70 half siblings] is way too many kids. He can't travel to that many places or meet that many families or maintain any level of connection with that many families. And it's the same with the donor siblings. Like my son is not gonna be able to be close to all of his siblings. That may not matter to him at all, but if it does matter, I'm sad that it's not 15, 20, you know, like a number that's manageable.

So this actually brings up a really good question. What have you told or plan to tell your son about this experience? Obviously you're very public about it, so there's not going to be any secrets, but you will leave it open for him if he wants to meet?

Absolutely. In fact, he hasn’t met his donor, but we have FaceTimed with his donor, but he's met some of his donor siblings. And they came to visit us and we had a little kind of weekend here in Austin. So they came and we did like, you know, fun Austin stuff. So yeah, I mean, I'm definitely open. What I tell him is we have a little board book that I created that is photos of the donor and many of the donor siblings. It's not all of them, but the ones that wanted to participate in this book. One of the moms created it on one of the places online where you can order, make little board books. It's just a board book full of faces and names. And then on the very last page is a picture of our donor and so when we get to that page, when we're looking at this book, I tell my son, you know, to make a baby, you need three parts. You need an egg from a woman, you know, and you need the sperm, and then you need a belly to carry the babies. And so mommy had an egg and a belly that could carry babies, but I didn't have the sperm. And so this is the guy that helped us. He gave us the sperm. And so I use the word sperm with my two-year-old and, you know, I'm just hoping he doesn't use it on the playground. But if he does, I just feel like that's an opportunity. And so what I've started to tell him is, you know, so-and-so, because he recognizes some of the faces, and we have FaceTime with some of the donor siblings, you know, so-and-so's mommy used the same sperm, as the same sperm donor. So I'm using the actual terms with him because I don't want him to be confused. I know a lot of women say things like helper, and that would totally be appropriate too. Mommy needed a helper and then later kind of bring in the idea of sperm. But to me, it just made sense to kind of explain the technical aspects of it, that egg, belly, sperm, the doctor helped put the egg and sperm in mommy's belly.

Can I ask you a question now? I'm gonna ask from the perspective of like someone completely ignorant. Someone who's watching this and has a million questions. So is one of the reasons that you mentioned that it's not ideal that there's so many half siblings, obviously, because you can't have a relationship with all of them, but is there also this question of what if he meets one of them? I mean, what are the chances and doesn't realize it's a sibling? Like, is this a thing?

Yes. You know, everybody brings that up. It's so funny. I don't know where that comes from, but I think the odds are so incredibly low. I think most of our donor siblings are elsewhere in the world. We have siblings in Canada and Spain, you know, all over the place.

It's one of the reasons why I am talking to him about it now, because I think that, you know, eventually when he's dating and things like that, it would be something to bring up like, Hey, you might just want to make sure this, you know, girl or guy you're interested in, like whatever, that they're pretty sure their biological parents are actually their biological parents, or if they know that they're donor conceived, like maybe we ought to compare numbers. Um, but no, it's not something I worry about. I think one of the other things that people do bring up that I think is more of a concern is like what about like unknown or undisclosed health issues that could have been passed on to your child. So that's one reason why I'm so grateful to our donor for being willing to be open. Because if I ever have any questions, it's very easy to just text him and ask like, hey, is this something that runs in your family? That's another reason why many women are drawn, especially women who are in their 40s or close to are drawn to younger donors and most donors are quite young. They're they're typically in their early to mid 20s. I actually chose a donor who was closer to my own age. He's two years younger than me. So he's 40 right now. I'm 42. And part of my thought process with that is that number one, I felt like his consent meant more to me choosing to be a donor because he was in his 30s. He lived some life like I just felt kind of weird about using a 20 year old sperm donor because did he really understand what he was agreeing to? But also all of the health implications, like he's older, which means his parents are older, his grandparents are older, and some of those health things have come up that maybe hadn't come up. I mean, some of these 20-year-old donors, it's like, oh, their parents, there's no cancer or anything in their family. I'm like, right, because their parents are my age. So like in 10 years, there will be, right? So they look like they have a cleaner bill of health and actually they're just younger.

You thought of some really amazing questions that I don't think I would have realized. This is why your coaching services can really go a long way to help a lot of women, because you've really thought about a lot of things.

Thank you. I hope so. Well, and I also chose three different donors. This was the donor that I landed with was actually the third donor that I chose. In the beginning, I was like, I think I should probably choose someone who has features are similar to mine because I wanted my child to look in the mirror and like feel like he looked like his family. I didn't want him to wonder, you know, where, like, where did I get this nose or these eyes or whatever? [But] I ended up choosing someone ultimately that doesn't look a whole lot like me or my family, but looked more like someone I would actually be attracted to. It was very weird for me. The first couple of donors totally could have passed as my brother, but I would never have been interested in dating them. It just felt more natural to choose someone that I would naturally be attracted to. My son looks so much like me and my dad. I don't know how that happened, but you just never know what the genetics are going to do.

Another question. Let's go back again to your journey. How did your family and your support system react and treat you throughout this whole process?

So I feel very lucky that my family was very supportive. I think I'm also very much a verbal processor and an oversharer. So there was never a moment where it was like breaking the news, “hey guys, I think I'm gonna do this crazy thing,” and they went from like not knowing to knowing. It was more like, “I think I might actually consider…” or “do you think I could actually…” you know, all of these kind of wonderings for so long that I think when I finally decided to do it, everybody was like, “yeah, that makes total sense. You've been talking about that forever.” But also there was that period of time where I was doing it and I wasn't ready. And that was a struggle because I was so in such a fragile place. And to have my family kind of echoing back like, are you sure about this? And I wasn't sure about it. That was hard, but I'm glad that I was talking to people. I was talking to friends. I was talking to family. I was talking to a therapist. It all happened in the like the midst of COVID when we were in like complete lockdown, not even seeing family. So I was to a certain extent, pretty isolated, which I think is where I started the podcast and kind of tried to create some community around it because I wasn't out in the world as much as, you know, I would have been without COVID.

What about work? I know that another thing that women are afraid of, even just in freezing eggs, you know, before we even get to the next level is how do I take time off of work to do the injections? Well, you do the injections at home, but to go do the scans and all the appointments. Like, how do you manage that? How much do you tell your office or your work?

Right. All the appointments and that, yeah. I was really fortunate that I had a wonderful boss at the time. I have a wonderful boss now. It's just a different boss. But I told my boss what was going on, but she's also a very still is a very close friend. And so I felt comfortable. She's someone I would have told whether or not she was my boss just because of our friendship. So I was very lucky that I was able to kind of make those appointments work and flex my calendar. And it wasn't a huge issue. It was also COVID. So we were working from home, it just, there was a little bit more flexibility.

Right you weren't running out with people wondering “where's she going?”

Yeah, so that was fine. And then telling people at work that I was pregnant as a solo parent, I had so much anxiety about that. It was no problem at all to tell my immediate team, which is about 10 people or so that I know fairly well, and I knew they knew me. And I think I knew they were going to be happy for me and that it would make sense to them. And also that they believed that I could handle it, that they weren't going to be like, oh, my God, you know. I train and lead a large, large team, like over 100 people. And I told them on Zoom while we were still all at home, because I was about to go out on maternity leave and I hadn't said anything yet. And I was so terrified to tell all of these people that I had done this because I knew they all knew, or at least in my mind, they all knew I was single and were tracking my personal life. I think half of them probably didn't even realize that I was single. I did say I decided to do this on my own and I used a donor, like I made that very clear. But even that was all when we were still home duringCOVID, you know, a couple of years ago. Now some people will be like, are you and your family doing blah, blah? And I'm like, they've forgotten. It was such a big announcement for me. They know I have a toddler and they forget that I'm doing it by myself. And I'll like remind people sometimes, Oh yeah, no, I don't actually have, it's just me and my toddler. Like that's it.

It’s also a reminder to us, when we need to make a big decision, we think everyone is watching us so closely but nobody cares.

Yes, yeah, they don't care. Right, right. The other thing I will say, because this is something that comes up a lot in my coaching, is women bring the thought: “They are going to think that I'm not going to be as focused or as dedicated or like as on at work”, they being the boss or the team or whoever. That's the thing that they want me to coach them on. And they want, I know they want the answer to be like, “no, they're not, they're going to see how hard you're working”. And really where I usually land with that is like, do you think you're gonna be as focused at work? Like, do you think you're gonna bring as much of your whole self to work as you're doing right now as a single woman with no partner? Because I actually don't think you will. And I think that's okay. Because most of us who are in this demographic of women who are choosing solo motherhood believe in ourselves enough to believe that we can handle it. We are not settling for some dude from Bumble just to make this happen at the last minute, right? We are killing it at work. And you could bring 75% of what you're bringing today and still be killing it at work. You know what I mean? So what if your productivity does go down a little bit at work? And what if work is not your whole life, but you got to be a mom? Isn't that a worthwhile trade? What if we're just not as good at work?

Katie Bryan considers her decision to pursue solo motherhood as her “single greatest choice”

Image courtesy of Katie Bryan

Listen, I love the way you're talking about how beautiful motherhood is. And what you just said about, “you still got to be a mom” and it's a really big deal. Because I think that a lot of the rhetoric now is very much like whatever. And everyone is entitled to live their life however they want, of course. And I support it. But I want to make sure that the women who are out there who still really want this don't feel like, they're not, I don't know what the word is. I don’t want to say “feminist.” It's okay to think that it's not enough to just be amazing at career and to still want a family and to put everything you want into making it happen. It's okay.

Ugh, it's the best. Yeah, I can't imagine missing it. I can't. I mean, if you know that it's what you want, there's just nothing better. And I don't think every woman wants it the way that I do. But if it's calling you, then you got to go for it. I mean, it is worth everything.

And like you said, you can freeze the embryos and you don't have to use them, but you've put something away to take the pressure off of yourself, take the pressure off of dating and sort of like calm your mind a little bit. It's expensive, but it's a choice. It's an option for you later. I think that's huge.

Yes, yes, right, right. And it gives you, depending on the outcome, it gives you so much flexibility moving forward. You know, I'm planning to have a second child. I thought I would be pregnant with my second child by now and I opted to push that by a year, which means that I will be 43, close to 44, if everything goes as planned when I deliver that second child. And did I ever think I would be having babies in my mid-40s? Absolutely not. But...It makes so much more sense for me career-wise, financially, with my son, with my coaching, like all of that. And I get to push that off because of all of the preparation that I did in terms of making embryos earlier.

I know that everyone is also wondering about this: what you said about when you started the IUIs and you were like, wait, I can't have a kid right now. That's something that everybody feels. I felt even when we got married it was just all happening too fast. How do you, how should one think of the financial planning for something like this, not just the process, but even the aftermath. You probably need to get a nanny. There's so much financial investment that goes into it for someone doing it on their own as well. So what do you tell women about that?

So I think my answer now is very different than it would have been at all of those steps along the way and when I actually made the decision. I will say, I think it's really sweet that when I'm coaching women, they'll say things like, well, “I am very last minute and disorganized right now, but I know that when I'm a mom, I'll have to be really on top of things.” I'm like, hmm, you're probably gonna be really disorganized and last minute and also have a kid at the same time because you're not gonna be a different person, right? And so if you're a saver now, you'll keep figuring out a way to save even when your expenses increase. If you're kind of paycheck to paycheck now, you'll somehow figure it, you're not gonna be a different human, right? You're just yourself but with a kid.

And those expenses, they kind of like…Like I don't do the $120 gym membership and I probably spend that in like diapers and whatever, you know, and like it all just kind of balances out. Other than daycare, I don't feel like it's crazy expensive to have a child. You know, it's different. It's give and take. Like there are things that I just don't do anymore, but it's not even because of the money. It's because I just don't have the time. There are no brunches with friends. There's no yoga studio membership. You know, those things just don't happen. So I think that what has been the most helpful for me is rather than trying to control or manage the logistics, like of course we have to plan and we have to think through things, but to get obsessed with trying to solve problems that haven't happened yet is just setting yourself up for a lot of unnecessary anxiety. And so what's helped me the most is to really ground myself in identity and to know myself, to do the work and the personal development work and to know who I am as a mom, as a person.

I always figure it out. Like I know that to be true. I can name a hundred examples of how I've figured it out. Was it easy? No, did it take multiple tries? Maybe, you know, but I always figure it out. Another thing I tell myself all the time is “I'm a good mom who has lots of resources”. And like I get even a little choked up to say that because when I'm telling myself I’m a good mom, it's in the moment when I feel like the worst mom, but I just can take that deep breath and remind myself - you're a good mom and you have lots of resources. So you can, whether that's financial, whether that's that Instagram account that's posting these parenting tips that are just what you need in that moment, you just have to kind of take that moment and tell yourself what you know to be true. The other thing that I love to tell myself is, “be where your feet are.” Like today, right now, I've got my bills covered. Today, right now, my child is doing okay. Instead of going way into the future or the past of what I could have done differently or I could have saved this or I shouldn't have bought that, but just being where you are right now is the cheesiest thing, but it's so true.

No, it's so profound. No, you're right. “I shouldn't have gone on that holiday. I should have put that money towards that”. You're right. We do that all the time. And then, “how am I going to pay for college one day?” Like you can really get ahead of yourself and talk yourself out of this. And like you said, you always make it work and remember that and believe it. So everyone always says, '“it takes a village.” And we know it's true, but obviously not everybody has a village. How do you create that community for yourself and that village, so to say, to help you?

I love that question so much. Like literally moments before we hopped on this video, I just posted a reel about that on my Instagram. And what I wanted women to know, because many of the women who follow me are considering or pursuing solo motherhood but aren't there yet, and what I wanted women to hear is that it's okay if you don't have a village right now. The majority of my village are people I didn't know when I was thinking and planning and pregnant and even in the first year of my son's life, they're people that I've collected along the way. And so I think that part of it is again, rooting yourself in that identity. It's a fine line between I never want to crumble into '“woe is me, I'm a single mom”. No, I'm a good mom with lots of resources and I can't do everything. Like that can both be true. Like I need help and I can offer help. I'm strong and I can't do it all, you know? All of that can be true. And so for me, help has looked like paying for help. I wish I didn't spend as much as I do on babysitters, but also I love to pay them because it is such a clean exchange. What I mean by that is when I ask for my family's help, I'm like, oh gosh, they're probably wondering where I am. I need to rush back. Whereas like my babysitter, I'm paying her till this time. I'll sit in my driveway and scroll my phone until the minute I'm done paying her and then walk through the door then, right? And so that is worthwhile.

The other thing that I've done is I've really made an effort to create community of other single mothers by choice, locally and across the world, but especially my local connections. For me, it started with, hey I have an idea, this was around a year old when the kids are getting a little bit more independent. I chose another mom who I clicked with, I did not know her well, we had never hung out outside of a group setting, but our kids were about the same age. And I liked her and I trusted her. And I said, hey, I would like to find someone who'd like to partner with me in a childcare exchange. What I'm looking for is, it could be Saturday, could be Sunday, I'm looking for maybe like three hours in the morning before nap time. You know, with kids, you're up at 5 a.m. So you can start early. But I'm like, I'd love to start. Would you be comfortable or willing to drop your son off at my house sometime this weekend? I'll keep him for a couple of hours. We'll see how that goes. And then it'll be your turn. And we've done that now for over a year. It is the best fucking thing because when she drops her son off, I am like, go take your time. Don't tell us when you're coming back. Like, go enjoy, because I know what a gift that is.

And then I know because it's so balanced that she is the person that I call when it's a last minute, like, hey, I know it's not actually my turn, but can we, is there any way? Can I leave my kid and his car seat at your house for like 20 minutes while I go get this piece and then come back and she's like, "'Sure, yeah, we're just hanging out.'" But to have somebody that you can ask, I think it starts with being willing to give as well as receive. And I never wanna be like the, "'Woe is me, I'm a single mom, I need all the help,' because I have a lot to offer as well. And then it just feels better.

Right. And it must, and also doing it by choice is so empowering. I can't speak for you, but you probably don't even allow yourself to feel woe is me because you must feel like, “I'm doing what I've always wanted to do. And I did it on my own terms.” I feel like even at the hardest moments, it still must feel so beautiful.

Yeah, I mean, I think we all can default into, woe is me, I think that that's a very natural thing. But what I like to tell myself when I'm in that situation is the resistance or those thoughts about woe is me are just making it worse. And so something that I say often in my coaching is, “the only thing that's worse than being up all night with a crying baby is being up all night with a crying baby that you believe shouldn't be crying.”

Like when you're resisting the reality, right? So we've had those moments where he's sick and I'm sick and I'm out of [sick] days at work. So it's costing me to stay home and that, you know, and we all feel like shit. And to then add the layer of this shouldn't be happening or woe is me that I don't have a partner who can take a shift or whatever. Like that's just making it worse. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. It's not helpful. So I just try to not go there.

No, that's really a nice thing to hear because that was literally me last night, my daughter just screaming her head off in the middle of the night. And yes I do default to, “everybody gets to sleep except me”, “everyone else's kid is sleeping through the night except mine, why?” And it doesn't help. It just adds this extra layer of tension that is not productive. So I think it's a good lesson for everybody.

Right, and so I do feel like I get to skip that a little bit. Like I think people automatically think about the hard parts of being a solo mom. But honestly, I think one of the biggest advantages is how little energy I give to weighing fairness or whose role it is or whose turn it is. Like there's none of that in my house because it's all me. And to me, that's just like such a good trade off because it takes so much emotional energy to maintain a relationship with a partner. I'm just not spending that energy. So I get to spend that elsewhere. Managing my own thoughts really is where that goes. It's like taking care of the woe in me thoughts, right? But just in my own mind instead of about someone else. But I love it. I love parenting alone.

Last couple of questions. I know that we both have to run, but how is dating now?

Nonexistent. Which is such a shocker to me because I thought that I was doing this to kind of take the pressure off and then I'd get right back out there. I think I did so much dating before I made this decision that I am like still kind of experiencing the burnout and fatigue. I think the main thing for me is if I weren't working full time and running a business that has really picked up, I think I probably would be interested in dating. The way I think about it is, by definition, you can only have a few priorities, right? Otherwise, they're not priorities. And so I think of, if I have this list of priorities, dating is on there. It's just right now, it's falling below the line of things that I could reasonably manage. So I'm just not doing it. Because can I find time to go get drinks with a guy? Sure. But then what if it goes well? Like, I'm gonna have to find that time again and again. So it's just not something I'm making time for right now. You know, it's just not on my radar. And that is shocking because it meant so much me that I hadn't met a partner. And now it's neither here nor there. Like, there are wonderful things about partnership, but like, I also really want to landscape my backyard and I'm not doing that either. There are lots of things I want to do in life that I just can't do right now, right? It’ll come or it won't. The other thing is I really want to have a second child and now that I've kind of identified the upsides of doing it this way, I don't want to complicate things by meeting someone. If I met someone this weekend, I'm not going to be ready by next summer, which is my timeline for having a second child or getting pregnant again. I don't want to get pregnant with someone else's baby next summer, but I do want to get pregnant next summer. So I need to not meet the guy until I'm on the other side of that.

I know this is a really hard question because there's so many, but can you think of what has been the best moment of motherhood so far? Or one you can recall on the spot?

Yeah. I mean, I just got emotional just thinking about it. I mean, of course, it's all the moments that all moms experience that are just so sweet. But the one that comes to mind is the first time we made it through the airport, just the two of us with the diaper bag and the stroller and all the things that we got to the gate and I was like, we nailed it. Like we did it, you know, just the sense of togetherness and it's just the two of us and I love it so much. I think I've noticed that when I'm around other adults, of course I'm talking to the other adults but I'm attending to my child if he asks for something or has an obvious need, but I'm not tuned into him in the same way that I am when it's just the two of us in the house. And you probably noticed this as well in your home, like when your partner's there versus when your partner's not there. I think children get talked over quite a bit and that's just kind of their experience. But I love that I have so much more connection with my son that I actually believe there's a huge benefit for him developmentally to have a solo parent because it is just the two of us. So he's 50% of the family, you know.

Yeah, he gets all of your energy when you're home.

Yeah, I feel the same about being a working parent. I always thought I would prefer to be a stay-at-home mom, but now I'm so glad that our time together is finite and kind of determined by what time we get home and what time bedtime is, because I know to pay so much more attention because that time is so confined versus us just being together all the time.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. My kids go to daycare three times a week now and the two days that I have them are always that much more wonderful... One last question, what is the one piece of advice that you would give to someone watching this that wants to do it and just needs a little bit of a push or encouragement or whatever you think she might need?

Oh gosh, can I say three things? Okay, the first thing, I'll be fast, but the first thing would be go and get your fertility checked. That's just the first logistical piece. Go get your numbers, don't pay attention to statistics, doesn't matter what was possible, doesn't matter when your mom or your grandma had you or whatever. People say all kinds of different things. It doesn't mean anything unless it is your own medical records. So go get your fertility checked, just find out where you're starting and ask questions. I think that's number one.

Number two, I think is any kind of personal development work that you can do, whether it's therapy or coaching or books or podcasts or, you know, whatever you can do that resonates with you, that is improving your ability to manage your own mind. I think the vast majority of our suffering and our struggle happens in our own brain. And there are so many tools out there to help you get to a place where you're not causing your own suffering. So I just think that is the best parenting tip I can give: if you work on your own shit now so that when it's you and a infant or you and a toddler, they're the ones having the meltdowns, not you. You know?

And then the last thing I would say is community. Just getting plugged in with the community of other women doing this. Because for me, my biggest kind of roadblock is after I got to a place where I could see that I could feasibly do this and maybe even thrive, my hangup was what the world was going to think about it. I made it mean all kinds of things about my value and my attractiveness and my ability to get a man, keep a man, whatever. And so I had a lot of stories about myself. And then I met one or two women who I'm like, oh my gosh, she's got this incredible career. Oh, she's gorgeous. She's hilarious. You know, she just has her stuff together. And you can't think of that as like an outlier when it's literally the community. It's the most incredible community. So then it just felt like there was this cognitive dissonance. Like I couldn't feel poorly about myself when I started to see the community that I was a part of. And it just like clicked for me. Oh, these are the women that didn't settle.

There are women who met their partners and it was right and that was what should happen for them. And then there are the women who lower the bar just so they don't end up alone, right? And then there are the women out there, woe is me, and not willing to do anything about it. And we are the ones who, whether unfortunate circumstances or not, we didn't meet the guy and we're moving forward anyway. And it takes a a badass to do that. You know what I mean? It takes a very different type of woman to even consider that. And so in the community, you're just blown away by the caliber of women.

I run retreats and groups, coaching groups, and provide resources for women who are on the path to solo motherhood. And it's exactly for that purpose, to help women feel less alone, to know that not only are you not the only one thinking about these things, considering doing this, but the women who are doing it are just such incredible resources and such incredible supports and you don't have to walk alone through this. I 100% believe that I have more support than most of my coupled friends because of the community that I've built.

I can't think of a better place to end. Thank you so much for meeting with me today and sharing your story and being candid. I'm sure that you helped so many people in your work. I think that even just getting your message out there will help even more women.

Katie Bryan.