5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Choosing Solo Motherhood

Nearly a decade ago, I sat alone at my kitchen table with four sperm donor profiles spread out in front of me, on the edge of choosing solo motherhood. I want to tell you what I know now that I didn't know then because if you're seriously considering choosing solo motherhood yourself, you deserve the truth from someone who has actually lived it. Not the glossy version. Not the cautionary tale.

I know why many of you found this post. You typed something into a search bar late at night some version of "will I regret this?" because the longing for a child is roaring inside you, and a quieter, colder voice sits right alongside it, asking whether you're about to make the biggest mistake of your life. I know that voice. I sat with it a long time. So before the five things, let's talk about it directly.

The Fear of Regret Isn't a Warning — It's a Protector

Here's what I've learned in my own journey and in more than twenty years of supporting women through life's biggest decisions: the fear of regret feels like a warning about the future, but it almost never is one. What it actually is, is a protector — and that distinction changes everything.

In my coaching work, I use the Internal Family Systems framework to help women get to know these fearful parts rather than fight them. And here is what we find, over and over: the voice predicting regret isn't a prophet. It's a part of you doing a job absorbing a lifetime of messages about how families are "supposed" to be made, working hard to keep you safe from judgment, loss and the unknown. It was built in a world that told you a woman who creates a family without a partner is settling, failing, or giving up. And it’s working hard to shield you from the discomfort that you anticipate will come from the real challenges of raising a child on your own.

The goal isn't to silence the fearful parts or argue them down. It's to turn towards them with curiosity, learn more about how they are trying to help you and thank them for trying to keep you safe. When you do, the fear doesn't vanish, but it loosens its grip enough that you can hear the quieter, surer part of you underneath the one that already knows what she wants.

Thing 1: The Loneliness Doesn't Disappear — But It Isn't Yours Alone

I won't pretend otherwise: there have been nights when my kiddo and I were both home sick, the dishes were piled high, and I lay down in bed with a part of me wailing, "I just want someone to take care of me for a change."

Here's what I wish someone had told me plainly: that loneliness never fully goes away and that this isn't a flaw in solo motherhood. It's part of being human. I've sat with plenty of married women who feel achingly lonely lying right next to their partner. A ring on your finger is not a cure for it. No one's life arrangement is.

What's also true is that loneliness isn't constant. It comes in moments, not in a permanent fog present on the hard nights, then gone entirely on the ordinary Tuesday when you are reading together cuddled up on the coach. Expecting to never feel lonely is the trap. Letting the lonely moments move through you is the skill. And one of the most surprising sources of company I found wasn't outside me at all. It was the partner inside of me: the voice that can turn toward a hard moment and say, "I see how hard you're working. I'm here with you."

Thing 2: Building Your Support Network Will Change Who You Are

Before my son was born, I had an idealized picture of "the village." What I didn't understand was that building it would ask me to grow in ways I never expected and that the growing was the gift.

Here's the truth no one names: our culture doesn't teach women to be interdependent. We're handed a story about fierce self-sufficiency, about handling it all alone, about not being a burden. So when this path requires you to actually ask for help to say "I need you" to a friend, to accept the meal, to let someone hold the baby while you sleep it can feel deeply uncomfortable. That discomfort is not a sign you're doing it wrong. It's the edge of real growth.

Learning to lean into that vulnerability is its own kind of virtue. Every brave text message, every awkward coffee invitation, every honest "I'm not okay today" builds a muscle most adults never develop. You become a more whole person not a diminished one who couldn't do it alone, but a fuller one who finally understands that no one was ever meant to. My son doesn't have two parents. He has an entire world of people who show up for him and I became someone capable of building that world by first becoming someone who could ask.

Thing 3: Grief and Joy Can Coexist

This is the one I most wish someone had said to me plainly.

Choosing this path doesn't mean you stop grieving the path you imagined. I grieved the partner who hadn't arrived. I grieved the version of family I'd pictured since girlhood. And for a while, I believed that grief was evidence I was making the wrong choice that if this were really right, it would feel purely joyful.

That belief is false, and it keeps so many women stuck. Grief is not a verdict. It's an emotional response to letting go of one story so you can live another. When I finally let myself feel the sadness fully in my body, with support, without rushing it — the grief moved through, and underneath it was my longing, intact and clear.

Now, nearly a decade in, the grief and the joy still occasionally sit at the same table. I both revel in a bike ride to the ice-cream shop with my son and wish there was a dad to join us on the same Sunday afternoon. Both are real. Neither cancels the other. A woman who can hold both is not confused she's whole.

Thing 4: The Finances Will Teach You to Find Options You Didn't Know Existed

Let's not dance around it: this path is expensive. Donor sperm, fertility treatment, childcare on one income the numbers are real, and I won't pretend they aren't.

But here's what I didn't expect: the financial reality of this path made me more creative and resourceful than I had ever been forced to be. When you can't lean on a second income, you learn to look harder, ask better questions, and find the options hiding in plain sight — the preschool co-op that costs a fraction of private tuition and hands you a built-in community of involved parents, the nanny share that cuts your costs nearly in half, the family member offering ten hours of care a week, worth thousands of dollars a year once you learn how to ask for it.

You also learn to read the fine print in your favor. Here in California, new fertility insurance legislation now requires many employer plans to cover treatment a single phone call to HR can change your entire equation. Tax credits, dependent care accounts, paid family leave they all add up once you go looking. I've watched clients with modest incomes build stable, beautiful lives as Choice Moms, and watched higher earners panic because they never got resourceful at all. Money clarity isn't the enemy of the dream. It's the creative practice that makes it possible.

Thing 5: It Has Been Hard — And I Would Choose It Again

I want to be precise here, because this is where so much writing about this path slides into toxic positivity. So let me say both halves of the truth, because they live together.

Being a single mother by choice has been very hard harder than I anticipated at that kitchen table. There have been exhausting stretches, lonely nights, and plenty of days that asked more of me than I thought I had to give. I'm not going to dress that up for you.

And at the same time I have no regrets about my decision. Not because the hard parts didn't happen, but because my life is full of a fulfillment and meaning I can't imagine having found any other way. When I tucked my son into bed tonight this handsome, gregarious, kid — I felt the same rightness I felt the day I chose his donor. The difficulty and the meaning aren't in competition. The meaning is what makes the difficulty worth it.

Here is the thing about regret that the search results won't tell you: in nearly a decade on this path, and in years of coaching women through it, the regret I encounter is almost never about choosing it. It's about waiting. Wishing they'd started sooner. Wishing they'd trusted themselves earlier.

If You Are Searching for Regrets Right Now, This Is for You

If you found this post by typing "single mother by choice regrets" into a search bar, I want to speak directly to you.

You are not searching because you're weak or doubtful by nature. You're searching because you take this decision seriously — and that seriousness is exactly the quality that makes a wonderful, conscious mother. The fear you're feeling about becoming a single mom by choice isn't a stop sign. It's an invitation to do the inner work: to grieve what needs grieving, get honest about the numbers, start finding your people, and listen to the part of you underneath the fear that already knows what she wants.

You don't have to figure out whether choosing to be a single mom is right for you all alone, in the dark, with a search engine. This is exactly the work I do with women every day through online coaching for single mothers by choice — wherever you are in the deciding.

Book Your Free 20-Minute Consultation and let's talk about where you are, what you're afraid of, and what's actually true. The woman on the other side of this decision is not full of regret. I promise you, she's fuller than she's ever been.