I'm a 42-year-old virgin, with a seven-year-old child. I keep a second embryo in a jar in my bedroom. Here's why I have no intention of looking for a man to father my daughter...
Her daughter having just turned seven, Kimberley Godsall is acutely aware that before long they will need to have ‘the talk’ about how babies are made.
This ‘birds and the bees’ conversation will, she realises, be a little more complicated in their house. After all, Kimberley, despite having carried and given birth to Scarlett, has never actually had a sexual relationship.
She was a virgin – and indeed still is – when Scarlett was conceived by IVF back in 2018 when Kimberley was 35. And she knows that when the time comes, her inquisitive daughter – who is already aware she has ‘a donor, not a daddy’ – will ‘ask all the questions’.
‘Scarlett knows how she was made, but she doesn’t know how other babies are made yet, though I don’t think I’m going to be able to hold off telling her for much longer,’ says Kimberley, 42, a tutor from Tunbridge Wells, Kent. ‘She’s annoyingly clever, always asking questions, and has a reading age of 11.
‘When I tell her about sex, I will also tell her I’ve never had it. I don’t want it to be a secret, something she ever feels shouldn’t be talked about. And I’m pretty sure, even if I don’t volunteer the information, she’ll ask.
‘I’ll phrase it as having been Mummy’s choice not to have sex and that we all make choices when we’re grown up.’
While this conversation may prove a tricky one to navigate, Kimberley is even more concerned about what happens once Scarlett is of an age where she might be contemplating a sexual relationship herself.
‘There may be things she wants to ask about that I haven’t experienced and won’t know the answer to,’ she says candidly. ‘I realise it’s something I might find uncomfortable, but, whenever I think about it, I tell myself I don’t need to worry about that yet. However, like the “how most babies are made” conversation, I’m sure it will creep up on me.’
Kimberley Godsall, 42, with her seven-year-old daughter, Scarlett - who was conceived by IVF
Kimberley - who hoped to have a husband, five children and a happy ever after - is pictured with Scarlett when she was a baby
Kimberley – who is a Christian, ‘though not particularly practising’ – has, for reasons she finds hard to pinpoint, always been adamant about not wanting sex outside marriage. Despite having dated in the past, she has never met a man she wanted to settle down with.
She considers herself ‘traditional’, having assumed her life would pan out like her mother’s and her sister’s, both of whom married their one love aged 25, settled down in middle-class suburban bliss and had two children.
‘I realise it’s a romantic view of life, however from a young age I knew that, while I wanted children, I only ever want to have sex with the person that I’m going to marry and always be with,’ says Kimberley, an English Literature graduate. ‘I’m also quite cynical and would never have “made do” with someone just because I wanted a child. Thanks to the wonders of modern science, I didn’t have to.’
However, she doesn’t expect her daughter, or indeed anyone else, to live by these same sexual rules.
‘I would never want Scarlett to feel she has to do things the way that I did,’ she says. ‘Right now, she says that she doesn’t want a husband, she wants to have children on her own. But that’s because it’s what she knows. When you’re seven, you want what you know.
‘I tell her: “That’s fine. If you want to do that, I’ll support you. But if you want to have children with a husband, or a wife, that’s also fine.” ’
Kimberley is one of at least five heterosexual women in the UK who have a virgin birth each year, all thanks to fertility treatment, rather than any divine intervention from God, of course.
Since she first spoke publicly about her story four years ago, she has been contacted by around 15 other virgin mums, all of whom have very similar stories to Kimberley’s and are grateful to her for breaking this ‘taboo’.
While proud to have done so, when Scarlett was in reception class Kimberley did have to talk her out of taking a print-out of their story into school.
‘I said: “No, I don’t think that’s quite right for show-and-tell,” ’ says Kimberley, laughing at the memory. ‘She’s very chatty, so one reason I haven’t talked to her about the “other” way babies are made yet is because she’d probably share it with the whole class and I’ll end up having to apologise to their parents.’
Initially, Kimberley had hoped to have a husband, five children and a happy ever after. However, her longest relationships – at the age of 22 with an actor, and at 32 with a teacher – both only lasted around three months.
She broke up with each man after realising they weren’t lifelong material, fearing the longer they dated the more likely they were to pressure her to go further than a kiss and a cuddle. ‘I remember being horrified when I had to share a room with the first one after a New Year’s Eve party at my sister’s,’ recalls Kimberley. ‘I insisted we had the one with twin beds, then lay awake all night worried he might make a move.
‘The second asked if he could come into my flat after things got a bit steamy in the car when he was dropping me off one night. I made some excuse and dashed for the door.
‘I never spelled out the fact I was a virgin to either of them, probably because I knew it was unusual and was a bit embarrassed. I just avoided being alone with them, or getting too intimate when we were.’
Kimberley is one of at least five heterosexual women in the UK who have a virgin birth each year, all owing to fertility treatment
Between those two relationships, Kimberley went on numerous dates with men she met online but says she gave up after it dawned on her that most were just after sex, rather than a chaste two-year relationship leading to marriage.
By her mid-30s, feeling she had ‘failed’ at relationships, Kimberley sought counselling, a process that helped bring about a sudden epiphany about motherhood.
She recalls realising: ‘I don’t have to have a man, or sex, I can do this without either.’ So she did just that. The first step was selecting a sperm donor online.
Kimberley chose the European Sperm Bank in Denmark, because it supplied more information about donors than other providers, which she felt important for any future offspring.
Once Scarlett turns 18, she will be given his name and last known contact details. While at the moment Scarlett says she’s not interested in knowing her father, Kimberley will be supportive of her reaching out should she choose to, when the time comes.
Kimberley opted for a Caucasian American who described himself as intelligent and creative, with reddish-brown hair and blue eyes, on the basis that he had a similar look to her, increasing the chances that any child conceived would too.
Kimberley paid £1,700 for two vials of sperm, enough for two rounds of IUI (intrauterine insemination), in which a woman is artificially inseminated in a clinic during ovulation.
In an awkward coincidence, her consultant at the Care Fertility clinic in Tunbridge Wells was the father of a boy she had tutored for his 11+ exams. While embarrassed by the connection, Kimberley was relieved the lessons were in the past, so their paths wouldn’t cross again.
From the start her parents and sister, who knew how desperately she wanted to be a mother, were supportive of her plan.
The IUI procedures, for which Kimberley remained awake but sedated, were so painful that she cried and squeezed her sister’s hand throughout – a fact the doctor said may have been exacerbated by her tensing up more than patients who aren’t virgins.
‘He told me that women having babies without ever having sex was actually much more common than anyone would imagine. There are even those in couples where, usually due to trauma of some kind, they don’t have a sexual relationship but still want children,’ Kimberley says.
‘I had worried it might make a difference to pain levels or how receptive I was to treatment, so that felt reassuring.’
Sadly neither IUI attempt was successful and Kimberley was advised to try IVF, where eggs are extracted, inseminated in the clinic and then any viable embryos created can be transferred into the womb.
For this procedure, Kimberley bought another £850 vial of sperm from the same donor (altogether she spent £16,000 of her savings on fertility treatment) and two embryos developed.
In line with Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) guidelines, only one embryo was transferred to Kimberley’s womb to reduce the risk of a multiple birth – something Kimberley feared she would struggle with as a single parent. The other embryo was frozen.
Two days before her period was due, Kimberley gave into temptation and took a pregnancy test, squealing with delight when it came up positive.
‘I called my mum first and she said: “Oh, my goodness. I’m so happy for you!” Then I rang my sister and told her not to make any plans for February because I wanted her to be my birthing partner,’ she recalls. ‘Of course it hadn’t quite been the romantic conception I’d envisaged, but it had worked. Nine months later, my wonderful daughter arrived.’
Scarlett was born healthy and weighing 8lb 8oz at Tunbridge Wells Hospital on February 25, 2019, 66 hours after Kimberley was induced. Both her mother and sister were birthing partners.
Although, as a virgin, the internal examinations were ‘possibly more uncomfortable’, she doesn’t believe the fact the labour was ‘long and utterly agonising’ had anything to do with that.
‘Obviously, the size of a baby’s head does not compare to any man’s appendage, whatever they may think,’ she says, laughing. ‘So I’m not sure what difference it could make.’
In fact, Kimberley’s capacity for seeing the funny side of her situation seems boundless.
‘Scarlett knows how she was made,' says Kimberley, 'but she doesn’t know how other babies are made yet'
‘Scarlett, not knowing the significance, picked a blue dress for me to wear to her nativity last year so I looked like Mary,’ says Kimberley. ‘I chuckled to myself and told my friend, a fellow mum, who said: “Well, Scarlett does have things in common with the baby Jesus!”
‘Another time, I was chatting to a grandmother at a soft play centre who, commenting on how tall Scarlett is, asked: “Is her dad tall?”
‘Keeping it brief, I said: “Yes, he’s 6ft 3in,” not expecting Scarlett to appear and pipe up: “But I don’t have a daddy – you need to tell the truth!”
‘Instead of being able to sit and read my book, I then found myself telling everything to a stranger.’
Thankfully, Kimberley has only ever had positive responses to those she’s shared her story with in person – though online, where critics hide behind a screen, people have been less kind.
Kimberley is not blind to the fact that growing up without a father presents challenges for her daughter. ‘Her school hosts a Father’s Day breakfast every year and, although she didn’t go, this brought home to her that she’s the only child in her class who doesn’t have a daddy,’ says Kimberley. ‘She told me she doesn’t like being the “only one”.
‘I’m not sure if it goes any deeper than that at this stage; she’s much more likely to complain about not having a sibling.’
Having initially paid £700 a year to keep the second embryo in storage, when Scarlett was four Kimberley decided it would be too much of a struggle to have two children alone, and that it was time to let it go.
While she would have been happy to donate it to help another woman have a child, she wasn’t able to without the sperm donor’s agreement. Rather than have it be destroyed, she asked if she could keep it. The embryologist agreed, as long as it was thawed first to ensure it was no longer viable.
Kimberley, who admits she likes ‘hippy, dippy things’, put the embryo into a small glass spell jar together with herbs and crystals, ‘representing grief, loss and letting go’, and sealed it.
What she hadn’t bargained for, however, was Scarlett coming across the jar in her mother’s bedroom last year.
‘I thought, because she’s so emotionally mature, that she was ready to understand there had been another embryo,’ says Kimberley. ‘That was very daft of me. She wailed a lot and said: “I could have had a brother or sister, a twin.”
‘She’s mentioned it once since, saying it was “sad we couldn’t have the other baby”.
‘I felt sad too because, in an ideal world, I would have had more than one child. But this is how things have turned out, and I’m happy with that.
‘Maybe if I’d had a second baby when Scarlett was two it would have been fine, but I think she would struggle to share me now.’
As their mother-daughter bond is so close, Kimberley believes the same would be true were she ever to meet a partner, something she is much less interested in doing since becoming a mum.
‘I’m not completely against meeting a man, but I’ve realised how much I like our life as it is, so I’m definitely not looking for one,’ she says. ‘I don’t know whether it’s a middle-age thing, but a lot of people I know seem to moan a great deal about their other halves.
‘Couples play musical beds every night because of kids and some sleep separately because of snoring, so I don’t think I’m missing much.’
Isn’t she even a little bit curious about what it would be like to have sex?
‘I’m not asexual, I do experience desire. But because I’ve never had it, I don’t miss sex,’ says Kimberley, after pausing to reflect. ‘I’m not in peri-menopause yet, but it can’t be far away, so I imagine I’ll be even less interested then.
‘Being a mum was always the most important thing to me. Now I have Scarlett, I think I’d be perfectly happy living the rest of my life as a virgin.’
