S5:E18 - Lindsay & Aric

First Try, Water Birth & Teaching Full Time

Lindsay is the kind of person who, when she decides something is happening, makes it happen.

She promised herself at 27 — the day she left her marriage — that not having a partner would never mean not having a child. She promised herself again at 30, moving to Scotland on her own without knowing a single person. And she promised herself at 35 that if she was still single, she would make it happen that year. She was. She did.

One round of IVF at Melbourne IVF. Nineteen eggs retrieved. Six embryos. A frozen transfer in December, just before her 36th birthday. A positive result over Christmas. A water birth with a doula at 37 weeks and two days — the day after her last day of work, standing in the rain doing tram duty. Aric is now eight months old. She's back teaching full time. She's planning to donate her eggs.

Lindsay is a maths and science teacher at an independent school in Melbourne. She navigated her entire IVF journey secretly, before the pregnancy was announced, managing scans and blood tests around the school day. She came back to work at five months and has spent term one figuring out what it actually means to be a full-time teacher and a full-time solo mum simultaneously — including more sick days than she's had in six years, a daycare she describes as phenomenal, and a WhatsApp group of five women from the Preparing for Solo Motherhood course who all had babies in the same year and are now, she says, the best thing in her life besides Aric.

This is a story for anyone who's been putting it off, thinks their journey will be long, or isn't sure how it's going to work with their job. Lindsay's answer to all of it is the same: you decide, and then you make it work.

In this episode:

Leaving her marriage at 27 and her mum's advice that changed everything

Living and working in Scotland at 30, dating with the FYI conversation, and the decision point at 35

The public fertility waitlist in Victoria — what it is, how long it takes, and why she's glad she explored private options at the same time

IVF at Melbourne IVF: choosing a donor, genetic carrier testing, and the last-minute transfer of funds before getting on a plane to Scotland

Nineteen eggs, six embryos, an OHSS risk, and a frozen transfer just before the Christmas clinic shutdown