The yoga studio where I volunteer just started a six-week workshop to enhance fertility. Apparently this isn't a new idea. And call me - single, thirtysomething, would sure like to be a mom, why yes, me - crazy, because I thought for a minute that I might drop in, because you can't be too prepared when the time comes.

But what if it doesn't?

I don't know if I can have children, because I've never tried. And I've never tried because I never connected with a man who wanted to try along with me, and I haven't yet been ready to do it on my own.

There you have it, one of the great pains of my life, summed up in two sentences. Awesome.

The things that people say in reaction to this stop me from commenting on any aspect of the reproductive situation of any woman I know, lest she want to punch me in the face or flee from the room crying, or both. I try to refrain from eliciting those reactions.

"But 40 is the new 18!"

"Oh, you're so lucky. You have all this free time. The world traveling! The yoga classes! I'm SO

JEALOUS OF YOU!!!!"

"It's a lot easier to adopt on your own than ever."

"What are you worried about? Can't you just freeze your eggs?"

I especially don't love when these statements are uttered by people who have multiple children and maybe even a partner who brings her coffee in bed (true story), because along the lines of Faith Hill singing about slinging hash in a diner in solidarity with waitresses everywhere, it's really a stretch to say she could relate to my situation. Last place goes to a woman who told me that she was so happy that she had a family and kids, so she didn't have to just focus on her job. And wasn't that depressing?

Oh, snap. Physically infertile or merely terrified that you might be, there's no better way to be rendered fruitless than being told you're just a drone with a bottomless cup of coffee and a lot of frequent flier miles. It's not like I'd ever tell one of my many mom friends that they should just suck it up, that running around after a two-year old who just picked up a kitchen knife is invigorating, not stressful - and oh yeah, how lucky are THEY with all that free time? That would go over well. And also I would have, deservedly, no friends.

Of all the tidy answers to a complicated life situation that have come my way, the egg-freezing comments are especially aggravating. I know, I know it's possible. Science works wonders sometimes. But there is so much emotion tied up in this that easy answers can sound dismissive, and plain-spoken problem-solving just plain rude. Besides, the jury is still way out on the effectiveness of this procedure, and what impact it has on the woman and any potential children. This recent story confirms some concerns I've had, along with some insights into the psychology behind it all.

But proponents of the technique say it is "empowering" to women -- many of whom face social rather than biological barriers to having a child. These barriers include commitment phobic partners, not meeting the right partner until later in life or both partners needing to work full-time to afford a mortgage.

Here's another reaction from the Science Progress blog.

Tell that to Marla Libraty, who Josephine Marcotte from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune quotes as saying:

"When you graduate from college, instead of getting a car, you would have your eggs frozen," said Marla Libraty, vice president of marketing for Extend Fertility, a three-year-old Boston-based egg bank that charges about $15,000 to women who want to freeze eggs for later use. So far it has about 100 customers, she said, but the number is growing. "This will transform the way we look at having babies," she said.

I've considered adoption and would definitely do it, but it's fair to say that there's a lot tied up in the decision to have a child by any means, and it's not unreasonable to need to work through all of this before the final decisions get made.

This was a situation I inexplicably never thought I'd find myself in. Like many women I've met and whose words I've read, I just thought it would happen. It had to. I'd be a great mom. I'd bring a lot to the tiny little table. As far as the other chromosome was concerned, who ever knows for sure how that'll happen? I thought I'd meet the right person, probably get married (my brain has always been a little bit fuzzy on that part, for some reason) and have children.

It hasn't happened. Whether it's choosing the wrong men to date, or none at all, or once in relationships that didn't progress rapidly enough, sticking around in stupid hope that they would,
(something I used to consider proof of commitment with a dash of hope and optimism, until a cranky therapist told me I was an idiot dating an 18-year-old mimicking someone my age) things haven't worked out.

When Sylvia Hewlett released her incendiary book "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children," blaming women for delaying pregnancy because of our awesome careers and selfish personal lives in 2002, my then boyfriend's mother showed me an article about it, and asked me what I thought.

"I love your son not least because he'd be a fabulous father, but I don't do ultimatums, and they'd be pointless anyway, right, and could you please pass the potato salad?" is what I should have said. What I did say was absolutely nothing, or maybe just the potato salad part, because nothing says "stress eating carbs and extra mayonnaise" like talking about babies with a boyfriend's mom. Internally, I dissolved into despair, and probably yelled at him for something unrelated and random, therefore perpetuating the "crazy girl" myth. Sigh.

Here's a response to the book from Joan Walsh on Salon that still rings true five years later. She said it way better than I did, and has been duly noted.

Even if you don't know if you can have babies or not, the older you get without life supporting that option, the more powerful and unpleasant the fear of infertility can be. At least that's been my experience. Exactly two months away from 37, I'm uncoupled, quite satisfied with all other aspects of my life, but very afraid that I cannot have a child, or at least I won't be able to by the time my footsteps land me in that position. Talking myself on a daily basis into being okay with this isn't a very loud conversation. It's really just a dull hum in my brain, one that's pretty easy to miss actually, if I weren't typing the words out.

I'm not an alarmist, and don't feel I've reached an age where kids are out of the question. It's just that this is an important thing, one of the biggest, and it involves so many variables that are fairly uncertain that it can be overwhelming. I'll cop to being a bit of a control freak who likes to be prepared for most things, and it's also that I'm terrified. The statistics terrify me,and the stories scare me even more. You can't hit what you don't aim at, so to speak, and I haven't been aiming at this at all like the other stuff I pursue - jobs, creative opportunities, a good meal, a 401k. How can you call it a goal if you aren't after it? In all the ways I slack, shouldn't this be an exception? Shouldn't I be on Match RIGHT THIS SECOND???

Speaking of that, I will never apologize for being choosy about who shares my daily life, because no one can afford not to be. If motherhood at any cost was the goal, I'd have married a guy from several years back who was on the family track too. I just can't imagine what kind of family we'd have been if we'd had children together, and that was a big reason for walking away. Having kids isn't just about me - surprise, surprise. It's about them, and providing a great place for them to grow up as well as throwing my own biological clock across the room.

Instead, it's been "hit snooze," repeatedly. In reproductive time, my last relationship ate up - physically, emotionally and psychologically - several years, and in the refractory period since that one, I have to admit that the thought of connecting with another human being on that deep level was more than I could handle most days, generally met with "Eh."

(How fun to look at life in this way! Nice to consider a person a vehicle for breeding that stalled, especially when I was there quite by choice. Nice, nice, nice. But in many ways, true. And I've had already erased much of this if I hadn't promised myself I'd write this one honest.)

So we move on. I live in a crowded metropolitan area. I love my friends, my job, my social life and my academic program. I try not to think about the things that bring me down. I try to stay open and aware. But when it comes down to it, I've never really gotten the relationship thing right. I trusted quickly and stayed committed for too long, in situations that didn't help me further my long-term goals of not just world domination through the written word, but of joy and family much closer to home.

I wish I felt financially stable to adopt, because if I did I'd be the first in line, but I'm not. I'm less certain about insemination. I live in one of the most expensive cities on the east coast, and the cost of living wherever I go next is a big part of my decision - in no small way because I'd like to be able to consider some parenting options when I get out of here.

So are you getting that I don't have any answers? I don't. But what I do have is a hope that the rhetoric can change. That the media can stop subtly or overtly blaming women for their losses, and also quit insinuating that it's all a matter of choice, every single minute of our lives a conscious decision to keep pursuing that life of selfish abandon that is the only possible flip side to marriage and family. The dream of being a family is really real for me, all previous choices and life experiences aside, and I don't consider that a bad thing. We all have our visions of what might work for us, although I'm well aware that the reality is often quite different from what we initially imagine.

Let's turn this over to some other folks, shall we?

Single Mothers by Choice is a group that advocates for women who opt to become mothers on their own.

Most of us would have preferred to bring a child into the world with two loving parents, but although we have a lifetime to marry or find a partner, nature is not as generous in allotting child-bearing years.

Single motherhood is ideally for the woman who feels she has much to give a child and who has adequate emotional and financial resources to support herself and her child. Our membership includes thinkers, tryers, and mothers.

More than half of our members are "thinkers" (as we call women who are considering single motherhood) or "tryers" (women trying to conceive or adopt), and our organization provides a unique support network for women who are going through these very stressful and important stages. We encourage women in the thinking and trying processes to become members of SMC.

My single mom friends are quite honest with me that this is a hard gig. I think it takes a lot to do it right, and I'm not sure I've got it. I think I'd need more help than it might be reasonable to expect.

Ruth Yahel's story shows what happens when you just make up your mind. I found this great piece, unbelievably, through a grandmother who started a blog in response to what she perceives as attacks on single mothers, and goes on to blame Ruth's appearance and age for just what she claims to be defending. Men aren't always the ones to blame for judgment.

Ruth has her own blog, where she recently announced

His name's Tim, he has a grown-up son of his own and he's looking forward to the challenge of being a stepfather to Luca !

Ishkabibble writes at I Went to Law School for This.

I'm the not-so-young single mother of two kids: Robespierre, a 5th grader who's the love of my life, and Cleopatra-Queen-of-the-Nile, a 2nd grader who is my heart. We live in the Midwest, where we spend way too much time shuttling to school, games, practices and playdates. In between, I squeeze in grocery shopping (hate it!), laundry (like washing; hate folding), puppy training (she's awfully cute, even when she's gnawing on my shoes) and running FeeFiFoto.com, a personalized gift web site. But enough about me. What do you think of me?

A recent study showed that there are more unmarried than married Canadians, the subject of this interview with Barbara Kay of Canada's National Post and Ann Marie McQueen of the Ottawa Sun blog "From Here".

McQueen reflected on the experience.

She brought up her 37-year-old daughter and more scary statistics, like by the time you turn 40 your chances of having a baby are one in four...

Oh I could have gone on all day. Seriously. When I was 23 I was living with 5 people in a house, finishing my degree, running between two restaurant jobs and getting drunk to celebrate whenever I had a rare free night off. Perfect time to have a child. Three years later, I was pulling down a cool $20,000 a year and buckling under an equal amount of student loans. Three years after that, I was single and finally getting my act together. If I never get married and have kids, seriously, what am I going to have to regret? Where would the little one have fit in? The funny thing is, if I'd met someone and wanted to marry him in my early 20s, I suspect my parents would have freaked out. My mom, who had kids in her 20s and a career, wanted me to have more. She always talked a little wistfully about how she could have become a flight attendant, but didn't, and I just knew she loved us a lot, but wondered too about her own road not taken and wanted me to head straight down mine.

And people like Kay make me giggle anyway, because they are so out of touch it's like they think you can just walk out into the street and nab the next guy or girl who walks past. "I need to have kids for Canada," I suppose you'd say. "Oh, I was just thinking I should be doing that too," he/she would answer.

It's like they've completely forgotten that we don't all meet a person we'd like to spend our lives with in that sort of timely fashion. These are the sort of people, I imagine, who'd argue we "choose who we love."

Commenter Juli S. said,

I guess what they should have said is 'you can do whatever you want as long as you get married and have your babies before you turn 30 and become infertile'.

Weezie thinks Kay is off the mark.

If single women are such a disappointment to society, should they apologize for not getting married and having children before now? Unfortunately, many have never found a situation that led them on this path. I'm sure many of these women wish they would have met a suitable mate and gone on to have a family. Instead many continue to think positive and look for that right person and opportunity while they give back to their community by volunteering their time, working and paying their bills. My impression here is that single women are not as worthy as the women who has married and become a mother. There are too many situations and scenarios out there to even begin to think this way.

Christina at SoloMother became a single mom following a divorce.

I wonder what life would have been like if I’d made the decision to have a child without the active involvement of a father. Would this be easier or harder or just different? I don’t know. Whether a woman finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy and decides to forge ahead, father or no… or if she’s a woman who wants a child but doesn’t feel like waiting for Mr. Almost Right to come along, and either has a planned pregnancy or adopts… I admire these strong, creative, confident women who are single by choice.

Rotunda Ramblings, from a "middle-aged fertility physician whose life revolves around Eggs, Sperms & Embryos...." notes that it's a lot tougher for single women to reproduce in Japan.

Jennifer Egan's article "Wanted: a Few Good Sperm" ran in the New York Times Magazine in March, 2006. She profiled several women who were either attempting to become pregnant on their own or already had.

"It's probably harder than you ever think it's going to be," this mother told me. After a moment, she added, "My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner." It is a measure of how deep the pull toward motherhood can be that thousands of women from many different walks of life are making this choice, using reproductive and communications technology in ways that not only break with tradition but also make it seem obsolete.

This anonymous contributor at Choice Blog could, almost eerily, be me, but isn't. You summed it up much better than I did, and wherever you are, I feel ya, girl.

Also, I love that even in my thirties, and up until now–forty almost forty one–I bypassed the agonizing rites of so many other women I knew and know: always looking for Him, waiting, hoping, eyes hunting left hands for the ring, eyes chasing down the barely hopefuls, brains doing the timelines again and again. If I meet him in the next six months, and we get engaged quickly, and I get pregnant in the first year... I love and am proud that I'm waiting for the "ridiculously in love" relationship, and won't settle for anything less. Even if it means not having children, because, really, who wants to spend the days and nights hoping and searching and praying that the next guy you meet is finally the right one? Not just the love of a lifetime, but the father? None of that internal tick tick ticking for me. "Listen up, eggs," I said once in the shower recently, " do whatever it is you need to do, have at it." Only a great love for me, or nothing...

That's today. But tomorrow, or the next day, or sometime next week, I'll wake up–maybe at 10:00, or even 10:30–and I'll stroll into a bookstore, or a coffee shop, and the sight will almost knock me over: a mother nuzzling her little girl in the checkout line. The little girl's arms possessively and casually slung around her mother's neck. The language of touches, the million signals of endless tenderness passing seamlessly between them. And I'll see this little girl's shy smile when she sees me staring, and I'll smile back, maybe even wave or say hello. And then I'll leave that coffee shop, or grocery store, or bank, because I have the freedom to do that. To come and go as I please. But always, always as I make my way back to my car (perfectly clean, no cookie crumbles and sticky books and ketchup stains and the warm, curdled smell of milk), I wonder: is it really my choice? Or am I just a forty year old woman who doesn't make enough money, who still has no clue at all how to meet the right man after all this time, and whose eggs don't need any encouragement or permission from me to follow the natural progression of time. Am I really just a forty year old woman, almost forty-one, who hopes that the list of reasons I made today will be enough for tomorrow, because the choice was never really mine in the first place.

The stories are legion and the feelings run deep. The answers are as personal as breathing, and as gray most times as the reasoning is simple: wanting to care for a child, to extend a family, to feel a purpose beyond oneself, in this very particular and wondrous way. It'll be nice to see the way clear before me, in a situation that's good for all involved, when and if it finally comes together.

Laurie White blogs at LaurieWrites