I am now 42 years old, I live in Germany and work in international customer service for medical products. I love getting to know people that are totally different from me, from other countries, with other languages, other cultures, other backgrounds. I enjoy going to concerts and flea markets, but I also love staying at home on the couch and watch football all day long.

Becoming a mother – without a child

My husband and I eventually split up, and I went back to therapy. I then fell in love with a man who couldn’t have children with me. For months and years, I cried during diaper commercials and hid in bathrooms at children’s birthday parties. I couldn’t feel happiness for anyone who got pregnant. We realised this wasn’t how life could go on. Together, we decided to stay as a couple and explore alternative paths forward.

Treatment options in Denmark

I learned about insemination options in Denmark and researched online. Despite losing over 50 kg, one clinic’s BMI requirement was still unattainable. Later, I discovered another Danish clinic that didn’t consider BMI in their criteria.

Had I known about this earlier, I might have avoided years of pain and had a child starting school this summer. But that’s not how things unfolded.

Considering co-parenting and a private donor

We liked the idea of co-parenting, so I signed up on a platform for people interested in this concept. After a year with no success, I became desperate and started looking for private sperm donors. I confided in others about my plans but quickly regretted it, as not everyone was supportive—some were even rude. Desperation led me to join online groups searching for donors, but this too ended in regret. I received an overwhelming number of inappropriate and disgusting messages from people.

Eventually, I found a nice sperm donor and drove hours to meet him for the donation. It led to the strangest moment of my life: holding an empty syringe in one hand and my phone in the other, messaging my girlfriends about what had just happened. I begged my unborn child to come to me, but it didn’t happen. Later, the donor revealed himself to be a terrible person.

I tried again with another private donor, someone local, kind, and handsome, who truly wanted to help. However, after three attempts, his girlfriend asked him to stop, and we had to respect her wishes.

Finding Diers

These lines describe years of hope, pain, fear and desperation. I did not know what to do anymore, I felt like I had tried everything. And then my friend told me to check for a Danish clinic again, a lesbian couple she knows just had become parents.

And this time I found the Diers website and could not believe they had no BMI restriction for IUI treatment. After a few days I made an appointmen for a phone call. It was very nice, they wanted to know about me, my life and if I was able to provide a loving home. I also had to send some documents from my doctor. But not once I was reduced to my weight or age. And that’s when I decided: This is it. I will no longer rely on anyone, I will not have to trust anyone again, I will just pay for it and travel, and no one can tell me what to do or not to do.

The first IUI

A few months later I was already in Aarhus, and I liked how the clinic did not feel like a clinic. I had found a donor in their database that I liked, I got an ultrasound and then the insemination. Every step was explained to me, and I felt taken care of. After the insemination, I found myself crying, with Adele’s voice playing softly in the background. Once again, I begged my child to please, please come to me, after everything I had endured up to this point.

When I left, I got a goodie bag with water, sweets, a pregnancy test and a card wishing me good luck. It just felt right.

A positive pregnancy test – I can do this

In the summer of 2022 i have had a couple of tries and a positive pregnancy test, but it was not meant to be again. However, I felt that I was on the right track and my body was able to conceive, so giving up was not an option. 

My gynecologist was incredibly supportive, checking on me before every trip to Denmark to ensure it wasn’t in vain. He encouraged me not to give up, which kept me going. However, the process became increasingly frustrating, and each month of disappointment made it harder to keep trying. Financially, I started to struggle and had to borrow money from friends, but they stayed by my side through it all.

13 IUI treatments with ups and downs

It took 13 tries. I have so many stories to tell from travelling (missing flights, no trains due to the weather, a murder in the train in front of mine), my body was giving me a hard time (it was hard to do ultrasounds, follicles were either not there or there was no positive ovulation test) and sometimes staying in Aarhus was a nightmare (had my wallet stolen and dirty hotel rooms).

I cried on the bus, the plane, the train, the hotel room. My life was all about intervals of two weeks and peeing on ovulation tests or pregnancy tests, always hoping for a positive result. The waiting in between was the hardest and it got more difficult to cope with the disappointment. 

There were even people telling me that Diers was a company, they earn money with desperate women like me and maybe they don’t always inject sperm so you have to come back and pay again. Yeah, well, I disagree. I pay for a service performed by educated and supportive human beings who have not once pressured me into anything and made me feel like they really care about what they do. And those human beings want to pay rent and live a good life. And that’s what you pay for. In my opinion that’s okay, but everybody can decide for themselves.

It worked!

In August 2023 the donor that I had chosen was no longer available except for siblings, which felt like another knockback, one of many. I picked another donor who sounded nice and had a cute baby pic. I had already given up on doing early pregnancy tests and I only did a test because I had so many left from the Diers goodie bags. And there it was…a faint line. I took a photo and sent it to my friends to confirm but we did not dare be happy yet. Until the day I saw this little heartbeat on the ultrasound…I cried my eyes out from happiness, I had never seen anything this beautiful before.

The first three months were difficult for us, we were so scared. But it stayed. It turned out healthy. It turned out to be a boy. I enjoyed pregnancy so, so much and had no complications whatsoever.

Our baby boy arrived

Birth however was horrible. I was in a lot of pain, and we had to have an emergency C-section. He had the umbilical cord around his neck and could not breathe on his own. When I finally got to see him for the first time, he had needles in his hands and a tube up his nose. But he was there. It could have gone so horribly wrong, but he was really there. 

A child is a miracle. It is a miracle how the female body is capable of making a human being. But our son being with us, after all these years, all the disappointments, the tears and a birth that could have gone wrong, that is the real miracle. Without Diers I would still be a mother without a child.

Thank you for reading my long story, which, funny enough, is just a short version of a story that is actually much longer. My boy only exists because I refused to accept to be nobody’s mom for the rest of my life. And whatever reason it is that brought you here and that made you read my story: I wish you happiness and success and the energy to go through with everything, from the bottom of my heart. 

Blog post written by Johanna, client at Diers Fertility Clinic and proud mom