Not By Accident

My body has seriously never looked better naked. Everything is soft, plump and trim in all the right places. My breasts are growing. I curse the fact that nobody but me will see, but feel fortunate I don't have to negotiate a physical relationship. They hurt so much they wake me up at night! I also have to get up to pee every few hours. I am so tired. I dread brushing my teeth because of the morning sickness. Foods taste different. I can't get enough of pink grapefruit and nectarines. I am put off by the smell of beer. I never thought that could happen. I am vague and forgetful - pregnancy brain I suppose - and happy that holidays have begun so work won't suffer. My body won't let me push through exhaustion. I plan to swim and go to the gym, but instead I nap. Often. I stare for hours at the embryo images on my pregnancy tracker app, but make a deal with myself never to jump ahead. I want to know exactly what you're up to and not wish it away. Knowing you're growing in there is the most surreal and profound experience I've ever had. Summer holidays have begun and nobody is left here but me. I shouldn't be alone. I need to travel to avoid that.  I pack my wheely suitcase and load my kindle with essential holiday reading: What to Expect when you're Expecting; Choosing Single Motherhood; Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice; The Complete Single Mother; Knock Yourself Up; Sperm Donor = Dad; and of course: My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy. I have great friends scattered around Europe, I piece together a plan of who to visit and when, culminating in a week in Iceland with my brother. I take off. It is utterly surreal to be an insignificant figure in these astounding places, and at the same time to be so focused inwards. To be so aware of you there inside me. The captivating wonder of each feels somehow symmetrical and profound. I can see I need to pave two paths while I figure out which one to take. So many things to try to understand, to arrange. Two possible new lives, one in Denmark and one in Australia. Two cultures, two systems, two midwives, two hospital bookings, two childcare places, one baby. So many choices still to make.  In the next episode: summertime is over baby. 13 weeks, the second trimester.   Not By Accident is made by me, Sophie Harper. Thanks to my family, my friends and my daughter for allowing me to record, and for the practical and moral support. Story input from Michelle Webster, Cathy Gray and Diana Lampe. Please subscribe, rate and review to help the series find more listeners. Go to notbyaccident.net to sign up to my occasional email newsletter, tweet at me @byaccidentnot and if you know anyone who might like to listen, please share! Music from freemusicarchive.org - CC NC License: Everybody’s Got Problems That Aren’t Mine by Chris Zabriskie; Rain Begins to Fall (Instrumental) by Silence Is Sexy; Blindness Rats by Khonner; Something Elated by Broke For Free; Murmur by Broke For Free; The Stars Are Out by Dexter Britain. Music by permission from the artist: You, You’ll be Waiting by Baby Blue.

US listeners, support the series and eat well. Hello Fresh Has signed on to support me for 2017! Sign up at www.hellofresh.com and use the promo code 'noaccident35' to get $35 off your first delivery. Everybody wins!

Go to www.notbyaccident.net to find out more about the series or to get in touch.

I had morning sickness and was trying hard to look after myself, now about 5 weeks pregnant, but it was a struggle with the lack of structure in my life over the summer, and all this travel.  Today though, back to work, just for a week. I was feeling guilty and conflicted about work. This was really the first time in my life that I wasn’t putting work ahead of everything else and it made me very uneasy. I was lonely and felt very isolated. It wasn’t a choice I’d made, to go through life alone.  After I came out at 30, I ventured out into the Sydney lesbian scene. I felt like a 30 year old teenager. It was exciting and terrifying. I started internet dating. I had some fun. I got my heart broken a couple of times. I fell in love with a woman called Lucy and we had a relationship that was intense, exciting and before long, tumultuous. The fact that I wanted a baby at some point added extra strain. She moved with me to Denmark and things unraveled.  I found myself living alone in a beautiful big, empty apartment, broken hearted again, in rural Denmark with no friends nearby and almost no lesbians in sight. I had my dream job but my personal life was empty and I kept wondering why I was doing this to myself in the last years of my youth. I gave everything I had to my work, which I loved.  So much was unknown, and unknowable. It was the first time I really wondered if I could do this. But now I have a long vacation in Europe which I’m determined to enjoy. Six years have passed since Lucy and I broke up, but we’ll always care about each other from a distance, and now it’s clear that the love carries through to the next generation.   Not By Accident is made by me, Sophie Harper. Thanks to my family, my friends and my daughter for allowing me to record, and for the practical and moral support. Please subscribe, rate and review to help the series find more listeners. Go to notbyaccident.net to sign up to my occasional email newsletter, tweet at me @byaccidentnot and if you know anyone who might like to listen, please share! Music from freemusicarchive.org - CC NC License: Like Swimming by Broke For Free; I Don’t See The Branches, I See The Leaves by Chris Zabriskie; Safe In Glass Houses by Dexter Britain; Going Under by Dexter Britain; Level 2 by Total Reboot.

US listeners, support the series and eat well. Hello Fresh Has signed on to support me for 2017! Sign up at www.hellofresh.com and use the promo code 'noaccident35' to get $35 off your first delivery. Everybody wins!

Go to www.notbyaccident.net to find out more about the series or to get in touch.

One day, soon after I left school, my mother told me that she wanted me to have a baby one day and she didn’t care how I did it, even if I did it alone, as long as I did it. I was a bit taken aback. Of course I’d have a baby one day. I’d always known I would.  I imagined I’d do it the way school girls imagine they’ll do it: I’d fall in love with a man, he’d fall in love with me, and the family would naturally follow. It took me another decade to come out. I got cancer and faced my own mortality. My mum almost died too. Things came sharply into focus and I realized as we both went into remission, this was no way to live the rest of my precious life. Very soon after, I made a weekend trip to come out to my parents. A huge weight lifted. It seems crazy that it took so much for me to be comfortable being who I am, but for some reason it did. The thing I felt saddest about letting go of was the idea of creating a baby, biologically, with a person I was in love with and for us to be a family. Eventually I decided the end the best option was a sperm bank. After thinking about it for 8 years, it was an easy decision to make. The clinic gave me a list. Checking out their profiles was a lot like internet dating, but of course they didn’t have to choose me back.  I wanted some input. My mother obliged. It would be my decision, but I was happy not to make it all on my own.    Not By Accident is made by me, Sophie Harper. Thanks to my family, my friends and my daughter for allowing me to record, and for the practical and moral support. Please subscribe, rate and review to help the series find more listeners. Go to notbyaccident.net to sign up to my occasional email newsletter, tweet at me @byaccidentnot and if you know anyone who might like to listen, please share! Music from freemusicarchive.org - CC NC License: Murmur by Broke For Free; One And by Broke For Free; Our Ego (Feat. Different Visitor) by Broke For Free; Pattern 4 (Version 10) by Cyan341; Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain.

US listeners, support the series and eat well. Hello Fresh Has signed on to support me for 2017! Sign up at www.hellofresh.com and use the promo code 'noaccident35' to get $35 off your first delivery. Everybody wins!

Go to www.notbyaccident.net to find out more about the series or to get in touch.

In 2012 I went home to Australia for Christmas. I had three weeks off from my job teaching documentary filmmaking in Denmark, just enough time to make the trip worthwhile. I wanted to ground myself after a recent break-up and as I came to terms with the fact that really was I was going to try to have a baby on my own, and soon, before it was too late. A couple of weeks after I returned to Denmark to work, I turned 38. I called a clinic and made an appointment to come and talk to them about choosing a donor and getting pregnant. This courage didn’t come from nowhere. I want to take you back to start unravelling some of the events that led to this point. As I approached 30, my mother underwent devastating treatment for advanced lymphatic cancer. She had two years of chemo and nobody thought she would survive. I had a mole on my arm that I’d been worried about for a long time, but a few doctors had told me it was nothing. It wasn’t. It was cancer. Stage two melanoma. My mother had her stem cell transplant days after I had my surgery. I don’t think there’s been a worse week in my family, ever. Then things turned around. My surgery biopsy results came back clear! Her transplant worked! It took some time to build her strength, but she went into remission! Now she has 4 grandchildren who adore her, who we’d had to accept she’d never get to meet. My father and step-mother came to Europe for a holiday just two weeks after my insemination. I hadn’t told them I’d done it yet so wasn’t totally sure how they’d react to this news. They were the first people I spoke the words to with certainty: ‘I did the test again. I’m definitely pregnant!’   Not By Accident is made by me, Sophie Harper. Thanks to my family, my friends and my daughter for allowing me to record, and for the practical and moral support. Please subscribe, rate and review to help the series find more listeners. Go to notbyaccident.net to sign up to my occasional email newsletter, tweet at me @byaccidentnot and if you know anyone who might like to listen, please share! Clips from ABC TV profile of Diana Lampe on Stateline Canberra by journalist Catherine Garrett. Music from freemusicarchive.org - CC NC License: Wednesday by Adrianna Krikl; Disconnect by Adrianna Krikl; Less Than Three by Adrianna Krikl; Tam814 by LJ Kruzer; Tamz by LJ Kruzer; The Stars Are Out by Dexter Britain.

US listeners, support the series and eat well. Hello Fresh Has signed on to support me for 2017! Sign up at www.hellofresh.com and use the promo code 'noaccident35' to get $35 off your first delivery. Everybody wins!

Go to www.notbyaccident.net to find out more about the series or to get in touch.

One morning in May my ovulation test showed as positive, and it was time to stop thinking about it and actually do it! I was living and working in Denmark when I reached the age of 38, the cut-off I’d settled on to try to have a baby alone before it was too late. I had decided on a donor and the sample was on stand-by. I was incredibly fortunate as Denmark has a thriving fertility tourism industry and maternity benefits that made it possible for me to even consider doing what I was about to try and do.  Life just happens and we can’t always control the circumstances or events, we just have to deal with what comes our way. Now and then we can make a big choice, and take action and set life on a new course. We don't have to just accept things as they are. We can make life more what we want it to be.   Not By Accident is made by me, Sophie Harper. Thanks to my family, my friends and my daughter for allowing me to record, and for the practical and moral support. Please subscribe, rate and review to help the series find more listeners. Go to notbyaccident.net to sign up to my occasional email newsletter, tweet at me @byaccidentnot and if you know anyone who might like to listen, please share! Music from freemusicarchive.org - CC NC License: Charge into 2015 by Dexter Britain; What Does Anybody Know About Anything by Chris Zabriskie; The Time to Run (Finale) by Dexter Britain; The Stars Are Out (Interlude) by Dexter Britain; Tam8+ei4 by LJ Kruger.

US listeners, support the series and eat well. Hello Fresh Has signed on to support me for 2017! Sign up at www.hellofresh.com and use the promo code 'noaccident35' to get $35 off your first delivery. Everybody wins!

Go to www.notbyaccident.net to find out more about the series or to get in touch.

This is the teaser for Not By Accident, an audio documentary series about choosing to become a single mother and coping with being one, made by me, Sophie Harper. Subscribe, rate, review wherever you listen to podcasts. Go to notbyaccident.net to sign up to my occasional email newsletter, and if you know anyone who might like to listen, please share! Music by permission from the artist: We’re Walking Through by Baby Blue.