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After years of dead-end dating, bumping into bums on matchmaking apps and in-person pickups, Lesley Jones, a wannabe mother with a ticking biological clock, looked to the heavens for help.
With her eyes cast up, what she ultimately saw was neither a bird nor a plane. Instead, the New Yorker finally spotted what she called her very own “Superman” — a tall, dark and handsome hunk who was ready to make a baby.
So, naturally, she bought two vials of his sperm for $1,000.
“I was 35, single and I really wanted to be a mother. I wasn’t going to sacrifice becoming a mother because I didn’t have a man,” Jones, now 46, a fashion retail manager based upstate, exclusively told The Post.
The wannabe mommy struck gold on “Mr. Right” — or “Mr. Right sperm donor profile” — via the Houston Fertility Institute, where she began her “Single Mom By Choice” journey in 2015, while living in Texas.
“I wanted a good-looking guy,” admitted Jones, naming heartthrobs with brown hair and brown eyes her studly kryptonite. “Someone who, if I saw them out [at a bar or lounge], I’d think was handsome.”
“That might sound shallow,” she laughed, “But hey, that’s my preference for dates and donors.”
Hot looks and high-quality traits are hotly important to the sperm-seeking women of the Single Mom By Choice (SMBC) charge.
It’s an unconventional uprising helmed by unmarried gals who’ve chosen to have children through donor insemination and parent alone. Some, however, aren’t choosing their “baby daddies” by themselves.
Solo mommies-to-be, such as Emily Webb, 36, are hosting “sperm showers,” inviting supportive loved ones to parties dedicated to picking the sexiest, smartest, most supreme donors while feasting on semen-themed sweets.
Katelyn, from New York, recently rounded up close family and friends on behalf of her sister, a future SMBC, for a “Who’s My Baby Daddy” jamboree, where attendees enjoyed an afternoon reviewing and voting on donor profiles to find the best man for the job.
Content creator, Ashley Deanne, separately celebrated her own SMBC venture, treating her inner circle to cupcakes topped with sperm-shaped globs of frosting, and a cake molded in the fashion of a female egg being fertilized by a swarm of eager little swimmers, while they cherry-picked a lucky lad to be her kiddo’s bio dad.
Even reality star, Lala Kent, had a lavish, over-the-top sperm donor party held at restaurant queen, Lisa Vanderpump’s Beverly Hills home, featured on an episode of Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules.”
Soirees and daydreaming about their perfect sperm donor aside, women of the SMBC movement often face bumps in the road towards motherhood.
Across the over 400,000 SMBC-stamped posts on social media, single ladies wanting to have babies are sharing the highs and lows of going it alone.
And the growing SMBC community is responsible, at least in large part, for 40% of all babies born to unwed women in the US, per recent CDC data. The number of singletons over 30 taking the solo route has increased by 140% in the last three decades.
In fact, millennial maidens, ranging in age from 36 to 45, make up a whopping 78% of folks seeking donors for their fertility treatments, according to statistics from Cryos International, the world’s largest sperm and egg bank.
Jones was one of these women. She chose a potential donor through California Cryobank after reading he was over 6 feet and resembled Christopher Reeve as “Clark Kent” in “Superman.”
Still, her pathway to parenthood, even with Clark Kent genes for her baby, was no cakewalk.
But the mom of now four-year-old son, Jaxon, noted, “You don’t just walk into an IVF clinic and walk out nine months later with a baby.”
Unsuccessful egg retrieval treatment caused Jones to pile on the pounds. Then those same eggs were deemed unviable, meaning she had to spend $15,000 on donor ones. Then all eight embryos that were created with her “Superman” sperm and embedded into Jones’ uterus mysteriously died overnight.
“It was back-to-back heartbreak and I was miserable,” said Jones.
Jones eventually opted for weight loss surgery in late 2019, and this time through an embryo donation from an anonymous donor couple through the clinic (which cost her $5,600), she fell pregnant.
Jones gave birth to Jaxon in June 2021. The pair, along with her mother, relocated from the Midwest to New York shortly after his arrival, seeking a fresh start. “I’m totally in love with this person my body created.”
Jessica Nuremberg’s road to Single Mom By Choice glory was, too, riddled with potholes and roadblocks.
“It wasn’t quick or easy,” Nuremberg, 44, a businesswoman and SMBC influencer who spent six figures to become a mother, told The Post. “I froze my eggs in my 30s, but that ultimately didn’t work.”
“It took 10 rounds to have my daughter. Doing it alone was hard, but it made me deeply focused, resilient and intentional.”
To choose a donor, Nuremberg carefully fished from a candidate pool filled with men whose portfolios featured photos and in-depth details about their family and medical backgrounds, personality insights and psychological profiles.
“Ultimately, it was a combination of health, values and a gut feeling about the traits I wanted reflected in my child,” she confessed.
Her child, Kaia, age 2, will have the option to make contact with the donor upon turning 18, if she chooses. In addition to his genetic makeup, the toddler got a swarm of 50 known siblings, thanks to the unnamed man’s contributions.
Although regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, sperm donation laws are somewhat lax in the US — namely the limitations on the number of pregnancies a given donor can aid in producing.
The overuse of a man’s specimen, especially within a specific geographical region, can cause issues for the resulting children as they mature into adulthood, warns the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
The more one guy’s sperm is used, the higher the risk that members of his bio brood may conceive children together without being aware of their genetic relationship. It’s a complication known as inadvertent consanguineous conception.
But rather than fretting over the future, Nuremberg is happily embracing Kaia’s half-relatives.
“We’ve built connections with some of these families,” said the mom of one.
“I don’t plan to hide it,” Nuremberg said. “I want her to grow up knowing she was deeply wanted, planned for and loved long before she arrived.“
Candice Katherine Febrile wants the same for her son.
The mom of two, from Montreal, Canada, successfully conceived her nearly five-year-old boy with donor sperm on Christmas Day 2020. She spent $7,300 altogether on her treatment.
“I was met with a fair amount of skepticism at first,” Febrile, 38, told The Post. “Most people are taught that a traditional partnership is the safest and most stable path for a woman [and kids].”
“But I’ve learned, and now teach, that safety comes from the environment you build, not the relationship you’re in,” continued Febrile, a Fertility Educator specializing in the SMBC lifestyle.
She routinely shares the good, bad and best parts of parenting as a party-of-one with curious crowds online, including the scoop on how finding the “perfect guy” in her sperm donor ultimately gave her — what she considers — the perfect setup.
“My kids and I say ‘We’re a mom family,’” she laughed.
“I want my children to know families can be built in many different ways, and that marriage isn’t the only path to a full and meaningful life.”
“The most rewarding part of being a Single Mom By Choice is the level of intention behind everything,” she added. “My children are deeply wanted and that shapes how I show up as a mother.”
