‘I hadn’t envisaged falling in love with a man who would die while we were in the middle of IVF’

Charlotte Cripps is a single mum living in the yummy-mummy heartland of Notting Hill. In her new weekly column she shares the highs and lows of her journey to conceive, the death of her partner, and life with her two kids and a dog

(Amara Bullough)

I’m a single mum trapped in yummy mummy Notting Hill – but it’s not really my scene. I’m still wearing baggy jumpers nine months after having a second baby and even my dog’s grooming bill is 10 times higher than mine. I’m breastfeeding and starving hungry – I keep stuffing my face with chocolate and bananas. I never snapped back into shape after the first one, despite trying out the clean eating fad.

So how did I end up in this predicament? I definitely hadn’t envisaged falling in love with a man, who would die, while we were in the middle of doing IVF.

I had stored his sperm in case of some kind of commitment issue on the day, but I hadn’t imagined it would be quite so final. Almost like ticking the organ donor box, he had agreed to let me use his sperm in the event of his death. So when he took his own life in 2014, having suffered from depression, I couldn’t afford to waste any time. He was the love of my life – but life must go on.

I’m sure he would have found it hilarious that his sperm then travelled from London to Alicante and on to St Petersburg, in a freezer on a plane, accompanied by a minder, on my quest for cheaper IVF.

We had been trying for ages. Not that he shared my enthusiasm, but my body clock was a ticking time bomb. So once I had secured his sperm in a sample pot at home – for what felt like the 100th time – I would leg it to Harley Street, with it lovingly tucked into my bra to keep it warm. With one hour maximum on the clock to get it there before it expired and often terrible traffic, I parked with wild abandon on a double yellow line outside the clinic.

I’d dread the loaded question: “Did you get it all in there?” said sympathetically, because a low-sperm count was recorded. “Oh no we must have just caught the end,” I say as I return to my car, praying I made it before the parking ticket man this time.

Back home and Alex is lying on the sofa, depressed. I’m online listening to Day 17 of the fertility summit, boiling up herbs from a Chinese acupuncturist (weekly sessions costing £180), while jabbing myself in the thigh with IVF drugs, each round costing £8,000. I'm visualising grade A embryos and a nice thick uterine lining.

So now I have two children: Lola, aged three and Liberty, 12 months, who were both conceived after his death, much to the confusion of my neighbours in west London, who still can’t work out how I got them, and I’m dodging yummy mummies, who are just as curious about where the dad is. It’s not your average scenario – that’s for sure. One of my friends complained that my late partner was doing better than he was at banging out children – and that’s from beyond the grave.

Now my days are eaten up by ordering nappies and wet wipes from Ocado at 2am and attending Monkey Music and Sing and Sign baby classes in Kensington, with other kids called Echo, Astral, Avalon and Casiopeia.

When I rewind my life sometimes – to that bleak time when Alex died – it is like being confronted by a giant full stop. But the maternal call was so strong that I could not rest until it was answered. All I had for comfort was Muggles, the Golden Retriever, who we got three days before Alex died, in the hope it would lift his spirits and get him out of the house.

I wasn’t even a doggy person but yet, here I was – no baby in sight – cold, wet and exhausted. He’s gone forever and I’m left holding the dog.