You don't need a husband to have a baby, and many women are going ahead and realizing their dreams of being mothers without being married to a man. If you choose to have a child on your own, you certainly won't be alone. Because so many divorced mothers raise children alone, single mothers are considered nothing out of the ordinary.

Raising a child by yourself is certainly a doable proposition. While it's true you won't have a partner there to help you with colic, diaper duty, or midnight feedings, it also means that you'll be your child's favorite person. Parenting alone is manageable if you have a good support system in place that is made up of family, friends, child-care professionals, and medical professionals. There are several pathways to single motherhood to consider.

Known Father

Perhaps the simplest way to become a single mother is to become pregnant from intercourse with a man in your life. The best course of action is to talk to the man you have in mind and agree that you want to create a child together.

If the man you would like to be the father doesn't want to be a real involved father to your child, you can either simply put “unknown” on the birth certificate for father, or you can see an attorney and have formal papers drawn up that give you complete custody and relieve him of any responsibility for child support. When thinking about single motherhood, many women consider how they will find male role models for their child and how their extended family will react to the decision to parent alone.

Sperm Donor

Another option is to use a sperm donor to help you create a child. You can obtain a donation from a man you know or have a relationship with. (This is different from just having a baby together; sperm donors sign legal documents prior to the donation giving up all rights to the child.) Once you've reached an agreement, you can create a child the natural way or through insemination.

Sperm banks are another option. Sperm banks pay donors to donate sperm. Donor sperm is carefully screened for STDs and medical conditions. The sperm is frozen until testing is complete (HIV testing takes several months to complete). The women receiving the donations also must be tested for STDs. Donors are described in a data bank or often in a booklet. Information available about the donor often includes the following:

• Photos of the donor as an adult and/or as a child

• Complete medical history

• Physical attributes

• Mental abilities

• Occupation

• Hobbies

• Personality traits

• Nationality

Some women have specific traits in mind when looking for a donor, and when you use a sperm bank you can be very particular. The sperm bank provides counseling to the donors and the women who receive the donations. There is a fee (between $200 and $400) for purchasing the sperm. You can find a list of sperm banks at www.fertilityplus.org/faq/donor.html. Once you have chosen a donor, you can either choose to do a home insemination yourself or have your physician perform a medical insemination. Medical insemination involves a catheter being inserted into the cervical opening (intracervical insemination) or through the cervix so the sperm can be deposited directly in the uterus (intrauterine insemination), increasing the odds of a pregnancy occurring. The latter method is often done in infertility treatment because of male infertility factors. Intrauterine insemination requires the sperm to be washed so as to remove chemicals from the semen that may cause serious reactions. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine provides a booklet about insemination on their Web site at www.asrm.org/Literature/patient.html.

When you use a sperm donor, you receive a complete medical history for the donor. Some sperm banks have mechanisms in place so that children of donors are notified of medical conditions discovered in the donor or donor's family years after the donation takes place. Some donors are willing to be contacted by their children in the future, while others wish not to be. If this is an important consideration for you, discuss it with the sperm bank. You may also wish to ask to have several other vials of the same donor's sperm reserved for you in case you would like to have more children, so that they can be full siblings to each other. It's important to ask how many children a donor you are considering has. If there are many, you may wish to consider using another donor, because this increases the odds that his children could someday meet and could unwittingly have children together.