First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in a
baby carriage. The age old chant has turned out to be the standard route to
parenthood. However, a growing number of 30 plus single women in the U.S.,
are switching up the old natural order.

They're putting off the search for Mr. Right, in order to find Mr.
Right Sperm Donor.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates unwed births among 30-to 44-year-old
women have risen 20 percent since the early 90s

Trista, who did not want 9NEWS to use her last name, was about 35 when
she made a life changing decision. After 15 years of building her career as
a tax accountant, she knew the baby-making numbers weren't adding up. She
thought, "You know, this is something I can do on my own."

So, she gave herself another year to try and find a long term
relationship with a man who wanted to have children. At the same time, she
traded in her two-seat sports car for an SUV and bought a house near her
mother

A year later, still single, she began a new search - for a sperm
donor.

"It was a little nerve wracking picking a donor. That's kind of a big
thing to choose," she said laughing.

Dr. William Schoolcraft is a specialist at Colorado Center for
Reproductive Medicine. He estimates about 6 to 10 percent of his practice is
single women over 30. That number has been holding steady for several years.
Part of the reason, he says, is the declining number of women of child
bearing age.

However, he says there's no doubt about the growing acceptance of this
route to motherhood.

"In our parents' generation, it would have been an aberration to have
a baby at 38. People would have said, 'Whoa, what were you thinking? What
happened to you?' Now it's, 'What are you thinking if you have a baby at
23?'"

Journalist Mikki Morrisette is a single mother who runs
www.Choicemoms.org. She estimates 10,000 single women in the U.S. use
anonymous sperm donors. She says the hundreds who access her site are
typically well educated women who have answered the call of a career.
Morrisette says many are well situated professionally, but no longer have
the biological luxury of patience when it comes to finding a man and
building a relationship to the point where they both want to have children.

"More women are aware that by 35, their fertility is about to decline,
sometimes rather rapidly. So, that's some added pressure on them," said
Morrisette. "A lot of women are at a point where they can kind of pause and
say, 'You know what? This is not how I want to enter into a relationship.
I'll have the child. I can afford to have the child and hopefully find the
partner still, later.'"

Trista was increasingly mindful of this bitter irony: that her
maternal urge would end up putting her child in a bad place.

"You know, force a relationship to work, because I knew I wanted kids
and I felt I had to do it very soon," she said.

Opponents of the practice often point to studies showing fatherless
children are more likely to live in poverty and deprivation, have emotional
problems, have more trouble in school and are more likely to become teenage
parents.

Morrisette acknowledges it's "not the same" for a child to have one
parent and not two. She says the typical "choice mom" tends to be older,
more educated and higher paid than many unprepared single mothers, who
Morrisette says are often the subjects of studies on fatherless families.

Trista found her perfect donor and employed her mother as a birth
partner.

"I told people in the child birth class, my mom and I had been birth
partners 37 years ago and that turned out successful, so I figured we'd give
it a go again," she said.

Give it a go they did and last summer, they welcomed Logan into the
house.

Trista gushed, "I'm blessed beyond all belief. My prayers have been
answered."

She promises that along with her nearby family support network, he'll
be immersed in a host of male influences - everything from Scouts to sports.

In the meantime, she's thinking of adding a sibling and not ruling out
the possibility that love, marriage and baby carriage may come in a more
traditional order next time.

"I do still hope someday to be married," she said with a laugh. "I'm
actually a pretty old fashioned girl, although you wouldn't think so with
the route I've gone!"

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