After road blocks and pandemic, she fulfills her dream of having a baby

THE PARENT: Susan Roth, 42, of South Philadelphia

THE CHILD: Morgan Lee Roth, born Sept. 8, 2022

THE NOT-A-BABY-SHOWER: Susan contracted COVID-19 in July, so the planned shower became a solo visit from her best friend; the two wore N95 masks in the house, sterilized everything in sight, and readied the nursery.

Susan knew she wanted kids, and she was already taking steps to pursue parenthood on her own when COVID-19 prompted her to rethink her plans.

“The pandemic made me hit fast-forward,” she says. “I had time for self-reflection … it became clear that [having a baby] was the only thing I wanted to do. I was like: It’s go-time.”

She’d been thinking about parenthood for years. At 21, she declined a marriage proposal from a partner who wanted to have kids right away. Susan knew she wanted a career in science, and a stint in Australia pointed her toward the study of infectious diseases and vaccine development.

In her 30s, she met a woman who initially declared she didn’t want kids; the woman later said she’d consider parenthood with the right person. The two married. Three years passed, then four, then five.

At one point, her wife suggested they get a dog. “But I’m allergic to dogs, so that was stupid, thinking a puppy could fill the child-sized hole in my heart.” After eight years, the relationship unraveled, mostly because of their impasse over children.

Meantime, Susan traveled around the globe — Belize, Turkey, Greece, New Zealand, Thailand, Tanzania, Peru, Ireland, Germany. “Traveling was great,” she says. “But it was obvious to me that it wasn’t going to be as satisfying as what I hoped parenthood would be.”

In 2019, she asked a longtime friend — they’d gone to camp together in Kentucky as teens — to donate sperm, and he agreed. But when the pandemic began, it wasn’t feasible for the friend, who lived in San Francisco, to have his sperm tested, frozen, and shipped across the country.

At the same time, Susan had begun dating Robert McDougall, an Australian native who was in the United States on a post-doc fellowship. “She texted me after our first or second meeting: Here’s one thing that’s relevant. I want to be a biological parent ASAP,” Robert says. “I thought: Oh, that means she wants a very serious relationship.”

He’d just received a job offer in Tasmania, the island state south of Australia. But when Susan told him of her plan, now scotched by the pandemic, to get sperm from her longtime friend, Robert said, “Could you use me instead?”

“I was on the fence about whether I wanted kids,” he says. “This felt like the best-of-both-worlds option, a nice legacy to our relationship.”

For Susan, he checked all the boxes: Robert was kind and calm, with a laissez-faire approach to life that complemented her planful nature. She had the financial resources and support system to parent alone, but she wanted a donor who would be known to her child, available for questions and a possible relationship in the future.

Originally, the two figured that Robert would freeze his sperm and return to Australia and Susan would begin the insemination process in his absence. Then a fertility specialist said her eggs looked inadequate.

“I thought: We are not waiting. Full steam ahead. Every month counts when you’re 40.”

Two IUIs; two cycles of IVF. Susan injected herself with fertility medications so many times that her belly was mapped with bruises. Sometimes she produced a single egg follicle; other times, they exulted at a harvest of “grade A” embryos, only to have them wither in the petri dishes. Robert returned to Australia, but the two were in contact every day.

“There were multiple late-night calls,” he remembers, “only to be told: All the embryos died. It was pretty upsetting.”

He began to rethink his own life trajectory, especially during a four-month lockdown in Melbourne. “It gave me a lot of time to think about what’s important. I’m here for this job, but someone I care about a lot is far away, going through something very hard.”

Last December, Susan opted for one more IVF cycle: seven fertilized eggs; five that began growing; two that were transferred; one that stuck.

The pregnancy was surprisingly smooth, she says — no morning sickness, no gestational diabetes, no concerns about blood pressure. “Mental health-wise, this is the best I’ve felt in about 20 years.”

Meantime, Robert quit his job in July and returned to Philly; they’ve decided to coparent, at least for the first two years, and to relocate to Ireland, where both can work as scientists without having to marry for immigration purposes.

Susan opted not to know the baby’s sex — ”it doesn’t matter to me; I’m genderqueer, and I didn’t want this Simba moment when they announce the baby’s genitals” — but she did have a dream in which she gave birth to a 24-pound, two-box Monopoly game. “In the dream, I was horrified; I can’t believe I went through two years of planning and 20 years of wishing, and I don’t even get a baby.”

She and Robert spent Labor Day weekend — she had an induction scheduled for Sept. 6 — playing board games and eating ice cream. At Pennsylvania Hospital, it was a long, rough prelude: hours to wait for a room; an excruciating cervical exam. “I was crying and rocking back and forth,” she recalls.

But she advocated to remove the monitors long enough to shower, and negotiated with a nurse to increase her dose of Pitocin slowly enough to prevent the baby’s heart rate from dropping. An epidural helped her unclench — as did having Robert read aloud from Irish fairy tales and scientific articles about dinosaurs.

She pushed for 15 minutes; Morgan was born at 9:29 p.m. Susan cut the umbilical cord, then cradled her son in a flood of amazement and pride.

“I did it. I went through COVID and found the right people and this guy who was totally willing to do this with me. I felt so proud of myself for not giving up, for making it happen. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy.”