Ceryn Rowntree has wanted to be a mother for as long as she can remember. “I just expected that it would happen,” she says. “When I got engaged at 18, I thought life was on a set trajectory, but that didn’t work out.”

A couple of relationships later, at the age of 39, Ceryn still hasn’t found the person to settle down and raise children with. “As time ticks on, I’m very conscious that my biological clock is ticking,” she says. “There are times I can think it’s okay – what will be, will be. Then there are other times when it is frankly, heartbreaking. I feel hopeless at times.”

Although a growing number of women are positively embracing being childfree by choice, there are still those, like Ceryn, who have an intense desire to become mothers. But what happens when there isn’t a partner on the scene to parent alongside?

“We’ve been sold the fairy tale of what happiness and success look like,” says Mel Johnson, a Solo Motherhood Coach at the The Stork and I. “It looks like meeting a partner and having children together. So many women come to me grieving the fairy tale they presumed they would have and feel powerless because they think time is against them.”