A woman who has been celibate for 11 years gave birth after inseminating herself with a £25 sperm kit she ordered online. Verity Jones, 35, says she gave up sex and relationships by accident a decade ago and didn't miss either - but she did want to have a child.
So, she took matters into her own hands and bought a sperm kit off a website. The donation was kindly given free of charge so she only had to pay for travel costs. Now Verity is a happy, single mum to 10-year-old daughter Holly - who is aware of how she came to be born.
Verity, from Ramsgate, Kent, said: "I had a bizarre dream about me being pregnant with a baby, it must've just been my biology telling me to hurry up.
"But I couldn't just go and have a baby with a random guy. So I organised a sperm donor online and inseminated myself.
"People with a lot of money go through doctors and things but I just signed some papers.
"He delivered his sperm in a donation pot and by some miracle it worked first time.
"We still talk every year on my daughter's birthday. It's worked out bizarrely well."
Verity says she "thoroughly enjoyed sex" before going celibate, but after too much "non-committed fun" she decided to give it up all up.
"It just kind of happened by accident 11 years ago when I was 24. One day I just thought, 'What's the point in this?' Maybe it was an early mid-life crisis," she said.
"I'm pansexual, so I'd mostly been with women - but some men too. I enjoyed sex a lot before that - it wasn't like I wasn't having it or committed to God."
Verity inseminated herself in December 2011 and her daughter Holly was born in September the following year.
Her daughter now knows about her origins, but Verity says she "loves" her mum's lifestyle choice and hopes it "can always be the two of them".
Although Verity has some fleeting moments of desire, these only last "for a minute" and she soon "moves on".
She has no plans for ever breaking her celibacy and says she now "hates the idea of being with someone romantically."
"When I became celibate I thought I was choosing not to just for then, and thought maybe once Holly was older I would go back to it," Verity said.
"But as time went on I hated the idea more and more - never again do I want anything like that again.
"I'm completely celibate in every way - physically and emotionally.
"When I chose to have my daughter alone I chose to purposely not have another parent involved. I'm cynical of relationships.
"I don't believe in true love after hearing so many awful stories and I'd rather her have one parent than be parenting by a broken relationship.
"Being celibate means I can focus on myself rather than thinking about whether I'm pleasing someone else or feeling inferior or worrying I'm not all the things a partner would want.
"If I like things a certain way then that's all that matters."
Verity says her mum continues to try and encourage her to find a romantic connection, and friends struggle to grasp the notion of being without a partner.
She said: "People do find it bizarre. If I post about it on Facebook I get lots of shock faces and people asking, 'How could that happen? You're only 35 and already been celibate for 11 years?'.
"People can usually understand the casual sex, but they don't quite understand the relationship aspect or get why I can be happy.
"They think I need a partner to be happy. My mum always says why don't you settle down but I can't think of anything worse than someone sitting on my sofa waiting for me to do stuff for them.
"And I can barely share the bed with my cat never mind another person.
"Of course there are times I feel sad that I probably won't ever have sex again, and if I do I'll be like 60 and past the age of feeling like an attractive woman.
"It's not as if I don't have desires. I'm not asexual or a robot, I'm a woman and see Johnny Depp in the same way anyone else does - but it only lasts a minute and I move on.
"I'd definitely recommend this to others. Instead of crying because I've been cheated on, I'm sitting peacefully at home with my cats."
Did you have a baby via sperm donation? We pay for stories. Email nia.dalton@reachplc.com.
