The roller coaster of infertility often leaves potential parents disheartened, not knowing which way to turn. Adoption is one option that is often explored as an alternative way of creating a family, but the struggle is even harder if you happen to be a single woman. Just ask Michele Roberts who began the journey to adopt a baby boy from Guatemala last year.

“I always wanted to be a mother, but it just never worked out that way,” says the 40-year-old business woman. “I love children, I always have, but I’ve been single for five years and my options were limited.”

Ms Roberts even considered artificial insemination, but because doctors could not pinpoint her exact period of ovulation and fertility drugs made her life “unbearable”, her thoughts drifted to adoption: “It was something I’d always thought about, but being a single woman you have so many more hurdles than a married couple. It just seemed impossible.”

Ms Roberts then read an article in the newspaper about a single Bermudian woman’s struggle to adopt a baby from China. “That inspired me and I thought, ‘Instead of spending all this money on something that may not happen, I could spend it on a child that needed a mother more than I needed to be pregnant’.”

She contacted Child and Family Services in Bermuda to find out about reputable adoption agencies: “They told me about another couple here in Bermuda who were adopting a baby from Guatemala through an adoption agency in Florida.”

Ms Roberts signed her contract in August last year with the agency in Florida and started what she now describes as a “roller coaster ride of emotions, stress and paperwork”.

The first step was being interviewed by a social worker as part of a “home study”.

“It was an eye-opening experience. It’s like going to counselling. You have your guard up because you don’t want to say the wrong thing, because all you can think about is that they are judging me as to whether I will be a good mother or not, but it was very enlightening discussing my goals and plans for my child. I had to go back over my childhood. The interview covered absolutely everything about my life,” she chuckles.

This entire process, she adds, took about a month and a half. “I was amazed because they really pushed for me and said they thought I would make a good mother,” she recalls.

Ms Roberts also had to pick a role model and guardian for her future child: “And all this before I even have a child. You have to make decisions in advance,” she says.

Over the next few months more than 20 documents had to be collected, notarised by a lawyer and certified — all at a great cost. “My lawyer helped me a lot by not charging me for that, but the revenue stamps were about $17 each.”

Ms Roberts elaborates that these documents then had to be shipped to the Commonwealth Office in London, shipped back to Bermuda and then sent to Guatemala where they had to be translated into Spanish.

But it was all worth it because on December 16 last year she received a call from the agency in Florida: “‘You have a baby,’ they said and sent me a photo. He was only 19 days old and they wanted a name right away. I had already picked Hayden Thomas, Thomas being my father’s name.”

Ms Roberts smiles when she recalls how strange that day was: “The emotional release was just unbelievable, but I also knew I still had along way to go.”

The next hurdle involved Hayden’s birth certificate, which arrived in Bermuda with his name spelt wrong. So the entire paper trail started all over. This was followed by more interviews, DNA testing and approval, but Ms Roberts said it was all worthwhile because every few weeks photos would arrive of her son Hayden, who will be six months old this month.

“Every time I get a photograph I become one of the women I always tease, like my friend who, when she became a mother last year, became this maniac with photos. Well, I’ve become that maniac,” she laughs.

As for when she gets to fly to Guatemala to collect her son, Ms Roberts said it could take anything from one to six weeks because the “system” in that country is “painfully slow”.

In an effort to make time pass as quickly as possible, she now spends her weekends decorating Hayden’s nursery and taking Spanish lessons.

“Which is not as easy as it sounds,” she chuckles.

The Spanish lessons are all part of her plan to keep Hayden’s culture alive in her home and Ms Roberts hopes to take Hayden to Guatemala when he is older.