Eboni K. Williams Details Her Pregnancy Journey: Why She's Proud to Be a 'Single Mom by Choice' (Exclusive)

"It is not the shame-ridden narrative that it used to be," the 'Real Housewives of New York City' star tells PEOPLE

• Eboni K. Williams tells PEOPLE she is pregnant with her first baby

• The Equal Justice with Judge Eboni K. Williams star opens up about the "single mother by choice" community, and how she's moving past the stigmas often attached to the term

• She also details her process to she underwent to get pregnant — from freezing her eggs at 34 to finding a sperm donor and going through IVF at 40

When Eboni K. Williams told her fertility doctor that she was ready to use the eggs she had frozen six years earlier to finally start on her journey to motherhood, he innocently asked her if she and her fiancé were still together.

The thing was, Williams had ended that engagement years before, and had no plans to wait around for another relationship to come along. "'I am doing this thing solo,' " the Real Housewives of New York City alumna recalled telling Dr. Daniel Stein of the West Side Clinic. "'This is about me, not he.'"

Williams, 40, is part of a generation of women redefining what it means to be a "single mother." In this week's issue of PEOPLE, she reveals that she is pregnant with her first baby — a girl, due August 16, that she conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) with her previously frozen eggs and a sperm donor.

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"I have wanted to pursue the single motherhood by choice journey for the past two years, and I'm so blessed to be here now. but I'm also not deft to how extraordinarily stigmatized it still is," says Williams. "My mother Gloria raised me all by myself, and did so in an era and at a time where being a single mother in this country — especially a Black single mother — was one of the most disgraceful things you could do. And in the span of a generation, that's shifted to where women like me are not just embracing it, but also choosing it."

"It is not the shame-ridden narrative that it used to be; that's steeped in poverty, that's steeped in scarcity, that's steeped in rejection — that's steeped in all of these heartbreaking, sad trauma points," Williams continues. "That is not this story. These innocent, little babies are so desperately and lovingly wanted that they have mothers who invested exorbitant resources (by way of money, by way of time, by way of what we put our bodies through, etc.) to bring them to this Earth, and to shower them with all the things that all sweet babies deserve. That's love."

The journey to motherhood first began for Williams when she froze her eggs at the age of 34. Years later, after deciding the time was right to pursue it for real, she began the process of selecting a sperm donor through the California Cryobank.

"As very proud and conscious Black woman, it was very important to pursue a sperm donor who shared my cultural and racial identity," the Equal Justice with Judge Eboni K. Williams star says, noting that a shortage of Black sperm anonymous donation in America made that no easy feat. "And I was very, very, very, very blessed and fortune to have found a fantastic donor."

Sperm donation, Williams points out to PEOPLE, has its own stigma attached to it — one Phaedra Parks famously propagated in a 2014 episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

"This isn't a random guy who 'needed $10 to get him a media pizza so he ejaculated in a cup,' " Williams says, quoting Parks. "This is the Cadillac offering of services. I know my donor's life story, which I heard told to me in an audio file he recorded in his own voice. I know his profession. I know about his family. I've seen childhood and adult photos of my donor. I've read essays he's written, first-impression essays staff at the facility wrote about him. I feel extremely confident."

She also knows that her donor already has fathered three brothers and three sisters through his donation. In fact, she'll have access to a registry of "diblings" (donor siblings), who will all be alerted when her daughter arrives.

"Her conception will never be a secret," Williams says of her baby-to-be. "She's going to know from the moment she has any awareness that she was lovingly, beautifully and perfectly conceived through a very generous man's donation of the missing genetic piece that I needed to make her and love her. And whether we have relationships with those siblings — or her sperm donor, whose identity my child will have the option to access on her 18th birthday — that will be fully up to her. That's my plan."

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There are multiple pathways to pregnancy after choosing a sperm donor. Some women start with Intrauterine insemination (IUI), though seeing as IVF is statistically more successful for women over 40, Williams chose that option. Doing so allowed her to not only use the healthier quality eggs from when she was 34 years old when she froze them but also to do biological sex selection and testing for chromosomal abnormalities, which can weed out genetic disorders.

Of the 10 viable eggs she froze at 34, Williams wound up with only one genetically, viable embryo — which happened to be a girl. She had her frozen embryo transfer in late November and found out two weeks later, minutes before taking the bench to film Equal Justice, that she was pregnant.

"I just burst into tears and then makeup had to touch me up," the daytime host shares. "That waiting window after the implant of the embryo in your uterus is the most excruciating part of the journey for every woman because you don't know if it took, and they advise you not to take at-home tests in case they're inaccurate. So once I got the blood test, I was able to breathe a little deeper."

Williams recognizes that many women who seek to be mothers, be it as single mothers by choice or otherwise, don't always have this type of quick success. Nor does it always work out beyond that.

"That's why I don't take any of this for granted," Williams says. "We all know women who have lost pregnancies. Even with that joy and celebration, I still knew enough to know I am pregnant today — and that has actually been something I have said to myself every single day of this journey since that moment. 'I am still pregnant today.' Because we must remember and honor our loved ones who have experienced pregnancy loss, infertility, and disappointment in this journey."

She gets quiet, before explaining that she too faced the worry that pregnancy wasn't going to happen for her when, before her transfer, she was told over the course of multiple vaginal ultrasounds that her uterine liner was not thick enough for the embryo to stick.

"It just wasn't getting better," Williams recalls. "And after the sixth one, I held it together in the waiting room but when I went into the lobby, I pressed the elevator door and just lost it. Because I just realized how desperately I wanted this child and how far I was willing to go to create him or her at the time."

"So every day I am still pregnant is a miracle and a gift from God," she says. "And I'm just so appreciative of the women who have gone through pregnancy loss and gotten back on that horse and done it again. And of the women who at some point said, 'I can't do this anymore.' Because either way, it takes courage."

For more on Eboni K. Williams, pick up the issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now.

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