You mean like the Marten in 2666? Which led to 2672, and which was immediately followed by a surprise visit from his mother to go on a date, which led to 2702, with some important advice from Mom in 2703. Which was followed later by Marten's field trip with Emily and Samantha, which led to a momentary confusion about Emily's possible interest and wondering why it freaked him out so much (2769).
The relationship between Claire and Marten has been a slow burn ever since Claire came out to him and ever since the wedding. He's actually become closer friends with Claire than everybody from the library, including Tai. So, when they both got a little drunk and Claire revealed her crush to him and then pulled back, Marten finally realized that Claire might see him more than as a friend. After Marten, in his words, "processed" what happened and what he now knows about Clarie's feelings (basically, he hit pause and did his mulling about the possibilities), he decided to take the risk and call Claire. Yeah, he missed Claire's attempt at flirting, but don't you think that happens a lot, with Marten and most people in general?
Marten's character been finding a direction for a long time now, ever since screwing up with Padma. Yeah, it might be hard to notice, because QC has become a large ensemble comic, but it's definitely there.
Martin was clearly going through a crisis in terms of life direction and what he wanted. But IMHO it's kind of offensive to say what he was looking to fill the hole was a woman. It especially becomes clear if you think about the genders being flipped around - if Marten was a girl who was fluttering around aimlessly, and then a man completed her. Marten's main issue is he's a full on grownup with no plan for the future. He doesn't want to go to grad school, he doesn't seem interested in a real job, and basically has nothing but vague dreams of being a musician he doesn't try too hard on. He's a reasonably smart dude with no ambition.
Maybe Claire can give him the support he needs to actually, you know, stop acting like a boy and become a man. But it would have been so much more rewarding to see Martin genuinely grow up while he was single than to do it under Claire's tutelage. Sort of similar to how Faye did so much improvement of herself while being single before Angus ever came into the picture.
That's what I was seriously expecting from Martin anyway. Becoming a grownup. And that's why I'm a bit let down if, as people said, this is what Martin's new "decisiveness" boiled down to.
In case of Claire and Marten, Claire's mother could serve as surrogate mother and egg donor. Things like this are not new and have happened before.
Clairmom probably doesn't have viable eggs any longer. Most women cannot get pregnant via their own eggs past age 44, and I'm guessing she's at least a few years older than that.
However, without ovaries to produce an egg, this becomes harder. (IIRC, essentially what has to be done is, get a donor egg, REMOVE the DNA from it, add the DNA from one sperm (better make sure it's an X somehow, too, you don't want to end up with a YY baby), which would be absurdly difficult. Then fertilize that egg.) I mean, it's hypothetically possible, but...
I don't think this violates forum rules to say. My apologies if it does, but given it's been established that Claire has been on hormones for 5-6 years, no matter the status of her bits, she isn't going to have any sperm to extract DNA from. The DNA would have to come directly from somatic (body) cells, not gametes.