When you want a new car you start to see them everywhere. You never noticed how many of them are on the road until you find yourself wanting one. Wishing you had a red one like that one but yours would have tinted windows, better rims and there’s no way on earth you would put those my family stickers on the back window. Babies are just the same.
In my twenties I laughed at those women in my life who told me the ticking was real. That something changed when you hit thirty and you could hear the infernal tic, tic, tic that pestered the deep, dark depths of your brain, your heart and your ovaries. For some, the ticking isn’t real and they never hear it, but for others it is loud. Louder than any front row ticket to a screamo concert and worse – it is constant.
I loathed the idea that my body was able to acquiesce to the expected social constraints without my permission. I was in control of my body and I would be in charge of what it told me. That was what I thought. I was very, very wrong.
I’ve always wanted kids. Knew that one day I would have them. I’ve never been in any rush to have them because I knew at some point it was inevitable that I would have a family. Instead, I spent my twenties and early thirties rushing to do everything else.
I travelled – drank exotic and not so exotic cocktails on the Nile river, danced under moonlight in a Mexican square, eaten unrecognisable insects in Cambodia and taken wrong turns in long abandoned tunnels on the Italian coast. I’ve shopped – bought shoes more expensive than kitchen appliances, collected dresses from every decade, coveted the touch of expensive fabric and the need for new gadgets. I’ve loved – my family without limits, my friends – old and new – with raucous and joyous laughter and sometimes men – with fear, trepidation, anticipation and honesty, that every time has ended up in heartbreak. And I wouldn’t take any of it back, not for a second.
I have fought my way through my twenties and early thirties to fit in all of the great stories that I’ve always wanted and I am one of the lucky ones. I got most of them. I have not lived a life without fear or pain, but who has. At the almost end of my thirty-fifth year I am luckier than most. I have seen more than most, have more than most and am loved by more people than I ever thought possible and yet there is something missing and the ticking is real.
That inevitable moment in my life where I knew I would have family hasn’t arrived. I am thirty-five and in obstetrics terms, now classified as a geriatric mother. My lady bits have betrayed me and I’ve left my run too late. My lady bits determine the possibility and the likelihood of me being able to have a baby. The doctor says the likelihood of me having a baby naturally after 35 is about 12% and every year I leave it the percentage sinks rapidly like a fat kid in quicksand. By the time I’m 41 the percentage is as low as 3%.
Like the red cars, I sit in coffee shops now and watch the parade of women in active wear with babies strapped to their chest buy coffee and push the non baby owners out of the way with their prams. They’ve always been here but it’s only now that I notice them everywhere. Their tired faces, stained shirts, tear stained toddlers, tiny shoes, sleeping babies, they are everywhere.
I always thought that my baby plan would just happen. There’d be a man, not necessarily a wedding, but a man that loved me enough to stay full time. He’d make me cheese toasties on the weekends and hold my hand when bad things happened. But he hasn’t shown up yet. I’m 35, old enough to be a geriatric mother, and my permanent hand holder hasn’t shown up yet. My lady bits are screaming and that moment that I thought was inevitable hasn’t happened and that societal ticking turns out to be real except for me it’s no longer a tic, it’s a loud, shivering gong that vibrates, grates and squeals like your fingernails on a chalkboard.
But it’s 2016. And I am a lucky woman and I can take charge of my own story. My cheese toastie maker may not exist, he may not be real and may be better lived in the words of my stories but my baby can be real. Like everything else I’ve ever done in my life, I will make do with what I have and I will buy what I don’t have. In 2016, you don’t need a husband, a man, a significant other to have a baby. The capitalist nature of the USA means you can buy almost anything online, even sperm.
So it begins. I will have everything I’ve ever wanted and I will do it with the people that have always been there. My family who have loved me since the beginning, will raise this child with me and they have promised to love it no matter how I choose to make it. My friends who have laughed and cried with me at every point on my life long roller coaster have collectively shouted a very loud ‘Hell Yes’ over a number of teapot cocktails at my pre-insemination afternoon tea and my hand holder and cheese toastie maker… well, he’ll just have to wait. I have other things to do now and if he can’t be bothered to show up, then I can’t be bothered to wait any longer.I want my kid to grow up with cousins. To grow up with aunties and uncles of all kinds that love them with their babies all doing things together. I want my kid to be part of that pack of annoying kids in the caravan park riding their bikes and annoying the permanent residents while a large group of adults yell at them from folding chairs with glasses of wine in their hands. I want my kid to be able to count on me to show up, to get down on the floor, to kick a ball and do that stupid Spartan kids race and I can’t do any of that as a real geriatric.
I am lucky. I am loved. I have almost everything that I’ve ever wanted. And I will silence that gong in one way or another. It will shush. I have bought what I need and now all I have to do is hope, wish and will that it works. But until the moment it does, I will drown out that infernal racket in the gym, with teapot cocktails, in sun filled coffee shops, with giant nephew hugs and at the Drag Queen festival that’s coming to town on Friday night. I am a lucky one.
life in big frilly knickers 