In November 2011, when I was aged 26 years, 3 months and 23 days old, my Dad called me to say ‘Happy Daddy’s Day’. It wasn’t Father’s Day so I asked him what he was talking about. He explained, ‘You’ve now reached the age that I was when I had you’. I was struck by this unexpected milestone, which surely passes unnoticed in most families. I wondered at how young he had been when I was born. I didn’t feel remotely ready or inclined to become a parent. I barely saw myself as an adult.
When I was approaching 28, my Welsh neighbours found an abandoned dog and gave it to me and BFG, hoping we could provide a good home for it. I told my parents about the dog and explained that we weren’t really able to look after it long-term. My Mum lamented, ‘If you can’t commit to a dog, what hope is there for a child?’
Whenever people have asked me, ‘Do you want a baby?’ I’ve always struggled to answer. As a teenager, I was adamant that I would never want children and begged my Mum to let me have my womb removed because I wanted my periods to stop. She insisted that it was too early to make this decision.
As an adult, I became increasingly ambivalent. In an abstract sense I started to envisage one day having my own family. I imagine that it must be enchanting to watch a little person growing up and experiencing things for the first time, seeing their delight and wonder. People say it’s a love like no other. Children can look after us when we’re old and help us to see a continuation of ourselves beyond death.
But do I want a baby right now? Even harder to answer. I’ve never looked at babies and craved one of my own. There are lots of other things that I want to do apart from have children. I love my freedom and independence and absence of responsibility. I’m terrified of pregnancy and childbirth and always think how many women historically have died and how my body could be changed beyond recognition; torn, scarred and stretched. A few friends have had near-death experiences in labour, and one described her sister after childbirth as looking like she’d survived a car accident.
That said, I hear my biological clock ticking. I know that the window of opportunity is finite and fertility not to be taken for granted. The warnings of older women echo in my ears: ‘Don’t leave it too late or you’ll regret it’. My Mum once told me about a card she saw with a photo of a woman slapping her head and exclaiming, ‘Oh no, I forgot to have children!’ I laughed at the time, but it also haunted me as a warning. And time is ticking for all of us. Life is short and people die. If I’m going to have children then I’d like them to have as much time as possible with their grandparents.
Then, one day, I was listening to Radio 4 and heard a biological anthropologist called Gillian Ragsdale say that deciding when to have a baby is a decision that we’re ill-equipped to make. She said that it has never been necessary for any animal, including humans, to set out wanting to have children. All that is needed is a sex drive. Then, if you’re having lots of sex, some of it is going to produce children. Once the children come along, it’s then very useful to have a natural urge to look after the child. So being ambivalent about the idea of having a child doesn’t mean you’ll feel ambivalent when the child actually arrives. Contraception has been an emancipation, but it has also given us the burden of choice, of deciding when to have a baby.
Hearing Ragsdale talk was a revelation, enabling me to rationalise my own uncertainty, and emboldening me to contemplate a leap of faith beyond it.
My Mum has always said that there is never a good time to have a child and I’m sure that’s true. Given that, I’d struck upon a reasonably good time. In my working life, I had completed a major project and not yet embarked on any new longterm commitments. BFG and I were settling into a new house. A few close friends had recently had children and blazed a trail, demystifying the transition to parenthood. I was opening up to the possibility.
I kept thinking about how a dear friend expressed the reason behind his desire to have a child: ‘I see how happy my parents are when they see me. They love it. I want a piece of that happiness’.
Then BFG declared, ‘My fear of not having children has now surpassed my fear of having them’.
So we decided to take the leap and try for a baby.