At what age do you start to really freak out about the fact you haven’t had kids yet? This question is obviously to my single and childless lady friends – those who are looking for love but struggling to find it. I guess that’s most of us then … right? But seriously though …

What’s Your Scary Age?

My scary age was always 30 up until the point I reached it. I made a pact with Bestie that if neither of us were happily married and babied up by the time we’d reached thirty, he’d be in charge of buying the turkey baster and I was in charge of spreading my legs. We wouldn’t actually have sex. God no. Continuing on with the theme of recent blog posts, Bestie is not a man I want to call a lover, boyfriend, partner … He would make a great husband and a super-great Dad though. I guess technically I want the relationship without the sex. And I still want to fuck other people. If only life were that simple. Sigh.

But I’m thirty now. That’s the point I’m making. I’m thirty, single (well, separated), zero kids, I haven’t bought a house, I still haven’t successfully managed to pass a driving test … I’m nowhere near where I thought I would be when I was 30 years old. Nowhere even remotely close. It’s pretty disappointing actually. So now I need to make my scary age 40, and if I’m being honest, 40 just seems a little too late to start getting scared. My mum is 50 and has been going through the menopause (and denying it) for the last five or so years we reckon. I read somewhere that you’ll generally follow the same pattern as your mother, and for the ten years leading up to that menopausal age, your eggs steadily and rapidly decline, making it all the more difficult to get pregnant. So if she was 45-50, I’ll be 45-50 (I know it’s not a direct science), and ten years before that is 35-40. Does that mean in five years time I should be freaking out? Or now … five years before the point where my eggs are apparently going to disappear?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a good life, plenty of adventures and stories to tell and all that, but I can’t help but think what my life might have been like if I’d gotten hitched, stayed hitched, and popped out a couple of sprogs. I can’t help but think I’ve been missing out on something. All my friends are either now married, getting married, making babies, having more babies, making a few more babies for good measure, or buying big houses and cars. I’m still renting, bumping from man to man, and thinking I couldn’t be further removed from the situation I would’ve wanted to be in to start procreating.

And that’s the point … Now I’m starting to worry a little.

I know, I know, 30 is young, plenty of women go on to have kids much older these days. In fact, it’s considered fashionable to have a life and a career first now, waiting until much later to reproduce. But I want to reproduce. That’s also the point. I’d love to have a kid I think, but I’m nowhere near where I want to be. I’m not even in a stable relationship. That man-figure is kinda important in the baby-making equation.

Or is it? 

I keep seeing news stories and media coverage of how women are freezing their eggs, using sperm donors, or going out and having one night stands in a desperate bid to get pregnant before it’s too late. I’m sorry to put it that way, but that’s the way the media has portrayed it to me. If I don’t plan for the future, plan for the fact that I might never meet a man I would deem worthy of my precious fatherhood spot, I’m going to miss out on the one thing that women were made for (or so everyone keeps telling me) – to have children.

The funnier thing is when I was younger and didn’t want kids, everyone kept saying to me, “It’s okay, you’ll change your mind, it happens to all women – we were created to reproduce.” 

Now I’m heading back to the doctors for the fourth time in two years for a cervical related issue, and I’ve already had LLETZ once and two bouts of “pre-cancerous” cells on my cervix alone, people keep saying to me, “A life without kids isn’t such a bad thing. If I could have my time again, I’m not even sure I’d have them!”

So what’s the truth? Should I have kids? Or is life better without them? Make your damn mind up.

Also, at what point do I start listening to Loose Women and other such fluffy daytime TV shows who tell me things I don’t want to hear? At what point should I open my laptop, pull up my internet browser, and type in those words … “Should I look at freezing my eggs?” At what age should I logically be thinking about these things? 30? 35? 40? Because it feels like I’m a countdown, and unlike most countdowns, there’s nothing exciting at the end of it. Just a feeling that I’ve missed out on the biggest thing I could ever do in life. Or one of.

It feels like I’ve spent 26 years of my life 100% sure I didn’t want to have kids, preferring to go globe-trotting or partying, buying nice clothes and shoes, having the kind of life that other people with kids could only dream of, and the last four years have been all about kids.

I must meet a man. 

I must keep that man. 

I must marry that man. 

I must have babies with that man. 

So where is he? And what do I do if I don’t find him? Is it time that I started planning for a future with kids but minus man? Or considering my pact with Bestie? What’s even more depressing is that the latter probably isn’t even an option anymore. He’s moved on to another woman who’ll probably have his babies after our massive ‘falling out’. I’ve lost my backup plan.

Story of my life … I can’t get a man to stay with me long enough to have kids with, and now I can’t even get my backup plan to stay around long enough either.

Women have all the luck.