Your mother went through it. So did your grandmother, and so on. Yet, for many women, the first signs of this natural progression come as a shock. Here, two 40-somethings consider this life stage
Missing: A dropped period at a certain age could mean one of two things: you’re pregnant or you’re perimenopausal.
“Pee on a stick.”
“No.”
“Pee on a stick!”
“Pour us some wine …” I replied, engaged in the more pressing task of scraping candle wax off my coffee table. My houseguest was a longtime friend and newly minted Married Lady and Mother of a jovial toddler.
“Oh … I get it,” she said, returning from the kitchen with a bottle of burgundy. “You just don’t want to know until after our cocktail party on Friday.”
“Guilty,” I said, clinking her glass and exhaling a plume of cigarette smoke. “Though it occurs to me, if I keep up this pace, I may be gifted with self check-out …”
This was just my black humour. Or was it? With my cycle nearly a month late – the week I was turning 45 – the only thing that seemed certain was my utter ambivalence. I’d spent my late 20s to early 40s with a man who didn’t want children and had always rued that loss, having frittered away my baby years. Yet now, presented with the possibility, I found myself wondering … was this a birthday gift I even wanted? Or, more to the point, wanted now?
It was hard to say. Context really is everything. On the relationship front, with “madly in love with a kind, handsome millionaire” presenting the ideal set of circumstances, I was several pegs down that ladder. The culprit was a scoundrel I’d dated briefly, recently ditched and could not sanely imagine anchoring myself to for 20 years of “co-parenting.” Instead, I pictured him counting back from nine when he ran into me holding a baby I hadn’t mentioned while I sputtered something about a sperm bank and being late for an appointment. With Father firmly in the Con section, I moved on to Finances. “Freelance journalist-single mother” sounded like a bad Tina Fey script. Though my mummy friends assured me that so long as you had free babysitting (read: eager grandparents), offspring were pretty cheap until they started demanding big-ticket items like designer clothing, dentistry and higher education. Conveniently, they pointed out, I already had a two-bedroom flat.
On the plus side, I’d have the Profound Adventure of Motherhood, the fundamental experience we’re placed on earth to have, be amazed, feel love like never before. I filed that under Pros. Conversely, putting my body through the terrors of pregnancy in my 40s meant I’d wind up with structural damage I might never repair; 20 extra pounds heavier for life unless I committed to daily grinds at the gym. I’d always joked that one upside of not having children was “keeping your tits.”
I’ll confess to a healthy vanity. The sort of woman who grew up pretty and clocks regular maintenance at the salon, nail bar and dermatologist, keeping dress sizes in the single digits, wearing heels. I’ve spent my whole life enjoying the pleasures of looking good. The wear and tear of not sleeping for two years after stretching my figure to balloon size wasn’t immediately appealing. That said, I love children, and moulding a small creature into an interesting adult held definite appeal, even if I had to live on a Stairmaster – and nix the cigarettes.
The real hitch, the one angle I could not picture myself gamely sacrificing, was my Freedom. By my 40s, I’d settled into a fairly carefree and nomadic lifestyle, my writing career skewing more and more toward a love of travel. With exotic adventure and exploring new places a central pleasure in my life, I’d spent years abroad. Jetting off for weeks at a time would be the first thing I’d have to relinquish if I were equipped with a papoose. Was this a reality I could accept? Reading Beatrix Potter instead of hot air ballooning over a Burmese village at sunset? Daily school runs over camel safaris across the Sahara? Waking up at six? I didn’t know. Even my housebound pleasures lay in peril. Cocktail parties that ran a little loud and late? Scratch those off the list. Entertaining lovers in the glow of my living room fireplace at all hours? Not any- more. Sleeping in? Undisturbed bubble baths? Elegant decor breakables displayed across every surface? Over, over and over.
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