Feeling Broody

SPRING

One spring morning, I roll out of bed, open the curtains and weep with such sudden ferocity that I realise ‘Things Have Most Definitely Come to a Head’.

I am 36 years old, single and desperately broody.

This dewy riot of twittering birds and general outrageous green throbbing spring orgy thing that is going on right outside my window seems a bit uncalled for, a bit cruel.

God damn it, does nobody realise my hair is turning grey here? My breasts are quietly sagging with NO BABY IN SIGHT

Broody… How dare such a warm word describe this sharp daily urgency that I am living?

I am in an aeroplane nose diving

I am in a room and the walls are closing in.

I am trying to catch the last ship off the island, running and tripping through the overgrowth.

Under these circumstances I really am not sure that I can allow spring, not this year.

I shut the curtains, go back to bed and note that the list of things that I want to avoid (or preferably ban) is increasing:

1. Spring.

2. My job: I have just invested three of the most gruelling years of my life to become a midwife only to discover I am allergic to my profession. I am having what I laughingly call a Mid-wife Crisis, ‘cept it’s not funny.

3. Pregnant women in general. The only possible exceptions being women older than me, providing they are a: pregnant for the first time, and b: with ‘difficult partners’

4. Pregnant friends in particular. For the sake of my mental health I recognise that I have to forbid the tired, shiny eyed friend who drops in for a cup of herbal tea with something ‘important to share’

5. Family gatherings. Please never let me have to endure another Christmas like last years again….’No, I do not have a partner at the moment, yes, I do want to have children, no, I am not working as a midwife at the moment and yes aren’t cousin Sophies and cousin Emma’s babies absolutely gorgeous . . . any other questions?, It’s just that I’d quite like to go and lock myself into the nearest loo.’

There are also the dreaded subjects of ‘infertility’ and ‘early menopause’, (but we don’t talk or even think about them).

In my teens and 20’s I had more lovers than sometimes seems proper, vast swathes of unprotected sex with an interesting assortment of chaps.

This was interspersed with some lovely admirable, conscientious condom using boyfriends.

But I never ‘fell’ pregnant.

I knew that I wanted to, needed to have children, but it was a relaxed ‘sometime in my thirties’ hazy dream.

I was ready and willing to have children at 30, but my late twenties had heralded the arrival of a more mature, breed of tantricly inclined boyfriend, much more interested in practicing the guitar than having children and who, to my dismay could and would withhold ejaculation indefinitely and this plus recent years of involuntary celibacy brings me to where I am now, hiding from the world, in my double bed, alone reading self help books.

One particular source of solace is a book by Pema Chodron an American Buddhist nun. She recommends when facing difficulties to ‘Perk Up and Lean In’.

Advice which I find oddly comforting.

I perk up with a cup of coffee, open the curtains once more, lean out the window and sob

CHILDLESS AT 36

‘Today’ I announce to my lover, ‘Today, the first of February, is the pagan festival of Imbolc’.

He turns over mumbling something about needing a couple more hours.

‘Imbolc means ‘in the belly’ and refers to the early stirrings of spring in the womb of the earth. It is a time for planting seeds and watching them grow’

I look up from my We’Moon Diary and see that he has gone back to sleep.

I'm tired too, to be fair.

We stayed up late as new lovers tend to and whilst a storm was raging outside, he planted his hundreds of millions of wriggling Imbolc seeds into a ribbed condom which he ceremoniously chucked into the bin.

My new lover is admirably conscientious.

I can't help finding it significant that he has written the word ´top’ on the lid of his pritt stick in indelible ink

not once

but THREE fucking times.

I have zero chance of getting pregnant by accident.

I peek out of the curtain to a riot of twittering birds, bright, bright sunshine and notice two sturdy daffodils have now opened.

My heart sinks.

Damn! I'm really not sure if I can allow spring this year.

Unable to go back to sleep. I decide to hunt and gather.

I make the mistake of going into the local health food shop where some healthy young mothers are hanging out, the owner gazes into my eyes and gravely informs me that I'm looking tired.

I study the nuts and seeds intently and march straight out again taking refuge in Budgens supermarket where the impact of Imbolc is decidedly less apparent and the staff are reassuringly obese and disinterested.

I come across the organic fruit in pairs wrapped up in plastic and somehow feel a strange affinity with them.

My baby feels further away than ever

AND THEN THE BABY CAME…

My 16 month old baby is sitting astride my lap convulsed in laughter.

It is difficult not to smile but it is important that I remain po faced, you see, she has recently decided that my nipples are exceptionally funny and now each time she feeds she laughs.

She laughs and I try not to.

‘Dada! Dada!’ she cries with glee, pointing, jabbing at my nipple.

Dada is under strict instruction to remain casually disinterested (but not disapproving).

The trouble is that she knows that I have two breasts, and once she has seen one nipple, she will not rest until she has seen the other one.

Ideally, the two breasts have to be fully exposed at the same time as she bustles and chuckles between them, delightedly.

I have to say that this is not a look I enjoy.

My breasts have never been my best feature. As a teenager I was mortified when I got stretch marks. Huge red gashes, like cats scratches, radiating from my nipples.

I have been trying to hide those silvery lines with bikinis and dim lighting ever since.

Now, at 39, they are saggy to boot and my daughters’ new game is worrying me.

What if she wants to play it in public.

I remember once, in a café, I saw a toddler standing up, it looked like he was getting something out of the pocket of his rather fat mother, who was sitting beside him in a chair.

Then to my utter fascination, I realised that the little boy was breastfeeding.

The mothers’ breast was hanging, like a goat’s udder; it hung so low that her nipple was peeking under the bottom of her jumper

At. Hip. Level.

At first I was shocked, repulsed even. Then I thought she was rather cool.

The mother looked like she really didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought.

However, this happened in a ‘collectively run libertarian anarcho’ cafe in Brighton and not Starbucks.

What worries me is that there are some people who are offended by a women (with pert young breasts) discreetly feeding her 1 month old.

There is nothing discreet about my baby’s antics and I am planning on feeding her until she decides to self wean.

Yet the older, bigger, more talkative she gets, the greyer and more saggy I will become.

I realise with a jolt that if don’t want to spend all my time at home, just incase she wants to feed. I have no choice but to become like that women in the anarcho cafe

It turns out I don’t have to wait very long before ‘It’ happens.

We’re in a café and it’s a French village café full of old men drinking pastis, she’s hungry and her father’s ordering drinks, we wrestle a bit and then I give in.

‘Dada!’ she laughs, ‘Num Nuuum!’

she crows triumphantly as she exposes both breasts.

As several heads turn to look, I fight the temptation to put my hands behind my head nonchalantly, a la page 3.

Gosh, it’s really not easy to be a ‘radical’ responsive attachment parent when you care about how you look