Issue 30: Running away from my life

Saturday January 05 2019

I ran away for my recent birthday. The big three-nine. I can’t believe I am this old. I will forever feel 26, with the rest of the xennial generation, but it’s just that it’s worse for me. (It’s not, of course. I’m just solipsistic like that.) I do, however, use every birthday as a marker. Another year gone without achieving motherhood. Another year that means I’ll be older and creakier by the time I’m finally needed at the school gates, another year shaved off my life-with-grandkids expectancy. No wonder I ran away. Forty feels like my birthdoomsday. I know, I know, it’s not old. Life begins at 40! You know loads of people who had a baby at 43 etc. I agree with all of the above, but I wanted to be a younger mum. I had that taken away from me, and then dangled like a carrot for eight years while all my friends cracked on and I tried not to be sad.

So, in an attempt to outrun my age, I went to St Lucia. To the BodyHoliday, aka the resort that Amy Winehouse retreated to in the middle of her turmoil. Sounds about right. It’s a think-less, do-less, swim-more, drink-more haven and it could not sound more perfect. (This is not the BodyHoliday sales pitch — theirs is “give us your body and we’ll give you back your mind”, but it’s not compulsory and I’m not in the market for a hardcore bootcamp.)

So there I am, on the plane with my friend Katy (I offloaded Mr B in an attempt to make it feel less like a birthday) and I have the same Pavlovian response I get every time I get on a plane. I hold my forearms out in front of me, elbows tucked, hands loose with thumbs aloft, and imagine. One day I’ll be coming home on a plane like this, sitting like this, with a newborn baby. It’s so difficult to conceive (ba da boom). I say it to Katy — as I do to whoever occupies the seat next to me on the many journeys I’ve run through this scenario.

“But I’ll feel just like this. Like me, now, but I’ll have this new baby to bring home and I won’t know it. Isn’t that mad?” Katy says the thing any good friend would say: “It doesn’t matter, everyone would feel like that with a newborn if they grew it or not.” But I know deep down that they wouldn’t. I’m not a medical professional, but I suspect that pregnancy hormones, cravings and everything else your body does to adapt to motherhood is prep. I’m going to have to keep doing these practice plane runs and marvelling at the freaky wonder of the thing in lieu of those essential hormone surges. Expensive therapy, but bonus BodyHolidays!

This feeling doesn’t go away once I get there. Something has shifted in my psyche. I’m haunted by the ghost of my future child. I can’t lie on a beach with a fresh coconut without considering how different it would be with a miniature plus one. For a start I wouldn’t be here, I’d be in the water — my happy place. Mr B doesn’t swim so he’d have to be on babysitting duty and I’d have to be snorkelling. Finally he’d have a purpose on the beach — a place that is pretty redundant for someone who doesn’t swim or like reading or hot sun or fresh coconut. Oooh, we’d be in bed by 9pm because we’d be legitimately tired, rather than just sunny-tired but killing time in the bar until a more acceptable bed-time. I lie there gazing wistfully at the bit of sunlounger my future ghost child would be sitting on. Is that as weird as I think it is?

After another Pavlovian plane journey even stronger than the outbound because we’re coming home, which is what will be occurring avec bébé one day — it happens again. I listen to the This Is Us playlist while I’m cooking and comment to Mr B what a perfect album it would be to play loudly when I’m in the kitchen with a child in my arms and he’s on the sofa. He looks at me, conveying something that definitely isn’t agreement.

When I sit on the sofa and watch TV — and this has been happening for a good few months now — I find myself peering at the door. I’m seeing the ghost of my future child running round the corner in that drunk-human way toddlers do. It’s like a glitch on a record that jumps over and over again. Round the corner to the sofa. Round the corner to the sofa. The thing is, I can’t think beyond these few specific scenarios, and it isn’t lost on me that, apart from the plane, I’m not picturing a baby, but a toddler.

I try to convince myself that it’s because I’m thinking bigger picture; it’s not the baby that’s important to me, it’s the child. Like longing for the marriage versus the wedding. A much, much bigger part of me says it’s because a baby won’t happen to me. It’s the law of superstition. It’s certainly what was responsible for both my miscarriages — I couldn’t picture me pregnant, therefore I was being psychic to the fact that it would not be so. And that’s what happened, so . . .

So now what, am I not going to have a baby? What does this mean? I take a moment to remind myself that I am not psychic. Nor am I superstitious. Also, I’ve got an embryo transfer in the diary. It’s happening, it’s exciting and I need to recognise the positives, not the negatives. It’s a tricky habit to break, but I’m trying, I promise!