A couple of days before Christmas last year I woke with a sore throat. Watching the second line on a Covid test appear meant all original plans had to be cancelled, and later that day I waved to my children as they left for their dad’s.
It was rare to have so much alone time with my boyfriend (also positive). We worked our way through all the food and several episodes of The Sopranos, and got so much sleep I seriously wondered whether I’d ever be able to leave the bed again. Strange, then, that we’d risk ruining this peace with baby talk. We knew it would only ever happen if we were both ready, and we were — three years on from our original talk, which started with him saying, “I want it, but not yet,” and ended with me saying, “If we want it at all, we’d better get a move on.”
“It” has yet to happen. Last week, after peeing on a stick and feeling disappointed at the appearance of only one line, not two, I threw the test away, returning to the bin ten minutes later to check that another line hadn’t miraculously appeared on the test. This is not the first time I’ve done this in the year we’ve been trying. Fantasies of me, my boyfriend, my teenagers and their smiling sibling in the future tend to blossom madly in the week leading up to my period, along with the “might I be?” curiosity brought on by sore boobs, tearfulness and a spotty chin.
I thought it would happen quickly. I forgot that 14 years have passed since I was last pregnant, and that, if you listen to the experts, each year beyond 40 is like a cat year in terms of its effect on fertility. It is hard not to panic when you imagine menopause boarding a train headed in your direction. The potential symptoms of pregnancy that I feel so excited about some months are more likely to be symptoms of perimenopause.
Yet, despite the stats, and the fact that a search for positive stories online instead spews up a hundred articles on why it is practically impossible to conceive naturally after the age of about 43, I still have hope. Statistically, there are more and more older mothers. In January last year ONS data revealed that for the first time half of 30-year-old women remained childless. The ONS last year also recorded a rise in older women in the UK becoming pregnant, with conception rates for over-40s rising to a record 17.1 per 1,000 women in 2020.
Advertisement
Certainly there are positive stories out there. You just have to know what to type into the search bar and where to look. I have a friend who got lucky at 45, after three years of trying. I joined a Facebook group called New Mothers 45 and Up, revealing many women who have done it both naturally and with assistance. Plus, my doctor said she would definitely advise me to use contraception if I didn’t want to get pregnant.
This year I will turn 45 and my boyfriend will turn 30. I picture his young sperm meeting my tired and jaded egg — and being turned back. So why do we keep going? If egg and sperm do work it out and we get lucky, I have a realistic idea of what will follow: broken nights, dented bank balances and a distinct lack of alone time when my kids go to their dad’s. But also joy like nothing else, because babies are so lovely. I’ve always thrived in the chaos of family life, and am relieved that my teenagers bring me as much happiness as they did when they were little. Yes, motherhood is knackering and frustrating at any age, but it’s what I signed up for. If I do have another baby I’ll see it as a promotion rather than an entirely new career.
● Emma Barnett: five rounds of IVF, one miscarriage and no baby
I have a strong feeling that my boyfriend and I will love being parents together, even if we are walking around bleary-eyed and a bit broke (and broken) for the first few years. We are lucky enough to get on very well, have good jobs, good health, loving families and supportive friends. Feeling so positive, even with the negatives, makes it harder to accept that we might not have a baby.
My boyfriend doesn’t need convincing of anything. “We go again” is what he says reassuringly, like a football manager, usually as I walk into our bedroom from our bathroom after I’ve done a pregnancy test or got my period. I admit that I feel disappointed for both of us. “You feel too much,” he laughs, and he is right. For him the only thing to do is keep on trying while enjoying what we already have. Take the next bit of thread. Get the sperm count. Do the fertility checks. His consistent kindness is a comfort. He brings me coffee in bed, checks my bike tyres before I set off for work, makes dinner even if it’s my turn. Every month when I am not pregnant I have the full, wonderful reality of him to remind me of why we are trying for this baby in the first place.
Advertisement
So we keep on going. At the very beginning I gave up alcohol, started taking supplements that are meant to boost egg health and peed on ovulation sticks to try to work out when I was most fertile. My boyfriend and I tried to have sex every other day for at least a couple of weeks every month, because I wasn’t always certain when, or if, I was ovulating. It was more sex than either of us could be bothered with. We’re more of a twice-a-week kind of couple, and some days I’d feel like a conflicted sex pest as I tapped my boyfriend on the shoulder and said: “Come on. We have to.”
I am more relaxed in my approach to things now because I want to feel like myself, pregnant or not. My boyfriend and I do not have sex if we’re really not in the mood, even on the days when I could be most fertile. I have gone back to drinking a small glass of wine most nights because I like the taste, and I rarely drink more. I’ve stopped visiting fertility app forums late at night, which always made me feel like a lurker (I never posted) and a little miserable, especially when I was witnessing so many women’s crushing disappointment at not being able to conceive.
Many women who desperately want babies can’t get pregnant, or haven’t been successful so far, and I can’t pretend to know how this feels at all. When I was younger and I wanted a baby, I got pregnant in the first month of trying. Only now am I beginning to realise how lucky that was and how privileged that makes me.
I know my boyfriend and I are allowed to feel both hopeful and disappointed, though. When something comes easily, you don’t have to try. When it shows no signs of coming, the trying gets harder to believe in. But if you were practising your tennis serve and the ball persistently went outside the box, would you keep on trying? There’s no reason why not.
We’ve considered egg donation. A close relative has said she would like to help us, which is incredibly generous and pretty amazing of her. For now, though, we will give it a few more months of trying naturally, going again and seeing if that second line might finally make an appearance.
The writer wishes to remain anonymous
