Feelin' Broody

They’re loud, expensive and full of poo. They wreak havoc on your social life, shatter all prospects of domestic bliss and turn your body into a battle-scarred wasteland. As the years roll by, they wear you out, run you ragged and “treat this house like a bloody hotel!”, before leaving you for good and breaking your heart. Is this an anti-baby rant you see forming before you? To the contrary: the words you’ve just read aren’t mine; they’re quotes from well-meaning friends who, when trying to placate me during my darkest hours, bombard me with edited lowlights from their lifelong journey on the baby bus.

According to contemporary soothsayers, one should only regret the things that one did not do; by and large, I live by that dictum. As a result, I’ve been to paradise – perhaps not quite the same kind of paradise that 1976 chart topper Charlene visited in her cautionary manifesto on this very subject (no subtle whoring for me!), but hey, I’ve lived. Still, I was never brave enough to embark on life’s greatest adventure of all. Now, when the broody blues kick in, the overwhelming feelings of emptiness, disappointment, regret and sorrow that the realisation that I’m probably never, ever going to know how it feels to be a mother brings are as emotionally painful and traumatic to bear as the physical act of actually giving birth is sometimes reported to be. To quote another tragi-comic camp icon, sometimes it’s hard to be a woman; until I hit my broody years, I didn’t have a clue what Tammy was wailing about.

But unlike our anti-feminist superstars, I refuse to give in and blame my woes – any woes at all – on some poor, commitment-phobic man. Blame is a bore, a chore, and an unnecessary evil that gives an otherwise sweet life a bitter, acidic edge. Anyway, my pro-choice sensibilities embrace equal rights for the men who don’t want to be fathers, too. Although I fully sympathise with their motives, I have little time for the ‘baby bullies’ – women and men, but usually women – who demand to fulfil what they perceive to be their right to parenthood by using emotionally sordid, passive-aggressive techniques to metaphorically twist the arm of the partner who disagrees with them (I include the deliberate sabotaging of condoms and the “whoops, I ‘forgot’ to take my pill!” brigade in this category). I agree with my gay friend who, when asked to consider to ‘donate to the cause’, eventually declined my request for a number of incredibly well-considered ethical, sociological, emotional and intellectual reasons. I’m not one of those women that the media love to hate for attempting to ‘have it all’ (the ‘it’ in this instance referring to the patronising, judgemental admonishment of successful childless women); I simply never reached the ‘Baby’/‘No Baby’ crossroad on the map of my life. But the fact that I can’t play the blame game doesn’t make my ‘situation’ any easier to live with: I'm clearly not destined to be any kind of Madonna.

So on I go, with the well-meaning but ultimately futile advice offered by those who claim to make practical sense of my seemingly illogical desires ringing in my ears, when all I long to hear is the yell that heralds the 4am feed. Apparently, I’m pre-programmed by mysterious forces – sort of, beer goggles for women - and therefore controlled by the biological impulse to reproduce. While I’m busy learning to ignore the ticking of that darned clock, perhaps the medical profession will find a way to mend a broken heart. In theory, broodiness and heartbreak are nebulous, conjectural conditions; in reality, one feeds off the other in a constant frenzy – and I'm powerless to disconnect either from the source. Unless, that is, a benevolent stork happens to drop a baby into my, erm, lap tomorrow – that, for me, would be my equivalent of paradise found.