Motherhood Missed by Lois Tonkin

Author:Lois Tonkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784506599
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2018-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

Holly,

36, Lives in New Zealand

At around 23, 24 I woke up and I just wanted babies crazily. Immediately! I wanted to have a hoard of kids. It was really weird. These days I’m thinking one would be fine.

I’m very, very happy single. A lot of the effort I put into dating now is because I want to have kids and I don’t want to do it alone. I know I could; I was raised by a solo mother and she did an amazing job but I…it’s extremely scary. I know a few women who’ve done it by themselves and boy did they rely on their mothers, and my parents are both gone. So I’d like a partner but I’m not desperate enough to shack up with anybody, and I haven’t been particularly successful at dating. I fluctuate between being in a holy fuck ‘I’m running out of time, what the fuck am I going to do about this situation!’ (excuse my language) some of the time, and most of the time just being really happy single, putting myself out there and trying to be open to possibilities. It’s very hard to find men who want to have children who don’t already have them. The ones who do – and who want a long-term relationship – are in the middle of that at the moment. I’m optimistic for my 40s and 50s, for the next wave, when the divorcees are available!

I recognise that there’s a biological imperative in wanting to have children. I regularly joke that I wouldn’t mind not having ovaries so I didn’t feel so inclined to have kids, but I’m a vet, and I think that’s vet humour! We de-sex animals all the time and it’s like, ‘You guys look so much more relaxed without ovaries or testes!’ I love children, and I think it would be a lot of fun to have them. I always imagine that I would carry on some of the family traditions. I haven’t got specific names for my possible children but in our family we all tend to be named after people who have gone before, so I always thought I’d use my mother’s name if I had a girl. I’m also quite determined that if I have children they’d have my surname! That’s important to me – my family, my heritage – and passing that on is pretty important, so I’d like them to be my biological children.

Just before I turned 30 I asked my doctor if I should be thinking about getting my ovarian reserve checked, and when I was 34 I asked whether I needed to freeze my eggs. Both times they were like, ‘No, don’t worry! No need!’ But I persisted, and I got to a really great locum GP and she said, ‘It’s a very sensible thing to investigate.’ So I did the test, and the number I got was dreadful! I got called by a nurse in the middle of work, and they told me, ‘Oh yeah, you’ve pretty much got no eggs left.

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