That time I made a decision about my body

And so many people were mad about it

I was recently a guest on a podcast called Sliding Doors. Host Jennie Becker asks her guests to talk them through three pivotal moments in their life where a decision took them very clearly down one of two paths. She’s had some really interesting people on. Also me. You can listen to the series here. In my episode, there is one thing I discussed that I hadn’t thought about in some time. I’ve decided to unpack it a bit more here. 

I discussed the very clear moment I knew I would stop trying to have a second child. It brings up a lot of thoughts and emotions around not only fertility - every woman has a complicated relationship with theirs - but the problem that so many other people seemed to have with our decision to have a one-child family. 

Here goes:

Me at 952 weeks’ pregnant. (Actually I was a week before my due date, but same thing). Dog is not model’s own.

When I was 35 I got pregnant. Our daughter was very much planned and wanted. To my great surprise and relief, once I figured out when I was ovulating, it happened quite quickly. Ross had thought he was in for many months of baby-making sex. It took about four months. I’m pretty sure she was Made In Mexico. Poor Ross was now actually in for many months of me being nauseous, migrainey, bloated, gassy and in no mood to even hold hands let alone anything else. We fought more than at any other time in our marriage. Pregnancy was not the euphoric wonderland that had been described to me in those infuriatingly disingenuous baby magazines. One night, when I was about six months’ pregnant and nailed to the couch, he went out with entertaining, non-pregnant people and I ugly-cried while watching ET. Like, wracking sobs, as if ET was real and my dog or something.

But you know, we got through it. I was so very excited to meet my daughter. A whole new face. That I was making. So I sucked down the Gaviscon, ate the 24-hour nausea away with white bread and Marmite and slept every spare second I could, because when I was asleep I wasn’t uncomfortable or pissing off Ross. It was, of course, all absolutely worth it. But I did not glow at any point that whole time.

So when Evie was mere weeks old, and people starting asking me when I’d have another baby, I could have Incredible Hulk’d them through a window. I was out of my mind with sleep deprivation, not to mention the ever-present high anxiety that I was doing everything wrong. (‘Why is she crying? I’ve fed her, I’ve changed her, I’ve winded her, she’s slept, I’ve done it all again, and she still will not stop crying. Does she hate me? I would, I’m an idiot who doesn’t know what they’re doing. How do I keep something so tiny alive? Why have they let me, of all people, bring this actual human home to keep alive?’)

None of this helped my alarmingly high blood pressure - gestational hypertension. I was on medication for about three months. I didn’t feel any different but I’ve never had doctors and nurses look at me with such panic in their eyes before or since. 

And yet, there were days when all I heard was that this baby was not a proper baby without the addition of another baby:

‘Oh you’ve got to give her a brother or a sister.’ 

‘She’ll be spoilt if you don’t.’ ‘

‘She won’t know how to socialise.’ 

‘She’ll be that kid who doesn’t know how to share and no one will like.’ 

‘She’ll be lonely when you die.’ 

‘I was an only child and I’ll never forgive my parents for it.’ 

‘She’ll be weird.’ 

By the time Evie was about 15-18 months, and I felt slightly like I was being allowed back up from my new life under the sea to take a few gulps of air, I did present the idea of another to Ross. He was not totally anti the idea, but he was now a man who’d seen things - like rivers of diarrhoea at 3am and Pregnantzilla Wife. He was perfectly happy with his one precious daughter and wasn’t in a rush to add to the chaos. Curiously, no one had sidled up to him to ever whisper about the terrible evil of having just the one child. Absolutely no one. 

Of course I had healthy reasons for wanting to have a second child. I loved my baby girl so much that I was excited to see what else we might be able to magic up from my womb. I did think it would be great for her to have a sibling to love and be loved by.  My 38th birthday was looming into view. It was a now or never moment. So, Ross gave one thumb up to the idea - note, not two thumbs up. I consulted the ovulation kit once more and we got busy. (Sidebar question: HOW do those of you with two, even three kids, find the time to try for more? You are made of more stamina and the creative use of a 12-minute toddler nap, than I could conjure in a lifetime.) 

Nothing was happening. Not after four months, or six months, or eight, or ten. So I went to a specialist doctor and had all the tests and he confirmed that my hormone levels were not those of 35-year-old me. ‘You can get pregnant, but it won’t happen naturally,’ he said. He started discussing my IVF options and I will freely tell you: I mentally checked out of the conversation before I’d even left his office.

Everyone must make their own choices in these matters. And I would probably feel very differently if we were discussing me trying to have my first baby. But I knew, in an instant, that IVF was just not a path I wanted to walk. I wasn’t up for the physical regime. I wasn’t up for the emotional lows I’d seen so many disappointed couples experience. And frankly, I was not up for the expense. 

Now, I know this was not just my decision to make, but you’ve probably already guessed that Ross took no persuading on giving up trying for Baby Number 2. 

I didn’t feel heartbroken by this turn of events, which speaks volumes in itself. I genuinely had a peaceful feeling that the universe had made a decision and therefore it felt right. I could now get on with parenting my one, precious child - a privilege, I know, that has eluded many people I care about. Unbearably, there are two families in my own life who have buried children. I was also the CEO of Children With Cancer UK for two years, so I’ve seen a lot of families lose a child. Watching people navigate that will jolt you into being so happy with what you have rather than obsessing over what you don’t. 

Ultimately, it was a deeply personal experience and decision. Which is why I continued to be amazed at the uninvited commentary on our one child family unit. A colleague told me that one child ‘isn’t a proper family.’ Yet another person at work who I barely knew told me having one child was ‘a form of child abuse.’ In conversations with strangers at parties, when talk turned to, ‘Do you have kids?’ etc, and I’d say, ‘I have one daughter’, most people instantly followed up with, ‘Will you have more?’ or more startlingly, ‘Oh, why do you only have one?’ or  ‘Oh, couldn’t you have any more?’ The implication in that - that having one child could never possibly be through choice -  is jaw-dropping.

I have never felt as though having one child is in any way ‘wrong’, I don’t give a shit about others’ opinion on that. I was simply mind-blown that people really thought it was OK to ask such judgement-loaded questions. For all anyone knew, I could have been grappling with the pain of multiple miscarriages, or a serious illness. I wasn’t, but that still does not make these questions and judgements OK. ‘Why do you only have one child?’  - as if my daughter’s existence is not valid until we have another human in the house? Fuck right off.

I have friends who’ve been chastised for having three or four children too. So if you want a little pat on the head from society, you’d better make sure you have a respectable, neat two. OK? Good. 

I love my one girl. She is kind. She is smart. The one-liners she serves her mother are often vicious, but so funny with it that I can’t help but be proud. She is weird, they got that one right. And thank god because all the best people are. She is my favourite person in the whole world and I would run in front of a bus for her. 

In terms of ‘sliding doors’ moments, of course I occasionally wonder what another mini me or Ross would have been like. But it just wasn’t meant to be and that is fine. 

I’m also very relieved to now be at an age where people only have to look at me and know I’m too old to pump out any more kids, so they’ve stopped asking me about it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences around this subject. Go!