(I have no idea why Day 17 posted after 18: they were written in order…Damn…just when I thought I figured out my phone.)
Last night I watched One Born Every Minute /em> for the very first time. I’d avoided this ‘water cooler’- for which read English staff room-staple for various reasons: I’m actually quite squeamish, and despite the huge number of friends and relatives that have given birth and shared their stories, I prefer to think of the whole process as, well, less messy, less painful: whatever happened to the stork?
(Why do these women want to share what is admittedly an incredibly significant but horribly painful and what should be utterly private moment on tv? I duly cried with the birth of each red and messy little bundle; feeling as if I was intruding on something that was just too special to share.)
Mostly I didn’t watch this or programmes like it because it reminds me of a dream I once had. Visiting friends with babies; is too, this bittersweet experience for entirely the same reason.
Once upon a time, I thought I’d meet a guy, we’d date, he’d propose in the most romantic way imaginable, we’d marry, I’d get pregnant and finally all those wonderful moments I’d imagined since I was old enough to hold a doll would be mine. And, yes, I realise marriage and motherhood brings its own heartache: and that no-one is guaranteed fertility even if they have the Daddy factor worked out.
Putting my Mummy dream way back on the shelf of possibility (right beside the one that has images of me in a wedding dress) is a difficult thing to do but the biological reality makes it an action I must commit to. I refuse to become a woman that other woman ‘protect’ from their pregnancy announcements and birth stories, from babysitting duties and child parties. I want to continue to delight in such things: to treasure the moments spent with my goddaughter and my nephew: rather than looking at each beautiful little bundle aching for the moment I will have one of my own.
Surely, feminism/ womanhood, society of 2012 allows me to have worth in the world even if I’m not a wife and mother.
Moving the motherhood ideal outta the way leaves space for me to pursue something else…or at the very least consider what that ‘something else’ might be.
