The earliest dream I can remember involved boil-in-the-bag babies.
I dreamt my mother wanted a new child, so she bought it from the supermarket, a small, square frozen lump in a plastic bag. My grandma put it in a pan of boiling water, and we all stood around enthralled as a baby unfurled. I remember watching its eyes open, and its teeth pop into place, one by one.
It occurred to me yesterday that I was still clinging to the idea of the boil-in-the-bag baby, frozen in stasis, ready for the moment I wanted it.
My plan to freeze my eggs has failed, you see. Yet again, my insubordinate body has refused to make things easy for me. I just don’t have enough of the right sort of hormones at the right time to make the grade. Unsurprising, I suppose, but strangely undermining all the same.
For me, the option of freezing eggs was a wonderful luxury, while it lasted. It allowed me to carry on being indecisive while my fertility inevitably declined.
I hugely envy the women and men who are sure when the time is right to have children, or who, alternatively, are absolutely certain they don’t want them at all. I’ve just never felt like that. I’ve never felt the urgent pull of ‘now’, and yet I can’t bring myself to say ‘never’.
The best I can manage is ‘later, if at all’, but I can see that I’m going to be allowed that. However much I want it to be the case – and I don’t believe this is a moral issue, just a matter of physical possibility – I don’t have the option of storing away my babies in the freezer, ready for a potential future defrosting.
And after I’d finished crying to Herbert about my stupid, bastard luck, those limited choices suddenly seemed refreshing. There’s something exhausting about putting things off indefinitely.
