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The number of women aged over 40 having babies has now overtaken those under 20 for the first time in almost 70 years.
Sounded encouraging enough…until you got to the bit that said:
As well as it potentially taking longer to get pregnant, later maternity can involve a greater risk of miscarriage, a more complicated labour, and medical intervention at the birth. Conceiving does take longer the older you are, and that is a reality—you have fewer quality eggs towards your later 30s, so each month there’s a lower chance the mature egg your ovaries produce will be good enough to fertilise. So at 40, you have a 5% chance of conceiving per cycle, compared with a 20% chance at 30. Furthermore, treatments such as IVF don’t work for everybody, and success rates also decline with increasing female age…
Oh, great.
Not looking good for me, then, was it (as Fertility Felicity had also ‘kindly’ pointed out), seeing as I was single and knocking forty? Nope. This was not helping me at all…
Speculation was the worst thing to do. The only way I was going to know for sure was to go and see an expert myself. I couldn’t face it right now, though. I needed to sort my head out first. All this Googling and Facebook stalking I had done today was toxic. I locked the screen of my iPad and went back to sleep. And it was 6 p.m. This wasn’t good.
I woke up at 8.37 p.m., feeling a bit more positive. I needed to get out of this destructive obsessing/oversleeping cycle. First things first: I started by arranging an FTA catch-up next week, as Bella and Roxy were both busy over the coming days and I preferred to see them in person rather than chat on the phone.
Next, Lorenzo.
Maybe I’d message him tomorrow…
No!screamed Reasanna.Has Albert’s passing taught you nothing? Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today?
True. Okay. Right. I needed to think about what to say:I can’t stop thinking about you and drooling over your beautiful pictures on Facebook.
Definitely not.
It was true, though. I don’t think I’d stopped thinking about him since I’d got back. If men think about sex every seven seconds, then I must have been thinking about Lorenzo every five. In fact, no. Make that four. I kept thinking about his lips all over me and replayingthis time two days ago we were…thoughts in my head. Bloody hell.
Those four days had shown me so much. I got it now. I understood how fun life could be. How you could lose yourself and feel happiness and joy. How people got married after knowing each other for just a few weeks.
Oh yes. That was another thing I had shamelessly been doing. Practising how our names would sound together (Sophia Rossidid have a nice ring to it…), imagining us getting hitched (even though, despite my parents being married for forty-five years, I had never really been into the whole marriage thing myself), planning how many kids we’d have if I was still able to conceive (two), which was debatable after this afternoon’s gloomy online research, and what we’d call them (Florence for a girl as a tribute to where we’d kind of met, and Angelo for a boy—a strong Italian name) and mentally decorating the dream family home we’d live in together after he moved to London to be with me.
Why do women like me who are normally sensible and intelligent have these crazy thoughts after knowing a man for five minutes and before we’ve even found out how they like their coffee? Next thing you know, I’d be scrawlingS loves L.over press releases and my notebook like some lovesick thirteen-year-old. So embarrassing.
I started jotting down my thoughts as a draft email:
Hi, Lorenzo,
Really enjoyed our lessons together. You’re an excellent teacher. I think we’ve mastered lesson number 1. Still available for lesson no 2…?
There. Nice and light. Not too full-on, with a hint of flirting. I’d put my mobile number at the bottom. And if I didn’t receive an email or message back, at least I’d know he wasn’t interested and I could just move on.
I’d considered going for a walk to let my thoughts marinate and to check that I was one hundred percent happy with what I’d written, but I needed to continue the relaxed approach I’d adopted in Italy and stop overthinking things.
It’s not like I was submitting an official announcement from a client for publication inThe Times. It was just supposed to be a casual email. Not too contrived. Just natural.
I read it one more time.That’s fine.
I typed in his email address, skim-read it again and then hovered my finger over the send button.
Once I click this little blue button, everything could change.
I was apprehensive, but I had to do it.
I pushed my thumb down.
That’s it. Gone. Nothing I can do about it now. The ball is firmly in his court.
Right. Time to take my mind off things. Mum had messaged me earlier about coming round for dinner one evening this week. I messaged her back to say tomorrow or Sunday would be best and to let me know.
I was feeling peckish so went to the fridge, took out the leftover cod with leeks, ready to reheat, and just as I was closing the door, my phone chimed. Then pinged again.
