THE BABY WINDOW
I’ve been thinking lately about the “baby window”. Nothing to do with circadian rhythms or biological clocks, but about circumstances. Have I missed mine?
Most will have heard of the sleep window; that magic moment when you’re drowsy and you can fall asleep easily. A moment you miss because you’re doing other things, or ruin by looking at a blue screen, brushing your teeth, talking or working. And if you miss it, getting to sleep becomes that much harder.
So what do I mean by a baby window? When things line up. A committed partner, the right age, a support network of friends and family, a place to live, enough financial stability to make it happen. But then something shifts. A new job offer, a breakup, a health scare. And having a baby is put on hold or becomes that much harder.
I’m pretty good at falling asleep, but it’s staying asleep where I run into trouble. I wake up around 2am or 3am and lie in the darkness staring at the ceiling. I try and keep my eyes shut and concentrate on sleep. It doesn’t work. I imagine a sunlit beach and waves crashing against the shore and my feet sinking into the warm, textured sand (a relaxation method I learned during a yoga class about 10 years ago). I’m still awake. I flick on the light and pick up a book and try to read. Or I give in and scroll through Twitter or the BBC news app. And then as a last resort I read my work emails, cementing the fact that I’m awake and will for a while.
With some money in the bank and more career experience behind me, I’m skimming close to 40 without a partner and without kids. Those last few years of singledom akin to the frustrating hours spent trying to sleep. Forcing yourself to relax and not to worry, when somewhere deep inside you can feel the panic starting to rise.
The more you worry about not sleeping, the further you slip away from sleep. The more you worry about your declining fertility and dying alone eaten by cats, the less attractive you probably become. You can take on the strung out, desperate air of someone who’s been battling insomnia for the last week.
When you really want it, sleep never plays ball. Before an important meeting, a wedding, an early flight, before Christmas morning when you’re a kid.
When I’m awake at 3am I think about how things are shaping up for me and I try not to worry. But I do worry: that I’ll never meet anyone, if I can come to terms with never being a mum, and occasionally I weigh up if I can do it alone. I Google celebrities to see how old they were when they got married or had kids, looking for people to compare myself to. To give me hope. And not the friend of a friend that someone heard about the other day.
But then sleep eventually overwhelms me, and when I wake to the sound of my neighbours arguing over breakfast and the pigeons nesting above my window, the future seems less bleak. It’s true that I drag myself to work looking five years older and feeling like I have a hangover but today is another day. Maybe it will be “the day”. The opening of a new window.
