Call me a fantasist, but if I’d pulled out a calculator and added up the true cost of motherhood, I’d never have had kids. Instead, I was fighting my biological clock – aged 38 and desperate to be a mother with a low ovarian reserve. Having had a cavalier approach to children up until this point, I sat in a fertility specialist’s Harley Street Office and it sank in that it was my last chance saloon. The cost of a child was the furthest thing from my mind. It was all about how I was going to have one – and I remember calling my partner from my car, sobbing: “It’s an emergency. We have to have a baby now.” It was primal.
I needed to have IVF, which used all my savings. It was fortunate I even had any – and it meant I’d have no buffer if I did have a child. Did I care? No. Did I lie awake at night wondering about the motherhood penalty? Spiralling housing costs? Unaffordable childcare costs? The unbalanced parental leave system? Dire maternity leave pay? Putting my career on hold? How much the nursery school down the road cost? The crumbling NHS maternity units? The gender pay gap?
