Ladies, I have a crisis on my hands.
This is worse than the time I face-planked in the playground and my kids pretended they didn’t know me.
It’s worse than the time that Low the Younger’s homemade Frosty the Snowman costume went wrong and the audience were perplexed as to why there was a singing penguin at the school Christmas show. Happy Feet Low has never recovered from the embarrassment.
It’s even worse than the day that Elvis, our goldfish, went to the big bowl in the sky and I topped the insensitivity scale by serving up fish fingers for tea the next night.
The current situation is much more serious. Yep, it’s the B-word. I’m… broody. That thumping noise is my biological clock chundering like a box of Pampers trapped in a tumble dryer.
This revelation has terrified the husband. In fact, I’m fairly sure that the only thing preventing him from leaving me is that there’s only a couple of weeks until Superbowl Sunday, so even if Kelly Brook showed up in her knick knacks carrying a case of Budweiser, he wouldn’t be tempted away from his fifty-inch plasma telly.
Instead, he’s giving me wary glances and keeping a minimum of three feet away from me at all times in case I miraculously manage to get impregnated while passing him a cup of tea and a Tunnock’s Teacake.
The cause of this hormonal surge is glaringly obvious. Welcome to the world, my three-week-old niece, Amelia. Naturally, I’m not biased in the least – she really is the most beautiful, funny, smart baby that the stork ever delivered. And I’m sure she’s got my thumbs.
I expected to do that whole ‘lovely, but nice to give them back’ thing. But, no, I’m visiting so often that the little angel’s first words are going to be ‘restraining order for the overbearing auntie, please’. Her parents are increasingly scared to open their curtains in case my face is pressed up against the window.
I can’t help think that Mother Nature is having a laugh. I’m forty-four. Knackered. There are bits of me that don’t work any more. It’s not even as if my pregnancy experiences were a thrill. I didn’t bloom and glow. No, I lumbered and sweated. By the time my sons were born, I was so huge that Health and Safety insisted I made a beeping noise when I backed out of a room.
And after extreme pregnancy weight fluctuations and two prolonged stints of breastfeeding, my breasts have gone from a 36C to a 42 Extra Long.
My boys are eleven and nine now, so I’m at the blissful stage where they are self-sufficient and independent but haven’t hit the teenage years when they’ll start crossing the road when they see me coming.
This should be an era of contentment, yet every time I see that gorgeous little face I catch myself pondering the plus sides of adding to the Low brood. That intoxicating baby smell (the baby powder one – not the one that requires investigation while wearing a gas mask). The joy that comes with every smile. And the social life. I could hang out with Beyoncé and we could go to baby classes together. She’d have wee Blue Ivy and I’d take my Scottish equivalent, wee Tartan Thistle.
I’m just praying that the logical side of my brain will wrestle control back from my hormones sometime soon.
Perhaps a few days of babysitting will put things into perspective and reduce the high-grade broodiness. Or maybe I should divert my maternal instincts elsewhere. I think it might be time to buy a new goldfish. I just need to find one that’s got my thumbs.