I’M LATE, I’M LATE FOR A VERY IMPORTANT DATE

Timekeeping has never been my strong point; ask my employers, my friends or anyone who knows me. I’m one of those people who sets her watch five minutes fast in order to try and con herself into keeping time. But it doesn’t work, so I am always late for school, late with meals, late for friends, late with my deadline for this diary and now, to top it all, late with my period. The late period has caused more than a little heartache as two tests have shown a resounding negative. So far from fantasising about gender, playing with names and writing an enormous shopping list I am perusing the Internet diagnosing myself with various frightening conditions. Of course, the sensible thing is to see my GP, and an appointment is in the diary (for ten minutes earlier than booked), but it still leaves me plenty of time to worry and agonises over what might have been and what is going to happen.

And it’s not just the fact that I’m frightened something is wrong that is upsetting me. It is also the fact that another month has passed and that brings me closer towards 40 with no sign as yet of a baby. I try and remain calm about this but it’s hard when you pick up a of the Daily Mail and you’re faced with five women all grinning out with enormous big clocks pasted over their fannies. (Cue Carry On Jokes.) The headline ran something like “How much time have you got left?” Dear God. OK, OK, I know I shouldn’t read the Mail if I want a reasoned viewpoint but I don’t enough brain cells left, especially in the mornings, to tackle the Grauniad. Mind you, I took some heart from the fact that according to the eminent fertility doctor quoted in the article I shouldn’t have any kids at all. But, having found the woman most like me in terms of age and lifestyle there was no getting away from the fact that I only have ONE YEAR LEFT.

Earlier on in the week I read a wonderful article by Rachel Cusk (if you’ve not read “A Life’s Work”, I urge you to do so), on when the right time is to have a baby. Wonderfully articulate and tenderly emotional, she concluded, quite rightly, that there is no ‘right time’, but did still allude to missing out by leaving it too long. Although I don’t put her in the same boat as other scaremongering journos, there does seem to be a vogue currently for warning women that leaving it too long can spell disaster.

Call me Oliver Stone if you want, but I have a nasty feeling that there is a bit of a conspiracy going on to panic women into earlier pregnancies thus getting them out of the workplace. The Observer ran a positively scurrilous article some weeks ago (they later had to correct some of their ‘facts’) which made me feel that having a go at a career was like playing Russian roulette with your chances of having a baby. You just can’t get away from the feeling at the moment that careers and children are either ors as far as the media is concerned.

But I feel like I’m living proof that you can have both, though not necessarily at the same time! And although I am still worried about my ovaries celebrating their fortieth birthday, I take heart from the fact, that like many other things in my life I was late getting there, but have still made it on the kids front. I didn’t meet Steve till four years ago, and now we have Olly and Billy, regular letters from the noise abatement society, a nice fat overdraft and a mortgage that is competing nicely with the value of our house. What can I say? Good things come to those that are late.

Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 3) and daughter Billie (aged 2) in Hertfordshire.