For Earth Day, 2024.
Multiple times, almost every day, I think about having a baby.
It is everything I think about but everything is about more than just a baby.
So, before you make any assumptions, this isn’t a personal essay about my experience with the biological clock. I know for many reasons, in the practical sense, that I’m not ready to make such a drastic life-changing decision. I’m not ready because although I’m starting to build a bit more financial stability, I know I likely need to find some more stability in myself, first – but it is very rare that I ever go a day without thinking about it.
Every day, something will trigger the thought, like watching a parent pushing a pram or cautiously tail behind a wobbly child on a bike. I think about it when I watch my niece innocently playing with her dolls, pretending they’re ordering pizza before sliding them down the side of a plastic chimney of a toy house. I think about it when my nephew speaks in a way that reminds me of how fast he’s growing, growing up so fast that he’s almost as old as I was when he was born.
Sometimes, I think about it without any prompting, as if the thought is always there like it’s my default setting, tuned in to the frequency of the future.
For a long time now, I’ve wondered how best to communicate what it’s like to be acutely aware of the fact that the world is forever changed and changing. I’ve wondered how to express the complexity of it, how to accurately depict the day-in, day-out cycle of the thoughts that come with being an actively ‘climate aware person’. I’ve been looking for ways to express the confusion that it all comes with, the dilemmas that I face on an everyday basis.
I think I’ve figured out that what I need to do is lay it all out as if you don’t know me. I must peel back the layers and shed them, on the off chance that you might understand part of what I see, a little clearer.
I write this all knowing I’m one of the lucky ones who gets to watch it all unfold slowly, from the safety of my home which has yet to be devastated by our changing climate’s full force. Somewhere, somehow though, my words might reach the right person and so, I will try.
Multiple times, almost every day, I think about when the right time to have a baby will be. Should we start a family in the next couple of years? Will it help if they see the world as it is now, rather than the world it will become if we wait? Why is it that when I look at the children already in my life, I don’t question their timing? Their timing was always meant to be.
I think about how certain I feel that having a child will be the right decision for me. I have debated it over and over in my mind but I have an overwhelming feeling that it is a deeply profound human experience that I have the right to, which wins over every doubt. We are on a small rock in the middle of the universe, and I am – or at least, I really hope I am – able to create life, with my body. It is a miraculous thing, like something born of stardust.
Multiple times, every day, I think of other things, too. I think about the single-use rubbish I put in my bin. I think about the plastic tofu containers with the non-recyclable film I haven’t peeled off; the oat milk carton that must be thrown out; the toothbrush tube that will end up in a landfill; the broken pieces of jewellery that I find when clearing out my flat to move house, tossed in a black bin bag.
I think about the strawberries I forgot to eat in my fridge, going mouldy. That half-empty packet of microwavable rice. I think about the microplastics on my cheap flimsy chopping board as I cut up an onion. Rinse and repeat.
In the new home I’ve recently moved into, I tap myself on the back for all of the second-hand furniture we’ve managed to source before looking at the gas bill I’m now responsible for. I think about the petrol-guzzling car I’m a frequent passenger in and the freedom it brings me.
At least a few times a week, I think about flying. I look at other people jet-setting across the world, booking holidays without thought, exploring far-flung places and soaking up warm sunlight which I so desperately yearn to feel across my skin. I think about what it would mean to do the same, what a betrayal it would be, knowing full well that there are plane tickets sitting in my email inbox, justified by friendship.
I wonder if what I’m really doing is self-sabotaging under the guise of doing good, holding myself back from experiences people don’t even question; even the people who I look to and think they’d hold back, too.
Every now and then, I have to excuse myself and leave a room, not explaining my reason for escape because what I’m thinking and feeling feels too big. I’ll be triggered by a throwaway remark about how the future is doomed, from someone who is doing nothing to stop it. I want to sit them down and show them the tears I’m trying to hide and ask, “Why, no seriously, why aren’t you crying with me, too?”.
There are people in my life who haven’t seen the tears I’ve shared with my partner as we come to terms with the science spelt out in front of us. There are people who haven’t seen me loudly cry and sob and weep in the cinema at a film depicting the very future I’m afraid of.
I don’t think about the big dramatic, record-breaking headlines as frequently anymore – there’s only so much one can think about, after all – but I do think about whether that makes me avoidant, sleepwalking like everybody else.
Sometimes, I think about other things but none of it ever truly goes away. I tune into conversations in cafes, hoping to catch a glimpse of other people thinking the way I think too. I feel a strange sense of comfort when it does eventually happen, their words like a pinch to my skin, reassuring me that I’m really here existing in the messiness of it all.
Every sunset feels momentous, like something to be treasured. Every storm feels like one to make note of, every hot day a reminder.
Every sunset feels momentous, like something to be treasured. Every storm feels like one to make note of, every hot day a reminder.
Multiple times, almost every day, I think about having a baby. I think about what it would mean to hold them in my arms and know that everything I’ve done and everything I do is for them. I think about whether it would push me to do more or whether they would see what I do as enough.
I think about the fossil fuel executive who told me to my face that he works for an oil company on behalf of the three children he’s already had. I think about how his words made me crumple into a ball as a young woman who can only hope she gets to have a family of her own before it all feels too late. I think about the young women whose lives have been threatened, harmed and ended too soon.
I know it could be very easy to read this and worry, to rush to solve my concerns and soothe them over with some sort of reassuring balm but I must remind you that there isn’t a wound within me that needs healing. A rush to try and calm my nerves or to try and point me in another direction is a rush to fix the wrong problem.
The problem is that we have created a world that needs healing.
And just like the many people who feel they have a right to look the other way and try to suppress it for as long as reality will allow them to, I have the right to look it head on and hold on tight, with everything I’ve got, even if it’s painful.
Even if it means that multiple times, every day, I think about having a baby and what the world will look like when they first open their eyes.
I desperately hope that what they see is beautiful.
