I sat down to the statement: “Our eggs are dying!” I took a swig of my large Shiraz and looked across the table at my hysterical friend, “Our…What?” I replied with a half smile, and could see her eyes searching mine for some compliance in her panic. I had known her ever since I can remember. We had always shared everything, the same name, the same school, the same 2.4 family life, the same age. Only now, I was to discover, our age seemed to be working against us. “Our eggs… EGGS!” She gestured frenziedly at her midriff.

It transpired my oldest, dearest, somewhat neurotic friend had read an article about fertility and was mortified to discover at the grand old age of 28 our most fertile window had closed and that as we get older, the quality of the eggs we produce rapidly decreases. As she hit me with the facts and figures, my thoughts turned to my own inner portion. Until that moment, I had always been proud that I had waited for the right man, the right time, the right financial place. Now I started to wonder; had I created this barren wasteland that was becoming my womb? I had never realised the power of a choice until I was reminded that one day soon, it may be taken away.

I was 25 when I first felt the stirring in my loins. My womb began to talk to me on a regular basis. Whenever we saw a mother with her baby we were engrossed. We would absorb every detail of their interaction. Then my womb and I would fantasise about what our baby would look like. We have decided it will have my eyes and my mouth, but not my ginger hair, as that would only lead to teasing in the playground. We have thought of everything my womb and me, yet never did we conceive that it might not happen; that we would evolve to be an empty space, or remain a void unfilled. I have an almost animalistic desire to become someone from which another originates.

As a race, we know we are living longer. The average age of a woman giving birth has risen consistently in the last two decades reaching 29.3 years in 2008; partially due to the almost uninterrupted increases in fertility, since the 1980s, of women in their thirties and forties. So are we listening to our minds rather than our bodies? As a woman who admires those before me who fought for my right to be equal to a man, I am fiercely independent and have always been pro choice. However, I cannot help but yearn for the uncomplicated rituals of the old days. A time that embraced the tradition of, courtship, engagement, marriage; Moving from the parental home into the marital one, leading to the metaphorical pitter patter of tiny feet. My ovaries throb at the thought.