You don’t know about me, I’m feeling thirty three…

You gotta love a bit of mad eye Swifty, all twenty two and heartbroked, having pillow fights with her bestie having felt a bit awks in a club full of trendies. We all know what *that* feels like.

And then, one music video later, playing mommie with Ed Sheeran. That, in a nutshell is the dilemma faced by ALL women in their twenties and thirties.

Thanks Taylor, in two videos you’ve essentially summed up why feminism will never work.

I gave up my right to be heartbroken in clubs aged twenty four, by having a baby, and devoting the next seven or so years of my life to being a good mother, wife and all that stuff. By the time I felt well-rested enough to go clubbing again, I was essentially thirty, and determined to make the most of still looking reasonable.

Trying to reclaim my missing youth didn’t go down too well with anyone, now I had responsibilities AND I was OLDER.

Most importantly of all, I WAS A MOTHER. I was balancing far too many balls to be heartbroken, which essentially means ‘tired and emotional’ or just plain old drunk, in clubs. It’s unseemly in a woman ‘my age’.

Women can be judged and judgmental, being their own worst enemies most of the time for expecting certain behaviours of themselves and other women. Many of my work colleagues are getting married and sprogladating right now, full of the optimism and joy that comes will fulfilling their essential purpose in life. But what after it?

Your career in tatters unless you’ve made sacrifices at both ends, or gone against the grain and had a househusband, full-time nanny or opted for wall-to-wall nursery – at crippling cost.

You can’t do it all, sweetheart, and you’ll die trying – or at least suffer a crippling bout of PND. (Update from 2025, and I love the childless cat lady even more than I did in 2013, and she has done it all and more- and she still has time for babies, if that’s what she wants. Taylor, I believe in you!)

Anyway, having clawed back my career, and with a bit of spare time on my hands, despite a brand new house with a postage stamp back garden (yes, it’s happening…mustn’t jinx it), my hormones are playing tricks on me.

I look at Taylor’s cutsey video with Ed Sheeran where their kids fall in love and my ovaries start tugging. I forget the tantrums and the trauma, and the pain in my perenium and remember Ava’s long-lashed eyes beaming for the first time in a swimming pool as she duck paddled along blowing bubbles. Any thoughts of the endless inconvenience of nappy changes whitewashed from my brain. I look at Jonah’s gappiness and gawkiness and Ava growing long-limbed and catlike, and I long for another little bundle of duckfluff, and the chocolate laughs of a delighted toddler. Yes it’s idealised, and no I’m probably not emotionally stable enough for babies, right now, but I’m thirty-three goddam it, and my doctor is telling me to get a move on- even though I cashed my chips almost a decade before my peers.

Add to that the fear of global overpopulation, the fact that my job *might* get interesting at any point and the realisation that it takes two whole years to regain your waistline, and you can see why I’m in an agony of indecision.

So, not yet. I’m gonna take a selfish pause, while my children are old enough not to need me every minute of their days, to just *enjoy* myself for a bit. Then, maybe when my sister goes in for a second, I’ll brace myself and gird my loins for number three. Or think again about adopting, if only to avoid the newborn stage.

Yes, I’m being facetious – social services. Mothers can be FUNNY and sarcastic too, ya know. They can even be sexy, contrary to what the rest of the world likes to think about mums. So get over it. I’m in my final flush. so to speak, and don’t I just know it.

Coz all those twenty three-year-old women with rosey tinted arrogance and a particular point of view, well, let me tell ya, thirty three don’t half come along quick, love. And when you get there, you’ll still be happy, confused and lonely in the best way. But probs not free, or if you are, you might prefer not to be….or at least if you were raised on Bridget Jones like the rest of us 90s chicks.