You can’t Botox your ovaries

Today, for the first time I realised my knees are going. Not in the sense that they creak when I go down a flight of stairs. They’ve been doing that for ages. No. It’s more that the skirt I’m wearing is three inches too short. My knees are starting to sag, and, unless I want to start looking like mutton, I need to cover them up. There’s a reason Duchess Kate always goes knee length, and that’s because, to look like a classy bird at 35, one really ought to hide one’s lower thighs. 

It’s the same with other parts. This last year has been cruel, and, what I carried off equally well at 17, 25 and 32 has suddenly become a no-go. It started with an all over bleach job, which, while it cost me a hundred quid, just looks cheap with roots. Red lipstick has started to blur round the edges, and I’m pretty sure my fangita has lost an inch in height. Two babies saw to the breadth years ago, but we don’t speak of it. I may have caved to a nose job after an accident on the dry ski slopes in my teens, but fillers are starting to feel like a really good idea, and I don’t just mean in my bra, which is definitely lower than it has been. 

No, it’s not my declotage or hands that are giving me away, though I reckon I’ve got half an extra one in girth on last year (I just got back from taking Ava to riding and a horsey metaphor seems apt). It’s my cheeks, although my hind ones are ample enough. They say you have to choose between your face and your arse, but honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever lose my derriere enough to have to worry about that. And  I know we shouldn’t have to worry about any of it, but aging can be a cruel joke when you remember quite well exactly how elastic things used to be. 

But it’s this sudden swing towards gravity that’s had me nodding in agreement with how hidden aging can be for so long. If my body’s finally starting to show its age at 35, then how things are faring inside is anyone’s guess, but my aches and pains tell me things have been complaining when I overdo it for a while.

As kind- if slightly off-their-faces- folks told me recently at Field Day, I may still get away with looking 28 with beer googles on, the next morning, when I’m stone cold sober and my liver’s taken a bashing, I can easily look and feel twice that. Inside, both me and my body know exactly how old I am, and my lackadaisical approach to contraception these days proves it. 

Getting knocked up with Jonah aged 25, when I had a couple of drinks and got a bit slack meant conception was practically immaculate. Ten years later, I might worry about near misses but my body’s pretty adamant nothing’s gonna stick. It’s a good thing too. Having a baby at 25 may have set my career back a good five years, but I don’t doubt the collateral damage to my figure, not least my sanity if I did it again, would be moreorless terminal.

But then again, who cares? There’s a reason men tend to fancy 25 year olds, and that’s because they are fertile. Today’s report that suggested women should be having babies at 25 if they want to avoid fertility problems confirms me in my descision, made consciously or otherwise, to “get motherhood out of the way”, or at least make hay while the sun shines. 

Because for all it may have been an uphill struggle as a young mum, these days I am virtually I encumbered. So I can go forth, not multiply and make up for lost time while my peers no doubt suffer more for their pregnancies, and all that goes with it, than I when I was in my prime. And for the rest, well I can prop up my forehead if need be and to heck with the consequences of injecting poison into my wrinkles, as my body’s now mine to do with as I please. 

The necessary selflessness of early motherhood may have left its mark, but unlike fertility problems, it’s all still easily fixable. You can’t as they say, Botox your ovaries, and that’s something society, not just women, probably needs to think about, if it wants to fix what’s wrong with that.