"I thought my biological clock was broken. It’s not."

The words that changed everything I thought. About everything.

I never heard that ticking clock, until now.

“Your husband is borderline. It doesn’t mean we know anything for sure. It just means we have to investigate a little further.”

I’ll be really honest here. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted kids of my own.

But it was in that very moment that I first heard it.

Tick.

People said it would start one day, but truthfully, I started to believe that, for me, the biological clock might just be permanently switched off.

Tick.

But the minute I heard those words from my doctor, it started.

Tick.

I was I never the little girl that used to daydream about babies. Sure, I had dolls that I loved and cared for as if they were real babies. But I remember saying when I was as young as 12 years old that falling pregnant wasn’t something I wished for.

I always said I would adopt if I did decide I wanted kids. And people’s response was always the same.

“Don’t worry, that baby clock will soon start ticking.”

But it didn’t. Birthday after birthday. No tick.

It’s not that I don’t like kids or babies. I am the first to coo over a pair of chubby cheeks. I was the best babysitter (modest, I know). I love holding babies. I love spoiling my sibling’s kids and I am the first to sit down to drawing and playing kid-games with my friends’ kids.

But not once did I ever look at a chubby baby and think, “I want one of those”.

Until my doctor came back with the results of my husband’s blood test.

Without lecturing you on third-year genetic chemistry, the deal is I have a dormant genetic disorder. Which is fine. It just hangs out inside me, making everything look weird and having doctors freak out until they know what it is. But that’s about it.

As long as my husband doesn’t have it. Because in the extremely rare case that he has it too, then we can’t have children.

And by can’t, I mean can’t. We're talking miscarriages. Still births. And if we would be able to beat the DNA and give birth, the baby wouldn’t be healthy. They would barely live. They wouldn’t blow out the candles on their 5th birthday cake.

His blood tests came back borderline. Potentially borderline to make ‘can’t’ a reality.

Tick.

I’d never heard a clock tick so loudly until that day.

I’d never looked down at my stomach and wondered what it would look like pregnant. I did that day.

I’d never noticed how many babies and pregnant women are around. I noticed each and every one that day.

I’d never held a newborn and thought, “I want one”. Until later that same week I visited my friend in the maternity ward. And it didn’t help that ticking clock when she said I looked like a natural mother as I held her baby.

I’d never walked down the baby aisle at the grocery store and wondered whether I would ever shop those shelves. I did that, too.

I’d never researched adoption in Australia. I did that. Several years wait.

Tick.

This is the part of the post where I know you want me to say, “The doctors over reacted. False alarm. Baby making begin”.

But the truth is, they are still checking. After a false hope of the all clear, we are back to more testing.

And the truth is: I’m no longer petrified they will tell me “can” or “can’t”.

I’m petrified that they won’t have a definite answer. I’m petrified they will give me a percentage that isn’t 100.

I’m petrified they will tell me that we will need to decide whether to chance it. Whether we will roll the dice, with stakes that have never been so high.

And while I wait for some kind of answer, that damn clock keeps ticking.

Have you ever experienced a similar diagnosis? Do you have any words of support for our writer?

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