My Menopause Blog

I’ve never really thought of myself as an egg producer.

I eat eggs. Not often thanks to being force fed the suckers almost daily throughout my youth. Now, with full control of what passes my lips, most of my eggs are consumed when I go out to our local diner and order the Breakfast Special on a Saturday morning.

Still, I have eggs in my fridge pretty much all the time. They’ve got the perfect lifespan for someone like me…I’m not into managing too many time sensitive foods. My egg owning is simple protection against my sugar crazed flap, which usually arrives in the dead of night, when I must whip up my chocolate cake recipe, which needs 2 eggs.

I grow hens and chicks. Not the feathered variety but rather the knarly succulent sort you see in rock gardens. My mother grew them and I suspect Granny kept some flourishing in her garden. They’re tough little dickens that survive foot, garbage can and dog poop accidents yet remain quite stylish with their close cut, thick petals and phallic, flesh coloured flowers strutting forth on long pole like stems. Roosters likely would have been a better name.

I have also referred to myself as a chick at times…yesterday in fact. I like the feeling of the word. The lightness gives my heart a wee jump, maybe like skipping Double Dutch on a spring day. And sometimes I can see my inner old hen creeping out with comments that start with “You should” or even more hennish…”You shouldn’t”.

However, the Egg Producer hat…those being of the human egg variety….technically speaking, fits, but it’s not my fashion.

Used to fit.

I’m a ‘has been’ Egg Producer.

I will admit I have never aspired to doing this well…in that, I have preferred my eggs to remain unhatched or scrambled. My fertility has never been of interest to me. Which I realize is a bit odd given all the ticking of the biological clocks that seem to deafen and torture the female population around the world.

Funny thing is, I don’t wear a watch nor do I use an alarm clock. My biological clock was flung against the wall and smashed to smithereens when I was around 14. I simply knew, clear as I know that Santa is short, that I had no interest in producing my own brood of chicks.

I’m very lucky that I understood this about myself. I feel tremendous empathy for the chicks who want, but can’t have, have but regret or who mourn the loss of fertility thanks to menopause.

Sue Richards

Tags: My Menopause Blog, Sue Richards, reproduction, fertility, peri-menopause