I love a holiday game. Give me a deck of cards and I’m on the rummy every night - assiduously keeping my winning tally. Usually against my husband, equally as ardent, regardless of the sea view competing for our attention.
Scrabble is another favourite but I can’t be doing with the travel version. Life is too short for those mini letter magnets and I need the full size to lean into my lexicon - so it doesn’t always get a look-in due to limited luggage vibes.
More recently my travels have also included Dobble (the only young-child’s card game I’ve found vaguely stimulating) which our four-year-old insists on winning but occasionally I trounce him just to keep things real.
But holidays now also include another awful game I just play with myself which is far less fun, not very healthy but utterly compulsive: the count the number of children game. This is the sequel to a previously awful game I used to play during the years we couldn’t conceive our boy: clock the number of pregnant bellies by the pool, waddling around galleries or marooned on the beach.
In fact - for a real shit sandwich - I sometimes still combine the two. Yes I’m a treasure and prone to a spot of self-sabotage. I would say - don’t try this at home or abroad. But if you know what I am on about, it’s too late. You are already an unwilling player too.
Let me explain. It is the process of walking around and mentally noting how many children people have and if a woman is expecting. Because when you are trying, you cannot help but notice the size of other people’s families. And marvel at how so many people, it seems, can procreate without needles and mind-bending drugs. (Of course - I hasten to add that I know not these individuals’ experiences of having children and things are rarely as simple as they seem). But sometimes they just are. And what it would be to have that experience of family-building.
These ‘games’ are not only reserved for holidays. This form of self-torture happens in the minds of those trying to have a baby and failing all the time in real life. At my peak, I used to jokingly refer to myself as bump patrol. I could see a pregnancy bump a mile away and while wishing nothing ill on that particular woman, the searing pain that could then hit me and my empty stomach, making me physically wince and take in some air, was something.
But on holiday, one can go play far more, especially when staying at a family resort - which I just have - in beautiful Greece.
Don’t get me wrong - it was a much-needed break that I adored. We all did. The need to feel warm all over my drug-addled and needle-punctured body is real. And post-pandemic, I especially treasure the ability to go aboard, on so many levels.
We went with dear friends, whose wonderful child is the same age as ours. Much laughter, playtime and of course, some tantrums, ensued - and not just the children I hasten to add. All around us though, I couldn’t help but notice families of two and three children. Again I don’t know these people’s stories but I don’t mind admitting that I did spend some time in sad awe.
I had to joke, such was my committed note-taking (only in my head - I promise I didn’t have my journo notepad out), that my husband should buy me one of those counters that bouncers click on the door of clubs to check how many people have come in.
A friend of mine, also trying for a second baby like myself and having experienced a huge amount of loss and trauma, prefers a slightly different version of the game. She’s a fan of trying to figure out age differences between children - as she worries about a too large one for her child, having enjoyed growing up with siblings close in age.
Here we part experiences - as I fail to relate - being an only child.
In fact many of you wrote to me after my Times article which kicked off me sharing my experiences of trying this time around, to kindly reassure me about the life of an only child. I am sorry I didn’t include that detail of my own biography in the piece as I do know the good life of an only child. In fact, I adored it. My mother and her cousin were solo kids too and I have spent time over the years reassuring parents of single children of how wonderful it was from the child’s perspective.
But that is not my vantage point at the moment. It does remain I hope a sort of hidden ace for me if I have to accept that another child isn’t possible for us in some way. But let’s return to only or single or solo children at a later date - whatever phrase you prefer.
The point is - I loved our family holiday, despite forgetting take my own tea bags (something I regretted every hour of the day - not to be too dramatic about it). And I felt so grateful to be able to have one, in the sun with our son. A dream I never thought possible only five years ago. And yet, that bloody counting game proved compulsive and impulsive.
Perhaps I just needed to pack the Scrabble after all….but who am I kidding. It wouldn’t have stopped play.
Trying...to not count
Thanks Emma for sharing. I’m in a slightly different situation. No children, never been pregnant, multiple unsuccessful ivf rounds after years and years. Always eaten well, exercised blah blah. We are currently on our last round because we decided we can’t face another. I went through a terrible stage of comparing myself to others who had children and were pregnant when I was out and about. Then all my mates (including the ones doing ivf) got pregnant and now I’m the last one left. The impulse to count and compare with others who have children is crippling. But one thing, which helped, which you touched on is that - even if externally another’s situation makes me envy them, internally there was sometimes something going with them, which made me reflect on what I count as my blessings (my husband, my dog, my interesting job, my family). That is not to downplay how I feel or the bad luck we have had, but to think of all the things that I am grateful for is what keeps me sane. Ps I hope you had a lovely holiday xx
I don’t think I have ever, ever felt as seen or understood as I did reading this article. I thought I was alone in this hideous yet compulsive self sabotage. We have a daughter, but lost our son at 22 weeks due to a late miscarriage. His due date was yesterday, which was when my best friend delivered her baby. The unfairness of it all is so overwhelming when we compare, yet I can’t stop doing it no matter how many times I point out that I know better… thank you for writing the hard truths and sharing your experiences.