Wendyl Nissen: Maybe baby

"Do you have a favourite brand?" asked the nice man behind the counter.

"God no!" I replied in shock. "Look at me!" He smiled kindly and then recommended one he said people preferred for its accuracy.

"Thanks," I mumbled as I paid and stumbled out of the shop.

At 47, it appears I look like the kind of woman who buys a lot of pregnancy tests. Obviously a late-life mother in waiting. I had hoped he might think I was buying it for my daughter, or a homeless waif I had taken under the shelter of my elderly wing, perhaps.

I got home and tried to read the packet. I needed my glasses.

"I think it'll be the same as it used to be," said my husband, who had been standing some way off in the kitchen, distancing himself from the drama, possibly a little late in the process. "One line is negative, two is positive."

"Hrrumph," was all I could think to say as I made my way to the toilet.

It was Monday. The day before was Sunday, when I had lunch with a few girlfriends. After a while we began sharing our various health issues, as you do in your late-40s. In our 20s and 30s, we had more interesting things to talk about, such as sex, shopping and, well ... sex.

I discovered that there were a few discrepancies about the behaviour of my ageing body with those I was having lunch with. I'll spare you the details, but there I was on Monday at my doctor with what I thought was a fairly easy complaint to deal with. I had Googled it, I even knew the name of the drug I needed.

Dream patient, that's me. Half an hour later I had been poked, prodded and sampled and was on my way to get a scan.

"Just to check," reassured the doctor. "I'm sure it's fine."

I quite like scans. They don't hurt so I hopped up, lay back and relaxed.

"Did your doctor tell you that this would be internal?" said the woman, before getting on with it. There was a long silence. "So have you had a pregnancy test?" she asked thoughtfully.

"No," I replied. "Should I?"

"Mmm, might be an idea. There's something there which looks like a very small foetus, but it might be something else."

"I'm ancient," I protested. "I can't have a baby."

"It happens," she said.

"My husband had a vasectomy," I insisted.

"It happens," she said.

I have never seen myself as the type of woman who had things happen to her.

"If you're pregnant I am never having sex with you again," said the husband, who was obviously in shock.

We disappeared to our computers, where he Googled "chances of a vasectomy failing" and I typed in "chances of late-life baby being mentally disabled".

It took us half an hour to decide that we would keep it. He had an epiphany while hanging out the washing, while I just spotted our baby pictures on the wall.

"That's it then," I said, full of doom. "Our lives are over for another 20 years. I'll be 68 at its 21st and you'll be 73. The poor child."

Friends offered to adopt it, which for a while seemed like a good idea - until I realised that it would be living just around the corner and I knew I'd find myself slightly deranged, standing in its nursery at 2am.

We presumed the older kids would help with babysitting. And we knew that our 12-year-old would find this, like most other things we do, highly inconvenient and deeply mortifying.

"How many things do you imagine look like a small foetus on a scan?" I asked my husband as we waiting for one line or two to emerge.

"I don't know - lots of things I imagine, it's just a blob."

"Don't say that, it'll hear you," I said, before the timer went off and we had a look.

One line. Negative. "I'm never having lunch with those women again," I said, before depositing the test stick in the bin.

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