I froze my eggs and sized up sperm donors while watchin…

I used to do it in the supermarket queue. It probably looked quite creepy. There I was, standing with my basket, squinting at a nearby baby or toddler.

It was a test: did I want one? Could I imagine myself as that woman with a carrier strapped to her chest, or that one over there instructing her small son to put a magazine back on its shelf?

This habit started a decade ago, around the time I turned 30. That was when everything changed. Or at least it felt that way to me. The subtle societal messaging until then had been: ‘Don’t get pregnant, don’t get pregnant! Concentrate on your job! You must be a career woman!’

Then, almost overnight, it reversed: ‘Quick, quick, find someone, get pregnant now!’

There’s a specific window when educated, middle-class women are supposed to get pregnant nowadays. Not too early (bit embarrassing – was it an accident?), but not too late, either (oh dear, left on the shelf, were you?). This window stretches from around 30 until 38.

During those years, I had two major relationships and, between them, the odd dalliance. But no baby.

Friends and siblings around me started having theirs – one, two, three or, in a few cases, four children, while I remained unsure. Unsure that I wanted a baby, and not entirely convinced by my relationships. Lovely men but forever is a long time, isn’t it?

It’s a strange, alienating thing, drifting through the baby years with no baby. I became a godparent to ten children; I bought books on the subject. How come everyone else seemed so clear on the matter? How come they were popping out babies like Pez dispensers?

One of these books was a compendium of 16 essays by Americans who didn’t have children – men and women, writing about their decision. It was called Selfish, Shallow And Self-Absorbed, because that’s what those who don’t want children apparently are.

I talked to those who didn’t have children; I watched those who did. Who had it better? Which side should I pick?

Next, I delayed this decision by freezing my eggs. I was 35 by this point, newly single, and decided it would buy me some time.

Egg freezing is no guarantee of a baby in the future, it’s not a perfect science. But 35 is also the age, say the doctors, that a woman’s egg quality starts dropping off.

If I could stash 20 eggs in the freezer, that would give me an 80 per cent chance of a ‘live birth’ (why is fertility-related language so hateful?) down the line.

By now, Covid had arrived, so I went to hospital appointments and spread my legs in the stirrups while nurses poked around wearing face masks.

This is all for a good cause, I told myself, as my lower abdomen swelled like a barrel from all the injections.

My hormone drugs were stashed in my sister’s fridge – beside her small daughters’ yoghurt pots and blueberries – because I was in a pandemic bubble with her at the time.

In the end, after a dramatic rush to the hospital, my operation was brought forward a day because my oestrogen levels were too high.

I produced 22 eggs in a process that cost just over £5,500. Or around £250 per egg, which makes them even more expensive than Burford Browns from Waitrose if you can imagine such a thing. But worth it, I felt, and still feel, for the relative peace of mind. Some breathing space.

And so I kicked the decision down the road again. If I was still single when I was 39, I decided I’d give single parenthood a go with the frozen eggs.

I have several girlfriends who’ve gone down that route and watched them in awe. In many ways, my mother confided to me, doing it by oneself might be easier. No rows over how to raise a child because there’s only one of you.

I spent some time on sperm bank websites, where you can read about likes and dislikes, hair colour, ethnicity, and also see handwriting samples and even listen to audio recordings of their voice. I found one who mentioned P.G. Wodehouse in his profile and texted it to the family WhatsApp group. ‘He’s the one,’ Mum replied.

And then, aged 38, I fell in love. Properly in love, this time. Mike was older than me, in his 50s, and had been married before. He had two grown-up sons. He talked openly about relationships and their challenges with an honesty I’d never come across before. We were inseparable within weeks. It was as if we’d come across one another after a storm and knew everything would now be fine.

Within months of meeting, we discussed having a baby, and he said he’d always longed for a daughter. Maybe, I thought. Maybe I could have a baby with this compassionate, wise man.

‘We could not not try?’ Mike suggested, seven months into the relationship. In other words, we could continue sleeping together, no contraception, and leave things to chance.

I’ve had this conversation with girlfriends before. Not-not trying for a baby isn’t so removed from trying, is it? If you’re having unprotected sex with someone, there’s a reasonable chance you could get pregnant.

What about a dog in the meantime? Mike said he’d been about to give up dating and get his own dog before we met. I’d long wanted one but was never sure it would be practical with my freelance writing job – darting around the country for interviews and research.

But together, we could manage it. We lay in bed together scrolling through rescue websites. At one stage I suggested we get puppies from the same litter, siblings, so they could stay together.

‘What if we broke up?’ Mike queried, and I laughed, knowing that was impossible.

Eventually, on a sunny Sunday in June last year, we drove to a small market town just outside Birmingham to collect a ten-week-old terrier I’d decided would be called Dennis.

I find comparisons between babies and puppies silly – can a puppy really be compared to a small human? But the first few months were brutal. There were sleepless nights because I had to carry Dennis outside at 3am to wee on the grass; no more lie-ins because Dennis needed to go to the park; no evenings out because Dennis couldn’t be left alone for that long.

At one point, I Googled ‘no sex life with a puppy?’ and scrolled through a Reddit thread on the subject to reassure myself that other couples were also too exhausted to manage sex as well as a new puppy.

Any thoughts about a baby were noticeably quieter during this period. Which was probably just as well because Mike then left. Suddenly, very shockingly, and with very little explanation, only days after we’d discussed where we might retire to one day.

I was left holding the puppy, heartbroken and about to turn 40. I was the wrong end of the baby years, still no baby, and now single again. Not ideal. Not what I’d dreamt of when younger.

In the past year or so, feeling as if time is running out, I’ve quizzed plenty of women on the subject. I interviewed a 51-year-old woman who has a three-year-old daughter, thanks to frozen eggs. ‘You’ve got plenty of time,’ she told me, when I said that I had 22 eggs in the freezer.

On the other hand, in the summer, I met a sensationally wise and glamorous 50-something Italian woman who lives in Venice and has four grown-up children.

‘If you’ve got this far, and you haven’t felt the need (to have them), and you have this fabulous life, maybe that’s telling you something,’ she said.

So, which way will I jump with those frozen eggs? Ten years on from when I started thinking about it, I’m still squinting at babies in supermarkets. Still not absolutely decided, although I do know now that I wouldn’t do it by myself.

I can see how magical it must be to have a baby with someone you love, but I don’t feel strongly enough, or rich enough, to go it alone.

‘I half wish I was 45 and the decision was made,’ a single 30-something girlfriend remarked recently, and I understood.

By that point, really, the great debate will be over: in the vast majority of cases, as a woman, you either have children or you don’t.

Until then, some exist in a hinterland, not sure which way to go. And there are growing numbers of us – the most recent figures show that the fertility rate has fallen in England and Wales for the third year in a row.

Women are not only having babies later but increasingly choosing not to have them at all. (Perhaps they’re all getting dogs, instead?)

I suspect, given that I haven’t had a baby by now, I’ll end up in the latter group. We’re not supposed to say childless these days. Too negative. It has to be ‘child-free’.

I’m now in a relationship with a very wonderful if unconventional man who has never married or had children.

We talk about it vaguely but, slowly, I’m coming to the conclusion that the wise Italian lady was on to something. I love my friends’ and siblings’ children. But I also quite love removing myself from them again, returning to my life, with my dog, and my relative freedom.

The ending of my new book, a memoir about falling out of love with a man and in love with a puppy, is ambiguous. Having overcome the break-up with Mike and eventually having got Dennis more house-trained and under control, I write that I don’t know exactly what my life will look like going forwards.

My editor, having read it, suggested an epilogue tying it up more neatly, but I refused. Life isn’t neat and tidy, mostly. It’s messier, more confusing, and I wanted the book to reflect that.

Who says parenting has to be biological, anyway? There are plenty of ways to parent or exist as a caretaker in someone’s life. Admittedly, I’m a terribly forgetful godmother who often forks out a tenner in lieu of a birthday present on the day, but I’d like to be a wise elder when they need it in due course, like the Italian.

I admit there’s a sadness at the idea that I probably won’t have my own children. A few months ago, I had dinner with three girlfriends in Soho, all of whom have young children. I mentioned Dennis a couple of times before one started talking about how tricky her one-year-old was being at night.

‘Sorry,’ she said, glancing at me after a few moments on this subject, ‘but we did let you do quite a lot of dog chat.’

Instantly, I shrank inside, feeling silly. I have Dennis and they have children. I know that children are more significant than dogs. Honestly, I do. I don’t want to become one of those women who becomes so obsessed with her dog that she considers him a ‘furbaby’ (yuk). But I still felt that playground sensation of being left out.

And yet there’s a tentative excitement at what I may do instead: write the historical novel that I’ve been banging on about for two years, travel outside of the school holidays, potentially escape the UK winters and go abroad for several months every year.

Some will think me selfish; others may be envious.

The norm around me, and probably around you, is to get married and have children. But how can that life possibly fit everyone?

Just because we’re biologically designed to have children, I’m not sure it means that everybody should. Or that I should, anyway. A decade on, I can sense some liberation in realising that.

• The Year Of The Dog by Sophia Money-Coutts (£12.99, HQ) is out on Thursday