It’s a man’s world… so the saying goes.

And nowhere is that patriarchy more apparent than when it comes to fertility.

For all the strides that have been made over the last century. For all the hard-fought rights (to vote, to own our own homes, to smash those glass ceilings) when it comes to having children, nature has us pegged at a real disadvantage.

Women get maybe a 20-year window in which to have their babies. And that’s it.
However we dress it up. Whatever advances that have been made by science, no one has really found a viable, risk-free way for women to put off children well into their forties.

At 35 women’s fertility goes off a cliff – conceiving gets harder and the risks to baby and mama go up too.

Fellas though? Well there’s absolutely nothing stopping them having little ones into their dotage.

Imagine how much easier things would be if there was no biological clock ticking away?

Women are becoming mothers later than ever before, as we struggle to squeeze everything in – the university education, the career, the finding Mr Right-to-have-a-baby-with, the getting a place to live, the maybe even getting married. Latest figures show that in the UK the average age of a first-time mum is 28.6 and the number of older women (over 40) having babies has overtaken the number of younger women (20 and under) for the first time.

It’s all so much pressure, being entirely born by us women.

Which is why I have been so intrigued by the fertility MOT service offered by Wickford’s brand new fertility clinic, Bourn Hall. Through a series of blood tests and scans, they can basically do an egg count. Allowing you to know realistically how much time you have before time literally runs out on you having a baby. It doesn’t make fertility any fairer. But reassuring results or otherwise, knowledge is power.

Find out more about Bourn Hall’s fertility health and wellbeing checks at www.bournhall.co.uk/treatments/fertility-health-wellbeing