Phoebe Luckhurst and her husband, Samuel, both 34, meet Merle Bombardieri, the 75-year-old therapist who says she can help them make the biggest choice of their lives. It’s a normal Wednesday afternoon except I’m talking to a stranger on the internet about my biological clock. I am not being particularly eloquent, though Merle Bombardieri seems to be keeping up.
After I finally finish stammering about fertility and cliff faces, she summarises kindly: “It’s not as if you’re 29 and you’ve got years to think about it.” Ouch. Yet it’s true (I’m 34) and this sort of real talk is precisely what I signed up for with my husband, Samuel, also 34 and sitting beside me.
Via Zoom from an armchair in her sunlit living room in St Petersburg, Florida, the 75-year-old psychotherapist helps people from all over the world make the most definitive decision of their lives: whether or not to have a child. This afternoon it is our turn in the hot seat. Bombardieri has been a “baby decision coach” for four decades (she is also a licensed clinical social worker).
Her first book, The Baby Decision , was published in 1981 and she is writing another: Baby or Childfree? She works with couples and single clients all over the world – from Scotland to southeast Asia – most of whom want to decide one way or the other in the next six months to a year (a session costs US$200 – about NZ$329). In the first of what is usually between five and eight sessions, she asks people to place t.