I was the eldest child of a big family and grew up with lots of pesky, younger brothers and sisters. I think it was this experience of younger children, particularly during my teenage years, that put me off having children of my own. When you’ve had younger siblings giggling behind the sofa when your boyfriend is round or making lots of noise while you are trying to revise for exams, you don’t tend to think of young children as endearing or desirable.
In adulthood I firmly maintained that I wasn’t having any. Friends started to have children and I still wasn’t interested. I was quite happy with my decision. I got on well with the children of my friends, but I didn’t go out of my way to deliberately spend time with them.
I’m not sure what happened, maybe it was that biological clock that started ticking ever louder. Maybe I was curious to know what a child of mine would be like. Anyway I decided that I would like a child, but I was already the wrong side of 35. Luckily my husband was amenable. He’d always said he was happy to have children and happy to not have children. So we got to work.
One early miscarriage and several months later, I had a very faint line on a pregnancy test. I couldn’t resist testing every day and gradually the line got a bit darker until it was in no doubt. Happiness and relief were the dominant emotions. I had been worried that I’d left it too late and we’d just been referred for infertility tests. In fact, I’d had some blood tests done during the cycle when I got pregnant and my hormone levels had all been normal for that month at least.
Now it’s difficult sometimes to imagine a time without my son. I certainly can’t imagine life without him. There’s no doubt in my mind that I made the right decision, even if I left it rather late to decide to be a mum.
