The unvarnished truth about having a baby in your 50s

I was rushing home from the nursery pick-up, banana skin in hand, when news of the latest Naomi Campbell interview withVogue broke this week. Mothers of all ages have been debating and celebrating the 51-year-old’s account of jetting round the world to fashion shows and shoots with her nine-month-old, who apparently “loves to travel” and “hardly ever cries”.

I had my daughter through IVF at the age of 49, and while it’s heartening to hear how much Campbell is loving the baby years, I can report that her interview – not to mention the photographs – bears little resemblance to the reality of becoming a parent at this age. The idea of those long-haul flights frankly filled me with horror. The luxury scuba-diving holidays I used to take in Egypt now seem a distant memory, and after two fairly disastrous attempts at flying solo with a toddler, I now settle for Legoland.

I’ve wanted a baby for as long as I can remember, which is not to say, as Campbell does, that “I always knew that one day I would be a mother”.

When I hit my 40s, I was keenly aware of a window of opportunity closing. I’d been in love once and despite me willing them to feel the same way, it just didn’t work out. My sister and her partner have three great kids who mean the world to me. I would have cosy, noisy, emotionally enriching visits and then cry on my journey home at the thought of the emptiness of my flat.

During my 40s, I actively considered my options. Fostering and adoption meetings left me brutally aware that being single and my age, I could be waiting years to become a parent. I started fertility treatment, and though in my heart of hearts I knew it wouldn’t be successful, when it wasn’t it felt like the end of everything. Depressed doesn’t feel adequate as a description of how I felt. At 49, knowing I was at the end of the road, I travelled overseas for fertility treatment using a donor egg and donor sperm. It took all my courage but I absolutely couldn’t face the future without giving it one last try.

On the day of treatment, the doctor told me that only one embryo was viable for transfer. I pinned all my hopes on that tiny human form and waited five very tense days before I could do the test. Memorably, it was Mother’s Day when I did. I took three tests (because surely the first two were wrong?) – all positive. I went from survival mode to living in that moment.

Pregnancy was tough on my middle-aged body. I had high blood pressure, a cancer scare, and the doctor ordered tests for my heart function. The baby arrived in a whirlwind in late November 2017. I had a caesarean on my doctor’s advice and the room flooded with nurses when I lost two and half pints of blood. As corny as it might sound, all that faded when she was born. It really was the proverbial thunderbolt of immediate love that I felt from the moment she was placed on my chest.

Campbell has said that her child is not adopted and is hers, but has not revealed how she was conceived or who the father is. But the little girl will no doubt grow up surrounded by an army of nannies and support. Such luxuries are not available to me, and in the early months I immediately felt the loss of my mother. She died when I was in my 20s and, sadly, by the time my baby arrived, so had my father. But I was on the receiving end of a great amount of goodwill and friendship: midwives saw me through sleep deprivation and breast-feeding horrors; my sister organised a welcome party for the latest member of the family. In short, people all around me made me feel supported and loved and as if I could do anything.

My friends stepped up in ways I didn’t fully expect. There is no getting away from the contrast in our lives – their children are going to university while I have been obsessing over potty training and going to Rhyme Time. But they know what a demanding stage this is, and arguably have more time and space to help out than they would have done as new mothers themselves.