When I found myself pregnant at 40 with my first child (and almost 44 — the same age as Sienna Miller — with my second) I knew there were things I might have to relinquish; sleep, spontaneity, a perky pelvic floor. But losing some of my best friends wasn’t one of them.
While I simply didn’t have the mental fortitude to tackle motherhood in my thirties (I’m in Sienna’s ‘more ‘grounded now’ camp), I hadn’t anticipated the isolation I’d feel at having a child when my friends, who had followed a more conventional reproductive timeline, were edging towards empty-nester life. Had I, like the Millers, had a sister — Savannah, 47, has just announced her 'miracle' pregnancy too — or even close friend, navigating the same chapter, those early years might have felt a lot less lonely.
Late bloomers, out of sync
We may be the only age group where conception rates are on the increase according to the Office Of National Statistics, yet us ‘geriatrics’ (or ‘mothers of an advanced maternal age’ as tends to be the more au courant turn of phrase) are still getting to grips with having a child at a point in time where most peoples’ career and child-rearing peaks collide.
By the age of 40 the majority of us have fine-tuned our lives or at least fallen into a comfortable rhythm that we’re content to strum along to until perhaps a mid-life crisis syncopates the anthem like a rogue recorder. It was certainly a symphony I had perfected over four decades, harmonizing perfectly with my motley crew of beautifully idiosyncratic friends; those kindred spirits who make you feel entirely like yourself.
Motherhood is often framed as the moment you ‘find yourself’. Celebrities extol that they’ve never felt so beautiful/empowered/fulfilled as when they were pregnant. And yet, just like that (and 8 pregnancy tests later), I was suddenly the dud note and it felt more than a little jarring especially when I found myself metaphorically (and literally) left holding the baby.
The myth of the missing clock
Advancements in fertility treatment and improvements in our diet and overall health have meant that we’re able to push the boundaries of biology but in my case delaying motherhood wasn’t for any burning career ambitions (although my job as a beauty editor is very nice thankyouverymuch!). It was more to do with the fact that the so-called biological clock just never chimed; not even a quartz ‘tick’. I’ve always loved children, but the idea of having one based on hypothetical future regret felt like too great a gamble.
And yet, as it turned out, mother nature had other ideas and two weeks before my 40th birthday I was tasked with unpicking four decades worth of self-prophecy, a shift that was even harder for some of my friends.
Friendship fault lines
Like most people my age, my friends fall into three camps; those who did the newborn thing in their early thirties, those struggling to conceive and those who are child-free - by choice or circumstance. The first group were mildly bemused ('why on earth would you want to do this at our age?' was the general consensus) but supportive from afar. It was the other two groups, understandably, who found the news harder, and in some cases impossible to process.
I had of course expected some relationships to atrophy as our lives took divergent routes, not to mention the physicality of having a small person clamped to you, but the catastrophic fall-out was, at the time, crushing.
Victor Hugo called 40 ‘the old age of youth’ and it is indeed a peculiar state, teetering on the precipice of fertility and inevitable decline. By your 40s you’ve supposedly found your ‘tribe’, the ones who have stuck with you when youthful foibles have cemented into middle-age pathologies. But when you don’t embark down the well-worn path of babydom in your thirties, childlessness becomes part of who you are and people it seems, are comfortable for you to keep playing that role. Veer from this and it’s almost as though they feel cheated. That the you they thought they knew had suddenly jumped on a ridiculous scooter designed for someone much younger, the exception of course, and totally understandably, being if you’ve made it known for years that you’ve been struggling with infertility.
Disconnected
There were people that I expected a certain amount of ambivalence from and the subsequent quietus of some friendships (several from the exact moment I announced I was pregnant) were sad but not entirely unexpected and remain loosely affiliated by a confetti of Instagram likes. But the dissolution of two of my closest friendships; the kind who have seen you through relationship breakups, career lows and the mourning of loved ones; the kind who your partners are always a little bit threatened by, left me totally floundering. Like a magnanimous mycelium, these were the touchpoints that forged my connection to the world especially in a city like London where many of us are, at the very least, physically cut off from family.
My late mother and auntie – both formidable matriarchs in different ways — had always instilled the idea that friends come before men and I stuck to that resolutely (many times to the detriment of my partners at the time). What they didn’t tell me is that children (or the loss of them as was the case with these two friends) trump everything.
© Dave Benett/Getty Images for SavGrief, growth and reconnection
Those early years were a blur of postnatal depression, friendship grief and the overwhelming terrain of motherhood – all without family to call on. But time, as it does, softened things. Eight years on I’ve found my way back to those pivotal friendships – through shared loss, honesty and therapy. We’re closer now than ever.
And then there are the unexpected friendships; my NCT buddies (which I’d once dismissed as a middle class way to buy friends) and the ‘older’ mums at the school gates whom I gravitated towards instinctively. These are the woman I can discuss phonics and perimenopause in the same breath.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and whilst I didn’t have a Sienna to my Savannah, it just so happens that mine is more ‘Brixton village’; cobbled together, eclectic, and constantly evolving. And I love it. Almost as much as my children (did I mention I love them too?).
