I had a sort of revelation recently. I was sitting in a doctor's office in the maternity ward of my local hospital, and the 24 year-old-doctor asked me if the baby was planned. Without missing a beat I giggled and said, "NO, of course not!" I then had to sit while she talked about the importance of contraceptive measures at six weeks post-partum, feeling like a skittish school girl.
Sitting there, listening to this - well - child, lecture me on contraception made me realise something I've never admitted before; I WANTED this baby and what's more, I wanted every one of them.
This sounds elementary, obvious even. But for 14 years I've been acting as if the big family happened by accident. I even, to my shame now, once wrote in a magazine column that when asked why I had so many children, replied that I was both excessively careless and excessively fertile in equal measure. At the time I thought this was clever, funny even.
But at 42 with my sixth baby on board, it's time I 'fessed up and said quite simply that, "yes, I wanted a big family, I think I always did."
As a little girl I had a troupe of dolls; baby dolls, long haired dolls, one who used to be able to walk until her leg fell off and she had to be duct-taped together. There were about 12 of them, and my mother knitted matching jumpers for them and I made miniature kilts out of cast off tartan I found in the craft box. They were my travelling choir and I used to bring them to all the cities of Europe - conveniently dotted around my sitting room and bedroom - where they would perform to vast audiences, Von Trappe-style.
At night I would pile them all in to my bed, plastic arms and legs poking into me at odd angles as I tried my best to get comfortable. My mother would frequently have to remove them all out from under the sheets once I was asleep, although on more than one occasion she found me asleep on the floor beside the bed, having given up trying to get comfortable alongside my bizarre collection of plastic bedfellows.
As a child who grew up alone (my siblings had all but left home by the time I was four), I craved company and I suppose my rag tag collection of dolls gave me a sense of belonging.
When I had my first child I felt a little embarrassed; my friends were working their way up their various career ladders and I was in a dead end job which I had no interest in. I was more than happy to ditch it to stay with my baby daughter, but at some level I felt I had let feminism down. I was a sell out.
And although I couldn't wait to have my second child, so wonderful had the first experience been, I still felt a strange doubt that I was some sort of sad sack who had chosen domestic life over a full social life and career.
My way of dealing with this was to denigrate my chosen way of living, dismissing the growing professionalisation of motherhood as ridiculous (I'm still not keen on it) and staying as far away from mother and baby groups as I could. I avoided other young mothers who were full of baby talk, their children the centre of their worlds. I wasn't like them, I was different to them.
I acted as if the whole being a stay at home mother was a bit of a drag, something to be endured but not enjoyed. I was doing it ironically, I knew it wasn't real life and I would get back to more important things eventually...
Deep down I don't think I really felt that way, after all having babies sort of saved me (as I've written previously), but I acted that way. And I continued in that vein for many years.
When baby number five came along, five years ago, something shifted a little, but I still protested the whole thing was a mistake and I'd roll my eyes and claim victim-hood to my fertility.
The FIFO year, of which I've blogged several times, taught me many, many things, one of which was that my children are my lifeline and kept me going through those dark, dark times. But when a family member, whose intention it was to hurt me, commented that I did nothing but put my children down, I had to take a long hard look at myself and ask why she had said that, and was it true?
As spiteful and unnecessary as her comments were, at a time where I was losing all hope, I knew there was a kernel of truth in them. And I had to face why that was. I did face it and stopped treating the whole experience as an inconvenience, and from that time on I've worked at embracing the mother role I'm so lucky to find myself in, and to genuinely cherish all those moments which I had allowed to, or at least had pretended to, irritate me.
Since then I've chilled out enormously, both with the children and myself and I've found my relationship with them grow and improve to the point where I can honestly say, they are fabulous, loving, curious and well-behaved children and I'm proud I've put so much of my time into raising them - I wouldn't have it any other way. I really mean it.
Which brings me back to that doctor's office and the boy-child gently baking inside me.
I'm happy to report this, my sixth and final child, and promise myself I won't apologise, roll my eyes or claim it was an accident. Because it wasn't. I wanted one last baby while I'm still lucky enough to be able to carry one, and fortunate enough to have a husband who is indulgent of my choosing home and babies over a bank balance-boosting job. We can't afford holidays, or a smart car. Meeting the bills is a struggle, sometimes we eat pasta for more days in the month than I'd like to admit. We get irritated when the music lessons don't seem to be yielding any results and question the cost of them. Finding a home big enough for us all is costly but vital - our home is our world.
But this is the path we've chosen - a path far less travelled these days than it was when our parents or grandparents were our age. The average family in the UK now has 1.7 children, which I find sad, and which makes us an oddity to some and perhaps stark raving mad to others.
In my opinion it makes us very, very lucky...
Sitting there, listening to this - well - child, lecture me on contraception made me realise something I've never admitted before; I WANTED this baby and what's more, I wanted every one of them.
This sounds elementary, obvious even. But for 14 years I've been acting as if the big family happened by accident. I even, to my shame now, once wrote in a magazine column that when asked why I had so many children, replied that I was both excessively careless and excessively fertile in equal measure. At the time I thought this was clever, funny even.
But at 42 with my sixth baby on board, it's time I 'fessed up and said quite simply that, "yes, I wanted a big family, I think I always did."
As a little girl I had a troupe of dolls; baby dolls, long haired dolls, one who used to be able to walk until her leg fell off and she had to be duct-taped together. There were about 12 of them, and my mother knitted matching jumpers for them and I made miniature kilts out of cast off tartan I found in the craft box. They were my travelling choir and I used to bring them to all the cities of Europe - conveniently dotted around my sitting room and bedroom - where they would perform to vast audiences, Von Trappe-style.
At night I would pile them all in to my bed, plastic arms and legs poking into me at odd angles as I tried my best to get comfortable. My mother would frequently have to remove them all out from under the sheets once I was asleep, although on more than one occasion she found me asleep on the floor beside the bed, having given up trying to get comfortable alongside my bizarre collection of plastic bedfellows.
As a child who grew up alone (my siblings had all but left home by the time I was four), I craved company and I suppose my rag tag collection of dolls gave me a sense of belonging.
When I had my first child I felt a little embarrassed; my friends were working their way up their various career ladders and I was in a dead end job which I had no interest in. I was more than happy to ditch it to stay with my baby daughter, but at some level I felt I had let feminism down. I was a sell out.
And although I couldn't wait to have my second child, so wonderful had the first experience been, I still felt a strange doubt that I was some sort of sad sack who had chosen domestic life over a full social life and career.
My way of dealing with this was to denigrate my chosen way of living, dismissing the growing professionalisation of motherhood as ridiculous (I'm still not keen on it) and staying as far away from mother and baby groups as I could. I avoided other young mothers who were full of baby talk, their children the centre of their worlds. I wasn't like them, I was different to them.
I acted as if the whole being a stay at home mother was a bit of a drag, something to be endured but not enjoyed. I was doing it ironically, I knew it wasn't real life and I would get back to more important things eventually...
Deep down I don't think I really felt that way, after all having babies sort of saved me (as I've written previously), but I acted that way. And I continued in that vein for many years.
When baby number five came along, five years ago, something shifted a little, but I still protested the whole thing was a mistake and I'd roll my eyes and claim victim-hood to my fertility.
The FIFO year, of which I've blogged several times, taught me many, many things, one of which was that my children are my lifeline and kept me going through those dark, dark times. But when a family member, whose intention it was to hurt me, commented that I did nothing but put my children down, I had to take a long hard look at myself and ask why she had said that, and was it true?
 |
| One girl and five boys...oh boy! |
Since then I've chilled out enormously, both with the children and myself and I've found my relationship with them grow and improve to the point where I can honestly say, they are fabulous, loving, curious and well-behaved children and I'm proud I've put so much of my time into raising them - I wouldn't have it any other way. I really mean it.
Which brings me back to that doctor's office and the boy-child gently baking inside me.
I'm happy to report this, my sixth and final child, and promise myself I won't apologise, roll my eyes or claim it was an accident. Because it wasn't. I wanted one last baby while I'm still lucky enough to be able to carry one, and fortunate enough to have a husband who is indulgent of my choosing home and babies over a bank balance-boosting job. We can't afford holidays, or a smart car. Meeting the bills is a struggle, sometimes we eat pasta for more days in the month than I'd like to admit. We get irritated when the music lessons don't seem to be yielding any results and question the cost of them. Finding a home big enough for us all is costly but vital - our home is our world.
But this is the path we've chosen - a path far less travelled these days than it was when our parents or grandparents were our age. The average family in the UK now has 1.7 children, which I find sad, and which makes us an oddity to some and perhaps stark raving mad to others.
In my opinion it makes us very, very lucky...
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