Three teens and a baby: 'I've just given birth and wasn't expecting this at all'

“So… what is it like?” This is the question I have been asked most often, since getting pregnant aged 42. 

It’s also the main reason why I started writing this column; so many people asked me what it’s like to have babies 20 years apart and return to sleepless nights, nappies and teething, after years of the relative freedom and independence of children who can feed themselves and wipe their own backsides. Most of the time. 

The simplest answer I can give, since giving birth to Scout is this; it’s wonderful. Two days after she is born, my cheeks ache from smiling. I haven’t stopped, since she was born. I just smile. At everything. All the time. 

I probably look permanently drunk or insane, and to be honest I feel a bit of both. My whole body is flooded with an oxytocin high so strong I feel madly in love with everyone and everything. I’d snog a bar stool if I could, and marry just about anybody I pass in the street. 

Gone are the pregnancy pains, contractions, fear, worry, nausea, heartburn and back ache. In their place; a feeling of pure, distilled, head-spinning bliss that I’d totally forgotten about, and am awash with. 

It’s probably hugely irritating for everyone around me, as I drift about on cloud nine with a perma-grim slapped across my face, but I don’t care. 

I’m totally in love with my baby, and feel so fantastic that I start to wonder what exactly they put in that epidural. 

Another shock in this new, post-natal life I’m floating about in, is that everything feels easy. Physically, I don’t remember recovering so fast after any of my previous births. I wasn’t expecting this at all.

Maybe it’s the last 15 years of going to the gym to stave off The Droop, maybe it’s luck, or a region of high pressure sweeping across the North Atlantic. But whatever it is, almost overnight I feel like a new person, like ME again - even if it’s a me who’s still bleeding through five maternity pads a day, and has giant, lactating melon-breasts. 

Hormonally charged to the hilt, I feel almost superhuman with happiness; if I ran a marathon now I’d smash it. Unfortunately I’d probably lose my uterus somewhere along the way, but in energy terms I’d be standing on that Olympic podium, gold medal in hand and baby on breast, shouting, “I’ve just had a baby, I’m leaking like a burst pipe, but I can do anything!”

I can almost hear the Happy Hormones whispering, “See? It wasn’t THAT bad was it..?”

Yes, it was that bad. SO bad, at times. But for the look of love on my partner’s face, to see him this happy, this complete, and for us to be a family, I’d do it again a thousand times. 

The day after Scout is born, we go out for a walk; for some sense of normality and vats of caffeine. 

I feel a strange combination of easy familiarity with all the practical things - changing, feeding, pram-pushing and so on – and uncertain beginner’s novelty.  It’s as if I’d never seen a newborn before, while being so familiar with her I’ve known her all my life. She looks amazingly similar to her older siblings, yet also like an exact girl-clone of her dad (he’s exceptionally good looking, so this bodes rather well for her, lucky thing). 

And yes. I am much more tired this time. Pained with exhaustion. Mentally almost incapacitated by lack of rest. My eyeballs roll in their sockets during night feeds, and I can barely stand up at times. 

But for one kiss of this baby’s cheeks, I will take all the tiredness in the world. 

Seeing my three teenage children meet their new sister, hold and kiss her for the first time, was the cherry atop the new baby cake. 

Here we are. A new, ‘blended’, gap family. And it feels pretty darned good. 

Next week: Settling in as a new family under one roof