There I was feeling smug with my outfit, a jumpsuit, animal print trainers snatched at Oliver Bonas on the commute home. Then Daisy, 11, piped up ‘Mum, those trainers are so cringe. You need some Jordans.’ Jordans? Last week it was New Balance. But Daisy was looking at me with absolute Tik Tok inspired authority. When you’ve just turned fifty and your kids are eleven and twelve you spend a lot of your energy trying to keep up with what’s in, what’s not. I’ll spend hours looking at the YouTubers they want to tell me about, the latest memes that make them laugh, I’ll get as into Ginny & Georgia, Never Have I Ever and Outer Banks as they do. Yes I can now identify which sweatshirt is ‘preppy vibes’ and I know which local post office has Prime under the counter. Because what you can’t be as an older mum is out of touch, it’s too humiliating. If Sonny and Daisy want to be mean to me all they have to say is ‘We wish you were like so and so’s mum. You know the blonde one, she’s so young. Why did you have us when you were so old?’
Career wise it can be helpful being an older mum. When I had Sonny at thirty-eight, I was established in a career in publishing, a board director valued by my company. Which was lucky as I got pregnant again on my maternity leave and tested everyone’s patience. Daisy came along when I was thirty-nine. But I didn’t need to worry about losing career ground the way I might have had to in my early thirties when I was still climbing the ladder. I knew my company really wanted me back, that I was considered an ‘expert’ in my field, I could relax about that part of the juggle. I’ve had lots of twenty and early thirty something women working for me and I have seen their struggle to come back and try to be the same person they were, not to always be rushing from work socials to get home in time, trying to still make time for the politics of the office, the water cooler moments that can be so important, when you find out about who is leaving and what positions are opening up. Everyone in an office, men and women, can be guilty of subtly side-lining someone who is back from maternity leave, believing that all their priorities have changed. If you are older and a boss it can be easier to navigate, you’ve probably already eased off those ‘just the one’ after work, all in the name of boss-like ‘gravitas’.
When you are an older mum, you want to stay current in your career, to keep your brain sharp with new ideas, to stay relevant. I work in PR for the arts and I am on social media every day for clients but it is Sonny and Daisy who have taught me about Snap streaks and the skincare routine revolution. In the office I can follow a fair bit of Generation Z’s conversations thanks to my Generation Alphas at home. Having Sonny and Daisy had kept me aspiring, not wanting to rest on my laurels. They have pushed me on to make them proud. I may not be one of the trim yoga mums at the school gates, often I am not at the school gates, but they are both low key excited about my new career as an author. And seeing them excited about new schools, new hobbies, new sports teams, reminds me all the time that we need to stay curious, stay involved, stay living every day and trying new things.
Of course, to do all those things you need to be less tired. When you are asked to join in a kitchen disco at 8am on a weekend morning, play a family football match after Sunday lunch, or have that nice long deep chat at 10pm when all you want is a hot bubble bath, then you curse your age. You wish you were ten years younger. You wish you were not having to feel all the good hormones rush leave your body due to menopause, just as your tween daughter has all her hormones arriving in the house. No one would plan things that way, the killer hormone conundrum, the collision. The boys in the house melt away when those hormone hot spots kick off.
But if you go through the indignity of having ‘geriatric pregnancy’ scrawled on your hospital notes, it can weirdly make you want to value it all so much more, the good and the bad. You know you were close to the cut off line, a time when your fertility was falling off a cliff. It might never have happened for you. You’ve seen your friends struggle through IVF. You’ve seen some friends manage to have one child, but not manage a sibling for them. It made me treasure the whole journey. I was lucky too as most of my friends went ahead of me, learnt all the lessons in advance and gave me the best advice. And that’s another thing that turns out okay when you’re an older mum. You may be tired but you give better advice. You’ve lived longer and amassed a lot more life experience. So come here Sonny and Daisy, I’ve got a story about that…
