I’d had my hair dyed to eliminate any unwanted grey and spent weeks considering carefully what I would wear, dismissing anything too young, too old, too formal, or that God forbid looked like I’d made any kind of effort at all.
I was 45 and it was my son’s first day at school. Despite 25 years working in some really tough office environments, I had never been more terrified, or more desperate to fit in.
I didn’t plan to have children later in life. It was finding someone to have them with that turned out to be the tricky and rather time-consuming part.
I was 37 when I met my husband, aged 40 when I got pregnant for the first time, and 41 when our first son was born.
Getting pregnant the second time wasn’t quite so straightforward. I had two miscarriages along the way and then, just as I felt it might be time to give up, I got pregnant naturally at 44. We celebrated the birth of our second son a month after my 45th birthday.
Medically speaking, I was already referred to as a ‘geriatric mother’ the first time around. By 45, there were no words, just lots of raised eyebrows and a permanent look of surprise throughout my whole pregnancy from concerned medical staff.
But on my son’s first day, I was nervous and, of course, it was nothing like I’d feared. As we all struggled to get our children into their classroom for the first time, it would have been ridiculous to assume anyone noticed, or cared, how old I was.
In fact, what I learned pretty quickly was that it was nothing to do with age and everything to do with your life stage.
I’ve made some amazing friends since having children and while we may have watched different programmes as kids and been introduced to Take That on their second, third or fourth comeback (unlike some of us who were there from the very beginning), as mums with kids of the same age, our lives are perfectly in tune.
Today, we have enough common ground and shared experiences to form the kind of impenetrable bond that is simply impervious to a slight age gap.
But does a decade count as slight? While I don’t feel massively different to those around me, there’s no getting away from the fact I’m eight to 12 years older than most of my closest mum friends.
After meeting one mum, a quick calculation revealed I could comfortably be her mother, which was disarming, to say the least.
In the moment, I remember feeling horribly self-conscious but quickly realised that it was only an issue if I made it one.
So, I chose not to – and I think that might just be the key. I can’t think of a single moment where I felt vulnerable about being older that wasn’t self-induced.
However fixated I might be on my age, the truth is, those around me couldn’t care less.
Plus, there are undoubtedly advantages to being a geriatric mum. Having children later means having longer to achieve some kind of financial stability, which certainly makes a big difference when you’re considering major life changes.
After 25 years of working full-time, giving it all up so I could do the school run every day felt like a huge privilege rather than a sacrifice. And I never had to worry about when or how I would get back on the career ladder.
I’d achieved my goals before I stopped working, which allowed me to just be mum for a while, before moving on to writing and becoming an author.
I’m grateful every day that these options were available to me. They certainly wouldn’t have been a decade earlier.
Some might also argue that having children later in life keeps you young. Mine certainly wear me out on a regular basis.
Daily trips to the park in my forties and into my fifties, honing my football skills and just generally running around after two energetic boys is exhausting but exhilarating and I wouldn’t change a single moment of it.
So for now, I feel no different to any other mum with 13 and 10-year-old boys. I’m tired most of the time, shouting about screen time and nagging about homework and untidy bedrooms some of the time, and celebrating being a mum all of the time.
But it’s hard not to look ahead sometimes with a little trepidation. If in the future my youngest son decides to go to university, what will his contemporaries think when they meet his 63-year-old mother?
It’ll be OK. I’ll just make sure my hair is freshly dyed and I’ve spent sufficient time finding just the right outfit to be certain I blend in.
Bring Me To Life is Elaine’s second novel and is available now on Amazon
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