Pregnant at 41: Do you have to grow up to become a mum?

Disclaimer: This is a guest post by Jo Ellis. The thoughts and experiences shared here are hers, not mine, though I couldn’t resist giving them a home on Saffron & Cyrus.

I was a kidult in my thirties. My God, I excelled at it. I was part urbanist and town planner, part compulsive singer and, eventually, an “elderly primigravida”: a mummy-to-be at 41. Before pregnancy, however, there wasn’t a great deal of evidence that adulthood had taken hold.

I had grown older. Growing up was another matter.

When I wasn’t cracking up, I put boundless passion into singing, using folk and choral music as vehicles for late nights and a touch of harmless mischief. My philosophy could probably have been summed up as: “Oh, Lord, make me good… but not yet.”

I was, by my own admission, a terrible employee. While colleagues were looking after children or caring for elderly parents, I had comparatively few responsibilities outside work. I clashed with bosses and, without the commitments that seemed to make everybody else behave like proper adults, I was as badly behaved as I liked. Somehow, I managed to hang on to my job until, eventually, I didn’t.

Outside work, life wasn’t particularly sophisticated either. I dressed largely from charity shops, made scrappy meals from whatever happened to be lurking in the fridge and consoled myself when necessary with chocolate and wine. After all that, what better way to rehabilitate myself than to become a mum?

Pregnancy didn’t magically turn me into an adult

Pregnancy didn’t suddenly make me feel like a grown-up. If anything, it made me a novice. Other people knew things I didn’t, and I found myself being guided and cosseted. Second-hand cots and baby clothes appeared, along with advice and a great deal of care.

“Are you cold? Are you comfortable? I think it’s time you had a rest.” Occasionally, all that attention could be frustrating. There was a sense of being relegated to the Women-and-Children corner of life, but it was difficult to ignore the love behind it. Being treated as a child in an entirely positive way gave me something I hadn’t expected: carte blanche to enjoy behaving like one.

Sandcastles, ice cream and silly games, the things that might once have seemed babyish, suddenly felt liberating. Growing older, I was beginning to realise, didn’t necessarily mean abandoning all the things associated with being young. It meant becoming more selective about which bits you kept.

I was reminded of that on a holiday in Scotland when I decided to brave the freezing seawater. My mother came chasing after me, worried about the cold and the jellyfish, or possibly moon jellyfish. There was maternal concern, but there was laughter too. I was 41 and about to become somebody’s mother, yet there I was still being chased around the beach and fussed over by my own.

That may be one of the stranger things about becoming a parent. Becoming responsible for somebody else doesn’t necessarily mean you stop being somebody’s child. Nor does growing up have to mean giving up silliness, delight or the pleasure of doing something simply because it is fun.

So what does being grown-up actually mean?

Pregnancy didn’t suddenly make me sensible, and motherhood wasn’t going to erase the person I had been in my thirties. Nor did I particularly want it to. There is, however, a difference between being irresponsible and retaining the ability to be silly. One is probably best left behind. I’m increasingly convinced the other shouldn’t be.

Growing older gives us the chance to be selective. We can leave behind the bits of childishness we’re better off without while keeping the curiosity, delight and willingness to build a sandcastle, eat an ice cream or play a silly game without worrying whether any of it is sufficiently grown-up.

Maternity gave me permission to rediscover that positive kind of childishness: accepting care, finding delight in small things and allowing myself to enjoy them without apology. Becoming a mother didn’t require me to abandon the child I had been.

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