When I was younger, I never wanted children. Never fantasised about what my future family may look like as a teenager, or day-dreamed of baby names in quieter moments at work.
It’s not that I didn’t like children, but I could see how much they needed and the younger me wanted other things so much more.
Even when my little sister had a child at 27 the thought of ever having one of my own didn’t cross my mind; motherhood wasn’t the logical conclusion to my life.
Mother's pride: Lorraine Candy was horrified by the reaction she got when she told friends she was pregnant withe her fourth child
Until I fell in love at 29. Then my world changed. Instead of seeing everything through a sort of selfish soft-focus I suddenly knew with complete clarity that I wanted a family.
The shift in my priorities was enormous. It was emotional and physical.
I was Editor of Cosmopolitan at the time — the job I had waited my whole career as a journalist for — but running alongside my ambition was my new and overwhelming need to start a family.
And here I am, 11 years later, awaiting the birth of my fourth baby in May. Sounds impressive doesn’t it? Mother-of-four: a statement of status for our times?
If you add ‘full-time job’ and the word ‘married’ it’s showing off on a whole other level isn’t it?
A Blue-Peter badge of maternal and marital success? Pass me the champagne for it would appear my life is complete: it seems I have ‘got-it-all’ (how ironic for the ex-editor of a magazine that coined that ridiculous phrase?).
Got it all? Victoria, who is pregnant with her fourth child, and David Beckham with their three children Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz
And the subtext, of course, is ‘affluent, middle-class’ married mother of four.
In 1964 one in five families consisted of four or more children, by 2009 that figure had dropped to one in ten. So today it’s more unusual to have four, it’s seen as a luxury and, as a result, people’s views on larger broods have changed.
You probably assume that I never see my off-spring, who are being raised by an army of nannies in an Elton John-style nursery, Warhols hanging on the walls and Tiffany toys in the cot.
I have merely been a ‘gestational carrier’ as Nicole Kidman would say, popping the babies out and getting my stretch marks botoxed the next day.
Also the implication, I read recently, of having four is that my children are just status symbols or living accessories and having so many is the female equivalent of being a ‘master of the universe’ to borrow a phrase from Tom Wolfe.
Or it’s decadence on a par with Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection.
I mean, surely only women like Posh Spice, Heidi Klum, Jules Oliver and Tana Ramsay have the money and lifestyle to have double the average number of children?
And I guess you also assume these women’s husbands work so hard they don’t see the family at all.
If this is life for a family of six you may smugly conclude we don’t want it, it’s better to be a foursome with a smaller car and less strangers in your house.
Of course, I exaggerate to make a point because I feel the need to explain — not justify — my reasons for having a fourth baby at the age of 42.
The response to each of my previous pregnancies was overwhelmingly positive.
Admittedly, when I had the third and continued to work full-time a few more traditional (male) eyebrows were raised.
But this time I have encountered what is best described as ‘a not altogether enthusiastic response’ to my condition. It’s been much less celebratory.
There’s been jealousy (and, of course, I understand this especially with couples finding it difficult to start a family), impatient eye rolling and quite a bit of general tutting.
One of my friends was cross, blurting out ‘why have you done that?’ rather than the more usual ‘congratulations what a lovely surprise’.
Some women have been defensive, illogically concluding I am subconsciously pointing the finger of failure at them for not having more themselves, as if I am subtly saying: ‘What’s up with you, is two all you can cope with?’ This attitude surprised me.
First I should say Number Four was planned, not an accident, Number Four was not a last bid attempt to have a boy or a girl: I have two girls aged eight and seven, and a boy aged four.
And I haven’t been laying awake at night for the past ten years thinking ‘maybe if I do it just one more time I’ll get right’, I haven’t been trying to fill the void of an unfulfilling career either or make up for a lonely childhood.
Someone suggested I was motivated by the chance to take the summer off work — by any standards of extreme behaviour this would be nuts.
Maternity leave is not a holiday: in fact if you used the word holiday in front of any sleep-deprived, sore nippled, saggy tummied, exhausted mother of a new born I suspect she’d summon her remaining strength to break both your legs.
We are having four because we want to. Because we want more. Simples, as they say in the meerkat ad.
It’s not about our wealth or social status; and really I can’t think of any woman with four who would see it that way.
Sometimes I wonder if there is a conspiracy of anti-female feeling; constantly reinforcing a ludicrous belief that women are stupidly competitive and would go as far as having a big family to prove something.
A fourth pregnancy (at any age) is hard work. No one in their right mind would go through it (pushing the statistics of a normal birth and baby into the danger zone) just to prove a point about superiority.
Of course, Mr Candy and I can afford good childcare, we work hard and are rewarded for this.
But I have made the most of the choices our feminist foremothers fought for and negotiated my way to a lifestyle that I believe accommodates work and family (it’s not ideal or guilt-free but what is the ideal? If you know please tell me and then we can share the fortune we’ll make revealing it).
And I am not passing any judgment on women who work longer hours or women who have to work, rather than choose to work. Everyone’s situation is different and we all make the most of what we have.
Why, then, am I judged for the particular life choices I have made? Why is wanting four children and a career treated variously as a mark of selfishness or virtual insanity?
WHO KNEW?
Large families are on the decline, with statistics showing that only children make up about 46 per cent of all families in the UK
I’ve negotiated flexible hours that allow me to pick up my children from school at least once a week or see them at home shortly after school. I do the drop off every day.
I’ve worked hard to reach my position as editor of a magazine. I have written about my own upbringing before but just to reiterate; I grew up in a remote Cornish village and left my comprehensive aged 16 with no qualifications, I was not born to privilege.
I find the harder I work, the luckier I get.
My husband is not a no-life banker who is rarely home before midnight. We share the child-rearing.
We have both turned down better paid jobs that would have stopped us being in our children’s lives so much. But I work because I passionately love my job, it makes me happy.
Obviously, family is priority but this is the best way to lead my life. I am having another child because I can — not because I am wealthier than some, or more middle class but because I know (roughly) what is involved.
I am aware of the sleep deprivation, the physical and emotional toll of a new baby.
I cannot say we are 100 per cent prepared because we don’t know what is going to happen — that is the joy of having babies, you cannot plan, or fantasise about what it will be like — this unpredictable nature of parenting is what makes you feel alive, I think.
I know I will weep with the pain of breastfeeding, I know I will be impatient and shouty, I know Mr Candy and I will take the stress out on each other and stride around the house at 4am in our PJs literally bickering over spilt milk.
I know that I won’t be going unaccompanied to the loo at home until about 2015.
I am aware that the grandparents — who aren’t really too involved in our children’s lives due to a combination of distance and age — will be even less enthusiastic about occasionally looking after four than they are three (I would never expect them to do more than they do anyway).
My children are my responsibility.
We also know we don’t have any room for a fourth and our baby equipment is as tired and worn out as us after three, so what we don’t have we are going to borrow or buy on eBay.
But I also know how much more love we will have in our lives, how much happiness we can look forward to and how long it will last.
It’s a risk but I think I can cope.
I’m not tired of reading The Tiger Who Came To Tea, I am not fazed by sterilising yet another set of bottles or another round of school assemblies or teething troubles.
I’m not squeamish about sick, poo, snot or blood, and I’ve never been one to sit down and relax: if I filled in a job application for mother-of-four I think I’d rate as a fairly good candidate.
I don’t like being on my own, and my fear of boredom is only beaten by my fear of moths.
I know many women from big working-class families of five or more, I also know mums at both my children’s schools who are much less well off than us who have four or more, too.
Indeed, my husband is one of four. So it is possible if you want it to be.
I believe my marriage is the most important part of this family jigsaw — it is the stability of this that makes it possible to build all other things on it. You can be billionaires but it won’t make you better parents.
Sometimes I am a little embarrassed when people I don’t know ask me if this baby is my first and I reply no, my fourth.
It does sound excessive, greedy even. Am I pushing the boundaries of luck, perhaps expecting more than I deserve? Probably.
And of course we will be (and have been) criticised for being selfish, environmentally irresponsible and naïve.
It’s your right to think what you think, but I really don’t care. We’re not trying to prove anything or expecting anyone to make our choice any easier. It will be what it will be.
But I think life is supposed to be an adventure — and this is the next part of ours. ( dalymail.co.uk )
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