Raising quads AT 50

One mother lays bare the exhausting reality, but insists that she’s never been happier

- HELEN CARROLL

Tracey Britten wants everyone to know she’s fine. More than fine, happy as can be and coping very well, thank you. She’d like to silence all those ‘nasty folk’ online who utterly crucified her last year when she hit the headlines as Britain’s oldest mother of quadruplets. Then aged 50, and a grandmother of eight, she’d conceived her bumper brood – three girls and a boy – with her younger, second husband, through IVF at a clinic in Cyprus. They were delivered by caesarean section, nine weeks premature, at London’s University College Hospital, on 26 October 2018.

The quads are now one, and some of the reaction Tracey has encountered since announcing her pregnancy hasn’t been kind. ‘A selfish, vain and immoral drain on the welfare state’ is a fair summary of the vitriolic criticism thrown her way.

‘People were saying they’d have to put in extra hours at work to look after “those poxy kids”. Well, I want them to see how well I’m doing, and how well the babies are,’ says Tracey. She does look well. Hair shiny and washed. Make-up on. Tracksuit bottoms nowhere in sight. Instead, she’s wearing a pair of fitted trousers and a (swoon) ironed shirt. There’s not even any post-baby tummy fat on her.

Spick and span