PREGNANT IN EVERY DECADE

Nicola Carr, 41, had her fifth child 20 years after her first

-  KATE SKELTON

As my teenage daughter Minnie and I took my newborn baby Maisie for a walk in her pram, a stranger peered over and smiled at us. ‘Congratulations!’ she said to Minnie, causing her to blush. ‘Oh no, she’s not mine,’ said Minnie, laughing. ‘She’s my sister.’ The woman looked embarrassed and walked on. But she wasn’t the first to make the mistake – even the health visitor had jumped to the same conclusion a few days earlier.

She’d come to do a check-up and arrived just as I was busy changing my two-yearold son Louis’ clothes. Minnie opened the door, holding Maisie, and the health visitor assumed she was her mum.

DOUBLE TAKES

I can understand why people get confused, however, because it’s not often women have babies in their 40s, when they’ve already got children in their late teens and 20s. My husband Andrew and I wouldn’t have it any other way, though.

We’ve been together 22 years, after meeting in 2000 through work, when I was 19. He’s 13 years older than me, but the age difference didn’t bother us.

From the start we spoke about having a big family, so I was thrilled when I became a mum to Harry at 21, followed by Minnie when I was 23. Hermione was third at 29 and then Louis came along a decade later in 2020, when I was 39.

I’d not set out to have a baby in every decade of my adult life, but that’s what happened when I fell pregnant with Maisie in 2022. ‘You do realise you’ve been pregnant in your 20s, 30s and 40s,’ Andrew laughed.