Katie Turner from Hassocks will be 45 next month and her son Noah is nine months old.<\/p>\n
“It’s the classic thing of my thirties were focused on career and that side of things, and I just didn’t happen to meet anyone that I felt I would want to have a child with,” she said.<\/p>\n
After she met her partner, who already had a daughter, the couple tried for a baby but after a few years without success, went for IVF and fell pregnant on the second round.<\/p>\n
Although Turner was the oldest in her antenatal class by “quite a long shot” she “actually had a pretty great pregnancy”.<\/p>\n
However, she found it difficult to relax as “you were just kind of gently always reminded that the risks are higher when you’re older”.<\/p>\n
She now feels “very lucky” to have her son and said it had been a “wonderful experience”.<\/p>\n
“I’d be lying if I said being the age I am doesn’t play on my mind,” she added.<\/p>\n
“I sort of do the mental maths constantly of like, when he’s this age, I’ll be this age.” <\/p>\n
But she says she has noticed she is generally less anxious than younger mums.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been through enough to know there are sometimes bigger things to worry about, you know?”<\/p>\n
Clarke said that her age does not matter to her, or her daughter. <\/p>\n
“It’s how you feel in yourself. I’m fit, I have a very young outlook on my life. I’ve not once felt like the oldest mum at the school gates,” she said.<\/p>\n
Having watched her raise her daughter, Clarke said her family were now very proud of her and they are back together as a “family unit”.<\/p>\n
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