Within 18 months, Jim had become not just my partner but a vital part of our family, taking to stepfatherhood like a natural. He’d always dreamt of having children of his own, but for various reasons it had never happened, and the longer I spent with him, the more that seemed unfair. He’s the most deserving dad there ever was. I remember, quite early on, he joined Moses, Lyra, Bali and me for a family trip to Cornwall. As I watched him lugging the kids’ boogie boards, wetsuits, and God-knows-what-else back from the beach, I felt a pang of guilt and said, “I’m so sorry, Jim. I’m sure this is hardly your idea of a holiday!” He laid down the bags, gently put his hands on either side of my face and replied, “What are you sorry for? I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life.” Even before our magical wedding in 2022—Moses giving me away in a golden Chantilly-lace gown that I designed, Jim waiting for me in an Anglo-Saxon church by the River Thames—we’d started to discuss the possibility of having a baby, with Jim telling me that he would accept my choice as final either way.
It was Sienna who made me realize that I could handle it. My sister’s attitude to life, and motherhood, is always to refuse to be defined by outdated patriarchal rules and societal expectations, being a firm believer, and quite rightly, that commentary on age only, and unfairly, seems to apply to women. It was seeing her with her newborn in 2024 that made me think, “Hang on, maybe I actually could do this again…” The longer I spent with my magical little niece, the more I realized how much I had changed since having Moses all those years ago. In my 20s and 30s, I had so much to prove to the world—and to myself; every day felt like a race that could never be won. Now, when I’m with Sienna’s younger daughter, I feel a lot more present, all of my urgency replaced by a sense of how quickly the years pass, no matter how long each day feels. If my niece is splashing in a puddle, instead of worrying about the dirty laundry or fretting about looming deadlines, my attitude is, “Let’s spend an hour in this puddle.” I have more awareness of the speed at which it all passes and want to soak up that wonder and innocence for as much time as I can.
For so long I thought that having another baby in my 40s would mean beginning the motherhood journey all over again—but actually, I realized, I’d be starting from a completely different place this time: a place of much deeper wisdom about parenting and with a completely different partner by my side. When Sienna told me in 2025 about her third pregnancy, it felt like a sign. If we should be so lucky for it to happen, I was in.
Inevitably, my fertility path with Jim has been complicated and we’ve decided to keep its exact nature private—not because we feel any guilt about taking advantage of reproductive technology (we don’t), nor because we’re trying to gloss over how difficult it can be to conceive at this stage of life. We simply feel that our child has the right to decide whether the story of the conception will be public knowledge. Suffice it to say, after many years of trying, in December of 2025, by the fire in our Gloucestershire cottage, I handed Jim a bottle of Champagne and a pregnancy test, forgetting that he, as a first-time parent, would have no idea how to interpret the result. Once I’d clarified that a double line does indeed mean “positive,” we both started laughing and crying in glorious disbelief.
