Snuggled against my body, the tiny baby's cries slowed, then became a whimper and finally stopped altogether as she fell asleep cradled in my arms.

Nothing compares with holding a newborn - that plump weight, the new bread smell, the little snuffles. And the joy of finally seeing them drift off into slumber.

But this time, my eyes pricked with tears and I was overwhelmed with sadness.

This wasn't my baby. It was the younger of my ex-husband's two children with his new wife.

I had taken her, with her mother's permission, when she began to fuss at a family lunch. I'd held their eldest child many times without any problems, 신통 so hadn't expected the conflicting emotions that were triggered on this occasion.

I knew it wasn't jealousy or regret. Yes, it recalled memories of when we held our own newborn - we share a daughter, who's now 18 - the astonishment, delight and overwhelming responsibility we had shared. But I wasn't longing to be back with him in that moment.

I am genuinely pleased for him that he found contentment four years after our split. His wife is a delightful, accomplished woman and I feel very lucky that my daughter has her for a stepmother.

So why did holding their baby feel utterly heartbreaking?





At 48, Lisa Hilton's body had entered perimenopause which came with erratic periods, a disturbed sleep cycle and hot flushes 

It struck me that there was an uglier emotion at play. A lingering sense of unfairness. For as my ex was starting out on parenthood once more, I was coming to terms with the fact that I would never be the mother of a newborn again - that my childbearing days were over.

Unlike men, who can become fathers in their 50s, 60s and even 80s, women clearly have age limitations to their capacity to have kids. And the blunt reality of biological redundancy felt horribly finite all of a sudden.

At 48, my body had entered perimenopause. Erratic periods, disturbed sleep cycle, hot flushes all confirmed that I had come to the end of my natural fertility.

I can't be the only divorced woman to feel like this when her former partner starts new family adventures at the very moment she confronts the menopause. But the strange sensations of emptiness and loss are not openly discussed.

They surfaced again after a long-overdue appointment with my GP, when it was confirmed that I was perimenopausal. As I left the surgery, I found myself bursting into tears in the street, blindsided by a wave of emotion I'd never expected to feel.

My own experience of fertility had been complex. In my 20s, I'd visited a fortune teller in Greenwich Village, New York, while on holiday with a group of friends.

None of us had taken her pronouncements seriously as she solemnly informed one of our group that she saw a long journey across the sea and another that her future contained a dark and handsome stranger.

After learning that I too would soon be crossing an ocean (hardly surprising since we were so obviously British tourists), the clairvoyant asked if I had any questions.

‘Will I have children?' I asked.

She turned over a card.

‘I see four,' she answered immediately. ‘Four children.'

At the time this seemed as improbable as the tall dark stranger. I knew that I wanted to have a family someday, but, like most women, at that age my life was about studying, travelling, all the fresh adventures of adulthood. I forgot all about the tarot reading until I found myself bawling my eyes out about not having more children.




When her doctor confirmed she was perimenopausal, Lisa found herself bursting into tears in the street

And yet I have indeed been pregnant four times in my life, though I have only one child, my daughter.

And though this had never previously troubled me, having enjoyed a largely happy life and successful career as a historian and author, now that I was confronted with the fact I wouldn't have any more, I was astonished by how much it hurt.

Two of those pregnancies ended in abortions in my 20s. I underwent the procedures at a time when I was in no position, emotionally or financially, to support and nurture a child. And, although I can't change a thing and I see no point in regret, the memory of those brief pregnancies came back to me as I mourned the loss of my fertility.

Abortion is a hugely complex subject. I have no mixed feelings about the political side of it - I am staunchly pro-choice and have been appalled at the recent rolling back of women's legal abortion rights in the United States.

What I hadn't expected was how impending menopause would cause me to re-cast my feelings. No matter how rational my decisions had seemed at the time, this was a raw, hollow, primeval yearning.

In my 30s, having met and married my husband, I suffered an early miscarriage that necessitated an operation and left me worried I might not be able to carry a pregnancy to term.

By this point in my life, I longed to become a mother and was delighted when I conceived again a few months later. My daughter's birth was very difficult; after 13 hours of induced labour I had to have an emergency caesarean, which proved complicated, not least because she weighed 12 pounds!

Frankly, by the time she was born, I was so exhausted I couldn't do much more than wave vaguely at her before the doctors took her away, and it was several weeks before I truly bonded with her.

When I did though, it was the most significant and joyful moment of my life: my daughter is the centre of my world and I feel hugely lucky to have her.

While she was tiny, I assumed that her father and I would try for another baby in time. But I was focused on her and there didn't seem to be any rush. If anything, my then husband was keener on the idea than I was; I already felt quite overwhelmed between one small child and work.



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But we got divorced when she was seven and any thoughts about having more children vanished as I learned to cope with being a lone parent.

Thankfully, my daughter was also untroubled about being an only child - in fact, aged about four she told me in no uncertain terms that babies were very nice but that if I ever had another one we would have to put it in the dustbin.

As she grew up, I was occupied with her and my career and though I did have boyfriends, none of those relationships was remotely serious enough to contemplate parenthood together.

I suppose part of me knew that it was unlikely that I would have another child, but the possibility, in theory at least, was always there. My daughter and I were a unit and I felt no desire for anything more - at least, until the option was taken away from me.

Hence my surprise to find myself so distressed as I held my ex-husband's newborn in my arms. Since I hadn't really contemplated another baby, why did the confirmation that there wouldn't be one hit me so hard?

Maybe it was the idea of the other children we might have had together, or maybe it was resentment that his life had been less constrained by divorce than mine.

At times, I admit I have envied him: my daughter lives primarily with me and while it never occurred to me to do anything other than fit my life around hers as best I could, he had the freedom to move on in a way I hadn't.

He comes from a very traditional Italian family and I think it's fair to say that he expected me to do most of the childcare when my daughter was small. Now I hear about him cheerfully changing nappies and getting up for night feeds and a part of me resents that he has had the opportunity to be a father all over again, and a hands-on one too, while that choice has been taken out of my hands.

I don't believe any woman should have to justify her fertility choices - not having children is absolutely as valid as deciding to have them - but from a very personal perspective I am finding acknowledging that I have come to the end of my childbearing years difficult.




Lisa with her daughter, whose birth was difficult after 13 hours of induced labour and an emergency caesarean

I hadn't given much thought to how much being capable of having children - even in the abstract - meant to my identity. But as far as nature in all its primitive brutality is concerned, I'm now a busted flush.

I am not haunted by imaginings of ‘lost' babies, but I now reflect on those terminations in a different, more nuanced way.

My feelings about how I parented my daughter in her earlier years have altered too. If I had to go away for a week, or explain that I didn't have time to play because I was writing, I was always confident that I was doing it for the best reasons, but looking back I can't help dwelling on all those moments I missed.

I was always there for birthdays and school events but I wish I'd had more of the seemingly unimportant moments, messing around in the park, snuggling up on the sofa with a film.

Part of me feels that if I'd had another chance I would have done it differently, been more mindful of quite how precious childhood is, especially knowing, as I do now, that this was the only childhood I would get to witness close up.

I think I would have discriminated more about the work I took and balanced financial necessity against emotional presence. I love watching my daughter becoming a confident, independent young woman with whom I can have heated political disagreements or serious conversations, but how I miss the little girl who hurled herself beaming down the school steps for a hug.

This year, I waved my daughter off to university for the first time. Watching your kids flee the nest is a poignant time for all parents, but perhaps it is even more intense with ‘only' children.

Practically, too, I worry that my daughter will have to cope with my ageing on her own. How will it impact on her life if I need care, the burden of which, not to mention the cost, she will have to bear alone?

Equally, I feel more privileged than ever to have my beloved child.

This is a strange and in many ways disturbing stage to be living through, but my unexpected reaction to not being able to have more children makes me even more grateful to be her mother.

I'm also thrilled that my daughter now has two adored younger siblings in her life, and when my ex grumbles good-humouredly about the tribulations of parenthood that I certainly don't miss - the sleepless nights, the monotony - I can manage a wry, if wobbly smile.






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