CF musings on: Being a young mum

A bit of a ‘brain dump’ of a post, but here it goes.

It’s really shocked me that, since giving birth to Country Bebe, I’ve been classed as a ‘young mum’.

In fact it started waaaay before the little guy even arrived. Heavily pregnant, on the tube (standing of course, chivalry really is dead on the London Underground) a woman looked at my ringless finger (my rings stopped fitted around week 2 of pregnancy) and actually tutted and shook her head. An unmarried, young pregnant woman. How terrible. Instead of defiantly staring her down, or even correcting her that I was in fact married, a home-owner and gainfully employed I, rather hormonally, cried and got off at the next stop. Ridiculous huh?

And it’s only got worse. Married at 26, baby at 28 – is that soooo young these days? When we opened our new business the local paper did a brief story, opening with the line “young mum Lydia Mansi and her partner…” The OH wasn’t dubbed a young dad, nor was I even imbued with the more accurate title “young business owner”. The fact I have a baby at home and I’m under 30 is, it seems, newsworthy.

On an almost weekly basis my son is mistaken for a sibling, in fact a particularly patronising woman once questioned me as to whether “I had our mum’s permission” to take him to a mother & baby class.

I find myself trying to drop ‘my husband’ into conversation as some way of justifying my active womb, how crazy is that?!

And it’s not just me. Over cocktails last Friday my best country friend regaled me of similar stories. As a late-Twenties, engaged, home-owning, dentist she was more than settled before her little chap put in an appearance but is routinely made to feel like a ‘teen mum’. Even a four-year-old asked her what her ‘brother’s’ name was the other day at soft play. Out of the mouths of babes and all that…

What’s crazy is, statistically, we were both older than the UK average (27.8 years for a first time mum).

So yes, it’s been a shock to feel I need to justify my age in relation to motherhood. Does everyone feel old/young as a mother or is there a magic age that feels ‘right’? I’d love to hear what age you were when you had your first, did you feel young? Were you the first in your group of friends? Or were you late to the game? My mum was 45 when she had me and has the perfectly wise, experienced, relaxed ‘older’ mummy… Look forward to hearing your thoughts…