I was 70 when I became a grandmother for the first time in 2023. My son Marlon had a son of his own, and while I had never been the kind of mother who was desperate to become a grandmother, I was delighted.
But it soon became clear I was entering uncharted waters. Very little about the way they entered into pregnancy and parenthood was the route I’d taken in my hippy-punk way. They were consciously well informed. I think I made it to two NCT classes. Lina – my son’s partner – had a birth doula. I’d read the one book, The Experience of Childbirth by Sheila Kitzinger, from 1962; they’d read a raft of parenting books like Philippa Perry’s recent The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read.
