Surprise, surprise

THE fact is, we were far too old for this baby business. It felt like the whole world was screaming at us that this was so.

THE fact is, we were far too old for this baby business. It felt like the whole world was screaming at us that this was so.

The hospital classification: "Geriatric mother." Friends: shock and horror - not congratulations - at the sight of the growing belly. Tiredness: walloped by it. The big pregnancy-maintenance question: not how to locate the toenails to paint them, but how to disguise the greying hair without flooding the foetus with carcinogens. 

Entering the touchy/feely birthing suite during a false alarm at 38 weeks, the chap and I instinctively reached for our spectacles - the lights were too dim. We asked how much the baby weighed "in the old money", didn't get those newfangled kilo things after so long in Blighty. And most tellingly of all, the new mother in the hospital bed beside me was 25 years younger. Yes, I was the old cracker in the back paddock, a perception not helped when the midwife slapped me on the bum after checking the war wounds, as if she couldn't quite believe it either.

How on Earth had Baby Number Four happened? Number Three had been despairingly hard to coax into existence. As our 40s galloped ever nearer, the chap and I had persistently tried but stubbornly, deflatingly, my period arrived, month after month. There were two miscarriages, two howling canyons of grief, and it was obvious we'd left it too late. Then I tried acupuncture and bingo, within a month I was pregnant. That was it, we thought. Two shining boys and a gift of a girl. We're done.

And now this. A wee little boy with the most beautiful, slow blink, who as I type is being bounced into stillness in the rocker under my foot. A wee little boy with dark, bright eyes who just gazes at all the madness around him as if he can't quite believe the family he's landed among; who's constantly passed from person to person because so many hands want to hold him, marvel, adore. The complete surprise, the astonishing mistake.

It was because we were relaxed, I think. The chap had finished his London job, I'd just completed a book, we could almost smell the idea of home and were revelling in our twilight London days, doing all those things we'd never done enough of with the sheer effort of being parents of young kids. The last thing we were thinking about was babies. In our, ahem, mid 40s. So I'm intrigued, now, by the vast Industry of Anxiety around conception - a highly lucrative industry. All the panic instilled in women as we career towards the age of reckoning, 35; all the statistics thundered at us and all our money spent; which has the effect of clenching us up at the precise moment when we're not meant to be.

And now, the small, bright wonder of this little man at my feet. Unnamed right up until registration deadline - we'd used up all the favourite boy names with the other two. Everyone was throwing in their two bob's worth, but nothing seemed right. The chap and I rarely agree on anything and he'd confessed his strategy to a mate: "Nikki thinks up all the weird names - then I come in at the end with the killer sensible one." Ha! I knew the tactics now. Let the battle commence.

My daughter's teacher buttonholed me the day before registration had to be sent. She'd had enough. She's Cornish, the chap's surname is Cornish, and she knew that wild, spiritual place of shipwrecks and surfboards was one of our favourite holiday destinations. Her suggestion? The old Cornish name for James. Instantly it felt right. With great trepidation I emailed the chap. Held my breath. 

"Love it," came the response. Blessed relief.

Welcome to the world, little Jago (pronounced JAY-go.) Or, as we prefer to call you: the Timewaster. Because we can't stop gazing at you, in shock and wonder and absolute delight, at every available moment.

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