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I met my husband, Robin, as soon as I left Cambridge, when Sefi was four. I was frankly too naive, and too immature, to feel anxious about our future. Of course I could raise a child on my own! I mean, millions of people were doing it, all over the world and in circumstances far worse than mine. Summer was born 20 years after Sefi and Tilly describes the difference in raising themīut at 18, I felt confident bordering on the invincible, and profoundly optimistic. Tilly pictured with her youngest daughter Summer. To me, brave implies you are afraid of something but do it anyway. I always feel a fraud when people say how ‘brave’ I was to have a baby so young. To be honest, back then I didn’t worry about much. Yes, I was young, but I never had to worry about putting a roof over our heads, or having enough money to feed my child. I am acutely aware that the fact I had financial means put me in a very different situation to the vast majority of teenage single mums. St John’s, my college, was astonishingly generous and supportive, providing a little cottage for us and contributing to Sefi’s nursery fees. Sefi was only ten months old when we arrived for Freshers’ Week. These were some of the happiest days of my life.Ĭambridge was happy, too, although daunting at first. I remember Mum and I driving all over the countryside with the girls, taking them to the seaside or the farm, where Alice could pet the rabbits, Sef strapped permanently to my chest in her little sling. There are new and different challenges that simply didn’t exist back then They had conveniently decided to have a late-life baby, my sister Alice, who was only three when I got pregnant with Sef. I was still at home with my parents in Sussex when she was born, and their hands-on help was invaluable.
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(Years later, playing the game ‘Articulate’, Sefi shouted out, ‘When I was a baby, Mum dropped me on my head on the.?’ To which my sister answered correctly: ‘Concrete!’) Of course, I made plenty of mistakes, some of which the poor child was lucky to survive. Sefi was born in my ‘year off’ between A-levels and taking up my place at Cambridge, so apart from a bit of reading I had nothing to do in the first months of her life but enjoy her. Awareness of mental health issues in general, and support for postnatal depression specifically, is one huge change for the better that happened between my two daughters’ births.īut as soon as my hormones righted themselves, I adored motherhood. I felt listless and hopeless, but no one ever suggested I talk to someone about it, never mind take medication. Tilly said that Sefi's birth was traumatic as nothing can really prepare a teenager for what childbirth actually is