A baby at 62? It’s not for me says Amanda, star of comedy Bumps
MUM-OF-ONE Amanda Redman spent her 40s and 50s trying to have another baby – and is now about to play a woman in her 60s having fertility treatment.
The Good Karma Hospital actress suffered nine miscarriages and two ectopic pregnancies to have a sibling for daughter Emily, now 32.
But playing pregnant Anita in BBC comedy Bumps has not persuaded her to give it another go. Amanda, herself 62, said: “She’s not really like me. She’s got a lot more energy for a start. It is very possible and lots of people do it.”
But she “would prefer to have grandchildren and be able to give them back”.
Amanda said her daughter helped her get over her baby sadness. She said: “Emily kept telling me she was thrilled I didn’t have any other babies. She wanted to be number one.” In 2014 she admitted the menopause also helped her get over it. She said: “It’s a relief that I know now that I’ll never have another child and I don’t live with the level of sorrow that I had when it was still an unfulfilled possibility.
“But if I’m honest, it’s still the one big regret in my life.”
Despite having spoken about the journey she and husband Daniel Schnabel went on to have a child, she says she was not cast in Bumps because of it.
She said: “I don’t think the writers were aware of that.
“They sent it to me and I loved it. It was right up my street.”
Daniel, who is 12 years her junior, was also not swayed about trying again. “No, he’d run a mile,” she admits.
Divorcee Anita tries for a baby when her daughter cannot have children, meaning she will not be a grandmother. She travels to Holland for fertility treatment but finds her daughter is expecting.
Amanda is “desperate” to be a gran soon. She said Emily “wants children but all in her own time – I have to suck it up”.
And she has no qualms about playing a birth scene. “I’ve played about 10. I’ve given birth loads of times. I’ve done it all.”