I was Britain’s oldest ‘test tube mother’
She’s the psychotherapist who had twins at 54 with her academic husband. Now, 21 years on, she describes how she’s overcome social prejudice, exhaustion – and the tragedy that left her a single mother
The hardest thing about becoming a mother in your 50s, says eleanore Armstrong- Perlman, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, who had twins when she was 54, isn’t the cost or the exhaustion.
It isn’t the process of getting pregnant, with its cycles of hope and heartache. It isn’t even the feeling that what you’re doing sets you apart from other people.
eleanore became ‘Britain’s oldest mother to have a test-tube baby’ when her twins were born at University College hospital, London, on June 3, 1997, and so had to cope with being in the news spotlight as well as difficulty breastfeeding.
No. The hardest thing for eleanore about becoming a mother at 54 was that her husband, Morris Perlman, a lecturer at the London School of economics (LSe), the father of her children and the centre of her life, died just two weeks after the boys’ third birthday. he was 62.
‘It was a tragedy,’ she says. ‘We were happier than we’d ever been.’
Maclaren buggies, walks across London, trips to the countryside — they looked forward to a continuing life together. ‘And then, that life was gone.’
We meet in her large and busy house in North London. At 75 she is mentally agile, energetic and outgoing — she coped after her husband’s death by having lots of friends. She likes gardening and going to the theatre and still works. her only concession to age is, ‘I wouldn’t go to dinner parties and talk philosophy until 3am’.
her son, Ben, 21, lives nearby. (his twin declined to take part in this article).
eleanore met Morris through a friend in London in 1968. She was 25 and a psychiatric social worker; he was 30 and a lecturer at LSe.
On the surface, they were very different. She was Scottish, feminist, with wild red hair; he, Polish Jewish, a free-market libertarian, dark, neat. She knew she was hooked when a disagreement about politics turned into a full-scale argument. ‘he could cope with me at full strength,’ she says. ‘he didn’t get threatened.’
They married in 1974. he said from the outset that he didn’t want children. he had a traumatic childhood in Nazi-occupied Krakow, where he was hidden by a Catholic family after his mother was pushed off a bus and died and his father was sent to Auschwitz.
‘ he just couldn’t face it,’ eleanore says. ‘he had a thing about feeling tied down.’
She accepted the deal. ‘It was too late to leave him and he was the only person I ever wanted to marry. I was very much in love with him all my life.’
BeSIdeS, at that stage, eleanore did not want a baby. But it was there, a dormant desire, which by her late 30s became a tangible longing.
‘I started noticing changes in myself,’ she says. ‘I began to feel my life was full but shallow. I just wanted a family. I should have been more up-front, should have asked him. But in some ways I was too proud.’
To her, asking felt too much like begging. From childhood she had never wanted to appear weak or needy. ‘I could get six of the belt when I was at primary school and I’d smile.’
Nor did she want to ‘cheat’ — drop her contraceptives without telling him. her background gave her a strong moral sense. ‘I’d been indoctrinated into the idea that you have a soul, and I used to think every time you told a fib, you’d get a black spot.’
So she had a coil inserted to guard against ‘ accidents’ and built a case against having a family. As a feminist, she felt she should be ‘totally committed to my job’, which wouldn’t suit her notional baby because ‘I thought I’d have to be there all the time, at least for the first three years’.
So she focused on her career. By then she was in her early 40s and had a successful practice (including high-profile clients), and was writing papers and occupying seats on committees.
‘But I started to feel false,’ she recalls, ‘ Like a performance. I should have spoken to Morris. What I did was get depressed.
‘I went into analysis and in the second session my analyst said: “You want a baby.” I said: “My husband doesn’t want a baby.” She said: “You never asked.” ’
So she made what felt at the time like the hardest decision: she asked him.
‘he was horrified I hadn’t said anything. he presumed I was perfectly happy, that we had the perfect marriage. he said: “It was true when I married you that I couldn’t have had children, but I changed. I would have had children for you.” ’
eleanore was 44, but still 12 years off the menopause. ‘ My family have late menopauses, so I didn’t feel past it.’
But Morris signalled his commitment by suggesting they also try fertility clinics.
This was 1987, barely ten years after Louise Brown, the world’s first ‘test-tube baby’ (as children conceived with IVF were then known) was born. The techique of using frozen embryos was virtually unheard of, having only been developed in 1984; ICSI, another IVF milestone, where an egg is injected with a single sperm, wouldn’t be invented for five years.
They approached Professor Robert Winston, then head of the pioneering IVF service at hammersmith hospital and dean of the Institute Of Obstetrics And Gynaecology.
‘ he wouldn’t consider it,’ recalls eleanore. ‘he thought I was too old. I felt totally crushed by that.’
Professor Ian Craft, director of the London Gynaecology & Fertility Centre in harley Street, London, however, did agree to treat them.
Another IVF pioneer, whose ground-breaking work resulted in the birth of europe’s first IVF twins in 1982, he argued that older women should not be barred from fertility treatment and set the limit at 55, an age at which a woman could still conceive naturally.
They opted to use eleanore’s eggs and Morris’s sperm — ‘he found it quite amusing, being put in a room with a porn comic’ — and began the first cycle when she was around 45. It failed, as did the subsequent two.
‘It was hard-going, a rollercoaster; counting eggs, taking the medication, how many survive,’ she says. ‘When it didn’t work it was heartbreaking.
‘After the third attempt we decided we were banging our heads against a wall.’
By 1991, when eleanore was 48 and Morris 54, the couple had a second home in Bath and were planning for retirement. ‘We were going to live in Bath because we wanted a garden,’ she says.
They embarked on a new routine: weekdays in London; weekends gardening in Bath.
‘I became a fervent gardener and read a lot about alternative fulfilment,’ she says. She tried to feel zen. ‘I carried on with living, being busy: chair of the Guild of Psychotherapists, lots of committees, blah blah.’
And then, when she was 52, she bumped into a friend. ‘I met her in Waitrose. She introduced me to her adopted Chinese baby daughter. I got to hold the baby and realised all the stuff about fulfilment and gardens was utter rubbish. I had found a way of surviving, but it wasn’t real.’
They decided, once again, to try Professor Craft. ‘I was now much more conscious of my age, of it being too late,’ she says. But by now Professor Craft had scored another first: Britain’s oldest mother. Pauline Lyon gave birth to a baby daughter in 1995, a month before her 52nd birthday. Eleanore was already 52. ‘He [Professor Craft] said: “Don’t use your own eggs. At this age it’s a total waste of time.” ’
Today, the idea of making a baby with a stranger’s eggs is more common. Donor eggs or embryos featured in more than 4,000 treatment cycles in 2017, including 97 for women over 50, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. In 1996, there were 1,634 cycles, and just 16 for women over 50.
What’s more, anyone who donated then was automatically anonymous. Now, a child is able to trace a donor when they turn 18.
‘All I know is she was British, good at sport and already had three children,’ says Eleanore of her donor.
The cycle resulted in a pregnancy, but it was short-lived. ‘I was chairing a meeting that day. Then we went around to friends for dinner and when I went to the loo I was bleeding. I was devastated.’ They marked the loss by planting a star magnolia in the garden in Bath.
ELEANorE and Morris went back to Professor Craft. ‘ He said: “At least it proves you can get pregnant”.’
But by now there was fallout from Pauline Lyon. ‘Criticism of older mothers was everywhere,’ she recalls. ‘ They’d say: “You’ll shame your children in the playground. You’ll have difficult pregnancies. How can you mother them?”
‘of course, it’s amazingly sexist. Elderly male film stars having children are a tour de force. With women, they go on about it as if you’re one step from the grave.’
Did it worry her? ‘ I had no doubts,’ she replies. ‘I was healthy, extremely fit. My only concern was getting through the door before it was banned.’
They used the same donor mother again. An ultrasound a few weeks later confirmed triplets. ‘We were shocked. But a few days later I started bleeding.’ A scan showed she was still carrying twins.
‘ When I told friends I was pregnant, the most common response was: “I’m gobsmacked, just gobsmacked!” ’
The pregnancy was uneventful. ‘I didn’t have morning sickness. I carried on working. The one thing I was aware of was fatigue. But about seven weeks before her due date she was admitted to University College Hospital with high blood pressure and oedema, a build-up of fluid in her body. Her blood pressure stabilised, but ‘I looked like the Michelin man and could hardly walk’.
She had an elective Caesarian at 37 weeks. right up until the last moment, a tiny part of her didn’t entirely believe there would be anything there. ‘ They just put these blobs inside you. You think, how can that be a baby?’
Tiny, fierce cries filled the room. Benjamin weighed 3½ lb; his twin, 4 lb. Eleanore and Morris grinned. ‘We were overjoyed to have these beautiful small boys.’
The next day an article appeared in the national press. ‘ Test-tube mum gives birth to twins at 54.’
‘A member of staff must have leaked it to the Press,’ she says.
‘Suddenly I was being offered amazing sums of money and being surrounded by flowers and teddy bears. They had to put up blinds because paparazzi across the road were trying to take photographs and my consultant said he was being stalked.’
They retreated, first to their university flat — ‘I was as high as a kite, sitting in the middle of the night with breast pumps, listening to jazz on radio 3’ — and then to Bath. Morris took a year’s sabbatical and turned out to be an utterly devoted dad. ‘He never let them cry for more than a minute.’
Did she wish she’d acted sooner, I ask? ‘You realise you can’t regret because you wouldn’t have had the babies you had,’ says Eleanore. ‘So there are no regrets.’
In those first months they entered a kind of honeymoon period. They carried the boys in slings and lived off boiled eggs.
‘We were totally exhausted, but happy. You have more patience as an older mother. You know what you want and have done most of the things you want to do. We weren’t frustrated at staying in.’
one day, when the boys were two, Eleanore told Morris he should see a doctor. ‘ He had a nagging cough and he was far too thin,’ she recalls.
He was referred for an X-ray. ‘The GP rang me and said in one of those too-kind voices that are the sound of doom: “He needs a biopsy,” ’ she recalls.
It was lung cancer. He had six months from diagnosis to death and spent his last weeks at home.
‘I was hopeless at nursing him. I was anxious, and Morris was not the sort you nursed,’ says Eleanore. ‘He was fiercely independent.’
Eleanore had always believed in her ability to cope, but as he lay on his deathbed, she said: ‘I’m worried I won’t have the energy to manage. He said: “oh my God, Eleanore, don’t be ridiculous. You’ll always have the energy.” ’
HE DIED on June 19, 2000. ‘Now that sick daddy has gone, is healthy daddy coming back?’ one of her three-yearold sons asked.
Eleanore was grief-stricken and alone. ‘I was concerned about who else would be there for them,’ she says of the twins. Morris’s family — his sister and her four children — were in Canada; Eleanore’s in Scotland. She saw her parents two or three times a year.
‘I built up a network of female friends so the kids had somebody they could turn to. As a single parent you need somebody else.’
She went on holiday with other single-parent families, including, when the boys were 12, to Go Ape, the outdoor adventure company near Hastings where she hung ‘too many metres’ above the ground on a zip wire. She was 66.
‘I discussed with Morris if people should be told about the egg donor and he said: “They grew in you, so is it relevant?” ’ I decided not to talk about it in front of friends — it’s not the world’s business — and to explain to the boys the minute they asked.’
Her boys are now 21. ‘Ben would like to have children before I die. He says it often.’
Her strongest wish is to maintain her independence. ‘I am financially secure. There is no way I am going to be a burden. I can afford to pay for myself.’
The boys are a source of pride and comfort.
For years she thought she’d be childless in her 70s. Instead, ‘I produced two very decent young people.’