Having baby at 41 was ‘really selfish’, says BBC’S Burden
THE BBC broadcaster Rachel Burden said having a baby at 41 was a “really selfish thing to do” and admitted she spent a long time trying to convince her husband that it was the “right idea”.
The 49-year-old mother of four said when she eventually became pregnant she thought, “You will barely even notice it” – but things were not “quite right” and she ended up giving birth to her son prematurely.
The Five Live radio and BBC Breakfast presenter said despite being hospitalised, she was “nonplussed” by what was going on until doctors told her she needed to get her “head around” the fact she was in a “critical situation”.
Burden told the Mid Point podcast: “I’ve been extremely fortunate, and I’m very aware talking about this with other women and families who have been through fertility issues, and so on.
“I had three very sort of straightforward pregnancies and I made the terribly arrogant assumption that I’d have a fourth baby and it would be fine and straightforward.
“And, I think sometimes when I reflect on it, I think it was a really selfish thing to do. I came from a big family, I really wanted a big family. I had that moment where Luke [my husband] and I sat around a table when the third child had gone to school and thought, ‘Oh, this is so boring’. And I sort of spent a long time trying to convince Luke that this was the right idea.”
Burden is married to Luke Mendham, a journalist, and at that point the couple had three children: Rose, Alice and Sam.
She added: “And then I was 40 or 41 and I did get pregnant, and kind of said, ‘It will be fine, you will barely even notice it’.
“As the pregnancy went on, something wasn’t quite right and I was kind of puffing up. My mum was saying to me, ‘Something is not quite right about this’, and I was saying, ‘Nah, nah, it’s fine, I’m just busy’.
“I eventually went into hospital for a semi-routine check-up. They were keeping a bit more of an eye on me.”
The radio presenter said she was about 29 to 30 weeks pregnant when she attended the check-up.
“I had been having quite regular scans because my babies had always measured small,” Burden added.
“They said to me, ‘Baby is still quite small, not quite happy with blood flow’, and I’d had a blood sample taken and then my blood pressure was taken. They kind of went, ‘Oh, yeah, you’ve got all the signs of pre-eclampsia and we need to really keep an eye on you’.”
Pre-eclampsia is a condition that causes high blood pressure during pregnancy and can be serious if not treated.
Burden gave birth to baby Henry in February 2016 at just 31 weeks.
“So I found myself with this tiny premature baby, which was not really the plan. You might think you’re in control of things, but you’re really, really not,” she added. “But I was incredibly fortunate – he was tiny, he was 3lb, but he was healthy.”
The presenter joked that she tells Henry, who is now eight, that he looked “a bit like baby gollum”.