Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
EIGHT kids ..in NINE years
PROUD mum Imogen Banham poses on the sofa with husband Peter and their eight children and jokingly declares: “I think I might be Britain’s most fertile woman.”
But it may well be no joke. Because Imogen has had eight babies in nine-and-a-half years and has not gone more than 10 months without being pregnant since her daughter Nyla was born in 2009.
And far from feeling the strain now she’s 30, Imogen is planning to have a couple more.
“People think I’m mad – but I adore being pregnant. I even love giving birth,” says the supermum who has seven girls and one boy.
“It’s the love, the connection. I love feeling them inside me, the moment they’re put on my chest.”
She even had her seventh on a dual carriageway en route to the hospital with the other six kids in the car. “She came out as Peter was driving. It wasn’t safe to stop,” says Imogen.
Life is never dull for the Banhams at their three-bed semi. But it is still a squeeze for mum, dad, Nyla, 10, Dulcie, nine, Oakley-Rose, seven, Nova Star, six, Rumer, four, Elva, two, their son Ephraim, three and Taysia, nearly nine months. The five eldest girls have the biggest bedroom with two bunks and a single. Two toddlers share a small room while mum and dad Peter, 52, have Taysia in with them.
STRICT
It’s a 24/7 job for both parents, who live on Peter’s £43,000-a-year salary as a maintenance engineer by sticking to a strict budget. The only help they get from the taxpayer is child benefit.
Imogen is up at 5.30 every morning to start the daily routine. Peter, who works nights, sleeps just four hours a day so he can help out as much as possible.
When they go out, Imogen drives the kids in a nine-seater minibus while Peter follows in his Ford Ka. “We have a strict routine, she says. “I’m up early preparing packed lunches and laying out school uniforms.
“Peter gets home from work at 6.30 to get the little ones up while I do breakfast. I do the school run and errands while Peter sleeps 8am to noon. Then it’s chores and entertaining the youngest three before school pick-up.
“Tea is at 4.30pm – before bath time, homework and TV. The kids are in bed by 7.30pm and then I have time to do my chores without distraction.”
Every week Imogen gets through 28 loads of washing and serves up 210 meals from three shopping trips that cost £200. Remarkably, she also finds time to help run
I love being in labour. I know the pain will be replaced with joy of meeting my new baby MUM-OF-EIGHT IMOGEN ON WHY SHE KEEPS ON HAVING BABIES
a toddler group. There is little time for romance – even though Imogen says people think they must be “at it” most of the time.
It’s just that when they do have sex, Imogen tends to fall pregnant straight away. “People ask me, ‘Why don’t you turn the heating on for a change?’ They think we’re sex mad,” says Imogen. “I don’t even know how the last two were conceived. We’re lucky if we’ve time for romance once in a month. I do think I must be super fertile. I have friends who have struggled to get pregnant so I know how lucky we are.” She and Peter, of Shimpling, Norfolk, met in August 2008. “He was a volunteer at a museum where I worked in the cafe,” she says. “We’d chat and he kept coming back. “He’s a lot older than me but he’s very young at heart. He cycles to work and has done the London Marathon twice. I think the kids keep him young as well.”
Their first baby Nyla was a surprise – conceived just three months after they began dating. “It was a shock, but we were already in love and I was delighted,” says Imogen. Just three months after Nyla’s birth, Imogen, then 20, was pregnant with second child Dulcie.
She explains: “I never imagined that would happen so quick. Being a mum so young wasn’t easy
but I loved it. Since then we’ve left it up to fate. The more babies I had, the more I wanted.
“As soon as I’ve had one, I want to be pregnant again. I hate the thought of not having a baby in the house.”
Imogen’s enthusiasm is due in part to easy pregnancies and deliveries. Her longest labour was four hours with Nyla and the quickest was 40 minutes with daughter Elva – the one born on the dual carriageway.
There was more drama during Taysia’s birth in February. “She was due on Valentine’s Day,” Imogen recalls. “But she arrived two days early in the middle of the night.
“I had a bath and went down to the lounge and she started to come out. Peter delivered her. The eldest girls woke up as the ambulance arrived and Nyla got to cut the cord.”
Imogen has never had pain relief during labour. “I decided early on I was going to get through it without drugs,” she says. For Nyla, I had gas and air, but that was it. Her delivery was the most painful because it was the longest and she needed forceps.
JOY
Since then, I’ve never had any complications, but I have struggled with bad nausea in some pregnancies.
“People think I’m mad but I do love being in labour. Of course it hurts – the pain gets worse the more children you have – but it also gets faster. I know the pain isn’t going to last long and will soon be replaced with the joy of meeting my new baby.”
She says Peter, who also has a daughter, Carly, aged 26 from a previous relationship has always been supportive throughout all of her pregnancies.
“We’ve just never wanted to stop having children. Breastfeeding seems to work a bit like birth control for me.
“The biggest gap between kids came while I was breastfeeding Oakley. And now I’m breastfeeding Taysia and I haven’t been pregnant for nine months.
“I bottle fed most of them for different reasons – one being it’s really hard to look after the other kids while you have to sit and nurse.” Amazingly, Imogen has managed to maintain the size 12 figure she’s had since her teens, baby bumps apart. She’s even escaped stretch marks.
“My size hasn’t changed much over the years” she says. “But then I’m always running around after the kids.”
With so many children, Imogen is now considered a higher risk for life-threatening haemorrhaging with each additional labour.
She says: “It is a worry. I sometimes wonder if we are pushing our luck. That’s partly why I will only have two more, max.
“I always follow all of the midwives’ advice and have additional scans.”
The current plan is for Peter to have the snip. “We’ll see if he goes through with it,” she grins.
She admits there are some downsides to having a big family. “We’ve never been abroad for a holiday – we make up for it by getting passes to our local zoo or taking trips locally.
“We get a lot of stares when we go out. There’s an assumption big families are always on benefits – so I often point out Peter works to support us.
“We have our own little tribe. We don’t need anyone else. Our house is filled with fun and laughter, and of course a bit of arguing. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”