My ex had baby I longed for with another woman just like Ant McPartin – I know exactly how Lisa Armstrong feels
BURSTING with fatherly pride, Ant McPartlin introduced his baby son to the world in a gushing social media post.
The I’m A Celebrity host, 48, hailed wife Anne-Marie Corbett, 46, a “legend” after “beautiful” Wilder Patrick McPartlin entered the world last Tuesday.
But as I read his emotional outpouring, which added, “Welcome to the family . . . Dad’s a mess”, I had just one thought.
His poor ex-wife.
While Ant’s heart was filled with joy, you can bet the heart of his former wife Lisa Armstrong was shattering into a thousand pieces.
During their 11-year marriage, the couple — who got together in the Nineties — were open about their fertility issues.
Ant spoke openly about trying for a baby with his childhood sweetheart Lisa, 47.
Said to currently be single, she will likely be nursing angry, bitter feelings while Ant embraces fatherhood.
My message to Lisa is this: It gets better.
Not quickly, but the pain will ease.
The reason I say this is because I know the feeling agonisingly well. I am, at 53, “childless — and not by choice”.
I know exactly how Lisa will feel seeing Ant — half of presenting duo Ant and Dec with pal Declan Donnelly — become a father.
She will be devastated.
The scars will have reopened, along with the wounds she privately nursed when trying for a baby.
‘Biological clock ticking’
Those untrue feelings of failure will have bubbled to the surface, causing a phenomenal amount of pain.
Like Lisa, I knew my ex-husband from my early twenties. We married when I was 31 and he was 30.
In our late twenties, we had talked about how, if we were going to get married, we were going the whole hog — the house, a dog and, most importantly, a family.
When I said my vows, it was on the understanding that in the not too distant future, we were going to become parents.
Fast forward to life as newlyweds and that is when the dithering started.
Over months, I’d say, “Shall we try for our baby?” The reply was usually, “I don’t know.”
Or an even more unhelpful, “I’m not sure.”
He just couldn’t commit.
It was like the Hokey Cokey.
He had one foot in, one foot out, the whole time.
This was definitely a contributing factor in our split two years after we tied the knot.
Is it that blokes can be late developers?
Mature enough to drive a car but not able to even think about becoming a dad?
One memorable morning I sat on the edge of my bed, tearfully shouting at him, and the words are still embedded in my mind.
I yelled: “I’m in my thirties, the biological clock is ticking. This is probably my last chance to have a baby and if you don’t agree, it will probably be too late for me.”
Until my dying day, I will remember those words.
In fairness to him, he did say: “Well let’s give it a go, if you like.”
That half-hearted statement said it all.
It’s not like I was pressing him to choose new bathroom tiles.
This was about starting a family together.
If he wasn’t 100 per cent committed, then why bother?
Thanks to social media, I know with aching clarity that my ex remarried and became the lucky parent of two children, while I heartbreakingly didn’t.
I was 41, it was just after my first round of IVF had failed.
A mutual friend decided to share with me the fact that he was a father.
It was a bolt from the blue, and something I’d rather not have known.
While I appreciate new life is always to be celebrated, it was bittersweet for me, given my circumstances at the time.
I got married for a second time, to Pascal, a French carpenter, in my late thirties.
After three years of trying to conceive naturally, and two rounds of IVF, at 42 I had to call time on trying for a long-hoped-for baby.
I took the decision to cancel a third round of IVF because, tragically, my husband’s son died of skin cancer and it was too much for our family to endure.
Anyone trying for a baby via the fertility route, knows that you enter the process with enormous optimism.
We see the pictures of perfect babies on the walls of clinic waiting rooms and tell ourselves we’ll be having one of those, too.
Except, as I know too well, not every woman gets a happy ending.
Sadly, the IVF pregnancy rate is just 33 per cent per embryo transferred for women aged 18-34, compared to four per cent for 43 to 50-year-olds using their own eggs.
So here we both are today: I’m 53 and Lisa’s 47.
The odds of me having children are practically zero.
Instead, I’m a fully-fledged member of a club lots of women want to belong to — except I didn’t choose it.
I’m in A-list company, as actress Jennifer Aniston, now 55, has spoken candidly about trying to get pregnant through IVF, but now admits: “The ship has sailed.”
She had been married without kids for five years to Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt, now 60, and just months after their divorce was finalised, he and his Mr & Mrs Smith co-star Angelina Jolie, now 48, were expecting their first baby.
The pain of that is unimaginable.
Around one in seven couples has difficulty conceiving and, while numerous studies have shown that having IVF treatment does not increase a couple’s risk of divorce, I’m dubious.
End of the road
I know many couples who, faced with a childless future together, have separated.
And trust me when I say that in our social media-obsessed society, you can never, ever get away from what you don’t have.
The feeling of failure is highlighted everywhere, from mummy influencers to YouTubers making cash out of their cute families.
It’s a kick in the teeth to have tried and “failed” to become a parent with your other half.
But what you really, really struggle to come to terms with is when your ex starts a relationship with someone else — a woman who goes on to have his baby.
You experience every feeling under the sun — devastation, anger, rage and a deep, all-consuming sadness that it didn’t happen for you.
It is a cruel trick of life that men can keep on having babies until their dying breath, but for us women, we eventually reach the end of the road.
And then, we grieve. This feeling even has its own name.
Disenfranchised grief, also known as hidden grief or sorrow.
It is often minimised or not understood, and it is not recognised by those around us as a “legitimate” form of mourning.
It bloody well should be. Because to us, the imagined families we were going to have were real.
My advice to Lisa, and what got me through my forties, is to avoid focusing on what you don’t have, but slowly, steadily, embrace what you do. Instead of hiding away, I chose a bigger life.
Dogs have always been in my life. Is it any wonder I ended up with seven?
Many were rescued and rehomed.
I might not have had a child’s love to fill my heart, but I had room for abandoned animals.
It is clear from pap shots that Lisa adores her Labrador Hurley.
My gentle advice is to think about getting one or two more.
As a wise person recently said to me: “Dogs are Earth angels.”
It is true.
For a few years, I did try to swerve children and babies.
At some point, though, you let yourself soften, your heart to open again.
Today I live a rich and fulfilling life. I’m a stepmum, and have a (step) granddaughter I adore.
Then there are my nieces and nephews, who I’d willingly take a bullet for.
In all these roles, I have found a way to channel my mothering skills.
Any woman longing for a baby will be the first to admit that she has forked out on toys and clothes for the warm little bundle she hopes to one day hold in her arms.
I know I did, and I am willing to bet that Lisa did too.
They sat for the best part of a decade in a bottom drawer.
The day I knew I had moved on was the day I was able to give them to charity.
When you fail at the one thing your body is “supposed” to be able to do, it is nothing short of devastating.
Yet women like Lisa and me can, and do, pick ourselves up again. We find a different life.
One that still has meaning.
Lisa strikes me as the kind of woman who will get through this with her dignity intact.
Because if I can, she definitely can.
Every day, I remind myself that this is one painful chapter in our lives, but it definitely isn’t the end of our story.
