SUMMARY with paternal pride, Ant McPartlin introduced his baby son to the world in an emotional social media post.
The I’m A Celebrity presenter, 48, hailed wife Anne-Marie Corbett, 46, a “legend” after “gorgeous” Wilder Patrick McPartlin entered the world last Tuesday.
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But upon reading his emotional outpouring, he added: “Welcome to the family. . . Dad is a mess,” I only had one thought.
His poor ex-wife.
While Ant’s heart was full of joy, you can bet his ex-wife Lisa Armstrong’s heart was breaking into a thousand pieces.
During their 11-year marriage, the couple – who got together in the 1990s – were open about their fertility issues.
Ant has spoken openly about trying to have a child with his childhood sweetheart, Lisa, 47.
Said to be currently single, she will likely have feelings of anger and bitterness as Ant embraces fatherhood.
My message to Lisa is this: It gets better.
Not quickly, but the pain will subside.
The reason I say this is because I know this feeling very well. At 53, I am “childless – and not by choice”.
I know exactly how Lisa will feel about seeing Ant – one half of duo Ant and Dec with friend Declan Donnelly – become a father.
She will be devastated.
The scars will have reopened, along with the wounds she tended privately when trying to have a baby.
‘Biological clock ticking’
These false feelings of failure will have surfaced, causing a phenomenal amount of pain.
Like Lisa, I had known my ex-husband since my early twenties. We got married when I was 31 and he was 30.
In our late thirties, we had talked about how if we were going to get married, we would go all the way – the house, a dog, and most importantly, a family.
When I said my vows, it was with the understanding that, in the not too distant future, we would be parents.
Fast forward to life as newlyweds and that’s when the hesitation began.
Over the months, I said, “Shall we try to take care of our baby?” The answer was usually, “I don’t know.”
Or an even more useless one: “I’m not sure.”
He just couldn’t commit.
It was like Hokey Cokey.
He had one foot in and one foot out, all the time.
This was definitely a contributing factor to our separation two years after we got married.
Could the guys be late developers?
Mature enough to drive a car but can’t even think about being a father?
One memorable morning, I sat on the edge of his bed, crying out to him in tears, and the words are still etched in my mind.
I shouted, “I’m in my thirties, my biological clock is ticking. This is probably my last chance to have a child and if you don’t agree, it will probably be too late for me.”
Until the day I die, I will remember these words.
To be fair to him, he said, “Well, let’s try if you want.”
That nonchalant statement said it all.
It’s not like I’m pressuring him to choose new tiles for the bathroom.
It was about starting a family together.
If he wasn’t 100% committed, then why bother?
Thanks to social media, I know with painful clarity that my ex has remarried and become the lucky father of two children, while I, painfully, have not.
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I was 41, it was right after my first round of IVF failed.
A mutual friend decided to share the fact of being a father with me.
It was an unexpected bolt of lightning and something I would rather not have known about.
While I appreciate that new life should always be celebrated, it was bittersweet for me given the circumstances at the time.
I married for the second time, to Pascal, a French carpenter, when I was almost thirty.
After three years of trying to get pregnant naturally and two rounds of IVF, at age 42 I had to end attempts to have a long-awaited baby.
I made the decision to cancel a third round of IVF because, tragically, my husband’s son died from skin cancer and it was too much for our family to bear.
Anyone trying to get pregnant through fertility knows that they enter the process with enormous optimism.
We see pictures of perfect babies on the walls of clinic waiting rooms and we tell ourselves that we are going to have one of those too.
Except, as I know all too well, not every woman has a happy ending.
Unfortunately, the IVF pregnancy rate is only 33 percent per embryo transferred for women ages 18 to 34, compared to 4 percent for women ages 43 to 50 who use their own eggs. .
So here we are today: I’m 53 and Lisa is 47.
The chances of me having children are practically zero.
Instead, I’m a full-fledged member of a club that many women want to belong to – it’s just that I didn’t choose it.
I’m in A-list company, as actress Jennifer Aniston, now 55, has spoken openly about trying to get pregnant through IVF, but now admits, “The ship has sailed.”
She had been married without children for five years to Hollywood heartthrob Brad Pitt, now 60, and just months after their divorce was finalized, he and his Mr & Mrs Smith co-star Angelina Jolie, now 48, were expecting their first child.
The pain of this is unimaginable.
About one in seven couples have difficulty conceiving, and although several studies have shown that IVF treatment does not increase a couple’s risk of divorce, I have doubts.
End of the road
I know many couples who, faced with a future without children, separated.
And believe me when I say that in our social media-obsessed society, you can never, ever escape what you don’t have.
The feeling of failure is highlighted everywhere, from influencer mummies to YouTubers who make money off their beautiful families.
It’s a kick in the face to have tried and “failed” to become a father to your other half.
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But what you really struggle to accept is when your ex starts a relationship with someone else – a woman who will have your child.
You experience every feeling there is – devastation, anger, fury, and a deep, overwhelming sadness that this didn’t happen to you.
It’s a cruel trick of life that men can continue having children until their last breath, but for us women, we end up reaching the end of the road.
And so, we suffer. This feeling even has its own name.
Disenfranchised grief, also known as hidden grief or grief.
It is often minimized or misunderstood and not recognized by those around us as a “legitimate” form of grief.
Should be. Because for us, the imagined families we would have were real.
My advice to Lisa, and what has helped me well into my forties, is to avoid focusing on what you don’t have, but to slowly and steadily embrace what you do. Instead of hiding, 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 rehoused.
Maybe I didn’t have the love of a child to fill my heart, but I had room for abandoned animals.
It’s clear from Dad’s photos that Lisa adores her Labrador Hurley.
My kind advice is to think about buying one or two more.
As a wise person recently told me, “Dogs are Earth angels.”
And truth.
For a few years I tried to divert children and babies.
At some point, however, you let yourself soften, and your heart opens again.
Today I live a rich and rewarding life. I am a stepmother and I have a granddaughter (stepdaughter) who I adore.
Then there are my nieces and nephews, who I would gladly take a bullet for.
In all of these roles, I found a way to channel my mothering skills.
Any woman who longs for a baby will be the first to admit that she shelled out for toys and clothes for the warm bundle she hopes to one day hold in her arms.
I know I do and I bet Lisa does too.
They sat for almost a decade in a bottom drawer.
The day I knew I had changed was the day I was able to donate them to charity.
When you fail at the one thing your body “should” be able to do, it’s devastating.
However, women like Lisa and me can, and do, pull ourselves together. We found 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 do it, she definitely can.
Every day, I remind myself that this is a painful chapter in our lives, but it is definitely not the end of our story.
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This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
