[Gayle]

For a long time I'd said that if I hadn't found the right man and had a baby by the time I was thirty five I would just go out and do it anyway.

Fortunately, the right man appeared when I was thirty three, and from the outset knew that I wanted to have a baby soon - he didn't run away - and I had Maddie two days after I turned thirty five.

We had agreed that if we had had a boy first we would definitely have gone for another but if we had a girl first then we'd wait and see. For most of the pregnancy we thought we were having a boy so when a girl came out, although we were thrilled it was a bit of a surprise. We had planned to have another baby after about two or three years but I hated my job so much that we decided to bring it forward a bit. Both were born pretty much on target for when we planned them as we had aimed for October babies which Maddie was but Zack was a couple of months off target in January (still not bad planning though).

We were fairly financially secure but I don't think that was particularly a factor. I wanted children, I found a man who wanted them and we got on with it, I think we'd have done that regardless of how financially stable we were. No question of doing anything differently, I wanted children when i wanted them and that's when I got them!