As I lay in a delicious morphine haze in the maternity ward, I watched the other women around me. Young enough to be my daughters, they seemed like empowered warriors à la Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC, brushing their thick, lustrous hair and applying lipstick in preparation for that all-important First Photo With Baby. Whereas I imagined I looked more like Gran from The Croods, my thin, greying, prehistoric barnet not only out of place but hopelessly out of time, too.

And while I could hear the unmistakable sound of their bellies snapping back into pre-pregnancy flatness, mine was ominously silent, still missing in action.

This may sound over the top – but those first photographs in the hospital prove the exaggeration is only slight.

Now 47, with an eight-year-old girl and a four-and-a-half year old boy, I often find myself wishing I’d had children earlier – when I was younger, fitter and knew who sang what in the top 40.

It’s not just because back then my hair was thicker, my waist thinner and I sported just the one chin, it’s also down to the fact that when you’re in your 20s and early 30s, your patience and energy are at an all-time high.

Lord knows, when you’re in your late 40s, you consider yourself focused if you manage to read the instructions on a microwave meal.

According to the Office for National Statistics, women over 35 have the fastest-growing birthrates and the number of women having babies in their 40s has nearly doubled in 10 years. So I’m not alone, even though most of my friends were already sprogged up by the time I was in my early 30s.

I hadn’t met the right guy, and that burning, urgent desire to have kids  didn’t begin to consume me until I was 35.

By the time our baby girl was born, I was 38 – officially an elderly primigravida, an older first-time or geriatric (steady!) mother. Though I prefer the lesser-known Latin-glish term, later mater.

Fast forward three years and, at 41, I find myself pregnant again. By the time my son is born, I will be 42 – the same age as the grandmother of one of the friends my son will make in reception class.

Like all parents of small children, I’m always tired. Tired and emotional. Which is another thing about having kids later on – you’re so hyper-aware of life, its soaring highs and crushing lows, its kindnesses and its cruelties, that you cry at anything and everything: saying goodbye at the school gates, car insurance ads. I was once even reduced to torrents of tears at a particularly poignant episode of Come Dine With Me.

Because being a mother, being in charge of these young lives, with all their potential, their beauty, their innocence and their sweetness is sometimes – a lot of the time – just too much to bear.

Yet still, in the thick of the bickering, the shouting, the whining and the wailing (I really must stop that), I do tend to forget just how much I wanted the whole family thing and how much I absolutely love it.

Yes, occasionally (and by occasionally, I mean almost constantly) I hanker after the good old days, before kids, when I earned a decent salary and had only myself to spend it on. When I could go out every night of the week and all it took to bounce back was two Beroccas and a Sausage and Egg McMuffin. Now I’m relieved if a night out doesn’t send my system into shock with the guilt of it all – having fun? With other adults? How very dare I.

On the plus side, though, as an older mother you’ve been around the block often enough to have seen a bit of the world, experienced a plethora of different people and gained a solid grounding in getting along with others, and know that all relationships have their ups and downs.

Indeed, as you get older, you inadvertently wind up with some wisdom and insight – and what better role model for a child awkwardly navigating the choppy waters of friendship? You’ve been charting them for decades, so it’s a doddle to teach your daughter how to let it go if her best friend has filled her Frozen sticker book faster – even if secretly you’re seething with jealousy on her behalf. Parenting is so often a case of do as I say, not as I do, after all.

That brings me to one of the best bits about being an older mother: while you’re busy banging your bunions on Duplo blocks and slipping discs skidding on rogue Rice Krispies, somehow you stumble upon your long-lost sense of humour. And, despite the fact that giggling plays havoc with a weak bladder, that’s a good thing because you’re forced to not take yourself quite so seriously. Which is handy, really, because your kids never did and probably never will.

So I say who cares if you can’t read the school newsletter without peering through your pince-nez? And so what if you can’t recall whether it’s Justin Timberlake, Bieber or that guy on Gigglebiz who’s bringing sexy back? I’m glad I had kids when I did – blessed and over the moon I had any at all.

Novelist Mink Elliott is the author of A Mother Dimension