Hannah Waddingham has opened up about her decision to wait to become a mother until she turned 40, as she didn’t “resent that child for taking me away from my career”.
The Ted Lasso star spoke candidly about her desire to have a child on her own terms and make motherhood “work in tandem” with her professional career as a star of stage and screen.
In a new interview with Glamour, after being crowned their Woman of The Year, Hannah explained: “I wanted to have a child when I was ready and to not resent that child for taking me away from my career.
“I wanted the privilege of motherhood to work in tandem with my career, rather than me thinking, ‘God, you’re stopping me doing things…’ Because the greatest gift in the world is a child.”
When she was 39, Hannah conceived her daughter naturally, after following the guidance of an Eastern practitioner and addressing the balance of minerals in her body and holistic treatments like reiki.
Hannah says giving birth to her “magnificent daughter” is her “greatest achievement”, but it was tough having a newborn in her forties.
“There’s no doubt you definitely have to be ready for it, because it’s right that they should take over, because they need to,” the actress said about the responsibility of having children.
“But being a single mother in your forties is not easy! I’m not going to lie, it’s quite exhausting. One of the greatest acting jobs in my life is pretending I have energy to my daughter! Honestly, when she says to me, “Oh, let’s do this or let’s do that, mumma,” my whole body goes, ‘Oh my God, really?’”
The irony of her daughter’s arrival was that a few years later her career “skyrocketed” and now the Emmy-award winning actress is busier than ever including hosting her own Christmas-themed special.
“I do believe that when you painfully shut one door, the sun shines through the cracks of another and you have to go to it,” Hannah said about her relationship breakdown with her daughter’s father ending when she was two and a half.
“Of course, some days I think that I’m an absolutely rubbish mother because I go out to work strange hours and I can’t always be with my girl, and I do believe women particularly have inherent guilt.”
“But I’m learning to feel pride in my work and that can only be a positive thing to teach my daughter – just as I saw my mother working, my daughter now sees me, and so it continues.”
Read the full interview over at Glamour.