Is it insensitive to ask a woman if she wants to have babies? Mums from across Essex share their frustration at the baby question.

Renee Zellewegger, Jennifer Aniston, Winona Ryder, Cameron Diaz, Helen Mirren – all famous women with super successful careers and all who have never chosen to go down the path to parenthood.

“I’ve never felt the need for a child and never felt the loss of it,” Southend-born Helen Mirren said last year. That’s her choice and one many many women will agree with, but why is it assumed a women of child bearing age must want kids?

Tamsin Bowers has plenty of experience of being asked “when you are you having children then?”. It got to the point she was so fed up with the question after six years of trying to conceive that she would tell people flatly “my husband and I can’t have children.”

That wasn’t quite true as Tamsin and her husband Andrewwere going through IVF and were hoping for a miracle but she said: “It was the only way to deal with it. It was stop people in their tracks and then they couldn’t say anything else.

“I was so fed up with being asked by people who didn’t know anything about our emotional and painful situation.”

Tamsin, 40, and Andrew, who have now been married for 15 years, ended up having four beautiful daughters – three with the help of IVF and one naturally – so there was a happy ending and she now dedicates her life to helping other couples undergoing treatment.

She says the insensitive questions are something that crops up time and time again when she is talking to clients, whom she sees due to her fulltime job as UK patient coordinator for AVA-Peter, a private IVF clinic based in St Petersburg, Russia.

“It’s something that women talk to me about a lot.

Sometimes it’s not just strangers but friends saying throwaway lines like how easy it is for them to get pregnant or dish out their ‘advice’ on what to do to get pregnant, like it’s that easy for everyone.

“That’s something both my husband and I had,” said Tamsin who has also just launched her own infertility support blog at www.infertilityandme.co.uk Tamsin, who grew up in Stanford-le-Hope, then lived in Leigh for many years, before moving to her current home in Coggeshall, said: “I think a lot of the time it’s people trying to say things to encourage and help, but it just doesn’t come across that way to someone who is going through IVF or who has suffered a miscarriage.”

Tamsin also says it’s not just women who are questioned about the pitter patter of tiny feet. “We tend to think men don’t talk like women but they do and although it might be through some banter, men that are having trouble conceiving with their partner also feel low or embarassed when they are constantly pressurised through questions like ‘why haven’t you had kids yet, what are you waiting for?’ “I think perhaps if people can be a little bit more sensitive in their questioning and remember that with fertility issues they are not problems you can see on the outside then there can be a happy balance.The couple are now blessed with 12-year-old twins Isabella and Francesca, nine-year-old Azaria and Ellthia, six.

I WAS CALLED SELFISH FOR NOT WANTING ANOTHER BABY

MUM of one Aimee-Jane Bromfield fell pregnant with Isabella, now 16- months-old, when she was 18.

While the pregnancy came as a big shock, Aimee and her boyfriend decided they wanted to have their baby and are happy in their family of three.

But not everyone was as pleased for them, says Aimee.

Aimee, of Colchester, explains: “When I first fell pregnant we weren’t sure if we wanted to keep the baby but we began thinking about the future and worried about the possibility of problems falling pregnant when we were older.

“We were so happy when Isabella came along. Then about two weeks after she was born I was in the restaurant where my husband works and a couple of customer asked me when I was going to have another baby.

“Children are so all consuming that even at that stage I knew I didn’t want another baby. It’s not that I wasn’t happy with Isabella – I was and am. But I feel that if I have another baby I won’t be able to give that child the same amount of love and attention I do to Isabella.

“When I told the customers that one woman told me I was being selfish, She said some people can’t have children and me just wanting one was selfish. She and her husband couldn’t conceive and I was sorry for that, but this is my personal choice. If I choose to have just one child it’s no one else’s business.

“I felt intimidated by this woman.

“She had no right to put me under that kind of pressure just because she couldn’t have children."

WHEN YOU ARE DESPERATE FOR A CHILD, THAT QUESTION HURTS

CLAIRE Owen always knew she wanted children, but she also knew there was plenty she wanted to do before she settled down with a family.

Like many women Claire studied, wanted to do well in her chosen career and meet the man of her dreams first, all of which she did.

She met Si when she was 21 and they married when she was 27. But things didn’t go according to plan.

“I used to think I wanted children before I was 30, but when it came to it I wanted to be settled and secure with the right job and a house first, so we started trying for a baby when I was 30,” says Claire, 36, of Colchester.

“But nothing happened. It was three years later in 2012 before we realised there was a medical reason why we couldn’t fall pregnant. It turns out Simon has a very low sperm count and he had to have two operations to have sperm retrieved, before we could then have IVF treatment. I was 33.

“Until that point when people asked us when we were having a baby I didn’t find it difficult to answer. In fact I remember being the one asking that question of others.

“When I realised there was more to it than just needing time, I would just want people to stop asking me.

“I’d think, we’ve been together since I was 21, we are married, of course we want children! It started to annoy me, upset me. I’d wonder why people did not consider there may be a problem.

“When you are desperate for a child that question hurts. I started making a joke of it and then going somewhere to have a cry. You don’t want to tell the world you are having fertility problems.”

Nearly 18 months ago Claire and Simon welcomed Arian into the world

HAPPY AS WE ARE

VICKY Irvine, a 31-year-old lecturer in anatomy at Southend College has been with her partner for more than eight years and they don’t have plans to marry or to have children.

And they are perfectly happy with their decision.

Vicky, of Southend, explains: “I get asked constantly when I am going to have a baby, mostly by total strangers because my family and friends know the answer. I do think it’s insensitive to ask that, but also very irritating. I can’t understand why people can’t get their head around the idea that just because having children is good for them, that it will be good for me, but I don’t think it is.”

CHILDLESS WOMEN CAN BE MADE TO FEEL A FAILURE

ASKING a woman when she is going to have a baby may seem innocent enough.

But for women who struggle to conceive the dreaded question leaves them feeling isolated, upset and a failure.

So is it insensitive to ask women when they are going to have a baby?

Vicky Parkin, an independent counsellor and psychotherapist who specialises in infertility, says: “It is not necessarily insensitive, but it can become so and offensive to someone who can’t get pregnant. For 90 per cent of the population it is a legitimate question but if you are struggling to fall pregnant, bring asked that question can become a real issue, to the point where they stop going out for social occasions, because they dread being asked when they are going to have a baby.”

Vicky, who works at various fertility clinics including Bourn Hall in Colchester and Wickford, works with many couples who are going through fertility treatment and is able to give them strategies to deal with probing questions from family and friends.

She says: “It is the unexplained reason for infertility that is the hardest for people to deal with. If there is something medically wrong, you can try and do something to sort it out. If there is no reason why you can’t have a baby, how do you understand that yourself, let alone explain it to everyone else?

“Being asked time and again leaves them feeling insecure, knocks their self esteem and it’s a constant reminder that they are the ones who can’t have children, so they choose not to socialise and they end up feeling isolated and alone.”