While many women just weeks away from their 61st birthday would probably be planning a celebration with their grandchildren or adult children, Carole Hobson is instead running around after her two-year-old twins.
In 2010, former social worker Carole raised eyebrows when she gave birth to her son and daughter, Frieda and Matthew, after undergoing IVF at a clinic in India.
Two years on, Carole admits that although she is happy and coping as a single mum, she would like to have 'physical help' with her children.
"I wouldn't get involved in a relationship for an extra pair of hands, obviously. But if you are in a relationship, you do have that help. It's not the emotional support as such, it's the physical support," she told the Daily Mail. "For example, help with getting two children through an airport, which is no mean feat as I discovered when I took them to Spain this summer."
Carole also admits that she faces constant assumptions that she is her children's granny – and that even her own daughter has called her 'nanna' after picking up on a stranger's comments.
"I thought: "Oh no, this is coming up now - the children are getting to an age where they understand," Carole said. "But I told her: 'No, I'm Mummy'"
It took Carole five attempts at IVF to fall pregnant with her twins via donor embryos planted in her uterus from the eggs of a 24-year-old Indian woman and the sperm of a Scandinavian man. She says that at the time, she had no idea what she was letting herself in for.
"I don't think people sit you down and spell out the drawbacks of motherhood,'" she said. "If they said 'You will get two hours sleep that night and the next night and the night after,' you would think: 'Oh my God.' But somehow you cope... I've had a few respiratory infections because lack of sleep can make you poorly."
Despite this, she says she doesn't feel any different to when she was 20 or 30, and insists she is coping with motherhood better as an older woman because she is more motivated.
"If people seem surprised to hear I'm their mum, I say: 'Oh yeah, I do look a bit rough', because I know that I don't," she says. "After all, some mothers in their 40s can look quite old."