When it comes to having children, you just can’t win.

Childless couples – whether voluntarily or otherwise – often get asked about having children, while couples with one child are questioned over whether a sibling will be coming along soon.

Columnist with the Irish Independent Tanya Sweeney told Moncrieff that she has dealt with this herself as the mother of an only child.

“I had a baby when I was 42, so there was no conscious at all about it,” she said.

“It just happened and I kind of went with the flow and went, ‘Wow, this is kind of amazing’.

“We were so happy as a unity of three and of course it came up then after a couple of years, ‘Are we going to do this again, what’s going to happen?’”

Pregnancy test.

Ms Sweeney said she had a fertility snapshot done but “it became evident that just, time wasn’t on my side” and so the idea was shelved.

“I was always very sure about that, even though I kept hearing so many people – oh my god – go, ‘Just the one? Is it only the one you have there’,” she said.

“As recently as last weekend, someone went ‘Are you going to have another?’

“It’s just a question that when you have one child, I presume I’ll be asked this when I’m 75; ‘Are you going to have another one?’”

'Crisis of confidence

However, Ms Sweeney said she had her own doubts and longings after holding a newborn baby.

“I was holding this brand new baby and I just kind of looked down and I got a flood of recall from the time when I had my own newborn baby,” she said.

“My six-year-old came over and saw me with the baby and she was very sort of sweet and tender with the baby and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, she would have really made a fantastic big sister’.”

Ms Sweeney said the event caused her a minor “crisis of confidence” but she “got it out of [her] system”.

Main image: Mother caressing her worried child outdoor in nature. Image: Martin Novak / Alamy. 16 July 2014