The Shock of 'Gran'

'I didn't feel ready to be a grandma – I was only 49 and I felt I'd been pushed into a new life stage against my will.'

Anne Beddowes, 53

There is a general assumption that every woman wants to be a grandma one day. All the clichés revolve around the lonely older woman, begging, 'When will you make me a granny?' and nagging, 'Isn't it time you two started trying?'

But the reality can be quite different. Women in their 40s and 50s today tend to have more demands on their time than ever before – it's no surprise they're often referred to as 'the sandwich generation', spinning plates between ageing parents of their own, demanding jobs, money, marriage and young adult children who can often cause more sleepless nights than little ones. Suddenly throwing a new grandchild into the mix can be a terrible shock – and while you want to be delighted, and say all the appropriate things, often the first grandmotherly reaction to the joyous news is open-mouthed shock.

A less-than-positive reaction isn't unusual – for every shriek of delight, there's a sudden inability to form words. The Hollywood dream where the big happy family hugs and cries with joy and starts building cherrywood cribs in the back porch is rarely what happens when an unexpected pregnancy is announced.

And while some grans-to-be are genuinely thrilled, and have waited long years to feel useful and rock a small baby to sleep again, plenty are poleaxed, trying to work out exactly what's going to happen to their lives in future. Will they be expected to sacrifice their free time? Be an unpaid childminder? Will they feel pushed out by a daughter-in-law who doesn't like them, or a son who's just taken a job at the other end of the country? Some may be dealing with illness – their own or a spouse's – or elderly parents, or coming to terms with retirement. Some may have settled into a pleasant, post-retirement pattern, and be fearful of disrupting it. And some grandmas may have absolutely no idea how they're going to fit a whole new family member into their already packed lives.

If you have been fully updated on the attempts to get pregnant (not in graphic detail, ideally) or have known for ages that your child and their partner are trying for a baby, then it may not be a shock at all – or at least only a joyfully positive one. In which case, excellent, crack open the cava (because you're drinking for two now your daughter can't) and log onto a baby-related website.

If you're somewhat surprised, however, you may well find yourself saying entirely the wrong thing. So here's a handy reference guide.

All of these can be said – more subtly – later on, if necessary, but the only possible thing to say when the pregnancy is announced – assuming