Michelle Mac Mullan: ‘I was deemed too young, too old and too selfish to have babies – all before hitting menopause’

From teenage mum and ‘selfish’ career woman to miscarriages and an IVF battle in her 40s, the former news anchor’s new play charts how society has always told her she’s got motherhood all wrong...

Michelle Mac Mullan's show 'Motherhood' will run in the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin. Illustration: Veronica Marcano Maguire

Michelle Mac Mullan

I lost my last baby last year. That’s it, the world told us, no more trying. After multiple miscarriages, the fertility factory should shut. To continue, at this stage, would be simply unseemly.

It took a long time to bankrupt my baby-maker, however, having been in perfect working order for aeons. In fact, before my maternal machinery ceased production, it churned out a seriously super specimen of childhood, back when I was little more than a child myself.