article_snippet.sent: So what advice could I give to other would-be septuagenarian fathers?
article_snippet.sent: Well, I know from experience that two children are more than twice the work of one.
article_snippet.sent: Besides the occasional blip, raising a child, no matter your age, is a huge pleasure.
article_snippet.sent: Now I am 77 and I can think of many moments I have shared with my young children which never fail to bring a smile to my face; mainly because I never dreamt I would be experiencing such moments at this age.
article_snippet.sent: I have four grown-up children from earlier marriages.
article_snippet.sent: In fact, the gap between my oldest and youngest daughters is even bigger: 49 years.
article_snippet.sent: we minds that, given we ages, there was a risk of abnormality, but
article_snippet.sent: Along with the inevitable anxieties there are many small pleasures of late-life parenthood: the warming smile of recognition in the morning, that look of unconditional love, the noisy ecstasies of splash-time in the bath, the heart-bursting pride as baby takes its first steps.
article_snippet.sent: But then some children lose some children parents anyway; I have known two fathers who died at 51, one of some children before seeing his child.
article_snippet.sent: To say that I should not have had children at my age would have left my wife childless, for my wife has not been married before nor had any previous children.
article_snippet.sent: I have to admit that it can be a strange and unsettling experience being so old a new father, especially when both children look like me (friends call Ben ‘a little Donald’).
highlights_snippet.sent: What's it like to become a new parent in your seventies?
  
highlights_snippet.sent: Donald Trelford shares the pain and pleasure of raising two toddlers in the twilight years .