As part of the Herald’s series, “How we make it work”, Jodie and Jae, 38, share what it’s like having an unexpected baby in the later stages of life, and how they manage running the homestead around the responsibilities of taking care of children.

Jodie Starling, 45, co-owner and host of The Starling Homestead

I’ve still got his Tinder profile pic in my phone.

He was just really handsome. I was living in Wellington. I’d been living my best single girl life in my late 30s, which was fun but also depressing and exhausting. I’d sort of given up; I’d been online dating for quite a few years. I remember I was at the end of it and I was like, oh, can’t even be bothered, I’ll go on one last date.

We met up for coffee and hit it off.

We moved here in North Canterbury in November 2021. We got married in January. Then our daughter, Remy, came along in April. At that stage I was 40 … and had two kids. My son Callum is 15.

We did want another child. We tried for a period of time, but because of my age … we lost a lot of pregnancies. We lost a little boy [about 16 weeks] who had massive chromosomal issues. That was the final straw.

A couple of years went by and I just threw myself into the business. I went to the doctor to ask to go on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). She said as an option, instead of going on HRT, I could try taking the combined mini pill instead.

I remember when Jae would get home from work, I kept on thinking, oh, you smell off. A couple of times I’d actually said to him, what are you eating?

That’s a classic pregnancy symptom – your partner will just smell funny to you. It wasn’t until I’d said that a few times in a row that I suddenly thought, oh my goodness, that’s what I had last time [I was pregnant].

And it turns out I was actually pregnant all along.

Truthfully, I was devastated. I cried. I’d put that opportunity to rest. We were in disbelief for so long because we kept on thinking it was just going to be another loss.

[Baby Tāne] just stuck in there and just was meant to be.

I think I’m better suited to having a baby now than I would have ever been in my 20s. I’m so much more patient now. The level of appreciation I have for this little boy is just so high.

I do not have a good work-life balance, that’s for sure. It’s particularly challenging when your work and home life are all on the same property because you can’t leave work.

Once you own a property, once you add animals to the mix, once you add children to the mix, it’s very hard to prioritise going on dates and things like that. We’d love to and we talk about it; we laugh about it.

I have a huge amount of gratitude to my husband for being the backbone behind everything we do and enabling all of this. We don’t really fight. We’ve got the same morals, values and goals for our family.

We get shared moments of being in the trenches together. They are so precious. There can be one of us putting Remy to sleep and the other one’s putting Tāne to sleep; you cross paths and look at each other, you both just laugh and roll your eyes. This is what we wished for and we’ve got it.

You feel like soldiers in arms sometimes.

Jae Starling, 38, machine operator and co-owner of The Starling Homestead

I hated her Tinder profile picture.

She was wearing a blue dress and she had her hair straight. I hate it when she straightens her hair. Well, hate’s a bit strong. I just don’t think it suits her best. It’s obviously something we laughed about and I did suggest straight away that she should perhaps look into changing her profile picture.

I’d been travelling for many years and I’d become accustomed to being the uncle. I never wanted to have children before I was able to support myself adequately. I always wanted to have my own home [first]. It was a line in the sand for me. So I thought I wouldn’t be able to have kids.

When I met Jodie, I really had to unpack all that.

She has a wonderful energy to be around. She’s calming. She has great zest for anything she does and it’s very infectious. It gives you confidence.

Jodie fell pregnant really fast … then she lost that pregnancy. I think it happened around 16 weeks. Emotionally, that was so hard for us. We felt flabbergasted. Some people go years trying for children and we thought we’d lucked out.

We found out that we weren’t that fortunate. We went through quite a few [pregnancy losses].

It was a real drain and really hard on our relationship. Because the act becomes a chore, and the desire to have a child becomes really robotic. It takes all the zest of life. It’s really sad, actually.

Once I became a father to Remy, I just wanted to have more kids. All the shackles came off. Being a father was the most amazing thing you could ever dream of.

It was so hard to watch your partner go through the peaks and troughs of [being pregnant]. And be a bit useless to it. Obviously, every partner wants to be supportive, but there’s only so much you can achieve. It’s always hard to get clarity about what Jodie – or any woman – might need in that specific moment.

We weren’t expecting or trying for Tāne but I was over the moon. We were very kind of cagey around the pregnancy because we’d been through so many. We didn’t tell anyone until she was close to six months. It becomes quite embarrassing. You feel shame when you tell people you’re pregnant, and then you keep losing them.

I think “balance” is a word that has been around for a while but didn’t have the relevance it had, say, 10 years ago. I don’t think it’s a realistic option for a lot of phases of life. And I think we manage it quite well.

I’m currently trying to get down to four days a week [in my machine operating job] so I can be here for a three-day weekend and have quality time and time to give towards the business, family and the connections that go with it.

We definitely have to meet in the middle [when there are disagreements] … it would be somewhere closer to Jodie’s side to be fair. That’s not a bad thing because I can be very guilty of being a hermit and overly cautious.

I was of the mind that once you’ve got one child, you might as well have two. But, my word, [the work] compounds. I was such a fool. We chuckle about it and we love that we have a second child together.

It’s as busy as you allow it to be. We’ve learned a lot since moving here five years ago, trying to dissect what works for us, what doesn’t work, and it’s constantly evolving as our children grow and we change. We’re getting better at it, and it’s benefiting everybody.

Varsha Anjali is a journalist in the lifestyle team at the Herald. She is based in Auckland.