Simone O’Kane is living proof that you CAN go to university, have a career and be a young mum

SO, feminist and property guru Kirstie Allsopp has told women to ditch university and have a baby by the time they reach 27 – before their ovaries begin to fail them and their eggs slowly wilt away.

This week the TV personality stirred up some furious reactions from women in the UK with comments advocating that her (non-existent) daughter should skip higher education to have a baby.

Although I couldn’t agree more that it’s important to have a family when you’re young, fit and healthy, it’s equally as important to get a good education and, if you can, an established career.

But you can’t have both I hear you say – especially from those who think that anybody who falls pregnant before the age of 30, and hasn’t travelled, graduated, got a mortgage, married and saved for the future, is a failure to society and their children’s futures.

Then there’s the Earth Mother types: the ones who can’t imagine anything worse than working full- time, balancing the baby and the boardroom whilst feeding their children convenience foods.

As a young-ish mum, I fall into both categories and what I have discovered is that it’s all about balance.

When I first announced that I was pregnant in 2004, I was at university. Certain lecturers treated me as though I was as an object of sympathy. Some fellow students gave off the vibe that my life was over and it was a tragedy that the staff at the student union would never find me under the table at 3am after a night out.

But it was those late nights that prepared me for the bundle of joy that followed. I was focused on what I wanted and nothing was going to stop me.

More often than not I was bright- eyed and bushy tailed the days after the night-feeds, which happened every two hours with a hungry boy.

The late-night partying at uni were perfect training. As a 20-year-old student with the world ahead of me, I returned to my lectures when my son was just three months old. The tiredness compensated for the lack of hangovers, so I didn’t feel alone. Determined to graduate, and with a supportive husband-to-be behind me, I managed.

Looking back I don’t know how I did it, although it’s clear that there is a strong advantage to being a young mum. You don’t have the worries that some older mums do. You live in a bubble – and mine was floating towards a future that was filled with ambition.

Kirstie Allsopp, who has two sons, said she would tell a daughter of hers not to go to university. The presenter of Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location told the Daily Telegraph that she believes women are being let down by the system, saying: “We should speak honestly and frankly about fertility and the fact that it falls off a cliff when you’re 35. At the moment, women have 15 years to go to university, get their career on track, try to buy a home and have a baby. That is a hell of a lot to ask someone.”

Fertility does dwindle as we get older. However, according to a study, 78 per cent of 35 to 40-year-old women trying to get pregnant conceived within a year, compared with 84 per cent of 20 to 34 year-olds. Not such a huge difference.

As women we are led to believe that whatever we’re doing is wrong. Motherhood is a mission that I have accomplished twice over but at the same time managed to have a career. But there’s no ideal time for a woman to plan a family and it should all just happen naturally. And why do men not get asked: When is the right age to become a father?

And why should IVF-conceiving couples go through the heartache of starting a family whilst teenagers who can’t manage to tie their own shoe laces are giving birth in their millions?

There’s too much pressure on women to deliver (literally) before the fertility window closes. They are always in the wrong, riddled with guilt for wanting to work as well as raising a family.

My two glorious children, who are now eight and four, have been smothered with love by friends who are only just starting their brood and it has been a fantastic experience for them to be the only kids in the gang.

And as friends give birth to their first, I am on my third pregnancy in full-time employment, married, mortgaged and feeling that being a mother in my thirties will be a different experience.