A woman who has 11 kids has revealed she is ᴅᴇsᴘᴇʀᴀᴛᴇ to have a 12th baby, despite living in a four-bedroom house with her big family. Zoe and her RAF engineer husband Ben live in Lossiemouth and share children Elizabeth, 16, Olivia, 13, twins Isabelle and Charlotte, 12, Noah, 11, Eva, eight and twins Leah and Erin, five, four-year-old Agnes May and Joseph, two.
The couple said about their daily life as the two parents follow a sᴛʀɪᴄᴛ ʀᴏᴜᴛɪɴᴇ during their 17-hour day from the moment they wake up at 4.45am. The family-of-13 live in a four-bedroom property in the north of Scotland. The parents have their own room, and the three other bedrooms are divided up between Elisabeth, 14, Olivia, 13, and twins Charlotte and Isabelle, 11, Eva, eight, twins Leah and Erin, three, Agnes, two, and sons Noah, ten, Toby, six, and one-year-old Joseph. Ben said: ” You’ve got the four oldest girls in the other bedrooms, the three boys in here and the four other girls in the other bedroom. I suppose you could say we are quite ᴄʜᴏᴄᴀʙʟᴏᴄᴋ here. It is going to be strange ᴡɪᴛʜᴏᴜᴛ a baby in here but hopefully the space should be filled fairly soon. We are making kind of plans to have another baby. I mean there’s up and there’s downs. It is busy, we don’t always get it right. Essentially we love it, and we love having all the children.”
And Zoe said: ” We’d love it. It’s our life, it’s who we are. They are our everything.” The family eats almost £300 of groceries each week, including three loaves, four litres of milk and a box of cereal a day. In the morning, the mum-of-11 gets up for a shower, then starts washing the first of the day’s three loads of washing into the machine and starts making packed lunches. She has given an insight into the family’s ᴄʜᴀᴏᴛɪᴄ ʟɪFᴇ as the children return to classes tomorrow. With nine of the kids heading to school, two for the very first time, it’s been a major shopping and spreadsheet operation. She added:” I have a spreadsheet for back to school. I do an audit halfway through the holidays, and then I know what I need to buy. I ᴅᴏɴ’ᴛ ᴛʜʀᴏᴡɪɴɢ things away if they have ʟɪFᴇ ʟᴇFᴛ in them, so the shopping list isn’t as big as it could be. The older ones are quite easy, because they don’t grow as much , they can use stuff from previous years. However, new schoolbags and jackets practically all round can add up, even if there is some hand-me-downing to be done for the smaller items.”
And it’s not all about the financial side of things – getting everyone ready and out the door is a big job on its own. She only has two at home now Agnes, four, and two-year-old Joseph and she admitted: “I ʜᴀᴛᴇ it when they all go back to school, it’s so quiet. We told earlier how Zoe is ᴅᴇsᴘᴇʀᴀᴛᴇ to have 20 children. The house is quite full. But there’s always room for more! I can fit more in. Easy. There’s space in our room.”
