I just wanted to post this that I read on another website. It is a fantastic story concerning being an older mother with the 'possibility' of problems.
You have to know the circumstances leading up to my pregnancy at 45, to be able to fully appreciate the way I felt...
I had divorced and remarried at 41 to a much younger man who had no children. Mine were fourteen and eight at the time. The deal was to try and have a biological one of our own, and if that didnt happen after a year, we would adopt. Funny, but when I told others of my plan to adopt, they didnt bat an eyelid; I guess it was OK to mother at an older age, but being pregnant at an older age was forbidden.
I was fortunate enough to conceive on my honeymoon, and had an uneventful pregnancy and delivery (c-section, like my previous two) resulting in a ten-pound healthy daughter. We were thrilled and, although most people agreed that it was better you than me (as they put it how I hate that phrase), they cut me some slack because my new husband now had his own child.
We decided not to use any birth control to see if lightning would strike twice. I mentioned to my new obstetrician what we were trying to do. His response, and I quote: At your age, we should be talking menopause, not pregnancy dont you agree? I left his office, never to return.
In the meantime my mother, who had been fighting a losing battle against Alzheimers, moved in with us. For almost two years until her death, we cared for her at home. I am sure the stress did nothing to help my chances of conceiving, and month after month I was disappointed each time my period showed up although now with less regularity as peri-menopause was settling in.
We lost her in November 1999. That Christmas I took my whole brood to Disney World it had been a long two years for us all. I had finally (almost) given up on the chance of conceiving again as I knew that without medical assistance (i.e. donor eggs, in-vitro) my chances were 0.02 percent or something.
Two weeks after getting home I still felt jet-lagged and one of my fellow teachers joked: maybe youre pregnant. I waited another few days for my period to start, and then bought a pregnancy test. I was so self-conscious at the drugstore after all, I was now approaching 50! Those two blue lines popped up in a nano-second; I was in shock.
Now I had to actually find an obstetrician. But not just any obstetrician a supportive obstetrician. I called a practice where the doctor had been around for years. He remembered a time before birth control pills, when everyone had a later-in-life baby, some after menopause. Terrific. Now for the rest of the planet
We told no one until an early ultrasound confirmed an in-utero viable fetus, and I was almost at the end of my first trimester. I should have just said to people I was gaining weight during menopause yikes! It just amazed me that people felt they could make such rude comments to a pregnant woman. In the background, always lurking, was the unspoken there will be something physically/mentally wrong with your child. I could see it in their eyes; hear it in their tone of voice. Some actually voiced this to me, and asked if I would abort a Downs child.
The final straw came when I got the results of my AFP, which my own obstetrician said would be way out of whack due to my age, so he was not going to pay too much attention to them. He only did the test to see about the neurological implications, and there were none, thank God. For my age, the chance of any complications was 1/33 Id take those odds to Vegas any day! My AFP came back 1/10; you could have heard a pin drop. Although there was still a 90 percent chance nothing was wrong with my baby, the looks on everyones faces said it all, from the nurse to the radiologist, even to my obstetrician.
My obstetrician said that he would not insist on an amniocentesis unless the results of an in-depth ultrasound he was going to do indicated otherwise. The radiologist freaked he said that I was being stubborn, unreasonable and possibly doing harm to my baby by refusing to acknowledge that something was probably very wrong. (I found out from a nurse later that the radiologist thought old women such as myself were selfish and crazy to have children, and nature did not intend for it.) I asked this nurse what she thought. She said it would not be her choice, but that she knew why I was doing it, and she respected me for it. Why couldnt everyone just act that way?
I was thought of as totally selfish for not finding out if my baby was perfect or not. I had spent most of this pregnancy not enjoying it, but defending my right to have it, and have it the way I wanted it. I finally ended up being just as rude as those who were condemning me.
Well, to paraphrase an old saying, delivering well is the best revenge and that I did! A beautiful, wild, healthy daughter, Logan Alexandria (named for an X-Men character and her fathers favourite Egyptian city). She continues to fascinate, challenge, exasperate and delight us all and when I get those withering looks as my (older) friends/family watch me buckle up her safety belt or race off to ballet with her as they pour yet another drink and whine for grandkids I know that all is right with my world.
