My two babies were born at 38 and 41 and despite having almost four decades of living under my belt, it was a surprising, sometimes humiliating, rewarding experience. First up, I had to contend with the idea that I had reached an “advanced maternal age.” The term “geriatric pregnancy” is—thankfully!—no longer really in use, but it hasn’t completely gone away.
Then I had to reckon with the fact that getting pregnant was not easy—it took three years of fertility treatments and a few rounds of IUI, the lower-tech (and cheaper) stepping-stone before IVF. My body was obviously alarmed that it was being asked to do something I had tried so studiously to avoid for a few decades. Like a Chevy that had sat in the garage for years, it took a while to jump-start and then sputtered to get going.
For me, the first trimester was about biding time and keeping my bundle of cells a nauseating secret, hoping they would coalesce into a healthy human. I endured one very woozy work trip with my boss where I attempted to downplay my billowy shirts and refusal of wine. I also helped out with an office move (probably a bad idea) that involved awkward squeezing past co-workers moving desks. Did I mention that insomnia and constipation are common pregnancy side effects? It’s lovely.
That said, pregnancy is a crapshoot no matter who you are—the annoyances described above are not necessarily related to the age at which I got pregnant. Some people are floating on a cloud of bliss, others mopping up vomit every other minute. I was somewhere in the middle, clinging to Unisom (one of the few sleeping pills considered safe for pregnancy), magnesium powders, and weekly hikes, which were the only exercise I seemed capable of. I was excited to have a kid but so, so tired all the time.
In your late 30s or 40s, you are likely further along in your career. That can be wonderfully empowering as well as utterly exhausting. One morning I sat on a subway platform bench for about 30 minutes trying to muster the energy to complete my trip to work and start my day. Would this have been different had I been 22 years old? Not sure, since I was wasting my prodigious energy at that point on 5 a.m. walks home from the club in heels. I did help a friend give birth when she was in her early twenties and watched her jump out of bed and start walking around almost as soon it was over. The body definitely changes.
Second trimester calmed down a bit, but Zika put a dent in any glamorous babymoon plans. We went to Los Angeles, which I thought would be safe, until I got awful food poisoning from a boutique hotel restaurant. Did you know Oscar De La Hoya donated a shining new labor and delivery center to the people of East L.A.? Neither did I, until I ended up there in the middle of the night, retching up my $30 mushroom burger. I received excellent care from the doctors there, who deemed everything fine, and I was able to stumble back to the beach the next day. I’m now a boxing fan.
I know I’ve made all this seem fairly low stakes, so I must share the very real risks of birth defects which increase as you get older. Down’s Syndrome, autism, heart malformations, and pregnancy loss all apparently increase with advanced maternal (and paternal!) age. This raises the stakes for the required 20-week checkup, when the doctors check for all of these things. I was very nervous waiting during the ultrasound, trying to parse the technician’s facial tics as she analyzed what looked to me like a series of pixelated blobs. Like so much in pregnancy, the conclusion was anticlimactic—I received a PDF a few days later declaring the future child healthy and also, in tiny print, a girl.
During the final stretch of any pregnancy, I experienced the unique feeling of actual bones pushing on your bones from the inside. Was this different for my late 30s and early 40s bones than it would have been if I’d had the skeletal density of a 25-year-old? I’ll never know, but I do know enough to say anyone who says pregnancy is not a big deal is full of it. Every single one of your body’s systems is affected: respiratory, digestive, circulatory, psychological, skeletal, and others I can’t even name. You feel an alien being asserting itself at all hours of the day, just below your lungs, and all you can do is lay down and donate online to your favorite reproductive-rights organization because nobody should be made to do this unwillingly.
If you do find yourself in a stable partnership or financial situation due to your “advanced maternal age,” spend your hard-earned funds on organic food for yourself (worth it), not a dozen brands of Danish baby bottles. (Baby will reject all in favor of whatever Walmart sells.) As an older mom, I’d had more time to read about the litany of crazy chemicals in our air, food and water and how dangerous they can be in pregnancy. So, I tried to control what I could. As for the Baby Shower Industrial Complex, having been around the block a few times I had seen some of the happiest kids of my friends sleeping in literal cardboard boxes, so I tried to refuse the onslaught of baby crap. Pay for a doula, a masseuse, whatever human help you can find.
Finally, the baby comes (or not, as was the case with my two—they refused to emerge and had to be medically induced, which is recommended for older, creakier pelvises even a week before the baby’s due). After an excruciatingly “natural” first birth, I opted to get the epidural for my second and have no regrets. I refused birth photos because I thought everyone would prefer to see photos of a scrumptious little baby, not my sweating and screaming face. My first words after the birth were “thank God it’s out!” Maybe you will say something more poetic, I hope so. Please take at least 40 days to take care of yourself or as much time as you need because your body and mind really take a long time to recover from the 40-week alien invasion. Find some mom or dad friends to be your friends in the trenches—if war veterans are allowed to parse every detail and revel in their shared experience, why can’t parents? My group of Old Moms has been my absolute salvation.
Whatever comes out of your vagina or abdomen is yours to keep. It will look like you, talk like you, annoy you like hell, and give the best hugs in the world with its tiny squishy arms. You will realize that any worries about childbirth were unfounded, because that only lasts a few hours or days. Sleep training can last 12-24 months.