The Beautiful, Anxious, Unconventional Reality of Pregnancy After 40
I’ve never thought more about my age than I have in these past few months. As I write this, the new life growing inside me (making me feel seasick every day for the last seven weeks) is the size of a lemon — likely a pomegranate by the time you read this. And I’m reminded how age and pregnancy and society’s judgment of both are all intertwined.
“How old are you?” a curious commenter asked when I announced my pregnancy on Instagram. At 44, already blessed with a teen and a tween, I’ll be an unconventional mother of a newborn. (I discovered earlier this year that one of my high school classmates recently became a grandfather.)
Friends and family were surprised and happy for us. Some assumed our upcoming little one was a birth control oops, not knowing the long road it took to get here.
People often say that I look, and act, and dress younger than 44. Maybe. But what does 44 look, and act, and dress like, anyway?
Still, the reality of being pregnant at this age is filled with far more anxiety than it was in my 20s and 30s. Looking and feeling spry doesn’t affect the quality of your eggs. It doesn’t change all the charts and figures that doctors show you about the risks that multiply with every birthday that passes.
My husband and I don’t talk about this pregnancy like we did the previous two. Even past that riskiest first trimester, we still pepper our statements with qualifiers like “if everything works out” and “hopefully.”
The last time I was pregnant, I leaned on my dogeared paperback copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. This time around, for better or worse, I google everything. I’ve been poked by so many needles, had nearly every available blood screening test, and the results are utterly, maddeningly...confusing.
I’m a voracious reader of “older mom” message boards, finding comfort in success stories (and quickly averting my eyes from the sad ones). Every woman has a story. For some, that involves multiple miscarriages, egg donors, surgeries, medications — we don’t know the whole story because we rarely talk about the whole story.
Fertility over 40 is often seen in mass culture as a salacious headline. So-and-So Celebrity Flaunts Her Baby Bump at 47. Surrogate Grandma Gives Birth to Her Son’s Baby. The reality is almost always far more complex and emotional.
The uniqueness of our situation is not lost on me. My oldest will be in college when his littlest sister enters elementary school. I’ll be an older, wiser 62 when my youngest child turns 18. If everything works out. Hopefully.
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