Being an Old Mom

A friend who is in her mid-30's and still hoping to marry and have a family was asking me recently about having a child later in life.  I am definitely well-qualified to answer that question, since I had my son at 44.

Of course there are pros and cons.  The main thing to consider if you are deliberately delaying having children is that your fertility decreases as you get older.  Essentially, you start running out of eggs, and, since you use your good eggs first, those that are left are more likely to be defective.  So, besides having a harder time getting pregnant, you are also at increased risk for miscarriage (which I experienced with my second pregnancy at age 45, and it SUCKED), as well as certain birth defects such as Down's Syndrome or Trisomy 13. 

Of course, any pregnancy comes with risks, so having a child at a younger age is definitely not a guarantee that these things won't happen, nor is having one at an older age a guarantee that they will happen; it's just that your odds increase as you get older.

My doctor offered to test me early in my pregnancy to see if Cooper had Down's Syndrome so I could decide what to do about it.  I refused.  I wasn't going to "do" anything about it.  I knew that if God was going to give me a child with Down's Syndrome, then He would give me the strength to love and raise that child.

My doctor also told me that the risk of pregnancy to my health at 40-something is not much greater than it would have been at a younger age, though there were a few things they had to monitor more closely, like my blood pressure, which is often higher in older women.  I didn't have any age-related complications during my pregnancy, and my delivery was also uneventful.  I have heard that statistically, women who give birth later in life, live longer.

I am a big believer that God is in control.  Rarely does a woman give birth past her mid-40's, which means that, in a normal life span, she will live long enough to raise the child into adulthood.  I also believed that, if God didn't want me to get pregnant, if my body couldn't handle pregnancy, He wouldn't have let it happen, though I wasn't going to try to "override" His plan.  I know of two different women who got pregnant through in vitro in their 40's, both with twins.  Both died giving birth.  So I wouldn't have even considered going that route.  But that's just me.

Then there are other issues that I didn't really consider before getting pregnant.  Like, I have no one to relate to.  Friends my age have children in high school and college.  Women with children the age of my child are often young enough to be my daughters.  I have, in fact, had people ask me if Cooper was my grandson.  I try to keep a sense of humor about it.

There's also the energy factor.  You just don't have as much at 40-something as you did when you were 20-something.  And raising a child takes a lot of energy, especially when they're babies and toddlers.  My husband is around my same age, so we both often fall into bed at night, exhausted.  But so far, we have managed.  As people tell me, it keeps us young.

If anyone asks me if I would do it all again, I reply that if my choice was to have Cooper at a younger age or have him at 44, I would choose to have him at a younger age.  But if my choice was to have him at 44 or not at all, I would DEFINITELY have him at 44.  I LOVE being a mom, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.  Yes, I'll be 63 when he graduates high school but, oh well.

When I was pregnant, I came across a scripture that gave me peace about it all.  My pregnancy was something of a surprise, since, after 4-1/2 years of trying we had pretty much given up.  I questioned God, why now, after all this time, did He allow it to happen?  This was the answer He gave me:

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.  God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.  Acts 17:26-28

I believe God planned the exact time and place that Cooper should live, that he might seek Him.  God has a plan for all of our lives, and He doesn't make mistakes. 

For those who are thinking of deliberately delaying having children for a career or some other reason, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, and certainly not planning to have one as late as I did, but for those like my friend, who have not had an opportunity earlier in life but would still like to have a baby, if you think you can handle the risks, then I would say . . . go for it!