Older, Wiser and Pregnant
What it means to have a baby at an "advanced maternal age."
by Ondine Galsworth
May 3, 2007
Nothing knocks the thrill out of your first trimester like a bit of stern advice
just moments after, "Congratulations! You're pregnant!" After
giving me the good news, my young, usually chipper female doctor looked at me
and said, sternly, "At your age, I strongly suggest serious genetic counseling." Serious
genetic counseling? Was there any other kind?
I was over thirty-five and pregnant — or, as I was graciously labeled by
my gynecologist, AMA — of Advanced Maternal Age. I was already keenly aware
of the grim facts. The odds of getting pregnant and being able to deliver a healthy
baby decrease dramatically over the years. (I think we all know this by now,
don't
we?) Once you start circling forty, you feel like you're trying to make
a three-minute egg with eggs that are already scrambled. When columnists and
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author of Creating A Life, start telling me when I should
procreate (or should have procreated), it makes me feel bristly and defensive;
unfortunately, a lot of what they say is true.
And now that I was indeed pregnant, and no spring chicken according to my ovaries,
I was in for a huge array of tests: blood work, Ultra Sound Levels I & II,
Amniocentesis . . . every month was something new. I didn't feel sorry for myself — well,
maybe just a little once they started bringing out the really long needles — because
I had accepted all the realities that came with being AMA and had decided to
give pregnancy a shot anyway.
I should mention that I didn't have a baby when I was I never didn't
want a child; as a matter of fact, I felt sure I would have one — later.younger for the simple
reason that when I was younger, I didn't want one. Unlike the plight of
many woman, like the ones in Hewlett's book, I was not older and childless
because of a soaring career, a lack of opportunity, or because I thought time
didn't matter. The discipline and devotion required for a sixty-hour work
week is so beyond my lady-of-leisure temperament that just thinking about working
that hard makes me start to hyperventilate. I was definitely not one of Hewlett's
high-achieving uber-broads. Not once did I look around my quiet apartment and
sigh, "All that is missing is a baby." Just the opposite: I was in
love with my solitude, my dog, my spur-of-the-moment vacations, reading in peace
until the wee hours.
Being from New York City, most of my friends started having children "late," after
their twenties. One by one, my clan of girlfriends began bringing their progeny
home. The kids were cute (most of them), but I was never tempted to hold them,
or baby-sit, or better yet, produce a bundle of joy of my own. Let's just
say that babies never enthralled me. I didn't suffer any feelings of longing,
or emptiness, or of being left out of the human experience. But, I never didn't
want a child; as a matter of fact, I felt sure I would have one — later.
The physical pull to have a baby, which really does feel like tug somewhere between
the fifth and seventh Chakras, didn't start for me until my mid-thirties — the
age one officially becomes AMA. All of a sudden, I found myself following mothers
around the neighborhood just so I could look at their infants bouncing in their
Baby Bjorns. I loved their little baby legs hanging down, their chubby faces
gazing up at Mommy. I wanted to hold them. I wanted one.
And I wanted one without drugs or IVF or ART or borrowed eggs. Nothing against
the many women who do try these methods. I have a friend who made a mighty fine
baby after a few rounds of IVF. Just not my cup of tea. My philosophy was: since
I waited so long to have a baby, I was prepared to live with the possibility
that it may never happen. Instead, I cut out sugar, caffeine and all refined
food completely from my diet for six months, practiced lots of yoga, and went
to my acupuncturist and told him to rev me up for fertility. And voila.
©2007 Ondine Galsworth and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Ondine Galsworth is working on a novel about her experiences as a go-go dancer
and a book about her new addiction, the rodeo. A New York native, she now lives in
New Jersey.
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