Things the Stork Never Bothers to Tell Midlife Moms
You have recently discovered that it is now possible for you--a post-menopausal woman in your 50s--to carry a baby full term.
And you are tempted. Quite unexpectedly, you long to hold a baby in your arms. When you read about this medical breakthrough, you chuckled because it seemed so ridiculous. But the idea resurfaces again and again.
A baby.
I don’t wish to discourage you, but I feel a certain obligation to share my story.
I was 42, our two sons were in college and our oldest daughter was a sophomore in high school when I became pregnant with our fourth child. That was 19 years ago.
When I was a 59-year-old grandmother and grandpa was 60, our youngest daughter, Jane, was a 17-year-old high school senior.
Most of our friends, having taken advantage of early retirement, were playing golf, participating in elder hostel programs or investing in second homes in Palm Springs, Seattle or Coeur d’Alene.
I was at home baking.
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Jane phones from school at 10:45 a.m. “I am in charge of dessert for a luncheon meeting, and I forgot. Can you make some brownies and get them here by noon?”
I stop what I am doing (which is often not what most 59-year-old women are doing), make a run to the market for a package of mix and bake some brownies, which I then deliver to the campus.
As a student body officer, Jane is in charge of providing team spirit, which means she will be responsible for planning the homecoming activities and organizing the Halloween dance.
And so, while friends our age are taking mini-vacations to Carmel, Yosemite or Montecito, we are sitting around the breakfast table helping plan a haunted house.
Our daughter decides to attend the dance as a bird on roller skates. For this, she will need two bottles of green dye, several packages of green feathers, an old pillowcase and some fabric glue. She asks me to put the costume together.
On the day of the dance, she calls from school: “Can Dad find the white tarp? Can he buy a roll of black plastic? And when he brings them to school, can he also bring the galvanized tub?”
Jane plans to make a difference in the world and works to convert our country into a drug-free society. As a member and organizer of Youth to Youth, she has traveled to numerous conferences, including one in Washington, and has become acquainted with other young people from all over the country.
One of these new friends, living 70 miles from us in Thousand Oaks, invites her to attend his prom. She spends $60.84 on fabric for a dress, which her 85-year-old grandmother sews. Her shoes are $42.
And so, while our friends are taking cruises to the Caribbean, Alaska and the islands of the Mediterranean, I am at home, loaning Jane my coat, my beaded purse and our gasoline credit card.
The boy from Thousand Oaks is merely a friend. The boy she falls in love with lives 510 miles away--in the Sierra--and he is on the football team. “I would like to see him play in one game before the season is over,” she says.
While our friends are playing golf on the Big Island, doing genealogical research at the Smithsonian or visiting a bed and breakfast in Williamsburg, Va., we are escorting our daughter to the mountains, with an overnight stay in a Modesto motel. And her father doesn’t even like football.
Senior photographs are taken for the high school annual. Jane poses for 52 shots at a local studio, and we have an opportunity to purchase the entire package--in color--for $499. If we wish to see her baby picture in the annual, we will have to fork over another $30.
Our generations are far apart. When I was a high school senior, there was no television set to distract or to entertain me, only one of my friends owned an automobile, and because my parents couldn’t afford a telephone, I walked to Woolworth’s and used the public phone.
Our bonus baby can’t study unless she is listening to rock ‘n’ roll. Because she has her own automobile, our monthly gas bill has increased by more than $110, and our monthly bill for automobile insurance has gone up $80. Her share of the monthly telephone bill sets us back another $58.
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Please do not misunderstand. I don’t wish to discourage any woman whose biological clock has ceased to function but who is longing to hold a newborn. And I think it is remarkable that women in their late 50s--implanted with donor eggs--can experience childbirth and motherhood.
But I do wish to remind a woman considering this that she may be attending PTA meetings when she’s in her early 70s. And while the couple’s friends are touring wineries in the South of France, the parents will be preparing hot dogs in the Little League snack bar.
Lynne Norris, with husband Jim, owns the Olive Press in Los Olivos and is the author of the book “Can a Woman Over Forty?” Their daughter Jane is now a freshman at UCLA.
