– or, why I’m glad I’m not a young mother

I got married when I was twenty-one.  I was that rarest of things these days: the virgin bride.  I lived with my parents until the day I wed.  I even continued to live with them and commuted to college – a Catholic women’s college.  I didn’t drink or smoke.  I was inexperienced, insulated and naïve, yet felt worry-free about making a lifelong commitment to someone.

Thank God I didn’t reproduce.

I’m sure there are many people in their early twenties who have the maturity to get married and raise a family.  But I wasn’t one of them.  I had no life experience to draw from, no sense of self, no frame of reference, no opinions and beliefs formed from hardships and painful lessons.

Well, I’ve got all that now, Chester.  In spades.  Heck, someone might say I’m twice the woman I was at twenty – chronologically and physically.  But then I would smack that someone.

I didn’t plan to be an older first-time mom.  But more women are planning it that way, establishing careers and relationships and financial security before they start their families.  But planned or not, the over-35 and indeed, over-40 first-time mothers club is getting more members by the minute.  The U.S. Census Bureau states that of the 4 million babies born each year in this country, 100,000 are born to women over forty.  Witness the multimedia barrage of information: Web sites like www.mothersover40.com; books like “Hot Flashes Warm Bottles: First-Time Mothers Over Forty” by Nancy London; blogs like www.pregnancyover40-over40motherhood.blogspot.com.  Famous faces like Geena Davis and Nancy Grace are making over-40 births seem trendy and accepted.

But this doesn’t stop the medical world from labeling me, at age 39, a “geriatric mother.”  Oy!  That hurt.  And the risks are there: Older mothers are at a greater risk for high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and difficult labors – first-time mothers 35 and older are almost seven times as likely to have C-sections or assisted deliveries.  I had all those things.  Well, labor wasn’t difficult, since I never went through it.  The scheduled C-section was a breeze.  I was amazed at what a non-event it turned out to be, despite my obsessing on the spinal and the word “vivisection” for days beforehand.

Physical ramifications of being an older mother aside (like, oh, I don’t know, my stomach muscles separating down the middle, never to return to even the flabby tautness I once enjoyed – well, maybe not enjoyed, exactly…), the emotional ramifications of being “a woman of a certain age” when my baby arrived have been overwhelmingly positive.  Even on my worst days, I know that I’m a better parent now, at this age and alone (with all due respect to my mother and aunt, who are my caregivers when I work) than I would have been at age 21, with a husband. 

I just have more life experience to draw from.  Indeed, I have come to view my life now in two segments: the first forty years, and the second.  I feel extremely fortunate that I got to live a pretty complete 39-year life that was all about me – growing, developing who I am and where I want to be, what my priorities and values are, and getting to be Kathcentric.  I could come and go as I pleased; I could explore the world and my place in it.

Now I can devote the second forty years to my daughter, using that lifetime of experience to determine what’s truly important, what deserves attention and focus and what doesn’t.  I’m more capable of not sweating the small stuff (the 3-second rule in my house is closer to one minute).  I know more about the horrible things in the world, but I have less fear about them.  I have a better big-picture grasp.  I know what kind of person I want to help her become.  And most importantly, I won’t live vicariously through her, because I’ve already lived.  I will help her find her own path, by reminiscing about my own right and wrong turns.

I will be the Aged, guiding my Beauty.