Pregnant (or trying to be) at 40 and feeling alone in a sea of 20-somethings? Welcome, start here!

I’ve decided to start this blog, partly as a therapeutic outlet, but also to share my experience in the hopes that I can help others who are in the same boat as me. Sometimes being a brand new parent in one’s forties can feel a bit isolating, to say the least…and having much younger friends with babies and young children can make it feel even worse, not better. It somehow manages to shine a spotlight on the vast differences in the experience a parent has with the entire child-birthing and rearing process, based on his or her age. It can be frustrating and lonely.

I got married at the “ripe old age” of 30, and my husband and I decided to wait a few more years before trying for kids because, as every woman is told over and over again, you have until the age of 35 and then your fertility drops off a cliff the day after your 35th birthday. Fast forward a few years, my husband got a vasectomy reversal (he had done in a previous marriage) and I got a fertility health workup from the local women’s clinic. All was well on both counts, so they said, so we started trying. And then we waited…and waited…and waited. My 35th birthday came and went, and so did a few more. We finally ended up going through IVF treatment (technically it was ICSI) through a wonderful clinic just a few hours away, since no one does IVF here in our town. I got to celebrate my 40th birthday with a lovely baby bump, and I had my darling baby son a month later! (Extremely prematurely at 30 weeks, but hey, he gets to have a summer birthday so it was a win.)

It didn’t take long to discover that my experience was, from the start, very different than my (much younger) peers who also had babies around the same time I did. During the planning phase, then throughout the entire pregnancy, and after he was born, I often found that I couldn’t relate to the other moms sharing their birth stories – usually home births, no complications, up and about again in a few days after delivery – whereas I checked into the hospital at 26 weeks with severe preeclampsia, stroke-level blood pressure, and had to stay in the hospital on bedrest an entire month until I finally delivered him at 30 weeks via cesarean, and then stayed another 10 weeks with my son in the NICU. It also doesn’t help that any pregnant woman over the age of 35 is classified as a “geriatric pregnancy.” WHAT?!?

Many of my younger friends had become pregnant as an “oops” or after a “whole 6 months” of trying. Their pregnancies were for the most part uneventful and life went on as usual up until the final few weeks for them. Me, on the other hand…well, I had the fun task of injecting myself with needles 2x or 3x daily full of meds that made me feel like I wasn’t even human, not to mention cost many thousands of dollars. I suffered ovarian hyperstimulation in the process (shout out if you know what that feels like), had to go on pain meds, and when we got the wonderful news that the embryo transfer was successful, I had to stick a giant needle in my backside every single day for months just to sustain the pregnancy. Don’t even get me started on breastfeeding. I never want to look at a breast-pump again as long as I live, so help me God.

I’m not here to whine and complain (well, maybe a little.) I’m here to relate – to find others in the same boat, to be able to swap stories and share advice, and ask questions that don’t leave the other person staring at me like a deer in headlights (what in the world do you mean, “should I opt to find out the gender during the embryo genetic screening?” Or, “I have no idea if blood pressure meds pass into breastmilk.”) I plan to share the unique joys and challenges of raising a tiny human while the rest of my peers are seeing theirs off to college.

So the next time you’re out to dinner with friends who are discussing the final touches on their retirement plans and you have to apologize because your toddler just threw a fork across the table, just know you’re not alone!