PSA: Have kids young!
Latest article published in Spectator Magazine
“Why do I feel like I got hit by a bus?” I ask my husband first thing upon opening my eyes.
“Because we have a two-year-old — and we’re eighty,” he says.
“I was told kids keep you young,” I say to no one. My husband is already gone, making coffee.
We aren’t eighty, but there are days that it feels like it. In 2022, for the first time ever, the median age of a first-time mother in the United States hit the ripe old age of thirty. I was forty-three when I had my daughter and, let me tell you, there is a reason we are biologically wired to have kids in our youth. Having kids is a young person’s game.
You’re made aware of this the minute you get pregnant if you’re over the age of thirty-five. Those in healthcare used to refer to these pregnancies as “geriatric” but that fell out of fashion for obvious reasons. Geriatric makes it sound like my ovaries are in Florida, riding golf carts in a MAGA parade. Geriatric evokes blue hair and nursing homes where my ovaries take a long drag off a Winston and yell, “BINGO!”
Even if you want to think of yourself as Hera herself, the doctors and nurses will remind you constantly of your “advanced maternal age” — but you know who reminded me the most often? My ancient body. “Geriatric” is offensive yet factually accurate at the same time. There is a higher chance of chromosomal abnormalities as you age and it goes up exponentially every year. Higher chances of stillbirth, miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. More likely to have high blood pressure, preeclampsia and gestational diabetes. If anyone is sexist, it’s Mother Nature.
Read the rest of the article in The Spectator.
This may be no consolation: I was 30 when my first child entered toddlerhood and distinctly remember thinking: I cannot do this (meaning having another child) again. EXHAUSTED ALL THE TIME.
But apparently “mommy brain” means your short term memory disappears, so we forget, and that’s how some of us end up having more children (I was blessed with two more).
When I read in the Spectator that you were pregnant, I rejoiced for you.
It does get better, suicidal attempts wane down to one a year, and at some point they can even go to school!
We had our kids at 37 and 41. I agree that younger is better especially energy wise. But they are 28 and 24 now and doing well. I only wish we had had time for more.