A little advice from another older mother

Stock photo by hortongrou
I think it's wonderful. Any baby's wonderful, and I speak as one who had her fourth baby when she was 47. (Not that I'm trying to compete here in the elderly mother stakes, at which I plainly win, just establishing my credentials to speak on the subject).

Having a baby late is no problem. Apart from anything else the system gets flooded with natural oestrogen, which stands you in good stead for at least another 10 years. If nature says you can, and gets you pregnant, then you can. The "empty cradle" longing gets finally laid to rest: that strange restless feeling that you're only whole if you have a baby in your arms. It's nothing to do with having "more children" that's rational, this is instinctive, and truly powerful.

You may have more trouble than you expect from other women, who somehow feel that it isn't right, that there are only so many babies to go round, and you have nabbed another one out of turn. They can get envious and peculiar.

On first suspecting this untoward event I went to a doctor and said "other women tell me I shouldn't go through with this, my eggs are too old", as if I were some ageing hen, to which he briskly replied. "My mother was 47 when I was born and there isn't anything wrong with me", which put an end to that discussion.

And of course you worry in case the baby isn't "all right" - who doesn't, at any age - but I was in such constant conversation with mine I knew it was just fine and refused all tests and amniocentesis and so on, on the grounds they were an insult to a perfectly good baby. As so he was. True, I had a placenta praevia, for which you need to get to the hospital rather quickly once you go into labour and have to have a Caesarean to get it out. But that can happen at any age, and Caesarean babies are happy babies and tend not to be criers.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/a-little-advice-from-another-older-mother-1127873.html

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