Pregnancy over 50 by Cyma Shapiro

I’m a little enamored of a Wikipedia category called “Pregnancy Over 50.” In it, it provides a historical timetable of women who gave birth over the age of 50. Women like Elizabeth Greenhill, born in 1615, who had 39 children with her husband William Greenhill, and gave birth to her last child (naturally) in 1669 at age 54,with London surgeon Thomas Greenhill. She is the first woman noted in this lengthy list. 

In 1996, Judy Bershak, of Los Angeles, gave birth to her first child at the age of 50. Bershak got married at the age of 44, and after failing to both conceive naturally and adopt, she went through IVF treatment and became pregnant on her first attempt. In 2000, Elizabeth Edwards, 50, wife of the former U.S. Senator John Edwards, gave birth to a son in 2000. And in 2010, Karen Johnston, from England, gave birth to twins at the age of 54 after undergoing IVF in the Czech Republic. All of these women fall under the 50-54 category.

In the 55-59 category, a 57-year-old Indian woman gave birth (with IVF) in Melbourne, in 2010, setting a record to become the oldest mother in Australia. 

In the 60-64 category, Arceli Keh, of California, gave birth to a daughter in 1996, at the age of 63.  In 2010, Bulgarian psychiatrist Krasimira Dimitrova, 62, gave birth to female twins, also using IVF. Dimitrova decided to become pregnant after she was refused the option of adoption because of her age.

In the 65-66 category (why they’d have a category for one year confounds me), in1999,  Harriet Stole, 66, from North London, gave birth to a son, after agreeing to be a surrogate mother for her infertile daughter in-law. One year later, Jennifer Hong, age 65, gave birth to her second child, in Canada. Becoming a mother later in life, she is quoted as saying, "It doesn't matter how old you are. It just matters that I have a family which I love.”

Finally, in the 67-70 category, Wikipedia lists only two women, both of whom accomplished the same achievement in the same year. In 2008, Omkari Panwar gave birth to twins in India via emergency cesarean section at the age of 70. Omkari became pregnant through IVF treatment, which she and her husband pursued in order to produce a male heir. Omkari has two adult daughters and five grandchildren. In response to hearing that she'd possibly broken the record for world's oldest mother, Omkari stated, "If I am the world's oldest mother it means nothing to me. I just want to see my new babies and care for them while I am still able." Also, Rajo Devi Lohan gave birth to a daughter at the age of 70. Lohan's health deteriorated soon after and she claimed she had not been informed of any dangers. Her doctor said, "Even though Rajo's health is deteriorating, at least she will die in peace. She does not have to face the stigma of being barren.” 

In total, nearly 100 women are listed in this Wikipedia article - a mere fraction of the real total throughout the world. In fact, since I’ve interviewed a few of the women listed here, I know that some of the dates and facts are incomplete. Nevertheless, this list remains a “Who’s Who” of pioneers and women from around the world who broke barriers and cultural traditions, simply by having children. (Remember, too, that this group doesn’t count any later-age women who have chosen to adopt/foster/guardian children). While this list is intended to inform and educate, it reads like a List of Champions – world record-holders who must surely have received some medal(s), as they unintentionally topped one another.  I fear not…

What strikes me the most is that my initial reaction to reading this was, “Wow! These women are (too) old!” Silly words for a woman who began her (second) family at age 46, and 48, respectively. Sillier, too, for someone who has worked tirelessly to bring websites and an art gallery show entitled NURTURE: Stories of New Midlife Mothers to this country - projects intended to celebrate and educate the public about the newest chapter in the women’s movement – the new middle age for women and the lives of new older mothers. MotherhoodLater celebrates this very thing; we all know it, because we are living it!

However, the innate biases remain the same. Once taken out of context, I am the culprit, as I’m sure are you!  For this reason, alone, the topic of new older motherhood deserves more conversation and more debate. This increasingly common and popular trend does not seem to be diminishing, and therefore deserves to be out of the closet. And, yet there are hundreds, if not thousands of women who remain fearful of being in this category not just because of potential medical complications, but for the stigma attached to their having made decisions (that were right for them) during their Advanced Maternal Age.  (Wikipedia’s definition of this is: an increase in the age at which women give birth to their first child, [which] is now a widespread, and indeed [a] near universal phenomenon across the OECD countries.)

Footnote: The AMA age in America is 35 and older.

Because of this, many women opt not to move forward in obtaining their goals and fulfilling their desires – that is, to simply be mothers. I do not mean to minimize the intricacies involved here; there are many facets to this complicated situation.

Wikipedia’s debate section concludes with the following: “Pregnancies among older women have been a subject of controversy and debate. Some argue against motherhood late in life on the basis of the health risks involved, or out of concern that an older mother might not be able or around to care for a child as she ages, while others contend that having a child is a fundamental right and that it is commitment to a child's wellbeing, not the parents' ages, that matters.

A survey of attitudes towards pregnancy over age 50 among Australians found that 54.6% believed it was acceptable for a postmenopausal woman to have her own eggs transferred and that 37.9% believed it was acceptable for a postmenopausal women to receive donated ova or embryos.

Governments have sometimes taken actions to regulate or restrict later-in-life childbearing. In the 1990’s, France approved a bill which prohibited postmenopausal pregnancy. (At the time) The French Minister of Health was quoted as saying it was "...immoral as well as dangerous to the health of mother and child." In Italy, the Association of Medical Practitioners and Dentists prevented its members from providing women aged 50 and over with fertility treatments. Britain’s then-Secretary of State for Health, Virginia Bottomley, stated, "Women do not have the right to have a child; the child has a right to a suitable home."  However, in 2005, age restrictions on IVF in the United Kingdom were officially withdrawn. Legal restrictions are only one of the barriers confronting women seeking IVF, as many fertility clinics and hospitals set age limits of their own.”

I do not have any answers, here, nor do I wish to share my personal feelings on the subject. However, I remain convinced that everything in life deserves attention, especially when it reflects an individual’s (truths and) true needs and desires. For this, and for these women, motherhood remains everything…

Testing, Shmesting...My Mom is Coming. By Liimu

I started to write a whole blog about amniocentesis and advanced maternal age and genetic testing and blah blah blah and it was just kind of depressing. What I really want to talk about is the fact that my mother is coming to visit today. I’m really looking forward to seeing her, but I have to admit that I’m a little nervous about how she’ll react to my big old pregnant belly. Is she gonna think that I’m holding it together this time, or is it gonna be obvious that I’ve already gained the recommended amount despite the fact that I’m only halfway through my pregnancy? Overall, I feel really healthy and extremely blessed to be pregnant again, not only with our fourth child but with our very first son. I’m very much looking forward to sharing that joy with my mother, who had five children of her own. I do have to admit, however, that my mother’s reaction to my ever-blossoming pregnant body is not exactly at the bottom of my list of worries.

I come from a long line of women, you’re probably not at all surprised to hear, who were obsessed with their weight. I can still remember visiting my grandmother in the nursing home when she was 93 years old, and her telling me that she weighed herself every day and replaced two of her daily meals with Slimfast shakes. Why they would let a 93 year old woman have Slimfast instead of a meal, I have no idea. I guess I say all that to say that I come by all this neurosis honestly. Anyway, my children are totally excited for Grandma’s meet. She may even get to see my eldest daughter’s first winter swim meet, and we all plan to go out to dinner on Thursday night to a fabulous restaurant in Abington, PA called Timber. It should be a fun evening. By then I should have the results of my fetal echocardiogram and hopefully have been told that the baby is growing fine and is completely healthy. By all accounts, it should be a fabulous weekend…if I can just let go of my age-old neuroses and relax, it might actually end up that way!

The Whole Plan (aka Week 11) by Liimu

One more week to go and I'm out of the first trimester. I have to say, I have never freaked out as much in early pregnancy as I did this time around. I still was not successful in waiting until the end of the first trimester to tell people (obviously, as I'm telling the entire world a la this blog), but that doesn't mean I wasn't nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs for the first few weeks I knew.

The amazing thing is that I got comfort from the most unexpected places. Friends I thought would have been at least happy for me, at most supportive and comforting, added to my anxiety by asking questions like, "Are you sure you can afford this?" and "Aren't you overwhelmed already? How will you manage a fourth child?" My response to that question was, "Look - we didn't push the issue of getting pregnant again. We left it in God's hands. God doesn't usually come up with half a plan." I'm not an overly religious person, but I do believe in a Power greater than myself. My husband and I had agreed that if it wasn't meant to be for us to have a fourth child, that would be fine with us. If it was, God was going to just have to make it happen (which He/She did). I have a feeling that's the way all the rest of it will work out. It just will.

One of the places I got the most comfort, which I never would have expected, was from my mother. My mother always gave me the impression that she didn't want more than two children. (I'm number five, so you can imagine how that sat with me upon first knowledge.) When I got pregnant with number three, I distinctly remember her response as being fairly underwhelmed. So, I was very nervous about telling her about this fourth blessing. I talked to my sister, Claudia, about it - my best friend - and she encouraged me to give her a chance, to give a little warning, but assume she could rise to the challenge. That's exactly what I did.

Not only did she rise to the challenge, but when I shared with her my fears of miscarrying, she put them all to rest by reminding me that I had to stop thinking of the worst case scenario and remember that I had already had three healthy, uneventful pregnancies. "Your body knows how to do this," she reminded me, "and stressing about it is about the only thing you could do at this point to confuse it."

My midwife was equally unconcerned, though perhaps not as directly reassuring. I don't know that she knew how freaked out I was, that I checked the paper every time I went to the bathroom (I still do, actually - sorry if that's TMI). I combed the Internet for any information I could find on miscarriage symptoms or statistics and didn't stop until I saw the one that said that once you've had multiple healthy pregnancies, your chances go down to less than 4%. And once you've seen the heartbeat (which we have) they go down to less than 1%. And as much as I can't stand the weight gain, nausea, dry heaves, sore boobs, acne and fatigue, I still welcome each symptom as a sign of a healthy, developing baby inside.

But the bottom line is that I need to remember my own words to my friend: God has the whole plan. And that means that if the plan is for this child to be born into our happy, welcoming, loving family, it will. And that's up to God, who...last time I checked...I am not.

Until next week!