Pregnancy is Not for Old Women

I don't normally consider myself 'old.'  When I think of old people, there are a lot more wrinkles and grey hair, funny-looking clothes, and endless repetition of stories.  I'm not even halfway done with my average life expectancy, so I'm a long way off from being old.

Except, that is, when it comes to childbearing.  I remember when my mother had my youngest brother and ticked over to thirty-five during her pregnancy.  When my brother came out with crossed eyes, we would tease her about 'advanced maternal age' and old eggs.  To my nine year-old mind, thirty-five was ancient, and probably high time to stop reproducing.  After all, she was going to be dead in not that many years and who would take care of my brother then?

My plan was always to stop having children when I hit the advanced maternal age category regardless of the number of children I had borne.  After all, I had heard the statistics enough times while transcribing patient notes for my father.  You can't argue with statistics.  But then thirty-five came and passed and Brandon and I thought that one more might be nice, so we threw caution to the wind and I joined the ranks of elderly multigravida women.

I have always had exceptionally easy pregnancies.  Good genes combined with good luck have resulted in six completely complication-free pregnancies and deliveries.  I've always been able to exercise until I deliver (sometimes running three miles a few days before induction), I've never thrown up from morning sickness, and life mostly continues on normally for the whole pregnancy.  I'm not fond of the four or so weeks of nausea and tiredness that comes during the first trimester, but it's not anything I can complain about with my mom friends, who all have real horror stories.

But this pregnancy has not been the same.  I started feeling nauseous around the fifth week and didn't fully recover until the thirteenth week.  I remember falling asleep between sentences while Joseph read his school assignments out loud to me, and a few days I cut school short because I just couldn't keep my eyes open any more.  The food cravings and aversions were so intense that whenever some weird and new thing would come up on the dinner menu, the children started shouting 'Hail Omega! Thank you for the tasty food!'  I couldn't go for more than two hours without having to eat a substantial snack because I was starving so much.

Thankfully the first trimester has passed (and I theoretically won't ever have to do that ever again in my entire life), but I haven't had the rebound that usually comes with the second trimester.  I sometimes have to stop halfway up one flight of stairs because I'm so out of breath, and these days my fastest mile speed is twenty minutes - anything faster and I feel like I'm going to die.  Random pains will wake me up in the middle of the night, and different equally random pains show up in the middle of the day.  I've had Braxton-Hicks contractions since the twelfth week.  My hips ache when I sleep and only my daily dose of omeprazole keeps the heartburn at bay.  And I still have four more months to go.

I've known women who have had children into their forties and I'm not sure how they did it.  I'm still more astounded at women who start in their forties.  I suppose they don't have the benefit of comparison so pregnancy must just be terrible the whole way through.  I can only imagine what I'm going through and extrapolate it out to almost completely unbearable for months on end.  My hat is off to women who make that sacrifice to have children.  I'm not sure how much further my theoretical dedication to childbearing would go if I had to face more pregnancies past this one.

But I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to have children before I get any more geriatric than I already am.  I turns out that I'm quite terrible at dealing with pain, tiredness, and the other unpleasant side effects of pregnancy, and I keep thinking that I'm so glad this is the last time I have to go through it.  Fingers crossed.