by Andrea Lynn
When someone suggested I might write for the Mothering in the Middle project, it seemed a perfect fit. Older women, coming to motherhood after other things. Infertility as a side-dish for some of us, adding that extra dash of gratefulness to our motherhood journey. Issues of aging – our parents, ourselves. A perfect fit. […]
by Andrea Lynn
On my very first Mother’s Day, I was three and a half weeks pregnant. Anyone who knows fertility (and infertility) and the bizarre world of pregnancy dating knows that a woman who is three and a half weeks pregnant doesn’t even KNOW she is pregnant yet. But I knew. It was about a week after my IVF, and I was gardening in the backyard. I dug holes to plant a new rose of Sharon and five lilies, and I became so overcome with that little exertion that I laid down on the grass, on my back, and looked up through the green of my maple tree to the blue sky above, and felt nearly faint with exhaustion. And that Sunday afternoon, Mother’s Day, I wondered if I was suddenly very tired for a very good reason. And I felt happy. By Monday I was debating baby names, though it wasn’t until Wednesday that I peed on a stick and got the two pink lines that I’d begun to think might never, never appear. […]
by Andrea Lynn
When I was 26 and my mom was 52, we went backpacking together in France and Italy. We took the train, hitchhiked, stayed in youth hostels – the whole thing. It’s not that I’m abnormally attached to my mom – really. The year before I’d done Europe with my best friend, backpacking, youth hostels, Eurail pass. But every time I’d see something great or funny, I’d be thinking, I wish mom could see this. Because she’d never been overseas, but would have loved everything. […]
by Andrea Lynn
I had my first IVF and first daughter in the United States; my second IVF and second daughter in Canada, two years later. There is little cultural divide, fertility-wise, between the two countries. My American reproductive endocrinologist, like my Canadian, was a strange amalgam of cautious aggression and hopeful pessimism, and both men seemed to want to simultaneously scare and reassure me as they prodded and poked my aging eggs. The clinic in Canada had massage chairs and a huge fish tank; the American better magazines and logo. Needless to say, stirrups are stirrups, no matter which side of the border I was on. Obstetrically, my file was stamped “AMA” – Advanced Maternal Age – in both countries, winning me extra ultrasounds and blood tests each time. Neither obstetrician cared whether I dyed my greying hair during the first trimester (I didn’t anyway, a triumph for the alarmist-pregnancy industry). […]
Andrea Lynn
Almost by definition, women who decide to pursue motherhood while single – single mothers by choice – are nearly always midlife mothers. For most of us, it took a few years of being busy, getting an education, finding a career, excelling, traveling, reading, hiking, having a great life, before we started to think about whether the next step – marriage and children – was going to happen. And a few more years to worry that it wasn’t happening. And maybe a year or two to realize it wasn’t going to happen. And then, surprised that we had gotten so old, we decided that just because the marriage part wasn’t going to happen didn’t mean we couldn’t be mothers. Add a year or two of fertility treatments or adoption waiting lists, and presto, single mothers by choice find themselves to be…midlife mothers. […]