by Dr. Barb Depree, M.D.
In our little roundup of sexually transmitted infections, maybe you’ve noticed that many of them have no symptoms, and others mimic common illnesses like the flu or a urinary tract infection.
The take-away? There’s no way to know if you’re carrying an STI without getting tested. And there’s no way to prevent reinfection unless your partner gets tested, too. […]
by Elizabeth Gregory
Like quite a few people I know, I had my first child in my late thirties–39 to be exact. My maternal grandmother had a child at 39, too, but that girl was her eighth baby and her last.
This difference summed up for me the change that had occurred in two generations, when I started writing a book about the new later motherhood–its causes and effects, personal and social. Where 1 in 12 first babies these days is born to a mom 35 or over, it was 1 in 100 in 1970. Add in the adoptive moms, and you’ve got a big group. […]
by Mariella Frostrup
(There’s no ‘right time’ to give birth, but later motherhood has advantages – its growth shouldn’t be greeted with wrist-slapping)
According to new statistics the female population of England and Wales are giving birth at rates not seen since the baby boom at the end of the second world war, and while the number of teenage pregnancies is declining, an increasing proportion of new babies are being born to older mothers. How should we greet such news? Pop the champagne corks, roll the red carpet out in front of your nearest maternity ward … or bemoan the 20 wasted years when these women were “failing” to make babies? Read more on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/01/give-older-mothers-a-break
Mariella Frostrup, 50, is a Norwegian-born journalist and television presenter, well known on British TV and radio, mainly for arts programmes. She writes for The Guardian/uk. She is a new older mother of two children.
New mothers in their early forties are five times more likely to suffer from depression after giving birth than their younger counterparts, new research has revealed.
Researcher Giulia Muraca, a Phd student at the University of British Columbia, believes this could be due to higher stress levels among older mothers fuelled by anxieties about their pregnancy and birth. Read more on the Huffington Post UK:
by Jane Samuel
We added our third child when I was forty and that’s when the skeptical stares started. You know the ones. You are just coming up to the counter at the local gym or squeezing through the candy-packed aisle at the grocery, baby on your hip, mask of exhaustion painted on your face where make-up should be when some bright-faced-twenty-something looks over in disbelief and says, “My! You have your hands full.” […]
The worldwide response to this:
Has, in part, been this:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/10399389/older-mums-can-be-better-parents-say-doctors/
http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2011/10/05/283721_news.html
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/10/04/3332223.htm?site=perth
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/a-new-kind-of-motherhood-statement/468702
http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2011/09/28/how-old-is-too-old-to-have-kids/
http://sharon.patch.com/articles/she-relates-to-nicole-kidman-halle-berry-and-madonna
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/features/baltimoremomblog/2011/10/too_old_to_be_pregnant.html
Talk (and write) on…
by Karen C. Hug-Nagy
Becoming a first time Mom of twins at age forty-five was like viewing a meteor shower in space, an amazing sight! Within an instant, I could sense a shift in my current orbit. I suspected something was about to change, and it did, with a loud BANG! […]
by Linda K. Wertheimer
“Click, clack,” I read, then paused. “Moo,” Simon shouted as he cuddled in my lap in a chair at Starbucks.
A man walked up and smiled. “Your grandson is so adorable,” he said.
I resisted the urge to glower. This man after all was paying Simon a compliment. I smiled back, then corrected the error as my 3-year-old son sucked his thumb and held onto my ear. “He’s not my grandson. I’m his mother.” […]
by Joely Johnson Mork
This topic is not what this blog post was going to be about. I was going to write about something much lighter, more manageable, and less anxiety provoking. But what has been on my mind for the past few weeks is survival. How do women survive motherhood? How do women like us, who have lived their lives differently for so long, suddenly (or not so suddenly) find themselves mothers and manage to keep working, thinking, breathing? I am unashamed to say I need to know. Because I am finding myself in a corner, with nowhere to run but here. […]
by Deatra Haimé Anderson
I got my first brand new car in my twenties. It was a silver Volkswagen Jetta with a dark grey interior and automatic sunroof. I was in love, freed, finally, from a completely unreliable and unwieldy Pontiac Grand Am that guzzled gas and was impossible to parallel park. […]