“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Through the voice of Hamlet, William Shakespeare teaches us that life, with its inevitable joys and sorrows, functions only according to how we imagine it. Call me weird, but it is Hamlet who is helping me sift through the perplexing array of emotions that accompany motherhood after 40.
To be sure, motherhood at any age arrives with a host of challenges. What makes our geriatric pregnancies (or acquisitions) any different? First, most of us have chosen the job. There probably was no ignorance of the contraceptive process that landed us with child (teenagers), or a wild and sexy romantic tryst (twenties) or even intense social pressure (“You’re in your 30s now. When ARE you going to have a baby!?”) No. Most of us have arrived at the point of 40-something motherhood because, like Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark, we started thinking. My thought process went something this:
“If Halle Berry can do it at 40, so can I!”
“If Nicole Kidman can do it at 41, so can I!”
If that 48 year old, medical marijuana “therapist” I met at Yogaworks can do it, so can I!
Yep, three years into my marriage at age 40 I started thinking motherhood was going to be a cake walk. After all, my husband and I were employed (though his job required lots of travel), financially stable, physically healthy, and we had a whole lot of life experience to bring to parenting. I dumped the pill, got pregnant within eight months and bounced around on my geriatric knees twice a week at Yogaworks like I was 20 again. A few months later, after 22 hours of labor and an unplanned C-section, our 8 pound little boy arrived.
And, I started thinking again. In fact, I screamed it out loud, “WHAT WAS I THINKING!?” I was soon to be all by myself with a completely helpless newborn. My husband insisted on maintaining his travel schedule, my mother could remain in town for just two weeks before returning to her own job in the Midwest, we had no family nearby, no trustworthy childcare prospects, and no aunts, uncles, or siblings to count on. “It takes a village to raise a child” Huh? Unless you give birth at 15 in an Amish commune, most modern mothers do not live in a &%$ village!
While I tried to sort through the awe, wonder and sheer terror of caring for a new life, of putting my 18 year career on hold, of instantly relinquishing at least 20 consecutive years of sleeping eight luscious hours a night, I realized with complete and utter sobriety that I could not handle a baby by myself. This is when two thoughtful, but single and childless and apparently CLUELESS pals of mine rationalized that I had a husband and (this being the 21st century and all), he would be there to help. Uh-huh. Like I was saying, I immediately recognized that I could not handle this baby by myself. Could I selfishly ask my mother to extend her visit? Maybe she would sympathize with my baby ineptitude and volunteer to stay longer to help me adjust. My anxiety reached desperation. Luckily, my husband, the champ, decided to step up to the plate to make sure I wouldn’t go through my newborn initiation all alone. Sometime after midnight he secretly stashed Mom’s luggage in the garage until we could brainstorm a plot to retain her a few weeks longer as a nanny.
So here I was with an absolutely perfect child. I was blissful, but I was exhausted. I was intoxicated by that baby taste and smell, but I really wanted a drink. I felt suspended between two worlds. My old world had long been predictable and structured, my new world spontaneous and beautifully chaotic. I grasped for ways to describe the feeling of loving this beautiful new life but simultaneously longing for the good old days…Was I nostalgic? Was I regretful? Or was I merely like Brooke Shields was after her 40 year old pregnancy–bipolar??
Alas, motherhood after decades of living just for myself is both humbling and challenging, joyful and illuminating. My son is 18 months now. Ironically, on many days when I search my heart I would love to have another baby, would love to experience the madness all over again and try to bring a sibling for Dylan into the fold. With four of us, instead of three we’d finally have our perfect village.
There I go thinking again.