MY FIRST TIME AT 40
We were lucky. Getting pregnant first time at 40 is a blessing, I know.
But getting pregnant and being pregnant was as far as I’d progressed in my thinking. Long-term family life hadn’t actually crossed my mind.
It’s not like I’m overly domesticated – I fail dismally at folding towels, can’t stack a dishwasher, cheat the laundry as best I can with wash-and-wear cycles and an ironing lady round the corner. And as for schools, demands of extended family, lateral organising skills and the fate of my own professional hopes and dreams… Can I tell you?
I’m glad I’m an optimist at heart. I’m glad my most enduring qualities are resilience and resourcefulness. Anyway, I’m glad I had children.
Having children opened a chamber of the heart I never knew existed. After my first was born my life was transformed. It was as if I was wandering into a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes commercial with endless fields of corn waving under vast blue skies with the occasional streak of white cloud.
Sure, the dirty nappies can make a day just like a chocolate milkshake, only crunchy – but for me this life is still a bonus.
I say “bonus”, because a whole lot of women like me were not really schooled in how to build a family life.
Girls who did Domestic Science were dummies. We are the children or pupils of first-wave feminists, when the message was very clear (and confusing), that women and men should be the same.
We should have high-powered professions and be able to support ourselves. That was first and foremost. Of course the true message was that women and men should have equal rights and remunerations in a just society.
But that wasn’t quite the nuanced message we received at school in the 1980s. Men and women were exactly the same, we were told. Later in time, folk like Dr John Grey made a fortune sorting out our unisex neuroses with books like Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, when we really already knew that. It all just got mixed up for a bit.
So we, the women who have children in our 40s, are a kind of social aberration with our toddlers and under-sixes and our joy and our ambivalence.
After spending 40 or so years honing one’s identity and finally feeling comfortable in your own skin, who can imagine giving any of it up for anything, or any one? But then along comes a partner. And the desire to build a family. And then, from the moment those little cells start to divide in your womb, their aim is to conquer a previously undivided attention to yourself.
So how has it turned out? At our age, motherhood is a patchwork economy – with some of us waving our 17-year-olds off on their gap year adventures, and others with kids starting their first year at kindy.
The age range in any kindy class this year at school is between five and six years. The mums, however, are between a sensible 25and kind of crazy 45. I use the words “sensible” and “crazy” absolutely on purpose. It’s not ideal to spit out your second or third child at 45 only to slip sweatingly into menopause by the time that child is walking.
Making friends in this new world is already a cross generational challenge. It’s even harder when your hormones become emotional terrorists. (Apparently. Not there yet. Just musing.)
My son’s kindy teacher is single – I tried to match her up recently with an available smart cousin of mine.
“No,” she said. “I’m just taking some time to do some work on myself. I had a break up earlier this year.”
“Get over it,” was my response. “There’s no time to lose. Get back into it.”
“No,” she repeated stubbornly. “Look. I know we’re about the same age, but…”
“We’re not,” I said. “I’m glad we look like we are. But not everyone gets to have their first at 40.”
That made her think. She’s 32, and while I know that motherhood is not possible for everyone and not desired by the rest, I think the lesson from my generation is loud and clear.
If you want to join the Mo’hood, get to it. Not everyone gets so lucky at 40.
RELATED STORIES
- Farrk, I forgot to have kids! Bianca Dye on being single at 37
- I love your kids, but … Bonnie Vaughn on being the childless friend
- Wendy on shopping with her daughter, Maeve
*Libbi Gorr is an expert host, facilitator and creative development talent – making sense of life’s challenges in a sidesplitting, warm and intelligent way, be it through television, radio, print or feature film.
A law graduate from Melbourne University, and offspring from the Melbourne Comedy circuit, Libbi has presented on ABC Radio, writes for Fairfax and is in demand as a corporate speaker, MC and facilitator.
6 Responses to this article
-
GM August 27, 2011
Am sad for you Nareen that you felt pressured to have your first child. My daughter is 28 and I will never pressure her to have a child, it’s not about me. It’s her life, she has only one, all I want for her is happiness.
-
Lisa August 30, 2011
I’m just tired of seeing this crap in my face all the time. Don’t get me wrong I’m so happy for you Libby but it upsets me that we seem to have this constant need to tell people what they should and shouldn’t do. I’m fast approaching 40 and just haven’t met the right man yet. I am sure as hell not going to do it with someone just because oops “tick-tock watch that biological clock”. So perhaps it’s just not my ‘calling’. Or perhaps I’ll do it on my own sometime soon. But please stop telling me i should have done it when I was younger. I think it sends the wrong message to young women to hook up with men who may not be right out of fear of missing out! I have plenty of friends who are having kids at 40… in happy and loving relationships and some on their own!
-
Kelly September 13, 2011
GM, I think that what Nareen is saying, is that for HER, it was actually a lot easier at 30 to have a child than at 36, and from my own experience, I can totally agree with that. And even though Nareen may have felt some pressure from her Mum, she has realised with her own experience, how hard it can be to have children when you are older. I was single until I was nearly 28, and had my mother and younger siblings constantly in my ear also, with their fears that I would never marry, or have children. I met my now husband, fell madly in love, and had my first child just before I turned 30. I had a 37 hour labour, but emerged from it feeling euphoric, and from the moment I first laid eyes on my first-born, I truly knew what love was. My Father was terminally ill, and I wanted desperately to have him meet another Grandchild, but this was not to be. After a fairly easy first conception, trying again from the age of 31, it took me 3 1/2 years and two rounds of IVF, to conceive again, and then 2 misscarriages, before finally delivering my second beautiful daughter. Giving birth at 35 was so much harder. My body didn’t bounce back like it had before. I took much longer to recover. I felt OLD. PND set in, counselling, and then a miraculous and surprise 3rd baby at 37, despite the mini pill and breast-feeding! At 39, I had my fourth and final child, and only son. I feel so incredibly, wonderfully blessed(and I’m not religious!)to have the family that I had always wanted. And Lisa, I think that is also something that Libby said. If motherhood is important to a woman, she should think twice before deliberately delaying it too long, or it may be too late. For those women who don’t want children, that’s fine, but if you do, don’t put it off assuming your body clock will tick forever. I’m all for independance, and being a strong woman. I hope my daughters wait until their mid/late twenties before having children, and I won’t pester them, either. My children aren’t my whole world, I have a life apart from them, but they are the MOST important thing in my life, they are what I am most proud of, and what I cherish most, and having them is, to sound a cliche, the BEST thing that I have done, or will EVER do.
-
Kelly October 19, 2011
I had a notification of a reply to my coment(or post, really, probably too long to be a ‘comment’!) The new post supposedly said- ‘What libreanitg knowledge. Give me liberty or give me death.’
I couldn’t find this supposed post when I logged in, but if it is around, I’m not sure what it was supposed to mean,? It sounds(apart from being grammatically almost incomprehensible)rather sarcastic. I wasn’t trying to ‘preach’ to anyone, just trying to speak about my own experiences. I know what it’s like to be pressured to have children. I know what it’s like to want them dearly I know what it’s like to have trouble conceiving them at an older age. That’s all. If you don’t want children, or not yet, and are sick of the pressure you feel is being placed on you, esp by people who may believe you are simply overcompensating in your attitude, because you do secretly yearn for motherhood(a strong possibility), then, I’m sorry for that, too. But how about a more apt comment to my post, such as ‘Give me knowledge or give me death’?!
