“Why do I feel like I got hit by a bus?” I ask my husband first thing upon opening my eyes.
“Because we have a two-year-old — and we’re eighty,” he says.
“I was told kids keep you young,” I say to no one. My husband is already gone, making coffee.
We aren’t eighty, but there are days that it feels like it. In 2022, for the first time ever, the median age of a first-time mother in the United States hit the ripe old age of thirty. I was forty-three when I had my daughter and, let me tell you, there is a reason we are biologically wired to have kids in our youth. Having kids is a young person’s game.
You’re made aware of this the minute you get pregnant if you’re over the age of thirty-five. Those in healthcare used to refer to these pregnancies as “geriatric” but that fell out of fashion for obvious reasons. Geriatric makes it sound like my ovaries are in Florida, riding golf carts in a MAGA parade. Geriatric evokes blue hair and nursing homes where my ovaries take a long drag off a Winston and yell, “BINGO!”
Even if you want to think of yourself as Hera herself, the doctors and nurses will remind you constantly of your “advanced maternal age” — but you know who reminded me the most often? My ancient body. “Geriatric” is offensive yet factually accurate at the same time. There is a higher chance of chromosomal abnormalities as you age and it goes up exponentially every year. Higher chances of stillbirth, miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. More likely to have high blood pressure, preeclampsia and gestational diabetes. If anyone is sexist, it’s Mother Nature.
My age has felt more of an issue as the child has entered into toddlerhood. This age is such a workout, physically and mentally. I spend all day chasing and lifting a twenty-five-pound, two-foot tyrant. Lately she’s been saying, “Mommy walk with me” and will grab my hand and start leading me down the hall.
And I’ll look at my husband and say, “Am I getting fired?”
“I don’t know, but that presentation you did on the planets was pretty mediocre, if I’m being honest,” he says, “and you definitely phoned in last night’s reading of Goodnight Moon.”
I love toddlers because they represent who we are before we are forced to live in society: tiny dictators who will fly into a rage because you did or didn’t do something for them. The child had a meltdown the other night because I wouldn’t let her wear her Easter dress to bed. She flew into a rage when I tried to velcro one shoe she was wearing and put the other one on. She wants to throw rocks and throw herself off the couch onto the dog bed. Civilization is the thin crust of cordiality formed over the mercurial temper of a barely verbal toddler.
One thing that never occurred to me until I had a child, and one of the biggest reasons I advocate having kids younger or sooner than you might want to — if you wait too long the grandparents will be too old to really help if they’re still around, and they have less time with your kids. This is sad for the kids and devastating for the grandparents and sucks for you because kiss any hope of free childcare goodbye. And childcare is bananas expensive. I have no idea how anyone affords it. I honestly have no idea how anyone does any of it — because I’m currently drowning.
I find working and momming crazymaking and there are days where I think I’m going to lose my mind, or what’s left of it. The child took a lot of that, too. Maybe it all gets easier when the child stops trying to kill herself every second of every day, all day. How anyone does this with more than one child is a miracle — because I’m exhausted — although to be fair, it’s 3 a.m. and I’m up writing because it’s the only time I’ve had all day to sit down and hear my thoughts.
When certain women — it was always a bitter, hateful kind of woman — found out that I was having a girl, they would remark, “Be careful, they say that daughters steal your looks.”
To which I’d reply, “Good! She can have them! I used the heck out of my looks. I’m middle-aged and happily married, I don’t need them anymore. I had a good run.” But this is a lie. I do need them because unfortunately, I’m on camera a lot and I’m vain and aging on camera is a horror show. And those hateful witches who cursed me were right, since I became a geriatric mommy, I’m aging like the witch in Tangled. It’s OK though; it will force me to focus more on my dream of becoming a writer.
There is some good news though. Several studies have noticed a connection between geriatric mommyhood and longer life. One study published in Menopause in 2015 “showed women who gave birth after forty were four times more likely to live to be 100 years old.” I can’t imagine how old I’ll feel if I live to be 100! 1,000? Kids keep you young and they also keep you alive longer and they also age you, rapidly. It’s a paradox, you see; just like toddlers who are maddening and adorable and hilarious and frustrating all at the same time.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s May 2024 World edition.
