Today we hear that ‘older women’ – those aged over 35 – are increasingly falling into the trap of assuming they could not get pregnant because they were too old. Too many recent messages about the fall off in fertility are blamed.
I remember a conversation with my mother just after she had passed her fortieth birthday. She said that although she had absolutely no desire to have another baby, the idea that soon she would just not be able to have one, ever, made her feel funny. In those days I think most women expected to go through the menopause round about the age of 45 (& population statisticians, for sound reasons, still usually calculate fertility rates wrt women aged 15 to 45).
A mother aged 40 today would be surprised at the idea of having such a conversation with her daughter. For one reason any such daughter is very likely to be under 10; I was in my last year at school, gearing up for A & S levels & leaving home.
But women of my mother's generation also feared the idea of falling pregnant at such an advanced age – no Pill, contraceptive accident all too possible. My mother’s best friend was always rushing round in hysteria, fearing for the worst if her own biological clock ran a bit slow one month. That she finally did fall, at the age of 43, only confirmed my suspicion that it was what she had really wanted all along. And that she had a son after three daughters (the youngest of whom was 9) certainly changed the dynamics of that family.
Stories of Change Babies were legion. One of Nana’s neighbours gave birth to a son three days after her own daughter had given birth to her first child. Although I had a Horrible Uncle only 8 years my senior, I could not get my head round the idea of an uncle who was younger than his nephew - well I was only just learning to do sums at school.
And of course, in the opposite direction, some women do get desperately broody, desperate for one last go, one last baby to hold – we all know sad stories of people who have gone through the trauma of miscarriage in those circumstances.
We think we have a duty to make the world a fairer place, but we fail miserably in this fundamental process, where those who least want it conceive at the drop of a hat, while medical science still cannot reliably assuage the longing of others, however good & deserving they are.
Life is just not fair, from its very inception.
Related posts
Immaculate labour
Immaculate labour
