Deb Lehman with her two children, Rebecca and Daniel
Older Moms Can Have It All Just Not All at Once
By Deb Lehman
When my biological clock started ticking like a bomb, I was 36 years old, separated, rooming with a stranger, and freelancing from paycheck to paycheck. But there was one certainty in my life: I wanted to have a baby. She would help me rationalize away past failures, including two bad marriages, countless job disasters, and a frustrated writing career.
“It’s too late,” many people warned, but I refused to give up. Conception became an obsession as I approached 40.
During the Jewish New Year in September 1992 I made a deal with God: If you grant me this wish, I’ll never take my child for granted. I won’t complain about heartburn, weight gain, endless sonograms, dirty diapers, and a million other indignities I couldn’t begin to fathom.
Okay, so I lied. Let’s back up a little.
I met my future husband at a Jewish single’s dance in Manhattan two months later. By spring I was pregnant. In October I turned 40. It was the best birthday gift ever. While others my age grappled with mid-life crises, I bloomed with happiness, savoring my greatest triumph. On December 19, 1993, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, two weeks after I married his father.
At home with baby Daniel, however, I quickly learned about the daily drudgery of nurturing a colicky baby, and my sacred promises flew out the window. Another soiled diaper to change. Another bottle to prepare. Another tearful visit to the pediatrician. Another sleepless night. Gone were the privileges I took for granted as a single person: showering with the door closed, reading novels in the afternoon, making love on the fly, sleeping late on weekends.
Two years later I conveniently forgot the negatives as my husband and I started to plan for baby No. 2, focusing not on soiled diapers and colic but on that first flutter of life in the womb, light as a butterfly’s wings. This time I even more strongly hoped for a female child, imagining pretty clothes, giggle-fests, and secret crushes. But there were larger issues at stake. My husband and I were 40 years older than our son; we didn’t want him to be alone in the world after we were gone. He would also need a sibling, we thought, to share the burden of having elderly parents.
One miscarriage, several rounds of Clomid, and another plea to heaven later, I got pregnant again – this time at 44. Everybody including my reproductive endocrinologist was shocked since fewer than one percent of all women between the ages of 40 to 44 have babies.
When the “amnio” revealed a girl, I was ecstatic. Not only had I defied the damning statistics, I lucked out on the gender. After Rebecca was born (a literal labor of love) I felt too guilty to complain about this bundle of energetic joy who never rested and was constantly crawling, exploring, babbling, or sucking down formula.
With Rebecca in the picture, our need for more space drove us out of the city in search of greener suburban pastures. This meant quitting a job I hated. I wanted to slow down anyway, leave the corporate world behind — and I had a plan. I would balance full-time mothering with freelance writing. Once both kids were in school, I would have my mornings free to work.
In the 1970s, Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown promised women that we could have it all. I had my doubts.
I’m a very happy older mom — most of the time. But having children later in life is a double-edged sword. Here are some pros and cons.
Young at Heart
My kids keep me young at heart (that’s as good as it gets at 52) because as they experience everything for the first time, I’m right there beside them, scheming and dreaming, loving and hurting. Their idealism helps keep my heart and mind open, combating the narrow-mindedness, cynicism, and sentimentality that tend to harden arteries. Without my kids, I’d never know that “I rock.” I might even wallow in the past. For them, I keep myself looking as young as humanly possible – dressing trendy and highlighting my hair to blot out the gray. Lately, people tell me I look 45.
On the flip side, there’s nothing like hanging with your elementary-school-aged kids to make you feel your age. Baby boomer meets Generation Y. When I was little, we had Channels 2 through 13. There were no computers, CDs, DVDs, videos, satellite channels, or microwaves. Our worlds are so different. Another concern I have involves being in my 60s when the kids start college – in my 70s or beyond when they have kids of their own. I’d like to meet my grandchildren. But I’m not going to dwell on numbers. I’m a late bloomer and I’m proud of it.
Maturity Matters
I have a certain wealth of experience and maturity to draw upon that young mothers lack. I’m more patient with the kids than I suspect I might have been when I was in my 20s. I sowed my wild career oats and didn’t sacrifice ambition for my children’s sake. Sure, I occasionally miss my freedom and spontaneity. But look what I’ve got – a boy and girl! Sometimes I look at them and wonder: Can these children really be mine?
Battle of the Bulge
As much as I exercise (three times a week), eat healthy, and think young, I cannot escape the ravages of age. When my kids have a cold, they’re over it in days; I’m out of commission for weeks.
My children are growing vertically. The only growth I can look forward to is horizontal. But unlike my younger counterparts, I don’t moan about every pound gained. No longer do I expect to look like Britney Spears. Maybe Madonna.
Peer Prejudice
Sometimes other people’s unthinking comments can give you gray hairs. On two occasions my husband and I were mistaken for our daughter’s grandparents. (Since I started wearing my hair longer and lighter, no one’s called me Granny.) There’s nothing like a school function in a brightly lit, overheated auditorium to accentuate age. In our community the average parent is in her late 30s or early 40s. No matter how well you take care of yourself, there’s no way to avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when you’ve lived more than a half-century. They put a crease between your brows, lines on your cheeks and neck, a nest under and around your eyes. There isn’t a lot to do except grow a thicker skin.
Younger Parent Envy
At the playground, I sometimes envy the perky 20-somethings with their reserves of energy as they run after their children. These women probably got pregnant just looking at their hubbies. They can also still make more babies. I don’t want any more children, but knowing that I can’t have them makes me sad.
Speaking of younger parents, I’m reminded of a former 29-year-old neighbor who avoided me like the plague when she learned my age. Evidently she thought that being 48 was contagious.
Tired All the Time
Hormonal changes make all women feel tired, but fatigue seems to be more pronounced in older moms on the verge of menopause. I stopped sleeping well after Rebecca was born. Now that the kids are in elementary school, my days are filled with drop-offs and pickups, extracurricular activities, parties, play-dates, and lessons. Many of us older parents have more heart than spark.
Embarrassing Your Kids
I was the youngest in my family. My parents had me in their 40s, and I felt painfully self-conscious about them when I hit adolescence. They were European, and older than the parents of my friends. I longed for tall Midwestern Robert Young as my father, slim Midwestern Donna Reed as my mother. Regardless of my age, when my kids become adolescents, they’ll also find me embarrassing. Why should they be any different?
Mothers and daughters
I feel the generation gap more poignantly with my daughter, maybe because being the same gender gives us a more immediate biological and emotional connection. Here I am in the throes of menopause and my young daughter hasn’t even started menstruating yet. We’ll never have our periods at the same time. Then again, maybe it’s for the best; two women ravaged by fluctuating hormones under the same roof could be an explosive situation.
Physical differences aside, Rebecca and I are starting to bond on the essentials. Take, for example, our taste in drama. Up until now, Rebecca has been addicted to Nick at Nite, me to Turner Classic Movies. But lately she’s taken to watching reruns of Judging Amy curled up beside me on the couch, a small bar of chocolate or granola between us, door closed to the men of the house. Likewise, I’ve accompanied her to girly movies like The Princess Diaries, Mean Girls, and Aquamarine. Without Rebecca, I wouldn’t know Amanda Bynes from Lindsay Lohan. And I wouldn’t know that her adolescent heroines are a lot more empowered than the Gidgets of my era.
Mothers and sons:
During the first six weeks of my son’s life, when there seemed to be no way of consoling him, I had serious misgivings. The maxim “Be careful what you wish for” haunted me during those long days and nights. But I must have sensed something special in this colicky baby who over the next 12 years wowed me again and again with his photographic memory, searing poetry, insight, and compassion.
It tickles me that Dan loves the rock-and-roll artists I adored as a teenager. He prefers the Allman Brothers and the Beatles to the Backstreet Boys, Marvin Gaye to Eminem. And he’s memorized every funny anecdote from my favorite episodes of Fawlty Towers and Seinfeld.
His exquisite sensitivity can even bring a tear to my eyes on the rare occasions when he shows it. When my mom fell seriously ill last year, he wrote her this card:
“Dear Grandma, I hope you’ll feel better as you slip into the next world. I have a keepsake of you. Your old wallet. A part of you will always be a part of me. Saying bye to you is really hard. Good luck in heaven! Love, Daniel.”
Of course I didn’t have children to flatter my ego. I expect my kids to be their own people. Still, when they reject my aspirations for them in favor of daring to be true to themselves, I sigh and shrug my shoulders. The first time Rebecca and Dan chose to ride home with my husband after a school event, I was stunned by the tightness in my chest. For some absurd reason, I had assumed they would pick up on how badly I wanted them, and know instinctively not to hurt my feelings. As it turns out, I am like other parents and my children are like other children. Dan and Rebecca, whom I waited a lifetime to meet, will always be the loves of my life.
I once heard Oprah Winfrey say: “You can have it all, you just can’t have it all at once.” Sounds right to me.
You know you’re an old-timer when:
• You’re the oldest parent in the auditorium.
• Your children keep asking: “Isn’t he dead yet?” whenever one of your favorite actors or rock stars performs.
• You’re exhausted and it’s only 10:30 a.m.
• You ask your child to show you how to switch from TV to DVD on the remote.
• Your child corrects you when you confuse “DVD” with “CD.”
• You think DDR (Dance, Dance Revolution) is a medical acronym.
• You can’t read your child’s IM abbreviations.
