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I'm 5 years older than the author of this article and I don't feel as old and decrepit as it sounds she does! I do regret that my youngest will not know what it is like to have doting grandparents, and I hope I live long enough and am in good health for my grandchildren.
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Why didn’t I meet anyone in my 20s? And why did so many of my beautiful and clever friends follow a similar path? I used to think it was just that good men were thin on the ground, but the older I get, the more unconvincing I find this theory.
I suspect the real reason we stayed single for so long is because, at least in part, our generation of forty-somethings was the first generation of girls ‘bred to work’.
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Fertility in your 40s is a lottery, one which some people win, like my two friends who had third children at 45, while others don’t, such as my friend who nearly died during unsuccessful IVF.
Studies indicate that 90 per cent of us are infertile by the age of 44, while IVF success rates for women over 43 are pitiful — less than two per cent, with miscarriage rates around 50 per cent.
Just as we were told, falsely, that we could put off having babies for ever, we were never told just how wonderful motherhood would be.
File this under "duh!"
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“People kind of think now at 40 what they used to think at 30,” Schoolcraft said. “People do yoga and they run and they do all these healthy things. They assume that means ‘I’m not aging.’ But their eggs don’t know that.”
Part of the disconnect is because of advances in infertility treatment, which have helped boost the rates of births among women in their 40s, even as rates have dropped for younger moms. Between 2008 and 2009, births in women aged 20 to 24 reached a record low, falling 7 percent. At the same time, the rates for women aged 40 to 44 jumped 3 percent and births to women older than 50 climbed 5 percent.
Those numbers are exemplified by a series of high-profile births in older celebrities, including icons such as Kelly Preston (son at 48), Holly Hunter (twins at 47) and Jane Seymour (twins at 44.)
The famous mamas may or may not disclose whether they’ve used fertility aids, such as IVF or donated eggs, says Schoolcraft. That further contributes to the notion that it’s never too late to have a baby.
“It sends the message, if she can do it, then Miss Healthy Boring Me, I won’t have any trouble at 41 or 42,” Schoolcraft says.
The trouble is, such thinking can cheat a woman out of her options, Collura says. It’s one thing to postpone children in order to pursue education or a career, fully knowing it might be more difficult to get pregnant later. It’s another thing to be surprised by infertility.
“This is not about empowering women and women’s rights,” she says. “This is about science and biology 101.”
That is precisely Holly Finn’s point. She wishes she had realized earlier the effects that endometriosis and age might have on her ability to conceive. If she had her way, she’d tell women ages 26 to 34 one thing: "Start having babies now."
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By Catholic News Service
PHOENIX – A nun who concurred in an ethics committee’s decision to abort the child of a gravely ill woman at a Phoenix hospital was “automatically excommunicated by that action,” according to Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix.
Mercy Sister Margaret Mary McBride also was reassigned from her position as vice president of mission integration at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix after news surfaced about the abortion that took place late last year. The hospital did not say what her new job would be.
The patient, who has not been identified, was 11 weeks pregnant and suffering from pulmonary hypertension, a condition that the hospital said carried a near-certain risk of death for the mother if the pregnancy continued.
“If there had been a way to save the pregnancy and still prevent the death of the mother, we would have done it. We are convinced there was not,” said a May 17 letter to Bishop Olmsted from top officials at Catholic Healthcare West, the San Francisco-based health system to which St. Joseph’s belongs.
But the bishop said in a May 14 statement that “the direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral, no matter the circumstances, and it cannot be permitted in any institution that claims to be authentically Catholic.”
“We always must remember that when a difficult medical situation involves a pregnant woman, there are two patients in need of treatment and care, not merely one,” Bishop Olmsted said. “The unborn child’s life is just as sacred as the mother’s life, and neither life can be preferred over the other.”
Sister Margaret, who has declined to comment on the controversy, was on an ethics committee that was called to decide whether doctors could perform an abortion to save the mother’s life. Catholic institutions are guided in making such decisions by the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.”
Bishop Olmsted cited a section of the directives that reads: “Abortion (that is, the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus) is never permitted. Every procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of pregnancy before viability is an abortion.”
But the Catholic Healthcare West officials, in their letter, asked Bishop Olmsted to clarify the directives, citing another section that reads: “Operations, treatments and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.”
In a letter to the editor of The Arizona Republic May 18, Dr. John Garvie, chief of gastroenterology at St. Joseph’s, called Sister Margaret “the moral conscience of the hospital” and said “there is no finer defender of life at our hospital.”
“What she did was something very few are asked to do, namely, to make a life-and-death decision with the full recognition that in order to save one life, another life must be sacrificed,” Garvie said. “People not involved in these situations should reflect and not criticize.”
According to a brief biography posted on the hospital’s website, Sister Margaret “has 34 years of health care experience in both for-profit and not-for-profit health care management.” She holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing and a master’s in public administration, both from the University of San Francisco.
Bishop Olmsted said in his statement that any Catholic who “formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion” is automatically excommunicated. “The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty,” he added.
The diocese also posted on its website a two-page statement by Father John Ehrich, medical ethics director for the diocese, on “Catholic morality and pregnant mothers who are at risk.”
“The unborn child can never be thought of as a pathology or an illness,” the priest said. “That is, the child is not that which threatens the life of the mother, rather it is the pathology or illness (cancer, premature rupture of membranes, hypertension, preeclampsia, etc.) which threatens the mother’s life.”
Adding that “no physician can predict what will happen with 100 percent accuracy,” Father Ehrich said, “What we should not do ... is lower risks associated with pregnancy by aborting children. ... When we try to control every possible situation in life, we end up playing the role of God.”
Interesting article on fetal monitoring and the correlation with unnecessary surgery.
I had Rosie at 46! My father lived to 93 and my great grandma made it to 98 -so maybe...
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If you’re around age 40 and trying to get pregnant - take hope in the fact that women who have babies in their 40s have longer lives! The benefits of late motherhood are physical, social, and emotional.
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According to the University of Utah, women how have babies naturally in the 40s or 50s tend to live longer than other women (it may be different for women coping with infertility and using in vitro fertilization or other solutions for infertility).
“If women in your family give birth at older ages, you may well have a chance of living longer than you would otherwise,” says the study’s lead author, Ken Smith, a professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah. “If you have a female relative who had children after age 45, then there may be some genetic benefit in your family that will enhance your longevity.”
Heredity - far more than environmental factors - plays a role in prolonged fertility and longer lifespans.
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An Aspen OBGYN office puts up a sign - no Doulas, no Bradly method and no birth plan allowed -making it much easier for women who want natural childbirth to weed this medical group of knuckleheads out!
This is really a sad story, but one I hope younger women will read. A few years ago I did read a 20-something blogger who was very happy to think that she could put off her childbearing until whenever it suited her! She's about in her mid 20s now. I hope she gets a chance to read this.
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Then I see a mother with her child and the realisation hits me, as if for the first time - that's never going to be me. If someone had told my 25-year-old self that I would end up here - aged 45, newly married and, sadly for us both, without a hope of ever getting pregnant - I wouldn't have believed them.
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It would have seemed incredible that love would take so long to find me; that becoming a mother would ever matter so much; or that my fertility - a gift that, at the time, seemed more like an inconvenience - would plummet far beyond the point at which doctors could work their magic.
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Congratulations to the Ionce family for baby #18!
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Proud dad Alexandru Ionce said Saturday that his 44-year-old wife, Livia, gave birth on Tuesday. Their daughter Abigail weighed in at seven pounds, 12 ounces.
Many people don't know what to say or do for a couple going through this. Here are some words of wisdom.
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encourage the family to hold their baby when possible. It is heartbreaking, but it is the only chance that they will every have. When our son died, our parents didn't hold him because they didn't know if it would be all right. They will never get that chance again. Of course, the birth attendant should treat the baby with the same respect that would be shown to a live baby. Wrap the baby in blankets, hold him/her gently, and support the baby's head. This will encourage the family to hold and bond with their child. Even if the child didn't make it to term, encourage the family to name the child.
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Encourage the family to take a couple of rolls of pictures of the baby. Pictures may include the baby wrapped in blankets, the baby unwrapped, any parts of the baby that are attractive (hands, feet, ears), the baby held by the mother and/or father, a picture of the baby's hand resting on the mother's and/or father's hand. Be sure that something in the pictures shows the size of the baby (a hand, a toy, a measuring tape). In our situation, our son was very tiny, but it doesn't show in the pictures.
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- One of the last things on a grieving parents mind is food and cooking. There are several different gift baskets you could put together for the family. Some ideas may be a gift basket of paper plates, napkins, plastic silverware, kleenex, bathroom tissue etc. Or, a gift basket of snack crackers, cheese and fruit, or vegetables and dip and fruit juice. Home cooked casseroles, cookies and bars the family could serve if they have company over are great ideas too. It was nice to have those "quick and easy" items on hand.
- Offer to come over to throw a load of laundry in the wash, or other light duty house work. This is something I had done for me, and I truly appreciated it.
- Give a gift certificate to the families favorite restaurant, preferably with no expiration date if possible. Or even take out pizza certificates.
- Lending a hand if we have other children. Taking them to school events, or out for a meal, to the park or movie etc.
- Gift basket just for mom. Bubble bath, shower gel, stress relieving soaks, candles, etc. Or lounge clothing and a box of chocolates or other sweet.
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