It’s a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure thread! Ask the Chick Who’s Pregnant AND…
…Old, for a Pregnant Chick (I’ll be 41 at delivery. Yikes.)
…Did IVF
…Changed Her Mind About Having Just One Kid
…Compare Notes With Her Previous Pregnancy
How will the title end? What questions will be answered? It’s all up to YOU!
(Or maybe you just want to ask the chick who’s pregnant.)
(It’s me!)
Any chance of twins?
A friend just gave birth to two. She worked (bartending) until she went into labor and returned to work four days after giving birth.
What are the good parts of being pregnant?
No, thank goodness! The fertility center we used strongly discourages transferring more than one embryo in most cases, because there are lots of risks associated with multiples, and the science is reliable enough now that most of the time, one is all it takes.
I was a little nervous when they did my first blood test, because the nurse who read me my results was like, “Congratulations! Your hCG levels look great! Really great. Wait… how far along are you? …And how many embryos did they transfer? Huh! Okay, well - good!” But they’ve done several ultrasounds since then, and have confirmed that the room is indeed single-occupancy only.
Good question! Let’s see… in no particular order:
It’s super-sciencey! If you thought growing Sea Monkeys was cool, try making a whole person inside your body! I love learning about how the little nubbin is developing and changing each week, and it’s so bizarre and awesome to feel him moving around in there. With my first, toward the end of the pregnancy, you could actually see my belly undulating as he moved around. It freaked people out. So much fun.
I get to eat more! Not, like, a ton more, but an extra snack or two per day is a nice bonus. And I can eat more of the full-fat, high-calorie stuff I love, because the nubbin needs it.
I get to buy new clothes! The bummer is that I can only wear most of them for the next six months or so. Maternity clothes are not just muumuus anymore. Most look basically like normal clothes, and they’re about the same price. So I now have bunch of very cute, on-trend stuff. Plus, swingy trapeze tops seem to be really popular right now, so half the shirts I’ve bought so far aren’t even maternity wear. If I’m lucky, that trend will continue for at least a year or two and I can get some more use out of them.
I don’t have to worry about what my body looks like. I’ve always had some body-image issues, primarily focused on my poochy tummy. But when I’m pregnant, I’m supposed to have a big belly, and everything else looks basically fine to me, so I’m usually pretty happy when I look in the mirror, which is a great feeling. (My skin is another story - I break out like mad - but we can’t have everything.) Although the other day, my sister-in-law saw me for the first time after hearing I was pregnant, and she looked at my belly and gasped, “It’s HUGE!” Which, no, it’s not yet, not to mention that she had seen me just a few days prior, before she knew, and it was no smaller then. But that did make me feel a little weird, like yes, I’m supposed to have a big belly, but is it abnormally big? So here’s my little PSA: never tell a pregnant woman she’s getting so big, she’s huge, she must weigh a ton. Not a compliment. Just say, “You look great!”
But the best part of being pregnant this time, bar none, was the look on our kid’s face when we told him he was going to be a big brother. He was happier than he’s ever been about anything in his life so far. I wish I’d taken pictures or video, but I’m pretty sure I will never forget that smile.
Do you have a nursery set up?
Have you bought a stroller, changing table, and diaper genie?
Pregnant??? Young lady, how did this happen?
I thought you meant you changed your mind about having one baby this time and were expecting twins or triplets!
Do doctors and nurses treat you like an ancient person? I never felt so old as when I was pregnant at 40. Except maybe when I had a three year old at 43.
Everyone kept asking me if I knew that everything was “all right” as if one would obviously abort a fetus that wasn’t “all right” (subtext, obviously: Downs), and as if this were a perfectly reasonable thing to ask random pregnant women. We didn’t actually know because I declined testing beyond ultrasounds and blood work. Again, not something I wished to discuss with all and sundry.
What are the craziest and/or most maddening things that people ask you about being pregnant at 41? How often do you want to hit those people?
Can I ask how long ago you were pregnant? Because three years ago I had my second kid at 39, and not only did no one seem to think that was particularly old (when I said something about it at an appointment, a nurse laughed and told me ‘Listen, not only are you not the oldest one here, you’re not even in the oldest group here’), but now people are asking me whether/when we’re planning to have a third.
I get the sense that older motherhood has become more common in the last couple of decades. I’m far from the oldest in my groups of friends-with-small-kids. So I wonder if those maddening comments and questions have got less common in that time.
P.S. And congratulations, Heart of Dorkness!
Have you chosen a name? No, not the one the world will know this child by–I mean the one you’ll refer to her/him when (if) you post adorable things he/she says on this board.
It was twenty years ago, so yes, it’s been awhile. I’m sure the prenatal testing has changed as well.
That’s good to hear. Twenty years ago, when my sister was doing IVF, her doctor was arguing for five. She insisted on three. He said they might not take and it would have to be done over. She said “I can handle three babies. I can handle doing it over. Three.”
One is a big improvement.
Oh, and congratulations. Also congratulations on having a cool big brother ready.
The nursery’s not ready yet, but luckily, we’re incredibly lazy, and never got around to getting rid of all that stuff from our first kid, so we’re pretty much set for the big stuff.
Well, when a man and woman love each other very much, but due to various age- and cycle-related issues, they find it difficult to knock the woman up the old-fashioned way, then the woman undergoes a long, tedious, and painful series of injections and medical procedures, the man ejaculates into a cup, some scientists do some science… and voila! A bun in the oven.
Emiliana, I’m happy to report that so far, my experience as a woman of “advanced maternal age” has been a lot more like eclectic wench’s. As far as the doctors are concerned, I’m just another preggo, it seems. And as for friends, coworkers, and so on, most people’s reactions have been along the lines of “You’re 40? You don’t look it!” (I totally do, but no one’s going to say that to a pregnant woman) and/or “Yanno, my [sister/neighbor/bartender/environmental lobbyist] just had a kid, and she’s [late-30-something/40-whatever].” So yeah, it does seem to be a much more common thing now. Or maybe not “now” so much as “here”. The area I live in is much more affluent and educated than the one I grew up in, and I think that’s at least partly why my Facebook friends from my hometown have kids in high school (and one or two are already grandparents), while my local friends all have kids just entering elementary school.
It’s a weird old world.
Ha! I’m sure he’ll just be “my younger kid”, since my other kid has always just been “my kid”. As for the real-life name, I’ve chosen one. My husband is not fully on board (yet), so I’ve told him he’s welcome to try to persuade me with alternatives and I’ll keep an open mind. So far, he’s got bupkis.
Will the little one take your surname? Because it’s always lovely to have another Dorkness in the family, even if I’m not sure how we’re related.
But of course! I think the nubbin will have the same relationship to you as Cousin Matthew did to Lord Grantham. I, however, would not be your Isobel, but rather your Rosamund. I’m not sure how that happened.
I have no idea what any of that means, beyond what ten seconds of Googling tells me, but anyway congratulations!
Sprout of Dorkness?
How did you find the hormonal treatments that they give you for IVF?
Mom, where do children come from?
Wwwwhen aaaa Mom loves a Dad very much they write a letter to the stork, or they phone her! And the stork comes flying from very far away, because she lives very far away, and that’s it. One day, you were born. [fading]What are you drawing? Let me see? Don’t you have homework?[/fading]
The girl’s expression at 0:18? Priceless.
Congrats
Did your health insurance cover IVF? Did you try any other assisted fertility things before it?
