Too old to be a mother?

I read this article HERE about a 66 year old British lady who is 8 months pregnant thanks to fertility treatment.



Obviously because of her age, the assisted pregnancy has attracted a fair bit of attention and criticism. She says " don't have to defend what I have done. It's between me and my baby and no one else." She also says that "It's not my physical age that is important; it's how I feel inside. Some days, I feel 39. Others, I feel 56"




The photo above shows Ms Adeney, she certainly looks fit. Maybe even fitter than me and she could be my grandma. Apparently she is still working 5 days a week.

It got me thinking... So many of my friends and close family have endured painful struggles with infertility. Many have found success with fertility treatments and have gone on to have children. Some much later in life than they had initially planned. Others have not found success yet and maybe when they do, they will be of a certain age. When I think of how much they want to become parents and how wonderful they will be when they finally get their blessing, all notions of "age appropriateness" go out the window.



Well, to a certain extent. I think having a baby at 66 is very dramatic and vastly different to having a baby 46. But then when I challenge myself I wonder if maybe I am being unfair. If I apply the same principles to the argument in favour of the 66 year old woman having a baby to the argument in favour of my 46 year old friend having a baby then I am a hypocrite.



Is 66 as absurd to us as maybe 36 was to our great grandparents? Is my disapproval of the 66 year old just a sign of the times moving quicker than my attitude? Or is it just too old to even entertain the idea?



What are your thoughts on this? I suppose in my mind the biggest stumbling block is the fairness for the child involved. It seems cruel to imagine an 87 year old planning her son's 21st birthday. It seems cruel to imagine the little 10 year old trying to play cricket in the backyard with his ailing 76 year old mummy... but maybe I am being ageist and awful. Maybe it is smug of me to deny this woman the right to feel the joy that motherhood brings because I happened to be in my twenties when I was blessed with my child...



Would love to hear your views.

Weaning Baby, Weaning Mama

credit fisheaters.com

I was going to start this post by noting that breastfeeding has been in the news a bit lately, what with the tragic suicide of Katy Isden but then when I thought about it a little more I realised it has been in the news for ages. It is always in the bloody news! Breastfeeding is one of those topics that always draws a crowd and usually an opinionated one at that.

For as long as I have been reading parenting magazines and perusing parenting/childbirth Internet forums I have found the term Breastfeeding Relationship a little hard to swallow. I can't quite say what it is about it that I dislike, but it really annoys me. Not as much as Birth Rape though, that is one term that really gets my goat. I'm getting angry just thinking about how much I hate that term. Don't get me started! Another concept I have never really grasped is the ABA Meeting. I don't feel the need to attend a get together with a bunch of mothers who breastfeed. It seems off to me, like we should also have meeting for mothers who push red prams, or others who feed formula or mothers who don't eat meat. I don't know, it irks me.

My little Tinker is now 16 months old and still breastfeeds. Well, that was the case until I got sick last week and discovered that 2 days of vomiting not only dehydrates a person but it also stops lactation. My daughter has never been a good eater, so she is quite attached to her 4 daily breast feeds. I had no intention of weaning her, my plan was to allow her to self wean when she was ready. I had guessed it would be from around age 2 but I didn't really know.

Now that I have had to wean her all of a sudden I have had to face some unexpected feelings. Guilt is one of them, of course. I think mothers are just programmed to feel permanently guilty aren't they? Feeling bad that the child tripped and fell, feeling bad that the nappy wasn't fastened correctly so it pinched her skin, feeling bad that the garden still isn't finished and the child doesn't have a lawn to run on yet, feeling bad for parking the child in front of Teletubbies so Mama could have a shower alone... It goes on. Feeling guilty wasn't a surprise but what was surprising was my grief.

It wasn't because Tinker was throwing herself at my chest 20 times a day yelling "mama please, mooolk? all gone mama? mooolk all gone? Nooooo!" because that was sad and it did break my heart but I think the sadness that I felt at the loss of... dare I say it... our breastfeeding relationship was actually real and it wasn't felt in response to her being so upset. I felt sad for me. I felt sad that I could no longer be the ultimate comfort for my baby and I felt sad that I couldn't allow her to gradually stop doing something that came naturally to both of us.

Being of average emotional intelligence I can't put my finger on why it is so important to me, but it is. All the other overwhelming feelings you get as a new mother were not surprising to me. I was not surprised at the protective lioness I became nor the completely irrational sleep deprived nut case I became after a year went by and I still didn't have my baby sleeping through the night. However this grief about having to wean her, and wean me has been a real shock.

I'm torn between getting medication to kick start the lactation again or just persevering with this weaning process. So far I have managed to get her to a point where she isn't hysterical about not having the breastfeeds in the day time but she is still hanging on to the 7pm and 7am feeds. For now there is a small amount there but it won't last so I guess in a few days it will be gone and I suppose she will then have to accept that she has weaned. And so will I.

I'm interested in your thoughts on this topic.

Wrong baby?

I've just read this article, linked here:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25350189-2,00.html

I must say I'm a little surprised. Not surprised that hospitals have tagged the wrong babies, or brought mothers the wrong babies from the nursery. I can totally see how that would happen from time to time. The ankle ID tags that my Tinker had when she was born would often fall off all the time in the hospital.

What surprises me is this bit:

In one case, a mother had to have HIV and other tests after being given the wrong baby to breastfeed.

So the nurse hands the mother the baby (the wrong baby) and the mother attaches the baby and feeds him/her. How could the mother NOT see that it wasn't her child?

Is it just me, or does that seem strange to you? I mean the minute I saw my daughter's face I recognised her. Not from the weird squiggly ultrasound images I'd seen but just... because. If you had taken her off me, even 5 minutes after giving birth (when it was fair to say I was in one heck of a state) I still would have known right away if you'd brought back the wrong kid!

There is no way I could have looked at her face as I fed her and not realised.Is it because my Tinker had a mop of flaming red hair? The only baby with hair that colour in the nursery? No. It was just that as soon as I saw her, I knew who she was. Sounds completely soppy and irrational. I know.

And I'm definitely not one for soppy or romantic. But that is the honest truth. Tell me, are there any other mothers out there who agree with me on this one? Isn't it odd?!

Mothers and babies

There has been a lot of talk in the media lately about homebirths, freebirths and hospital births.

A lot of people think how a mother gives birth to her baby should be entirely her decision.

They tend to use the line the pro-abortionists use- "her body, her choice".

For me personally, a woman's body is her own. Yep I agree...UNTIL she becomes pregnant. Then she is also the guardian of her child's body as well.

So she must always make decisions in her child's best interest. That is what being a mother is all about.

So in my mind it is insane that any mother would choose NOT to be as close to a neonatal intensive care unit when giving birth to her baby.

Fortunately very few babies need admission to high dependency units like the NICU at birth, but some do. And often there is no indication prior, often low risk mums can go through very normal labours only to deliver a baby who requires life saving treatment immediately.

Why take the risk? Why deprive a new born of immediate access to this type of care?

I will never understand it.