At the age of 39, I believed the hype about being too old to get pregnant. My husband and I had stopped using birth control because I figured that my day had come and gone. So convinced was I that I was a dried up old hag that when my period didn’t start, my first thought was, “this is it, I’m going through the change of life!” But I had breast tenderness which I knew was a telltale sign of pregnancy, so I took the test. Well, ladies, I found out that the female body is more than capable of conceiving a child at the age of 39! I always was a late bloomer. I would be lying if I said that societal pressure didn’t play into my decision-making process. A woman of my age who has “failed to reproduce” is constantly being nagged about whether she is planning on having kids or not, as if it’s anyone’s business. And I would also be lying if I said that the idea of a little person with a blend of me and my hubby’s DNA didn’t sound pretty cool. That being said, I was extremely ambivalent. I had never really planned on having kids. Before I got pregnant, I had been planning to go back to school and get my degree. I had all sorts of plans that now seemed impossible so the thought of having a kid, while it was exciting, also put a horrible nagging feeling in the back of my head. My husband, a truly great guy, told me that it was my decision to make. I tried to be open-minded about maybe going through with it and I went to my doctor very early on in the pregnancy. She told me about all of the pitfalls of childbearing over the age of 36: miscarriages, Down’s syndrome, trisomy, amniocentesis, etc. and all this of course was scary, but I decided (still full of ambivalence) that I would go ahead with it and down the line, I would get all of the scary genetic tests to make sure the little being was normal. Then one night I woke up in the middle of the night just feeling like I was facing a prison sentence, feeling as if my life was over. I had been waking up with these feelings of panic regularly, but had tried to put them on the back burner. This was about my fifth week and by that time, I was so nauseated that I could barely get up off of the couch. By my seventh week I basically laid there for most of the day and tried to clamp my jaws shut, so I wouldn’t get sick. I puked when I went in the kitchen, because it smelled like food. I puked when I went in the bathroom, because it smelled, well, like a bathroom. I puked when I brushed my teeth. Every health care professional I saw and every book I read said that I should get proper nutrition and that I should consume 2300 calories a day (!) I was lucky to hold down a piece of toast. I took prenatal vitamins the whole time, but after the seventh week I began to get severe, ulcer-like stomach pain after I took them. It felt like they were eating a hole in my stomach. I called the ”Prenatal Nurse” and told her this. She acted like I had interrupted something much more important and she said snottily: “I’ve never heard it characterized that way before.” I stifled the urge to tell her to fuck off. She told me to take Flinstone vitamins. A few nights later, writhing in pain from my stomach, unable to sleep, nauseated and totally defeated, I sat up in bed and I told my husband that I just couldn’t do it. I was physically and mentally exhausted. He was a little sad because he had gotten used to the idea, but he was also tired of seeing me suffer. I called Planned Parenthood the next day. A few days later, they informed me that my insurance company never pays for abortions because it is a Catholic organization. (Providence, beware if you have them) I had health insurance for the first time in my life and we still had to pay for the entire cost of the procedure. I went in a week later and found out that I was a little farther along than I had thought, and I was over ten weeks pregnant. I had to take those little pills that you put inside your cheek to make your cervix soften up. One of the ladies there told me that my age group was second only to teens in unplanned pregnancies. (Heads up, 39-44 yr. olds) PP was fabulous about the pain meds. I had a whole menu of drugs to choose from (for $430.00 dollars I damn well better have!) I took Atavan and two Vicodin. Atavan is an anti-anxiety drug, which worked great, and the Vicodin killed the pain. The time consuming parts of the experience were the paperwork, the ultrasound, blood tests, waiting for the pills in my cheek to dissolve and the many explanations of how the procedure is done. The actual procedure took five minutes. It hurt about as much as a Pap smear and five seconds of menstrual cramps. Then I went to the recovery room and had juice and cookies and a heating pad. My husband picked me up and I got home and puked up the sugary juice and cookies. Then I ate, and for the first time in over two months, enjoyed a chicken pot pie. I fell asleep watching TV and I woke up and felt like a human being again. Three days later I had some bad cramps, but they diminished as the days went by.
One thing that I didn’t see mentioned much is all the hormones that are still floating around in your system for about a week afterward. They can make you very weepy and sad. It is a lot easier if you recognize that it is just your body trying to get back to normal. Drink lots of water and flush those hormones out. Taking vitamins helps too.
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