Help, I’m having a baby at 42! by Lori Loesch

I have been asked to blog for Motherhoodlater.com, and I couldn’t be happier.  I have always wanted to be a writer.  I never pursued that dream, but I write a lot, and always kept the idea in my heart.

I married my husband when I was 27 years old.  We married and I felt the tick of my biological clock.  We had our son right away.  I had no time to waste.  I was thrilled to have a son and relieved as well.  My husband said, a lot, he wanted a boy, he really wanted  a boy.  The pressure was on…

After having my first child, a boy,  I quickly said that I would not have another baby until God came down and told me to do so!  The reason…I had a few complications after his birth.  I was a happy pregnant woman.  Pregnancy was wonderful!   I had no problems, no bed rest.  It seemed like a very normal uneventful pregnancy.  However, after delivery I had a problem. There was a tear, and it’s called a fistula and I had to have surgery to repair it when my son was just a five months old.  

Eleven years after our son’s birth, God came down and spoke to my heart and I wanted another baby, I really wanted a baby.   I had a baby girl!  I was 42 years old.  I thought that after the problems I had with my first,  this pregnancy would be considered high risk.  

I had to find  another doctor.   I had a real bad feeling for the doctor group that delivered my first child, and at forty two, I didn’t trust them to deliver my second child. I knew a woman who had three kids and she became pregnant with her fourth when she was forty.  I can still see and hear her, in my minds eye, saying, “ You haven’t lived until you have a baby at forty!”  

I went to her OBGYN doctor.  He was in business by himself, and that alone made me feel comfortable.  When I was with the OBGYN group, I didn’t like seeing a different doctor for each visit.  I had two doctors deliver my first born.   Is this a tag team group?   One doctor started the delivery and then he left and his colleague finished my delivery.  When I made the appointment about the fistula, I saw another doctor! He performed the surgery. That was three doctors for one birth!

Any who, on with my second child.  I thought that this new doctor would consider me a high risk patient.  I was forty one and had major complications with my first born.  ( there were more problems that I didn’t go into.  Maybe another time I will elaborate on them.)  Surely I was high risk and he specialized in high risk pregnancies.  He told me that he saw no reason why this wouldn’t be a normal delivery.  I could not sway him.  I was not high risk, period.  

Again, I was a happy pregnant person!  Things were fine.  Everything was normal.  My son was in fifth grade, so for me that was easier than having a toddler running around!  I walked my two German Shepherds everyday and that kept me in great spirits.  Not to mention it helped keep my weight at a good place and kept my muscles stronger than the first time, when I worked through my pregnancy with no exercise. 

It was the last day of middle school for my son.  I felt tired and decided to take a nap around 9:00 am.  I was very busy the day before.  I had been shopping all day and went to dinner with my mother and grandmother.  A nap sounded like a good idea.

Around 10:00 am.  I awoke to a feeling, as though I had wet myself as I slept.  I couldn’t believe that.  I called my new and improved doctor’s office and his nurse said that I should come right in.  I can remember driving myself to the office thinking “ Could I be having this baby, six weeks early?”  And I marveled at the fact that I was driving myself to the office.  I will always remember the nurses face and her voice when she tested the fluid to see if it was urine or if my water had broken.  She said in a voice of dread, and slowly,  “It’s not urine. You’re in labor.”  Then everything was a fast paced blurr.  I had to be transported by ambulance to another hospital that was equipped with a Neo Natal Unit.  Before I left the office my doctor said that my baby must have turned and now is breech!  This is not happening to me.  I really wanted this doctor to deliver.  I felt trust with him and that was very important considering what I went through with the last doctor group.  He said, I can’t deliver your baby.

My husband, was dealing with this worse than I was.  I was telling him that I had a hair appointment scheduled for the day, and he needed to call and cancel.  He would need to pick up our son at school.  This was his last day of school, for the summer, and I missed it.  My husband saw his doctor that day and his blood pressure was through the roof.  Doctor asked him to sit down and take it easy.  He tested his blood pressure again and it was normal.  

I arrived at the hospital with a NICU.  It was an hour away from my house.  I felt very much at ease with the doctor, anesthesiologist, and nurses.  They were the best.  I went into the delivery room at 6:00 pm. and my daughter was born at 6:06 pm.  I insisted on having a cesarean delivery, because of the problems I encountered with a natural birth.  Since my daughter was breech, I feel God took care of making sure this new hospital would give me a cesarean delivery.  I didn’t feel a thing.  I talked to the nurse and the anesthesiologist, was joking with me.  Everything seemed fine.  I was looking over at my daughter wanting so much to hold her.  She let out a sound and I said to the nurse that it didn’t sound like a cry.  It hurts me to think of it now, the sound.  She was whisked away from the room, I never held her.  I didn’t see her but from across the room.  I was devastated…Would her lungs be okay?  She was six weeks early.  

They took me into the NICU to see my daughter.  She was so small. There were tubes and wires all over her.   She didn’t have anything to do with me.  Again, I was as sad as I could be.  My daughter didn’t want to hold my hand.  She didn’t bond with me. She doesn’t love me. What was happening?  On the other hand, my son was very happy, his baby sister squeezed his finger!  I thought it was because she recognized his voice.  He would always say to my belly, when I was carrying her, “ Hello Baby!”  

She stayed there for two weeks.  My husband, son and I made the trip to the hospital everyday.  Everyday.  It was weird to be at home without her.  The nurses made me feel better about leaving her there, in the hospital, an hour away, by assuring me that she had the best baby sitter’s.  I needed to be home with my eleven year old son who was having a difficult time living with dad and no mom.  He was my only child for eleven years.  We were never apart overnight in those years.

We came home with her attached to a monitor.  The monitor proved to be more of a problem than we needed at the time.  We lived in a busy area with a lot of interference from cell phones.  The monitor was sounding off so much, which meant that she stopped breathing.  When the nurses read the monitor, they said there was only one time, in the middle of the night that she stopped breathing. All of the other times were false alarms.   We started to understand why one mom refused the monitor.  When it went off in the middle of the night, my husband and I would jump up from bed, and check her. I jumped up out of bed, so fast, and without thought, that I forgot my glasses, and now I couldn’t see anything and had to go back to get them.  

I don’t remember  how many months we went through this, but we were so relieved when we took the monitor back.  Things quieted down and life went back to normal.  That is until winter set in.   Because she had a brother in school,  and he could bring germs home to her, I took her to the doctor every month to get a shot in her tiny little leg, so that she wouldn’t get RSV.  I was glad to have the protection, but hearing her cry every month, was heart wrenching.

Today she is an intelligent, beautiful, vibrant, and happy, nine year old!  We are fortunate that her lungs are healthy!  She sometimes needs an inhaler for exercise, but the doctor just told her that she can cut back on her use of it.  She is doing a marvelous job in school and has lots of friends.  Two nights ago, as I was writing my blog, she was in a melt down.  I went to her, she was upset that she couldn’t make a server for Minecraft.  She cried and cried!  She is just nine years old, she has plenty of time to create a server.  

Tags: 35+ mom, getting pregnant, midlife mother, motherhood later, parenting later in life, raising kids