Pregnant at 49

[yellerpup]

I this is an essay that talks about a topic that is not usually mentioned in the debates about choice.

By ERIN KELLY

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/author/erin-kelly

I was pregnant the week of the Republican convention, when they ratified their platform regarding abortion. Pregnant and considering an abortion, and not one that would fit into any of the “exceptions” identified by many Republican politicians: rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. It was a more usual condition, an unplanned pregnancy at my age. But not because I’m a young teenage girl with my life stretching out before me. It was quite the opposite: I’m 49.
I was also considering how strange and fun having a baby at my age might be. I was considering the hilarity of an AARP discount and a newborn at the same time and the ironic outcome of our first vacation without our daughters. I was picturing how excited those teenage daughters would be. But I couldn’t tell them yet.
My husband, a lawyer, was bearing down on the “advanced maternal age” pregnancy issues and statistics like it was a federal case. There was very little for us to read and very little hope in what we found. Advanced maternal age begins at age 35, and the statistics end at about age 45 and they pertained entirely to in-vitro fertilization pregnancies, not the seemingly unheard of naturally-conceived pregnancy.
We could surmise that the odds of miscarrying were extremely high, as were potentially lethal complications for me like pre-eclampsia and diabetes if I stayed pregnant. There were also sobering reports on a propensity for a baby to have its own complications — a host of genetic disorders and birth defects that would disable it physically and mentally and should it survive those, we could still have an anxious wait for autism or schizophrenia to reveal themselves as the baby grew up. We were also high in the running for multiples.