Down the Sewer

I can't believe that when I was checking to make sure I had my house key with me, it slipped out of my pocketbook and into the tiniest sewer opening, never to be seen again... Fortunately, Ohad was with me & he had another key. I can't even begin to explain how unlikely this was to happen. Oh well.

The next exciting thing to happen was that I got to the post office to mail a few packages (of the famous OPKs I sell for peanuts) only to discover that I had forgotten to address one of the envelopes. Now, due to being a country that's known quite a few terror attacks, our mailbox openings are tiny. You can barely put a letter in them, much less a small package - so each time you want to mail a package, it means making your way to one of the 3 post offices that we have in the city (fortunately, one really isn't too far away, it's just down a one-way street, in the opposite direction, of course). A second "oh well".

This morning Einav Galili (who I like watching) wasn't on the morning show & her replacement showed a newspaper article about a 57-year-old woman who just had a baby. And she went on to say how happy that makes her. I really wonder how fair it is to a child to have a mom who's going to be in her 70's before s/he starts high school, especially a single mom. I can understand really, REALLY, REALLY wanting to be a mom, but it seems like there's got to be a point at which you give up. I'm feeling old to be a mom now. I look in the mirror and see my growing belly and think, "I am too old for this." and I am nearly 20 years away from 57...

What do you think? Is there a right age to stop at? Is there an age that's too old to become a mom?

Not what infertility treatment is all about...

I read this article (Clinics prepare for 'lifestyle' fertility treatment) in The Guardian. It talks about offering egg freezing and sperm freezing for people who are delaying childbearing as a life choice -- they specifically mention women who will choose to conceive after the age of 50(!).

My first response was to write my mom who I can always count on to agree with me about such matters. I just sent the link and the phrase my oldest daughter coined when she was about 5 (though she used it about someone who'd double-parked badly) - "that is SO 'come on'".

My mom and I both had babies in our 20's and 30's. She gave birth to my oldest brother just before turning 22. I had my first baby (by IVF, after almost 4-1/2 years of marriage) at 24-1/2. My mom had her last baby at 32-1/2. She felt old. I felt old when I gave birth to my youngest daughter last year, at 35. The old I felt wasn't related to my body or the way I look at life. It was the thought that at my daughter's high school graduation I'd be 53. That by the time she has children I could easily be in my 60's. Hardly a young grandmother...

Obviously I believe in fertility treatments for people who are trying to conceive, but I think there's a point at which it's not in the best interest of the baby who is going to be born. Once you've got the eggs of a woman who's now in her 50's thawed, who's going to stop her from transferring 2 or 3 embryos. Imagine a woman at 54 with triplets... You might say, "COOL!" or that it's her choice, but think about the poor kids explaining to the kids in their nursery school that it isn't Grandma dropping them off, or in elementary school with a father who's starting to experience the signs of old age. By the time they graduate college, they might be looking into old age homes for their parents...

I'm 36 and my parents are still young. That's pretty cool. I hope they'll stick around to see my grandchildren and hopefully dance at their weddings. For now, they've got a great social life. They travel. They enjoy their 20 grandchildren (and are expecting another...) and I can call them up whenever I have questions or if I need to comment on the newscaster's bad haircut.

There are choices we need to make in life and if having a family is high on our list of priorities, we should get started before it's too late. I know it doesn't always work and that sometimes things take years, but to delay starting your family until you're over 50 really seems to be pushing it.