#oldermums

It’s no secret that becoming a mum often comes with its fair share of anxiety, especially when it comes to the impending birth. But there are effective ways to get through it! We speak to Dr. Tuesday Watts-Overall on managing birth anxiety and review some of the latest Mama Mio pregnancy skincare products. Excitement And Anticipation Feeling a tad jittery about giving birth? You’re not alone.…

What sad news to wake up to this morning.  A legend of our time, a distinguished gentleman who turned down a knighthood because the state was not making enough investment in science - the extraordinary Stephen Hawking had not just a brilliant mind but a mind of wit and acceptance and wisdom for life that we can all learn from.  

I think it is easy to pass through life in a little bubble without anything going too drastically awry and without the real dangers and impacts of the world touching our daily existence.  Living here in rural Ireland, it would be particularly easy never to watch the news about Syria, Trump, Brexit or the domestic issues of abuse, violence and homelessness... all of this would just happen around us without us missing a beat.  It’s actually fascinating that it takes there to be something wrong with you or for you to go through an awful situation before you stop to take a look at yourself and your life and how you sit within the world. Why is it that those who struggle, are those who see the world most clearly? Why can’t we be deeply in tune with the world and ourselves and figure out a conscious persepctive on how to be and who to be in this world without having to get into a black hole first?  It’s something I shall continue to wonder.

In any case, today, I am going to take Stephen Hawking’s advice that there is always a way out of a black hole and I’m going to carve his most famous quote into my brain. “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist.  Be curious.  And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.  It matters that you don’t just give up.”

Good morning everyone… perhaps it’s the middle of the night for you… often is when you have an infant. In any case, I am delighted to introduce to you my blog which I’m hoping might offer a few pearls of wisdom, a whole lavender bunch of comfort and maybe even some sensible discussion.

The Geriatric Mother - a strange name for a blog written by a 41 year old perhaps?  You might think so.  However, this is actually what they call us.  To explain… this blog is aimed at women who become mothers after the age of 35. When I was finally pregnant with my first daughter (more about that later), I found myself chatting to a midwife one day and her words left me with that phrase hanging in the air… “well, because you’re a geriatric mother…”

It didn’t really matter what she said next.  I was sitting there thinking… what are you talking about!?  I’m 37 or I was at the time.  That’s not geriatric.  I mean… seriously?

That singular descriptive word used to define how I came late to motherhood suddenly labelled me as someone who hadn’t got my life together early enough or who was perhaps too old to think about having children at all.  “Don’t worry,” she said, “37 is the average age for first-time mothers in the Richmond borough.  “Yes,” I thought, “of course it is… we’ve all been working!”

There it was though. It seemed that women who had prioritised career over family life or who simply hadn’t pinned down one of those promiscuous city boys in our 20s, were now to be given their own category of… what was it… pity?  “Pity you left it so late,” “pity you had a miscarriage,” “pity your eggs aren’t harvesting… but you are a geriatric mother you know… it was always a risk.”  I don’t know.  I don’t like to put a victim’s hat on so perhaps ‘pity’ isn’t the right word. To be sure, all the medical staff were extremely understanding and supportive… but with every failed IVF attempt and every passing month, I found I was unwittingly growing into the label they’d given me and wishing even more, that I’d started sooner.  

You might wonder why, after two births, I’m still musing over this.  Surprisingly, I’ve found that this unwelcome tag sits even more heavily with me, now that my children are here.  In truth, therein lies the purpose of my blog.  Four years later, I am a geriatric mother of two, absolutely warmed to the core of my soul by my children… but getting to this point meant giving up my career which was followed by a decision to leave the city of London and move home to rural Ireland.  It’s a decision I’ll never regret, but it’s one which has left me with absolutely no idea of who I am beyond the worlds of my husband and gorgeous girls.  So here I am, hoping to reach out to you – you previously confident, successful, globe-trotting, public-speaking, energetic, professional, career-women; you geriatric mothers who gave it all up to have children and who now, because you don’t want to work full-time while your babies are small… have absolutely no idea what to do next.  Perhaps like me, you have too many ideas but none of them are sticking.  Perhaps you’ve decided to be a stay-at-home-mum but hate feeling as though you have to justify that all the time.  Perhaps, no matter how many business plans you write, social media identities you form or how much market research you do… ultimately going back to work, going back to the thing that has always defined you or a new thing that could create the ‘new you’… means leaving your precious babies to be taken to the beach by somebody else.  And what’s the point in that?  

I look forward to getting to know you, to sharing my ideas, to sending you links and to hopefully pulling you forward into the next chapter of your lives… with clarity and with confidence.  With any luck, in doing that, I might find some for myself too.