Over 35 and pregnant

Congratulations

It’s 10am. I’ve been back from the clinic probably no more than 2hrs. My phone rings. The clinics name flashes up on the screen. Surely, they don’t have the results so soon?

“Hello”

“Hi, this *name* from *clinic* – can you confirm your date of birth for me?”

My heart jumps into my throat.

My first thoughts are “they must want me to come back in for bloods, this is too soon to know?!”

“Firstly, I want to say congratulations”

My mind goes into a spin. It’s happening again. The years of trying and here we are, I’m pregnant again. We have done absolutely everything possible to make our chances of staying pregnant – will it stick?

I need to call my partner. I need to call my mum! I think of how many people I need to call. Hold up – is this like a regular pregnancy now? The nurse on the line confirmed that yes, apart from them monitoring me for the first trimester, everything else goes over to my health care provider.

As most couples experience, IVF wasn’t on our family planning list. Frankly, until I met my partner, extending the family line via my uterus was pretty much off the cards. Yet here I was, 38 and pregnant with our child.

I call my partner, he’s excited but holding back a bit – I can tell he doesn’t want to get his hopes up. After the losses, grief, hormone injections, egg collection, blood collection, transfer and anticipation, my body is ready for some unfiltered joy. And I tell him as such.

Let me Google that for you

I get off the call and sit there. What happens now? Previously, I’d let pregnancies happen to me – not this time. I wanted to be as prepared and informed as possible. I opened up my laptop and punched into my browser “38 year old first time mum”.

Google search results for 38 year old first time mum.

Not exactly confidence boosting.

The results did not flood me with confidence.

I don’t see myself in these search results.

None of this applies to me

Health-wise, I was the healthiest I had ever been – I’d stopped smoking and binge drinking in 2018.

I’d stopped drinking all together in preparation to conceive. Fortunately, I am food motivated so I’d eaten well and focused on nutrition.

Physically, I was in the best shape of my life, taking Pilates reformer classes 4-5 times a week for the 6 months after our missed miscarriage, the most practical way I could process my grief.

Financially, we were in the position to pay for IVF in cash – whereas at the beginning of 2015, I had over 20k credit card debt and a miserable $3000 in my superannuation fund (the Australian equivalent of a 401k) due to years of study, insecure work and complete ignorance of my finances. Cycle forward a few years and I’d pulled my fiscal head out of my arse, paid off my debt, advanced my career and built a nest egg.

And psychologically, I was as ready as I was going to be. It was a challenge I was ready to take on. I had a secure sense of self and identity. I continuously do the work, processing my traumas, developing my relationships and communication skills. I had a veritable fortress of mental health care professionals around me for my perinatal depression and anxiety.

Because of all that I have done, that I am already the best possible mum for our child.