PeekabooNWA

Making Babies… Oh the Glamour

Posted on 01. Mar, 2009 by admin in After The Bubbly

I had my last baby when I was thirty. And when I say last, I mean that’s it. I won’t be one of those women taking prenatal vitamins and Boniva at the same time. I don’t have the energy. I waited until the ripe old age of twenty-eight to have my first child, then followed up with a second only twenty-two months later. I had to work quickly because way back then we were afraid to get pregnant after thirty-five. A lot has changed in the last ten years. Pregnancy over forty has become accepted and, if you believe the celebrity photos, it has become easy.

As I inch toward forty, the biological clock still ticks. Instead of ‘have-a-baby-have-a-baby’, it now says ‘just-one-more-just-one-more.’ I fanaticize that if I had another baby, I’d do everything right this time. I would coordinate perfect outfits, put on makeup, and shower every day. I indulge this dream for about a minute before I remember the sleepless nights, continuous feeding, and far-flung emotions. Between post-partum, PMS, and peri-menopause I can’t imagine what older moms are going through. I’m pretty sure if you knocked on their doors at nine in the morning, they wouldn’t be red carpet ready.

Despite the reality of baby rearing, glitz and ease is exactly what we see in those magazines we peek at in line at the grocery store. People may complain that Hollywood glamorizes young pregnancy by holding up Jamie Lynn Spears and Ashlee Simpson as role models, but I’m more offended by the forty-is-the-new-twenty-two celebrities that are selling us regular women a bill of goods.

* Gorgeous Naomi Watts recently gave birth to a second son at age forty. She claims to have lost all her baby weight breastfeeding. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the live-in personal chefs and trainers.

Read the rest of this story at http://afterthebubbly.blogspot.com.