40-something Pregnancy

When whining about my very bad day on Tuesday, I mentioned receiving a surprise pregnancy announcement by way of invitation to a surprise baby shower. Let’s face it, hearing about any pregnancy still leaves an empty, gnawing feeling in my gut, but finding out someone I considered a friend didn’t tell me personally but let me find out via a group email, well that added an extra sting to the announcement. Yes, I am making this all about me because this is my blog. Please don’t think I’m so vapid in real life!

 

So, the shock, especially in the midst of a rotten day, really hit me hard. And here is why. This co-worker has fluctuating weight and she carries it mostly in her tummy region. About a year ago she had lost some weight but recently she seemed to be gaining it back. It happens, right? Now that the cat is out of the bag, her tummy looks rounder than normal, with a fullness that does look like pregnancy, but probably only because that’s what I now know it to be. It hurts that she didn’t tell me herself because I thought we were friendly enough for her to confide in me. We’ve talked about a lot of other things. She told me something before and asked me not to tell anyone and I didn’t. I find it especially painful because she wanted me to adopt her nieces baby, telling me her situation wasn’t stable, which I thought was alluding to her recently splitting from her long-time boyfriend and moving into her own place. That would have been a good time to drop the P bomb on me, no? Why let me find out a month later via mass email from a supervisor? I just don’t understand…

 

I wasn’t the only one totally floored by this announcement. The entire office was a-twitter about this, everyone asking if anyone else knew about it because it appeared next to no one did. The reason, I’ve been told, that she kept her pregnancy a secret was because this is her fourth pregnancy – she has two living daughters and one son who passed away as an infant – and she didn’t want to take anything away from the first-time mom-to-be who announced her pregnancy at the start of her second trimester. One of the biggest reasons everyone in the office was so shocked by this pregnancy announcement is because of her age. This co-worker’s oldest daughter is in her 20’s. In fact, when I first read the email, I thought the baby shower was for my co-worker becoming a grandmother until I re-read the email various times and it became clear she herself was pregnant. I overheard a younger co-worker expressing shock that she could get pregnant. The supervisor interjected, “What? She is the same age as me, 43 and I could still get pregnant!”

 

Is it possible to get pregnant in your 40’s? Yes, it is. A different friend of mine had a baby just before Love Bug was born and she was 42. Still, the audacious claim the supervisor made had me cringing and slinking down in my seat. I just celebrated my 36^th birthday last month and I’ve been trying to convince myself I’m past the point of infertility, even if I weren’t infertile. But, my co-worker friend is 7 years older than me and she got pregnant without really trying. When I had my blood tests done by the Nutritionist one of the hormonal tests indicated I was perimenopausal. The Nutritionist told me whichever ovary was tested just doesn’t work. She wanted to test again at another point in time to see if the other ovary works. For whatever reason, it seems easier to consider my age as a factor than the other mess. Maybe because I’ve been told losing weight is the magic cure and it’s something I’ve failed miserably at doing. Still, staring at the mythical 40-something naturally pregnant by accident co-worker makes me want to retch. And cry. A lot. It makes it harder to give myself an out based on age because it seems infertility will chase me into the 4^th decade of my life. Yippee.