An older mom, a better mom

Moms by Age - 40-something Moms

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Let's face it. Sure, we may look younger than our grandparents at the same age. Maybe some of us even act younger, or dress younger (please stop doing that. Dress your age). But our bodies know better. I've watched the 20-something and younger 30-something moms in their lean, velour jogging suits, chasing their children around the playground. Yes, I've watched that. From my comfortable seat on a bench, resting my aching, 40-something bones.

Forty is not the new thirty

My mother had me when she was 19. It was the Vietnam era, and that wasn't so out of the ordinary. So imagine my shock when I had my first child at age 32. So old. My husband's mother had him when she was 38 years old, and she seemed to be so much older than my mother. When my mother was 41, I had already graduated from college. Well out of her hair. And I'm here, now, at age 41, chasing around three active boys, ages 8, 7, and 3. And I'm often very, very tired.

My energy levels have changed dramatically between the ages of 32 and 38. Having an infant at age 32 was hard, sure. I'd never been that drained in my life, and I was one of those people who liked to stay up all night in my salad years, reveling. Turns out, staying awake with a fussing, hungry infant in the wee hours is a lot more tiring than, say, drinking beer and dancing around to Madonna at 4 a.m.

But the infant fatigue I experienced with our youngest when I was 38? There aren't words sufficient to describe that kind of exhaustion. That six years from "young 30s" to "near 40" were like six decades. I really had nights--me, the efficient, energy-packed, never-stopping mom, writer, dynamo--I had nights when I honestly thought I couldn't go a minute more. Luckily, I also have a great husband who gracefully accepted the infant that his almost-40, bedraggled, hormonally challenged, milk-cow of a wife handed him at 4 a.m. on some of those desperate nights.

Older mom knows better

Now that I'm past those dark and desperate moments, I feel my age, but in ways good and bad. I see younger moms interacting with their kids with loads of energy, but sometimes perhaps with a little less of the wisdom one acquires in the decade and a half that lies between us. I'm glad I spent my 20s traveling and dining and playing freely with my husband. It's left me without an iota of feeling that I'm missing something. I've got world experience I can bring to my parenting that I simply wouldn't have had in my 20s. I've also got a greater maturity than I had in those younger days, including a lot less impatience. I honestly think that if I'd had children younger, I wouldn't have been ready, and my kids would have traveled a much different parenting path with a younger, more harried, more distracted and immature mother.

As a mom in her 40s, I bring a focus and maturity to my parenting that I simply didn't have in my 20s or 30s. Other women may have developed that earlier, but I do see among older moms like me a certain Zen acceptance of situations--like split skin requiring stitches or a bedtime that falls a little later than usual--than younger moms sometimes have. Yes, I'm older. No, I don't wear slim velour jogging suits or pointy-toed high heels (with these post-pregnancy arches? Are you kidding?). Some days, I'm lucky to be wearing anything recognizable at all. But what I've got on the inside is the experience of 10 or 15 adult years of living and maturing and getting my ya-yas out, time well spent in preparation for the greatest responsibility of my life: parenting. Aching, tiring, and older but rewarding parenting.

Emily Willingham is a scientist, writer, autism mom, and worrier who entered her 40s about 1.5 years ago and enjoys parenting her three young sons, with frequent rest breaks.

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