Posted on 11/22/2002 6:29:50 PM PST by victim soul
The pregnant pause here is me imagining oldster moms
he Virginian-Pilot © November 14, 2002
http://www.pilotonline.com/opinion/op1114dou.html
Excuse me. Please. I'm trembling so violently I can barely type. I'm also hyperventilating, perspiring and on the verge of what feels like a bad case of the vapors.
Blame it on the news. Once again, The Pilot's front page has scared the bejabbers out of me. And a lot of other women.
No, I'm not referring to Wednesday's headline that raised the specter of Osama bin Laden still menacing America. Most of us already knew that.
I'm talking about that happy little story nestled down there on the bottom of the page. In the right-hand corner.
``Women In 50s Can Safely Have Babies,'' it crowed. Oh joy.
So it's official. Women today really can have it all. Hot flashes and morning sickness. Wrinkles and stretch marks. Visits to the gerontologist and the obstetrician. It's a mad scientist's dream come true: Women can be matronly and maternal all at once!
It's long been known that Mother Nature ``discriminates'' against women. They can't get pregnant after menopause.
``No fair,'' cried some doctors on the West Coast (where else?). The next thing you know, they fixed something that didn't need fixing.
Now, through the miracle of donor eggs, doctors have proven that it is possible for women well past nature's child-bearing years to bear children.
In a discussion of this fabulous breakthrough on National Public Radio on Tuesday, one delirious doctor declared that there was almost no upper age limit for pregnancy. Although I nearly drove my car into an embankment at the news, I think he said at least one woman has already given birth well into her 60s.
Am I the only one who finds this kind of freakishness an affront to nature? This insane quest for the fountain of youth has gone too far. It's time to start acting our age.
What's next, nursing homes with nurseries?
Mothers stooped by osteoporosis toddling their toddlers to preschool?
Gray-haired moms guzzling Geritol on the soccer sidelines?
Apparently it's not enough that women today juggle families, larger-than-ever houses and careers.
Now, thanks to ``advances'' in science, we'll be pressured to get pregnant, change diapers and wake up for midnight feedings until we draw our first Social Security check. Or our last breath.
Maybe I'm just being grumpy. Of course, that's endemic to women of a ``certain age.'' We're moody. Not as gay and carefree as we were during our salad days. Frankly, we're tired.
All the more reason for aging women not to go to extraordinary scientific lengths to give birth to babies. Women who wake up in their second half-century with an irresistible urge for a child might satisfy that desire -- unselfishly -- by adopting an older kid.
Sure, some will point out that men have always been able to be doting fathers well into their dotage. Of course they couldn't do it without the, er, assistance of younger women. Much younger. Women who will likely live long enough to guide their offspring safely through childhood even if the geezers who fathered them have gone on to greener pastures.
This latest hot flash/news flash caused one bioethicist to say something that eerily echoed my late mother's homespun wisdom: ``Simply because we find we can and want to do something doesn't mean we ought to do it,'' she said.
She's right.
I can take my next paycheck and put it all on a pony at Pimlico. It would be fun. It would be exciting.
But it wouldn't be right.
Still, it's a better bet than becoming pregnant at about the same time I become a pensioner.
Reach Kerry at 446-2306 or at kerry.dougherty@att.net
I'm a 40-year-old male and I put a stop to that a few years ago (vasectomy). My kids are now becoming teenagers and they will be grown up and out of the house while I am still in my 40s. It's been a joy having them but I'll be damned if I start all over again at age 50. My wife and I are looking very much forward to a long and happy life together with the kids grown. We'll get to travel again and go out to eat wherever we want and fix up our home the way we want it. Who knows, we might even move out into the country where we don't have to worry about how the school systems are or whether there are kids in the neighborhood (for our kids to play with).
It horrifies me to think of having kids to raise when I am in my 50s. To each their own, I guess. But God bless them, they're going to need it.
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