‘Birgit too old to be a mother? Say who?’ | Columns & Opinion

“Love is love. And you are as old as you feel’, writes Birgit Schuurman, Katja’s sister – who also became a mother again at what we can call a fossil age from a fertility point of view. And although women are starting to have children at an increasingly older age, many people think they should express their opinion from the sidelines. Nice and anonymous of course, from behind the keyboard.

Mother Nature

I feel it too, the judgment. No one tells me I’m too old, but you see some people thinking, ‘Weren’t those three recent miscarriages enough ‘hints’ from Mother Nature? What are you doing to yourself?’ That’s what I thought myself. Even said and written out loud. Where I got and stayed pregnant effortlessly with the first three, that turned out to be a different story with numbers four, five and six. They did not sit. Their heartbeats died before I could even give them one hug.

Death Fears

But then I found out a few months ago that I was pregnant again. Not quite planned, we kind of got ourselves into the ‘we’ll see’ attitude and that resulted in a seventh pregnancy. I was terrified. This had to go wrong again. After a sixth ultrasound this morning and the reassuring announcement that everything looks perfect so far, we increasingly dare to believe that our composite family will be expanded with a fourth child at the end of 2021.

bad relationship

Of course I sometimes think, ‘If this baby is 16, I’ll be 60. But is that bad? Worse than, say, 40 and then have an adolescent? Because don’t forget that that mother of 40, for example, can be busy with her job (or ‘me-time’) 24/7. Or the drink. Or in a very bad relationship, as a result of which such a child grows up in a very unstable world. It’s all possible isn’t it? Yes, just as it is possible that I walk behind a walker at the age of 60. But it’s not necessary…

Makeable

You get no guarantees in life. ‘Nobody has a program for this concert,’ my grandmother used to say. Life cannot be made. It’s what happens to you while you’re making other plans and that’s fine. Whether your child is born when you are just dry behind the ears or you have a baby when you already have one leg in the hot flashes: it does not matter, period. If only there is love. Why would you, as an anonymous keyboard knight, doubt that with a new-fangled overjoyed mother? So what are you doing? Why does that keep happening?

Lafbekken

Birgit, let them talk. Research shows that we older mothers offer our children more stability. Those children are also becoming more brave, I read on. Oh, and smarter – pretty handy right? So we didn’t look that wrong. Happy birthday and enjoy your pregnancy. Stand up for us old people, because we are nothing less (but also no more) than mothers of an ‘average’ and therefore socially acceptable age. And to the cowards with an anonymous opinion: shut up!”

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