The Truth About Having a Baby at 40

Cognitive bias, sleep deprivation and the slightly odd joys of late blooming.

Since I had a baby at the tender age of 40, I’ve been surprised by people talking about how apparently not optimal this is. Maybe I’m daft (well, for sure) but most of the time I genuinely think being late to the motherhood party is pretty great. Of course, I’m a highly late bloomer, only learning the most basic human lessons extremely slowly and under significant duress. Nonetheless, let me explain my viewpoint.

I always hated any talk of the biological clock, and never felt it ticking so much as heard its echo bouncing off the narrow walls of society’s expectations. I mean, sure, I remember turning 30 and beginning to wonder if I would ever have a kid. Occasionally, I even wanted to get pregnant, but always more as a fix for my life/existential crisis/depression than any real urge to be a mother. Babies never moved me much, until I had my own. Now I’m that woman who aches to hold every baby I see. It took having my own baby to unlock these soft feelings in me.

(Or as my mum pointed out, I only had these soft feelings for cats before.)

Having my own time, until the end of time, seemed (seems) pretty appealing.

My strongest memory of that period is just wanting to know. One way or another I wanted to know: would my life transform in that particular way? Or would it transform in some other way that I couldn’t even imagine yet? Maybe I’d open a donkey sanctuary or just enjoy my life quietly until I died… I remember worrying about how society would view me, but that only made me want to not have a baby even more than I already wasn’t having a baby, just to teach society a lesson. Activism via abstinence, if you will.

Since then, of course, I’ve been ravaged by evolutionary hormones (I’m still breastfeeding) and my sweet brain has begun the work of making this outcome the best of all outcomes. Thus, becoming a mother aged 40 seems to me to be exceedingly wonderful.

The element of surprise, plus the struggle to get here, has supercharged this most ordinary extraordinary rite of passage with a meaning and good fortune (how very nearly it didn’t happen!) that makes it easier to enjoy from deep within the torture chambers of sleep deprivation.

Nobody Called Me a ‘Geriatric’ Mum, thank god.

Pregnancy can’t be easy at any age. The way the baby just gradually shoves your actual organs to the edges of your body, stretching your skin like it’s nothing more important than a birthday balloon. It sounds like a nightmare, and it kind of is, but I found it thrilling. Watching my belly pop and then my belly button. Seeing that funny dark seam finally appear down my middle. [This is really happening!] I was sick as a seasick seadog (what?) for the first trimester, but after that hellscapade, I watched the miracle of new life trash my human form with a sense of wonder. Feeling the baby wriggle, knowing they were safe, after the anguish of early losses never grew commonplace.

And birth was a breeze, due to the glories of Western medicine. I was ready to labour, had brainwashed myself into believing I was a fertile goddess capable of silently breathing out earthlings, no bother at all. But lo, it wasn’t meant to be. Baby boy arrived by unplanned, or as I prefer to say: surprise! caesarean.

Then my lifelong insomnia stepped in to ensure the sleepless nights of the ‘fourth trimester’ didn’t destroy me much more than my usual nighttime routine.

My body does feel a bit different at 40, I admit, but guzzling beer and crisps the way I did means I was never a particularly spry or active 20-year-old. I could possibly class myself as in the ‘shape of my life’ just due to never having been in such great shape before. Winning!

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The Gift of Perspective

I know how quickly time passes. I can feel how fleeting each stage is. The endless nappies and nursing sessions don’t feel as overwhelming when you know that someday that is coming soon you will look back on these moments and wish you could hold your sweet baby, and have them need you, more than is manageable or reasonable, all over again.

I’m right here, in the magic of it. Now.

It’s bittersweet, though. The whole being older, aka closer to death, thing. I’ve definitely wished I started sooner. But the wonderful thing about having a baby is that it stops that sort of thinking in its tracks.

Because if I had had babies earlier, I wouldn’t have had this baby. Might not have, anyway.

And sure I’d have loved those ones the same (would I, though???) but this one is The One. In a way that I’ve never understood that term before.

And now all the love songs I hear, seem to be about babies. About my baby!

(Yikes. I’m really far gone, aren’t I? Maybe I’ll chill out a bit if I ever stop nursing.)

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And sure, there’s a flip side to this perspective too. You think more about the future. About how you’ll be in your 50s (FFS!) when kiddo is a teenager, and what it might mean for them to have an older parent. We have less time together. Their chapter without me will start sooner than I would like.

God, that’s painful to think about. But then, isn’t that life?

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No friends at the same life stage

Most of my best friends have already raised their kids or decided not to have them. They are at a different stage in life, ferrying tweens about or getting used to an empty nest, enjoying actually relaxing holidays, embracing careers with newfound freedom, while I’m still up all hours Googling about weaning (will it ever happen???) and teething (will it ever end???).

This can feel isolating. I don’t have a built-in network of friends going through the same things at the same time. But I’m a socially anxious weirdo who has preferred staying home over doing almost anything else for a decade now. The baby has, if anything, just given me a more socially acceptable reason to continue my longstanding preference for not going out.

So yeah, it’s not all care bears and unicorns (though they are key players, FWIW.)

But I’m a socially anxious weirdo, so I don’t actually need that much socialising, so even this doesn’t particularly get to me. I’ve preferred to stay home than do almost anything for almost a decade now, so the baby only gives me more excuses to do what I want.

Overall: More Fun than I Expected

It’s extremely enjoyable being considered the cutest, funniest person of the cutest, funniest person you’ve ever met. Especially when you’re 40, and by more objective measuring tools ageing out of cuteness (tho still hilarious, obvs).

From the outside motherhood looked to me like a gigantic raise in chores and responsibilities (which of course it is) so I have been bowled over by the fun and lols that come with it. Every day is the best day of baba’s life and I am *the best* person in the world in his opinion, too.

I held a lot of fear about childbirth (my mum’s first birth was extremely traumatic) and assumed I’d get postnatal depression, if not postnatal psychosis (gotta love my go-gettin’ positive mental attitude!), but in fact I’ve been buoyant AF since they sliced me open on the surgical table that day.

At the same time, my life has been stripped of many of the things that used to give me pleasure and peace. Would I have been able to cope so well with the painful and almost constant (also freakily automatic) sacrifice required at 25 or even 30? Perhaps. But at 40 I’ve seen enough of life to know how quickly this phase will pass. Even when it feels like it's going on forever.

Would I Recommend It?

I wouldn’t trade The Boy for anything, but my reservations about motherhood were legitimate.

If you’re considering having a baby at 40, or making peace with not having one, my advice is simple: don’t let anyone else’s opinion dictate your choices. And don’t let the fact that you are doing things in a less typical way make you feel inadequate. Whether you have a baby or don’t, whether it happens early, late, or never at all - none of those things define your worth.

Life happens as it happens, and we just have to do our best to make the most of it. Forgive ourselves for the many mistakes we make along the way and enjoy whatever comes our way to be enjoyed. Because no one’s getting out alive here. And tragedy + time = comedy. Who would have thought someone so ambivalent about motherhood would end up working incredibly hard to have a baby.

So hone that sense of humour, and get on board with the cosmic giggle - because it’s going to keep laughing at you. : )

You’re welcome.

Chelsey x

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Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She is currently working on a book about getting sober and then finding out she’s autistic/ADHD, and her first domestic thriller.