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Let’s not shame women who want to have a baby in their 40s, for ‘geriatric’ pregnancies, for choosing to wait
by Mairead Heffron
17th Oct 2022
17th Oct 2022
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Mairead Heffron: 'I was well into the category of older mother when I had my boys. Once it would have been called a ‘geriatric pregnancy’, now it’s usually called ‘advanced maternal age’. In my experience, many women feel shamed for the choice to wait. Even when it hardly feels like a choice.'
Moments after my second baby was born, still high on a powerful cocktail of endorphins and oxytocin, I had that thought. Later, still filled with elation and love from the birth I so wanted and at home, surrounded by familiarity and family, it came again. “When can I do this again?” I didn’t voice it – surely it was only the crazed sounds of the hormones talking. But in the following months that turned to...
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