Forty

In a couple months I will be turning 40. It's waiting there for me. In the fertility world this marks a big cut off point as to whether a fertility doc will take on an old broad like me or toss me aside with no hope.

I began this journey at the tail end of 34 years of age and I can't even believe that I spent the second half of my 30s spiraling into infertility hell. Through those horrible years, 40 was the big dreaded dead end for me. Even though plenty of women get pregnant after 40, I knew that if it wasn't happening by 40, I would just have to welcome menopause and call it a day.

So I had been planning, in theory, to arrive at a fuller acceptance of what happened to me in my 30s and begin 40 with a clean slate. I really want to do this. But it's seriously not helping that for some reason 2011 is an explosion of pregnancy all around me. Everyone from younger friends, same age friends, infertile friends, to even older friends (40 plus!) are all getting knocked up.

But the kicking and screaming and feeling like I got screwed is not how I want to start this next decade. I really want it to be a starting point. My father used to say to me when I was young that he couldn't believe he was this old - he didn't feel any different than when he was a young man. I would just shrug my shoulders and now I feel the exact same way. Putting wisdom and knowledge aside, internal aging is this weird invisible thing. Yes, my eggs are crap and are withering away for good, but the essence of who I am doesn't feel like it's aged at all. There has to be something too that. Aging is not the most fun thing, but I have to hold on to the parts of aging that still open doors and breath life into us. I mean, if our essence deteriorated like our eggs then we'd be some seriously cranky toxic people.

Having two young children at this "mature" age also swings expectations to a younger mind set. Most women in their 40s have long started their family and are well into having tweens and teenagers. I, on the other hand, will be searching for preschools this fall. But being immersed in the baby and toddler world sometimes fools me into thinking I am younger. I breath among young mothers all around me and then I start to believe I am a young mother too.

There is good and bad to this, as many illusions of youth might suggest. On the one hand, I can live a young mother life because that's the reality of where I am in motherhood. But at times I remember when my daughter goes to college, I will be nearly 60 years old. It makes planning your life a little different knowing that you are going to have to still be 100% parent at an older age while others might be having their first grandchild.

But I promised myself I would end this post on a positive note, as this is the new theme I am striving for. It helps that I now have 40 followers on my blog, so thanks for that symmetry! But back to my positive ending. I do recall when I turned 30, I went to an astrologist on my birthday who said to me that my saturn renews every 30 years. It's like a clearing out of an old room and refurnishing. So at 30 years, I cleared my internal room and began again. She said my next clearing out will be at 60 years old. As it turns out, just in time for when my daughter goes to college. So in the end, 40 is just another year of living among hopefully many more to come. My room still has bad pieces of furniture from those awful painful years, but it doesn't mean they have to take over the whole space. It's time for some reupholstering - get me a stable gun.