Half lives and last-chance babies

As 2023 began, I was thinking, maybe even half-seriously, about trying to have one more baby.

At that point I was 41, remarried for a little more than a year to a man I’m deeply in love with. I had told myself I was okay with my two wonderful boys from my first marriage, and my husband’s two adult children from his. Life was getting so much easier, now that mine were past the little-kid years. With a soon-to-be-married stepdaughter in her late 20s, who knows, there might be even grandchildren before too much longer.

And what couple in their 40s and 50s in their right mind has a baby?

AI prompt: “pregnant old woman”

But increasingly, I couldn’t ignore it: the longing for one more child - and with him. In the rush of newlywed love and what has to be a final paroxysm of my waning fertility, I felt myself longing for something that I knew might, just barely, still be within reach.

As a reporter covering reproductive rights - not to mention a woman who’s carried two babies - I knew the odds pretty well. At my age, the sun was setting rapidly on any chance of getting pregnant. I didn’t have any frozen eggs, and even if I got pregnant the old-fashioned way, the odds of miscarriage or other serious complications were scarily high.

I’d even written a piece for NPR’s Life Kit about this a couple of years ago: “There's never a 'right' time for a baby — but these questions can help you decide.” The piece had been inspired by watching several friends cross into their late 30s and replace ambivalence about having babies with a sense of urgency. When I wrote it, I told myself the questions being raised didn’t apply to me: I was done. Enjoying the good life.

My husband, Greg, was understanding but cautious. We’re not young, and we’re really, really happy. Why mess with it?

But I couldn’t quite seem to let it go. As 2022 was drawing to a close, I was reflecting on the end of that year and our first anniversary of marriage (and let’s be real, probably also ovulating). On a car ride with my husband, something broke inside. I found myself overwhelmed with how much I wanted another baby. With how big my boys were getting. With knowing the door was closing, and fast. I knew it was a crazy idea but I wanted it. As Greg drove, I sobbed, tears streaming down my face.

The closest word for what I was feeling is grief - grief for the “normal” family we’d never have, for the years with my little ones that were gone forever, and for my passage from youth into middle age.

And then, just a couple of weeks or maybe even days later, we were on vacation in Florida, walking past a crowded open-air restaurant, when I heard someone call my name. It was a friend from high school - a friend I’d last seen more than two decades ago, back home in the Midwest. We sat down and had a drink. Her husband, I learned, was a little older - like mine. And they had a small child together.

Maybe, we thought. Just maybe, it’s a sign?

Fast forward a few days. We’re in the last phase of our vacation, in Mexico now, zooming around the beach on a motor scooter. And suddenly, it tips. We’re in the ER. Eventually, back home. I’m a scraped-up, bloody mess (but otherwise fine) - and Greg needs rotator cuff surgery to repair two torn tendons. Being injured, and seeing my husband like that - uncharacteristically fragile, needing my help, in pain - felt like a rude awakening. We weren’t kids. We shouldn’t be having any more. I put it out of my mind.

The year 2023 zooms on. And then, in September, out of nowhere, another accident. A car is coming into my lane. It hits us head-on. My son is injured, badly. My collarbone is broken. The car is totaled, but that’s not what’s important. Another reminder of our fragility.

I found myself thinking about the near possible world in which we’d decided to try to get pregnant. And if we’d been lucky enough to succeed - what would have happened that day? An impact serious enough to fracture a collarbone and leave bruises all over my torso and hips might have been devastating for a pregnancy. I wondered if we were spared additional, useless grief.

And still, time is moving on.

I did the math recently, using the Social Security Administration’s personal Doomsday Clock - I mean, life expectancy predictor - and realized that the accident had occurred at almost precisely the predicted midpoint of my life, if current projections hold. I had so many ideas about the first half of my life - college, marriage, babies, career-building - but the second half isn’t scripted in the same way. It’s a little stunning to realize that if I’m fortunate enough to live out all of my actuarially-predicted years, I may get to do this all again - but this time in an aging body, with the celebrated moments in the rearview mirror, and with kids that feel almost grown.

This has also been a year of rejoicing through several friends’ last-chance pregnancies. Some combination of IVF and nature or God has meant new babies in my circle, some of whose moms are around my age. New babies are always exciting, but especially so at this age, when the algorithm is serving up Botox ads and perimenopause supplements like the apocalypse is nigh.

As a meme I saw floating around recently noted, at my age, some of your friends have babies and some might even have grandbabies (particularly if you grew up evangelical like I did, where it’s normal to marry and have kids a bit younger).

As for me, I once again started this new year on vacation, this time on a cruise ship with my big, weird, blended family. We’ve mostly healed from what 2023 brought us, and I felt grateful to be with the people I love.

My husband took this. I think he’s ready for a gig as an Instagram husband?

There were ten of us, including kids and step-kids and even a former spouse or two, because we’re fortunate to get along unusually well. (If this scenario sounds deeply uncomfortable to you, I understand. As one colleague observed, “Cruises aren’t cool, are they?” No, even without an extended family, they’re admittedly not. But this group is wonderful, and the wifi is terrible, and that’s exactly how I wanted it.)

I sat next to my tween during a production of the ABBA musical, “Mamma Mia,” and definitely did not choke back tears during “Slipping Through My Fingers All the Time” (I definitely did).

I thought about watching the film version when my oldest was still a baby, before I knew what it was like to say goodbye to a little one with a “schoolbag in hand” like the song describes. I remembered the boys with their short, blonde haircuts and their backpacks at the bus stop. Moments from seven, eight years ago. A blink. Everyone tells you this but, like I’ve said before, you don’t really understand it until you experience it.

My son looked over at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him studying me as a few tears trickled out.

The lyrics made sense in a way they hadn’t 16 years ago: “the feeling that I’m losing her forever/without really entering her world.” I thought about my older son, how quickly he’s become a high school upperclassman, immersed in his own world. I search both of their faces for traces of the babies I used to hold. I don’t really know where they went, or how they got there.

I look at them and feel what I can only describe as grief - mixed with a lot of pride.

Somewhere where the wifi doesn’t work, thank heaven./Sarah McCammon