Surprise, Pregnant at 43

Many people find themselves with unplanned pregnancies. Often people think of unplanned pregnancies as something for the young, not those of us who are not so young anymore. Well that is changing as more of us older folks are having children later on in life.

Now when I say unplanned, I don’t mean it is an unfortunate turn of events. Rather another baby was not something we were trying for. To be honest we had decided that two children was enough 6 years ago. Things happen, and now we are having our third child, it is not a bad thing, just an expected but happy turn of events.

However there are some real pros and cons with being pregnant at 43.

The cons are:

It is considered a high risk pregnancy. Fortunately more and more older woman are successfully having healthy pregnancies and babies in their 40’s and even 50’s. This means that I have to be smart about what I do and eat. I have to take care of myself and the baby. Well I did that with the first two. Only real difference is that I am being monitored more frequently and will be going to an Obstetrician sooner than later.

Our other children are older 7 and 9. For some parents that it is a good thing, you have babysitters when they turn 12. For others the gap can cause problems within the family dynamics.  I am looking at it in the positive; I am not going to have three kids all in diapers. Instead I have two children who can help out and at least for the most part do a lot of things for themselves, like get a drink or something to snack on.

I was through with diapers. Guess not, lol.

We got rid of all our baby stuff. Now we have to start all over, from scratch. At least with my second child we saved a lot of money because we still had most of our baby stuff from our first child. Also we had friends who had children just before us and after us. We all passed baby stuff to each other.  I don’t think we are going to have that this time around, though I could be wrong.

We live in a three bedroom! The baby will be in one of the other kids rooms. Not sure how that is going to go over. Lots of changes, and adjustments.

Who has money for a baby?

We have to come up with a good baby name – do you have any idea how hard that can be?

Pros:

We know what to expect, and what we are going to be going through: the lack of sleep, the crying, the diapers and everything else that comes with a baby.

We have some skill dealing with children, and are not bad parents. Yes we made mistakes with our first two, but we will be making completely different mistakes with this one.

Our children are older, so they can help out.

What is available for baby’s now is way cooler then what was available 10 years ago.

Most important pro: We are having a BABY – way cool.