but uh, does your Stepmom not know of the name “Susan Sarandon?” or “Jodie Foster?” yeesh, it’s ridiculous.

i do have to throw out there that my grandmother got pregnant at 40 and had my aunt a week after her 41st birthday. doctors were warning her that the baby would likely have down’s syndrome, be retarded, and whatnot…

i was born 9 months later. over the summers, i effectively ‘shared’ my grandmother’s parenting abilities. my aunt and i grew up together, to a large extent. without a question i have to say that my grandmother equaled my mother at parenting. they were both good, but good at different things. my mother was insecure where my grandmother was secure, and my mother was tolerant of things my grandmother was not. my aunt is an extremely intelligent and vibrant woman, and i love her to bits and back. i’m more than willing to admit she is far more well-adjusted than i am, despite – or maybe because – of having an “old, tired mom.”

take that, evil StepMom.

as for waiting for the dog until you have babies – why? to what point? having a dog certainly shows you how much patience is required for childrearing. as much tolerance and patience and firmness as is required for a dog, multiply that my a thousand – that’s what a child takes. it’s a good precursor.

i know you know this, but your baby Sam will be a wonderful addition to your family no matter when she arrives.

As for your stepmother – no disrespect intended, of course (and I’ve had step-parents too, and the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve realized in retrospect that they really were trying to “help” and be involved in their own ways) but her thoughts on brooches alone cast some aspersions on her advice as a whole. For anyone other than Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel and Wallis Simpson, brooches are not a viable option. (Occasionally, there are exceptions; they can look great if made from real jewels and worn on a particular cut of Chanel jacket – again, a likelihood of fashion that pertains to about .00000000000008 percent of the U.S. population.) The brooch concept as a “trend” was abused so monstrously and severely in the Eighties that it should rightly have been buried forever after. And I’m a former fashion editor, so I spent many long and aimless years pondering just such matters and getting paid to do so. Lastly, you live in FLA – so where, specifically, would you pin a brooch? To your T-SHIRT? How about somewhere on your shorts, a la the kilt pin? Come on, now! You seem to me a person who’s comfortable and confident with her own style, and that is a really great place to be. So keep it that way and if I can dig up any of my own fashion mistakes in the form of faux-tourmaline and garnet brooches with their cheap enamel work and all manner of chains, beads and geegaws hanging off of them, I will set them aside for you so you can have a big old laugh.

As for babies, my entire department is having babies! Tomorrow I have to go to yet another baby shower. I can hardly take care of myself, much less another human being (provided that there should a father in the picture, preferrably in the same zipcode, unlike my own situation now, but still…)

I had my dog before I had kids. I don’t even know what the hell that means to wait for the dog until after you have babies. What is the logic? I’m glad I got the puppy training like the bathroom stuff out of the way before the kids came along, to tell you the truth. I shudder to think of having to clean doggie messes up with my kids crawling around on the floor. And if anything, my dog seemed to take very well to having babies to watch over – he’d sleep under their crib at night. People have weird impractical ideas about puppy and child rearing I guess, ’cause I don’t see how one has much to do with the other personally.

My mom has been a young mom and an older mom (there’s a huge gap between myself and my little sister.) The real pain in the ass for her was other people’s inability to shut their yaps about her “age.” She once told me that it made no difference what age she had us at – she just felt we were supposed to be there where we were supposed to be there, and the timeline part was irrelevant. If anything, I think my baby sis got the better end of the deal – my mom was waaaaaay more patient with her than she was with my brother and I.

You will be a great mom at whatever age you decide to have kids. I had my son at 26 and I was always tired LOL. It doesn’t matter if you’re 25 or 35 IMO.

Don’t worry about what anyone else says, follow your heart.

BTW, Sam is absolutely gorgeous and I can’t wait to see more pics

Holly

BTDT, still wearing the T shirt. The lettering changes over the years (now it says “Elderly Primapara”, which is what the 1985 OB/Gyn crowd called new-mothers-over-30), but it’s always something.

“I read some recent research suggesting that the best time to have a baby is 34″ – WinterWheat, I wuv you for this Does it count if you were preggers at 34 but had the baby after your birthday? {{{worries}}}

Joan-er, at least if you have a baby in your 30s, you have a built-in exercise program. Your very own personal trainer! You can’t fire her when she pisses you off, but you can take embarassing pictures of her for the Future Blackmail File and send her to her room. Worked for me.

And y’know what’s worse than having old parents? Having parents who weren’t ready to have you and resent you.

Also, statistically, children are more well-adusted the longer their parents were married prior to having them.

Just sayin’.