Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

Lot of it about

Some doctors don't like treating older mums-to-be, a midwife friend confided in me recently.

Why not? I wondered. "So many questions," she explained wisely. "The older, educated mums get on the Internet and winkle out every bit of information they can. Sometimes they know more than the doctors do. Makes the doctors nervous."

But the doctors have all that status that comes with their white coats, I pointed out. How could they be intimidated by a pregnant woman who's frightened herself silly on the net? "They're phasing white coats out," she told me. "White, you know. Gets so grubby. Nobody has time to wash them." So, how then do doctors manage to outwit their uppity patients? "Big words," she said succintly. Ah, words. That would do the trick.

Then I was chatting casually with another medic, a doctor, and mentioned my interest in the issues surrounding older mums. A lovely girl. Kindly, generous and competent. But she rolled her eyes at the mention of older mums. "There's certainly a lot of them about," she told me drily.

I shouldn't be surprised that age issues can lead to difficult dynamics between doctors and older mums. The other week I experienced it myself, when I saw a young female doctor, who didn't look a day older than 30, bless her. I couldn't help thinking no way was she old enough to understand about babies and miscarriage. Goodness knows what she thought of me.

I'm still reading Kate Mosse's excellent book Becoming a Mother, which has a small section on older first-time mothers. One of the things I like best about Mosse is that she's so iconoclastic, but in such a thoroughly thought-out and sensitive way it's hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with her as she proceeds to demolish one out-dated belief system after another.

I was glad to see she had words about how some members of the medical profession treat  mum-to-be over 35 as latter-day dinosaurs who are messing with Mother Nature, automatically labelling them 'high-risk'. Mosse discovered that psychologists at Bristol's Institute of Child Health had reviewed medical literature in this field, and discovered most of it hopelessly out of date.

According to Mosse, the Institute concluded: "Social and psychological factors were not taken into account and most research is out of date. We were also surprised at the very small samples that researchers used. The problem is that poor science of this type of then used to justify the label 'high risk'."

Given that overall life expectancy has changed so drastically over the last century, likewise health and nutrition, perhaps it's time some enterprising doctors revised their definitions of what it means to be an older mum. Having had Beanie aged 38, and not yet given up hope of having another baby, I've got more than passing interest in the subject. If anybody's heard of any research in this field, I'd be interested to know about it.

Posted 18 September 2007 21:54

Older mother Parenting gurus Pregnancy

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