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My 97-Year-Old Mom’s Childbirth Advice For My Pregnant Daughter
“I’m going to call your daughter,” my Mom said. “She’s probably getting nervous.”
My mother is 97, and my daughter is in her ninth month of pregnancy with her first child. This is what happens when life expectancy increases and more women delay childbirth.
“That’s nice of you, Mom. She’s feeling pretty good but I know she’d love to hear from you.”
“I want to tell her about childbirth,” she said, a look of determination on her face.
My mother is an amazing shape for someone born in 1924. She can get up and down the stairs, belt down a cocktail, and is as capable as she ever was of delivering a sharp opinion. That said, her eyesight is shot, her short-term memory not great, and her judgment sometimes questionable.
I explained to my Mom that women today have access to a great deal of information about pregnancy and delivery, far more than even I did when I had kids in the 1980s. In fact, I’ve been amazed by how much my daughter knows — the month when the baby’s kidneys are functional, when the baby grows eyelashes, the exact measurements of the baby’s spine.
When my mother was expecting in the 1950s, none of that technology existed. Three decades later, when I was pregnant, I had only one fuzzy sonogram. My…
