Wow! A baby at 45. Yikes! My grandmother's aunt had her last baby at ~47~
She was married in 1900 at the age of 22 and had kids in 1902, 1904, 1912 and 1924. (I'm a genealogy nut, that's how I know. )
Infertility is a strange experience. You just get sucked deeper and deeper into it and you can't help it. Even people like me who were never overly maternal. You find yourself doing things (for treatment) that might have been unimaginable before. People without insurance coverage (thankfully not us) take out second mortgages to pay for treatments.
I guess the bottom line is that we don't realize how much we take something for granted (such as having a baby) until we realize we may never be able to have that thing. It really changes one's perspective.
We were incredibly lucky. It's good to have a reminder of that from time to time because I tend to forget how hard it was and how the odds were against us, and just see myself as a mom with a child. Certainly, all children are gifts, but ours was truly a miracle.
It's great that the struggle to have a baby strengthened your folks' marriage. It doesn't always work out that way.
When I think about it, what I see in current generations that the elders didn't seem to have is a sense of entitlement. The elders did what they had to do, they worked hard, but I don't think they felt entitled to anything. They took what they got and made the best of it. Life sure was tough, in the amount of physical labor it took to do most things, whether raising children or working in a factory or iron foundry. But still they did it. When I think of what my own grandparents did, I feel like such a lightweight in comparison. Sometimes it helps to wonder what they would do if faced with a certain situation.
I had a nice Mother's Day. Thanks! And thanks in advance for letting me include my musings in your thread.
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