The World's Oldest Room Mother

Actually Sophia is not a Room Mother. Her stomach churns whenever she is called upon to do room-motherish things--mostly because she never knows what to talk about with the other mothers. She does not knit, or scrapbook, or bake gluten-free muffins. Sophia's wonderful son, Percival, goes to the kind of school where moms bake gluten-free muffins. Sophia isn't quite sure what gluten is, but she's pretty sure she's not free of it.

Oh, and Sophia was not mean enough to actually name her son Percival. You will doubtless have surmised by now that this is a pseudonymous blog. She does like the name Percival. Just not for a person.

Anyway, Percival is nine years old. Which means that he was born when Sophia was more than a tad over forty. This in itself was an experience. Because when you are An Older Pregnant Woman, the medical profession treats you like a bomb about to explode. Miscarriage, birth defects, preeclampsia, diabetes, premature birth, weak cervix, stroke, insanity...you name it, and the Older Mother is way more likely to get it. Sophia's husband was working in a city with a large and famous University Hospital nearby. Naturally, this is where he insisted Sophia be incarcerated for the birth of His Son and Heir.

Not that Sophia is a natural, homebirth kind of girl. No way. Early on, she realized that drugs were going to be an essential part of getting through the experience of late-in-life childbirth. Sophia's pain tolerance is roughly equivalent to that of an oversensitive two-year-old. A bad headache can make her cry real tears.

In Sophia's birthing class, all the women were asked to hold an ice cube tightly in one hand, to see how long they could endure discomfort. Every one of them held onto those ice cubes as if their unborn spawn depended on it. Sophia watched the water dripping through those tightly clenched fists, imagining tiny little babies nestled deep inside every womblike palm. Inspired by all this bravery, she tried extra hard to hold on to her cube.  Nevertheless, within thirty seconds, Sophia was begging for an epidural.

This birthing class was a surreal experience in other ways, too. The teacher/midwife who taught it was a natural childbirth propagandist. So she showed lots of movies of women giving birth in Natural Situations. Water baths. Rustic cabins. Airport bathrooms. And Sophia's personal favorite, the Amazon Rain Forest. This film was very short. It showed a pregnant Rain Forest Woman walking, then squatting, then whooossh! a rush of water. Seconds later (literally) she holds her hands down there and catches the baby as it slides naturally out. A few grunts, and it's over.

Sophia didn't understand the purpose of these films, since she was quite certain her own birthing experience was going to be nothing like this. What's more, Sophia's husband announced that he'd "had enough" of the class after that, and refused to go again. His comment was simply that he "didn't need to see that."

As for the rest of the pregnancy, it consisted of Tests. Many, many tests to make sure Sophia's egg wasn't defective and her aging body was up to the task. Sophia was swamped with statistics, which she never really understood. A one in seventeen chance of having a Down Syndrome baby. A one is three hundred chance of having a baby with something worse. A one in a thousand chance of having a baby that would end up on the cover of the Weekly World News.

And so on. It was terrifying. When Percival finally arrived--two weeks late, but with all his fingers, toes, and all his internal organs tucked into their proper slots, Sophia felt as if she had dodged about five hundred bullets.

So here she is, Over Fifty, the mother of a nine-year old. Yesterday he entertained a school friend, and Sophia drove the lad home. Little Alfred's mom (okay, not Alfred, but something equally old-fashioned) was about thirty. She had a toddler, and a nose piercing. Or is it a pierced nose? She was very nice, but young enough to be Sophia's daughter.

Sophia is sympathetic to many of the fashions and concerns of younger generations. She has no body ink, but can appreciate a lovely tattoo. She doesn't like rap or hip-hop music, but can understand its allure. People have been rhyming for millennia, after all. There's something viscerally satisfying about insulting someone in a rhyme.  But there are some trends that Sophia simply doesn't get. Chief among these is the fad--mercifully past its apex--of piercing multiple body parts. Sophia had her ears pierced at a department store when she was thirteen. She loves to wear long dangly earrings. But pierced noses, lips, eyebrows and tongues are beyond her ken.

And so, Sophia made what she hoped passed for acceptable chit-chat with this young pierced mom. Then she loaded Percival into the car, put on The Last Waltz, and drove home.