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April 2011 Moms
shaindelr
member
Mac and cheese lover!
"Older" mamas... :-) nothing deep, just sharing thoughts.
shaindelr
member
I went to live music at a coffeeshop the other night, and one of my friends who is only 11 years older than I am kept talking about how she "can't wait for grandkids"... It just weirded me out. Um. In 11 years, I'll have an *eleven-year-old" -- I'm nowhere NEAR thinking about grandkids.
It actually sounds like she's doing the whole "pressuring" thing of asking her kids if they want kids, etc., and I told her they have *plenty* of time. Her kids are all in their early 20s.
Do conversations like this come up with your friends? Like, people roughly your age who have "grown kids," and it makes you see how different things will be when your LO is older? Just wondering.
Mac and cheese lover!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: "Older" mamas... :-) nothing deep, just sharing thoughts.
Goodness gracious, no. Luckily, I haven't had that encounter and you are very right in thinking you're no where near that even being an idea in your head.
And for what it's worth, there's no way in hell I'd be pressuring my twenty year-old to have babies.
I'm still wondering when I'll get used to the smell of spit up.
BFP 3/28/16 (EDD 12/9/16) * Chemical pregnancy
ME: 40 yrs.old
DH: 41 yrs.old
DD: 5 yrs.
I had my LO 2 months before I turned 41. I have plenty of friends who are grandparents, even a few of my high school classmates. It does feel weird sometimes, but I don't regret waiting. I had a lot of fun, traveled and was career oriented in my 20s and 30s. The one thing I do get sad about sometimes is we will only be having one.
I KNOW! I mean, this is a very rural place, but my friend has a 23 year-old and 21 year-old twins, and she was talking about how one of her boys is dating a sweet, farm girl who wants to get married and have babies. And I know this girl; she *is* sweet, but I would SO not be pressuring anyone into anything like marriage/kids. People do things in their own time. Yikes!
Her daughter is a singer whose CD just came out. I think she'd want them to be focusing on things like that before babies.
Mac and cheese lover!
My husband will be 42 this year. Both his parents and my parents were grandparents by that age. We also have friends with older/almost grown/grown children who will probably be grandparents before Nora hits kindergarten.
I'm ok with not being anywhere near that stage, though there is a *small* part of me that wishes we'd started our family a little sooner. (Not 15 years sooner, though.)
ETA: My husband has a grown niece as his older brother had his children at a younger age. His oldest niece is married with 3 kids ranging in age from 5 months to 4 years. She and her husband could be grandparents before we are lmao!
My oldest nephews are 20 and 18. I stress to them often that they are VERY young and that there are ways to prevent having babies. (Their mother started having babies when she was 20 and seriously 20 years later she is still having them, but that is a story for a different day)
I keep reminding them that life is about choices and that the choices I have made meant that I have gotten to see the world and do some amazing things and now I get to have a family. I don't want to be a "great aunt" any time soon.
That said I dated a guy for a long time who had older children. I saw that his daughter had a baby last year, Had I married him, I would be a step grandma. Whew. I would also not have Jack because he didn't want any more kids. Which is why we finaly ended it.
So crazy!!
Yeah, its weird that a few friends of mine have kids old enough to have babies.
I can't imagine being a grandparent at this age. I feel so young myself and don't think of myself as being old enough to have a grandchild. Unfortunately, its hard to connect with these friends right now as they are able to enjoy the freedom of no kids and are out and about doing things that we can't participate in without preplanning and hiring a babysitter.
Heck, some of the kids I used to babysit are now old enough to babysit for me. That made me pause and think. Heck, one of them was a teenage parent 2 years before I had my first kids and that was shocking.
Hopefully these 20 somethings (or teenagers) will be like me. My mom was suffering from an empty nest after I left for college, and the first time she asked me for a grandchild was picking me up from the airport over Christmas my freshman year. We hadn't even made it home yet when she turns to me and says "I want grandbabies."
My response, "Mom, I just turned 18, you're going to have to wait!"
And I made her wait for 14 years!
Though it did help that I completely knew she was joking. She would have freaked if I had called her before spring break that year and told her she was going to be a Grandma.
As some of you know I have two older DDs who are 20 and 17. I told them both do not make me a gma any time soon. I encourage them to enjoy their time being young. My 20 year old has the merina (?) implant so she is good for 5 years.
I would never ever pressure them to make me a gma. My mom was 48 when she became a gma and I don't see me being a gma and a mother to children under 10 at the same time. However it can happen and I would accept it with a big heart.
Okay, so I'm not really an older mama (31 y/o), but I do have a few thoughts to share. (Along with our 9 month old DH and I have an 8 y/o we adopted when I was 25 and he was 22, but that's another tale.)
One of the women I work with is a few months older than me, and her oldest is almost 17. She talks all.the.time. about she could be a grandma any time, and about how much she misses little babies. She then also tells her boys to not get any pregnant yet, soooo. In her frame of reference, parenting that young is totally normal, and I'm like- NOOOOOO!
And, another tale. When my grandmother was pregnant with her first baby, my great-grandmother was pregnant with her last. That's what happens when you live in rural Oregon and have 12+ children.
Completely the conversations people have here... (We're probably in the same part of the state ;-) All of the 40 year olds are all, "I'm ready to be a grandma." Yikes!
If you are in the same part of OR, you should PM me, and we should get together sometime.
Mac and cheese lover!
Yep. One of my best friends is 42 (I'm 35) and her youngest son (who actually occasionally babysits my kids!) is in college and just had a pregnancy scare with his girlfriend. It freaked me out to think she could have been a grandma because I feel like we're so alike even though our kids are quite a ways apart in age.
Related: A guy my DH went to high school with just had his first grandson born. So, one of our effing PEERS has a grandkid only a tiny bit younger than our girl. GAH!