Pregnancy at 40 is no joke. Reading and hearing terms like "geriatric pregnancy" or "advanced maternal age" is strange. I've never seen getting older as a negative. I try to enjoy each year and what it brings. Being pregnant for the second time, almost 10 years after my son was born was a little different. In a lot of ways though, it was the same.
The day we decided to make our pregnancy know to everyone, we were up in the mountains of northern Utah hunting for one of my favorite things, fall foliage. I had purchased a pumpkin for each of us, painted our names on them, and painted a small pumpkin with "BABY" painted in place of his or her name. I took pictures of Ben with the sonogram photos and set it all up as creatively as I could. When we decided we'd had enough, we began exploring the lesser traveled roads.
At one point, we were driving over some rocks and POP, there went one of my tires. Rob and I have a lengthy history of our adventures becoming more eventful than we intended. In 2009 we were exploring Paris and had our trusty TomTom with European maps installed. Well...we ended up going the wrong way down a one way street courtesy of our faithful guide. I have never witnessed so many angry Parisians in my life. Yet, we both went unscathed. This is one example of how wild things seem to happen to us when we go on adventures. We see incidents like that as part of our story. As long as we're all okay, then it adds more to our memories.
So, as we were working on changing my tire, the completely useless jack that came with my car bent. The ground was uneven and rocky, though we were able to drive to what looked like the "flattest" spot. We were unable to get my car jacked up enough. So frustrating. A man with his three kids in a Polaris pulled up and asked if we needed help. How lucky for us? We were in the middle of nowhere. He drove back down to his truck and brought back his jack. While he and Rob worked on getting the tire changed, I was looking for rocks and large pieces of wood to chock my car to keep it from rolling on the uneven ground. Ben and the other three kids were hanging out. At one point Ben said one of the kids had just walked off. We quickly learned he was also nonverbal. We began frantically looking for him, and I walked far down the dirt road calling his name. We all frantically searched. Turns out, he wandered all the way back to his parents' vehicle and found his mom. Thankful that everything turned out okay, we finished up with my car and headed down the mountain. That is a feeling I hope to never experience again, with my child or anyone else's. I can only imagine how dad felt, or what mom experienced when her son came back alone. We were so grateful he was safe, and grateful that dad was willing to stop and help us. We drove down the mountain and checked into a hotel for the night, and I posted the pumpkin announcements that Ben and I created on my social media accounts.
When I was pregnant with Ben, I just knew I was having a girl. I was wrong. I had a 50% chance of being right, though, right? On September 26th, 2021 we had our gender reveal. We forwarded the results of the blood test to my husband's best friend Ethan. He loaded shotgun shells that had previously been stocked with pink or blue powder, and the suspense was at its peak. We gathered way out in the southern Utah nowhere to learn who was going to be joining our family. Out of the three rounds, only one fired. It was pink. PINK! I knew this was going to be another boy. I'm pretty terrible at "knowing", clearly. Ben's head dropped. He was really hoping for a brother. Rob was already planning how to keep the boys away when our daughter grew up.
I had been so certain that I was always going to be a 'boy mom.' It took me a few weeks to really wrap my head around having a little girl. Ben had hoped for a little brother, but quickly got on the baby sister train. Shortly after we told him I was pregnant, he had dubbed the baby "McNugget" which morphed into "Nuggie" because his nickname in utero was "Nugget" until we'd found out he was a boy and named him.
Due to my age, I had more ultrasounds and anatomy scans. We also learned that the NIPT we did that determined her sex also said we were "low risk" for the Trisomies. According to the Cleveland Clinic, NIPT tests are 99% accurate at detecting Down Syndrome. Other sources will say that the accuracy results are lab-dependent, but typically 90-99% accurate overall. With no further concerns, we moved forward.
I welcomed every single one of those as extra "perks" of being "geriatric". I got to see my precious daughter more often. Every single ultrasound and anatomy scan came back perfect. She was healthy, growing, and all of her measurements and organs looked great. I'd always leave so relieved and so happy I got to see her again.
We bounced back and forth for months on what to name her. Naming a girl seemed so much more daunting to me than naming a boy. In my experience, a name will play a part in dictating how someone will view or treat you. This seemed even more of an issue for women. I wanted our daughter to have a strong name (pun intended). Something that was as beautiful and appropriate for a 50 year old Court Justice or a celebrated novelist as was for a baby. We finally decided on Evelynn. I had been in love with that name since the first time I watched Pearl Harbor. You know, the one with Kate Beckinsale and Ben Affleck? I love the way Evelynn sounded when I heard others say it. It was perfect.
By January, I had discovered that Evie enjoyed dancing. She really liked to dance on my internal organs, and I swore at times that she thought it more important to dance than it was for me to breathe or eat. So what helped me slow those dancing feet down? Her daddy's voice. Yes, only his voice. He would come home from work and I'd immediately tell him to come calm his daughter down. He'd lay his hand on my very big belly and calmly say "relax, my girl, let your mommy relax a little bit." Just like that, she'd calm down. Not for long, but long enough for me to get a break. We often joked that she would either be an MMA fighter or a dancer. Ben was practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at the time, so I think she was picking it up through my many hours in the dojo watching her brother.
February was the month of baby showers. I had one with my coworkers and one with friends and family. I had been adamant that I didn't want the house covered in pink, and didn't want all of Evenlynn's things to be pink. Sometimes I think they all got a kick out of buying every shade of pink known to man. Turns out, pink is Evie's best color. Touche'.
My friends covered my house in pink ballons, pink signs, pink food, pink, PINK, PINK!!! Knowing me means knowing that I am not the tea party kind of girl. I like to have everyone involved. The baby shower for Ben included friends, family, husbands and wives and all their kids too. We did it Oklahoma barbeque style and had a good time. In Utah it was no different. My sister-in-law and her wife flew in from Texas, and my mother-in-law came in from California. My sweet friends Alisha and Jess set everything up. We had this wonderful core group of helicopter pilots and their significant others that made up our Sunday dinner crew. You want to see something hilarious? Watch a bunch of bearded, tough-looking male veterans who have never had babies try to diaper a doll while blindfolded. I laughed so hard my face hurt.
The countdown was on. Rob and Ben put together Evie's crib and set up her nursery so I could fully get into nesting mode. I washed and folded and hung up what felt like a thousand onesies and outfits. I hung decor, stocked diapers, and washed pumping materials and bottles and pacifiers. Good thing too, because Evie was going to make her grand entrance sooner than we had expected. As it worked out, we did our maternity shoot just days before my OB said, "Do you want to have her today or tomorrow?"
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