Five Challenges of Having a Child in My Late 30's

I'm going to make lists of the benefits and challenges of having child at this point in life that I foresee.  We'll start off with the challenges this time because I prefer to end on a positive note.

1. Will I have the stamina?

Now, I'm no wimp.  I'm hardly athletic, but I'm fairly active and try to stay healthy.  But, get this: I am seven months older than Kobe Bryant, the man who just retired from basketball.  Now, I'm no Kobe Bryant (I did mention I'm not athletic, right?), but boy do I know where he's coming from.  I just do not have the stamina that I had back in my 20's.  Granted, I'm in better shape than I was about four or five years ago when I fell into some poor health habits.  The first photo below is me in 2010, straining the buttons on my shirt, and the second is me just a couple of weeks ago, wearing the exact same shirt!

Even still, I'm not the spry little man I was we got married, either:

Yes, once upon a time I had really short hair.

My body doesn't always cooperate with what I think it should be able to do.  I find myself needing longer to recuperate from physical activity than I once used to.  I am currently trying to get in better shape since I know this child is on the way.  And I'll do my best to stay active and keep up with her.  But, honestly, I get tired just thinking about the fact that, when this child turns two, I will be forty!

2. Most likely we will be among the oldest parents of our daughter's friends and classmates.

What is that going to be like?  I imagine us taking our four-year-old daughter to the birthday party of one of her friends and looking around to realize we are probably closer to the age of her friends' grandparents than the other parents in the room.  I worry I will feel a lot like Steve Buscemi here.  Perhaps it won't be so bad.  After all, I already work with college students as it is, and they manage to help me stay young while simultaneously making me feel old all the time, and I survive it.  But, that brings me to point #3...

3. Will the generational/cultural gap between my kid and me be too wide?

This child will never know a time when the internet didn't exist.  Smart phones and touch-screen tablets will be obsolete technology not unlike how 8-tracks and vacuum tube computers were to me. As a kid, privacy was achieved by stretching the phone cord to its absolute extent to get the receiver into my bedroom.  Even then, my parents could pick up the other line (something else our child will have no concept of) and listen in if they were concerned. I can't begin to name a musical artist who is popular among young kids right now.    Even Justin Bieber (with whom I was never infatuated) is in his 20s now and losing favor among the youngsters.  The technological and cultural environments that will shape our daughter's childhood will be so wildly different from those that shaped mine as a late Gen-X-er.  Will I be able to relate at all?  Will I seem to her like I came from another planet?

4. Will I become a burden to our child at a time when she is still working to establish her own life?

This is a long-term issue, for sure, but a concern nonetheless.  When our daughter is 40, I will be 78.  There is a distinct possibility that I could be in need of assistance just as she reaches the point in life when she should really be coming into her own.  I don't want to be a burden or stunt her in any way.  It's a bit of a scary thought.  The less I talk about it now, the better.  It's going to require some serious planning on our part, I suppose.

5. Will we be able to give her a sibling?

Megan is already talking about a second child.  My response is usually something to the effect of, "Can we just figure out if we can handle one first?"  But, aside from that, we have to take into consideration whether or not we will be physically or emotionally able to give our daughter a sibling if we do decide we want to.  I mean, we had a difficult enough time getting pregnant this first time.  In addition, the emotional trauma of the miscarriages was harsh.  I can't help but hesitate a bit when confronted by the possibility of going through all of that again.  There are few things that hurt as much or make you feel as helpless as seeing your wife in pain and inconsolable.  It is a conversation we'll have to have and a decision we'll have to make at some point.  On the other hand, if we--or nature--decide to stop at one, will our daughter resent being an only child?

So, remember when I said that I am a notorious over-thinker?

However, please don't be concerned that I am slipping into anxiety here.  I'm not completely focused on the negative.  These are concerns that pop into my head, but they hardly keep me up at night.  I welcome challenges!  Life is far more interesting that way.  I will post a list of 5 benefits to balance the scales soon.

What Am I Doing Here?

My wife and I have always been very education- and career-driven people.  We were married in 2004, and shortly thereafter each of us was accepted into grad school.  We made a specific choice not to bring children into this world until we were both finished with school and life was relatively stable.  That took some time.  Once we finally felt that we were in a good place (I was a tenure-track assistant professor at a local university and she was a master's-level therapist for one of the premier provider of services for children), we were both in our 30's and discovered that there were fertility issues.  After more than three years of trying to get pregnant, a few different fertility treatments, and two miscarriages, we were just about ready to give up and look into adoption.  

Well, so many of our friends and family told us that it would happen when we least expected it, and those words proved very true.  

Now, here we are: my wife is 5 months pregnant (due in March).  When this child (a daughter) is born, I will be 38 and my wife will be 35.  Not that many decades ago, ours would have been labeled a "geriatric pregnancy".  No kidding.  Look it up.  Thankfully, that is not the case any longer as more and more people are waiting until their 30's and even 40's before having children.  Still, I have friends from high school and college who have children in their teens.  My own sister, who is almost the exact same age as my wife, has two girls, the oldest of which is 15 (and 16 is just around the corner) and the youngest of which was born just a little over a month after my wife and I were married (she's 11!).  So, in many ways this late pregnancy is still a bit outside the norm.

Don't think that I am worrying over it.  That is not the case.  But, as you may or may not already know, I am a notorious over-thinker.  So, looking at being a first-time father at age 38 has, naturally, gotten the gears turning in my mind, assessing and contextualizing what exactly this all means.  (Forgive me. I can't help it.)  So, this is the place where I'm going to process some of my thoughts.  It may seem odd to air private thoughts in a public forum, and most people may not care and may never read it.  That's fine by me.  But, if there is, perhaps, even one other person out there going through a similar situation, and reading my random ramblings on the subject should provide some comfort, then it's worth it.