Today I had lunch with a girlfriend of mine, one that I hadn’t seen in a while. She brought another friend of hers who was pleasant enough, but pregnant. It dawned on me it was not going to be one of our usual mid-day boozy lunches. You know, the kind where we dish about our husbands, kids, life, etc.. It turned out to be a very sobering experience. This newcomer droned on about motherhood and what a JOY it was, and how she was about to have her fourth child in September, blah blah blah!! She continued on to say it would be different this time now that she was forty-five. “Whoa, backup”, I said “you’re forty-five?” First of all, she did not look her age, but in this land of smoke and mirrors who does, right? I mean the Botox alone in this land of Hollywood could slow down the aging process for millenniums. Anyway, her story was that she’d always wanted four kids and this seemed like the right time. Right time, I thought, almost out loud! I had to catch myself. Is this woman crazy? When did our forties become the best possible time for child bearing? Was all this forty is the new twenty-five stuff going to our heads? Let me just say you need energy, and lots of it, to raise a baby, and especially to make it through the toddler years. I think all these celebrities are really starting to sell us their dreams. I think when Halle Berry got pregnant at forty-five the whole world went crazy. It’s totally understandable if you’ve never had kids, to hope, wish for and even get pregnant, but it’s a lot of work, time and energy to raise a little person. So getting pregnant for the forth time when you already have three healthy, almost grown kids, seems to me a bit greedy, if not risky? Wouldn’t you say? I’m just not sure if the new normal should be mothers going to their kids high school graduations at sixty-five. I guess the beauty in the times we live in, is that we, as women, have choices. In the end, isn’t it always a woman’s choice to change her mind?