happy birthday to me

It's not such a great week so far - I came down with a yucky cold over the weekend and called in sick today. But things are picking up. I'm feeling better and hey yippee it's my birthday tomorrow! Not just any birthday, either - it's the big 4-0!

We have no particular plans. Mr. Foxy was out shopping today, so I guess there is a gift in my future. For mother's day he got me a cute pair of sensible Scandinavian shoes, which I promptly exchanged for some metallic pumps and fake snakeskin slides. I have plenty of sensible shoes.. a girl needs something sassy to go with a nice summer dress, no?

So now that everyone at work is starting to notice that I'm pregnant, I don't think I'll be able to help myself from saying "Yes I am.. and I'm 40 years old! How do you like that!" Yep, it feels pretty great. And I keep remembering the news stories, back when I was a teenager, about women having babies over 30 and what are the health risks, and what is this world coming to!? Well that was the 1980's.. by the time I got married at the age of 32, those concerns were just a distant memory.

Okay, there is one age-related pregnancy issue that's been buzzing around in the back of my head for a few weeks now. When my OB suggested that I might consider a VBAC delivery (vaginal birth after cesarean) and I ruled it out with hardly a thought. After the heroic effort we went through to get pregnant, I simply want to take the quick, easy, and painless route. And I'm really not interested in a prolonged labor, only to find out (36 hours later?!) that I'm not progressing and end up needing a c-section anyways.

So I made the decision to do c/s again, but part of me still felt like I was wussing out. I kindof had it stuck in my head that older moms are more likely to have labor complications, but is this really true? Maybe I was just rationalizing to justify my own wimpiness.

Well, my dears, Dr. Google has come to my defense! I looked it up.. apparently it has been shown that the chance of successful vaginal delivery decreases big-time after the age of 40. Overall there is a 20-40% failure rate for VBACs, but for chicks over 40 the risk of failure is more than doubled. This is enough of a problem that most of the guidelines for identifying a "good" or "bad" candidate specifically say that being over 40 is a poor indicator. Basically, you'd have to be highly motivated to even consider trying, knowing that you're more than 50% likely to fail. And how motivated am I? Not at all! So forget it, people, I am a bad candidate!

So I'll be whooping it up on my birthday tomorrow. Looking forward to our big Level 2 ultrasound on Friday. We definitely intend to find out whether Lil' Scrappy is a boy or girl. Stay tuned!