It’s My 40th Birthday And I’ll Cry If I Want To
I can say, hands down, this was the worst birthday ever. Sandwiched between two losses, this milestone hit me like a boulder out for vengeance.
I’d been dealing with disappointments for months; trying to get pregnant again, feeling distant in my marriage, and watching my career unravel. And when you think you’ve hit your lowest point, life has a way of handing you a shovel. These are the times when mothers really do need a village because it takes community to get out of a mourning hole.
In this article:
Advanced Maternal Age: Trying to Have a Baby After 35
Geriatric Pregnancy and Trying to Have a Baby After 40
Midlife Crisis and Midlife Edit
Death, the Great Clarifier
Life After 40
Advanced Maternal Age: Trying to Have a Baby After 35
I knew the odds. “Geriatric mother” isn’t exactly a confidence booster, but I tried to ignore that medical insult printed on every prenatal form. Still, after nine cycles of hope followed by heartbreak, I finally saw two pink lines.
I was 37 when my son arrived healthy, squishy, and perfect. I had done it. I’d beat the biological clock.
So, when we started trying again at 39, I knew it would be tough but not impossible. After another nine months of trying, I got pregnant again. I let myself dream: maybe it would be twins. Maybe I’d end up with the three kids I always wanted.
But instead, the ultrasound showed an embryo measuring 5 weeks and 5 days, not the 9 weeks and 2 days it should’ve been. There was no heartbeat. A silent miscarriage, they called it.
My body finally caught up, and I miscarried naturally at home. It was every bit as painful as it sounds. There are truths about pregnancy no one warns you about, like how my body carried a non-viable pregnancy for almost four weeks, refusing to let go until my mind knew the truth.
Geriatric Pregnancy and Trying to Have a Baby After 40
I knew getting pregnant would be harder at my age. I didn’t realize staying pregnant would be, too. Now, I have to wait at least two months before trying again. A forced pause that feels cruel when time already feels limited.
I don’t feel 40. I don’t think I look 40. But my ovaries disagree. Every article and statistic remind me that biology doesn’t care about optimism.
Pregnancy after 40 comes with brutal math:
A 33–50% miscarriage rate
Egg quality and count drop rapidly after 35, and even more after 40
IVF success rates hover around 10–20% depending on health and luck
Perimenopause looming in the next few years
It’s surreal to feel so alive and capable in every other part of your life, while your most primal abilities are slipping away.
Midlife Crisis and Midlife Edit
Turning 40 makes you take a kind of involuntary life inventory. What have you built? What do you have to show for it?
The answers are mixed.
I have a son I adore, but I’m struggling with being “just a mom” and putting the rest of me on a shelf until it’s a more convenient time to have a fuller identity. And it makes it harder to commit to being a stay-at-home mom by the aspect of him being our one and only.
My marriage functions like a business partnership. My husband and I used to be that flirty, touchy couple who couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Now we’re coworkers at an office called “home,” managing a project named “our child.” Our love now presents as packed lunches and appointment reminders.
My writing career vanished when AI took over the market. Clients disappeared overnight, replaced me with algorithms that work faster, cheaper, and without needing breaks. I pivoted to something AI couldn’t take, but now I’m making less than I did 15 years ago.
I spent the week between my miscarriage and birthday wonder which version of me deserves saving. Do I double down on motherhood and quit the low-paying job, pour what I have into fertility treatments, and risk debt for the chance to grow our family?
Or do I let go of the uphill climb and focus on building a career again, using the degree collecting dust and giving my family stability instead of a sibling? It feels like an impossible trade: expand our hearts or secure our future. Either way, something gets left behind.
Death, the Great Clarifier
And then, on my actual birthday, my mother-in-law died. Her death was sudden, unexpected, and cruelly timed.
She wasn’t just “my husband’s mom.” She was one of my favorite people. The kind of woman who made motherhood feel less lonely.
Losing her made everything else feel both smaller and sharper. Smaller, because nothing compares to death. Sharper, because it reminded me how little control we really have.
Life is long until it isn’t.
You think you have time until you don’t.
Grief doesn’t wait for a convenient moment.
Even though losing a pregnancy is devastating, it doesn’t compare to losing a whole person. A woman who should have had another twenty years to watch her grandchildren grow into adults.
All the little spats with her husband, the emotional distance that creeps in after decades together, none of it matters when one partner is suddenly left to figure out how to live without his coworker, the one he’s shared more years with than without.
Her obituary didn’t list a job title or an income. It listed relationships. The ones she built, nurtured, and left behind. And that, more than anything, has me questioning what kind of legacy I’m really building.
Life After 40
My 40th birthday is a milestone wrapped in mourning and reflection.
Maybe I won’t have another baby.
Maybe my marriage will continue to be more practical than magical.
Maybe I’ll never have a glamorous job title again.
I can’t undo the losses. I can’t rewind time. I’m grieving who’s gone. I’m clinging to who remains. I’m showing up for the people who still need me. I can take what I have and enjoy the life I have left.
Related: The Morbid Talk Every Family Needs to Have (Before Life Forces You To)
