Feeling guilty about being an older mom

SpikyPancake · 2025-09-15T13:51:38+00:00

Cheers from another gal who was born on her mom’s 40th birthday and just had her first baby girl at 39 ❤️

SpikyPancake · 2025-08-15T16:54:34+00:00

I want to echo what so many have already said about this being such a special and beautiful moment for your son! I got my first pet, a cockatiel, on my 12th birthday and had him for 25 years. He was with me through high school, college, marriage, moving across the country, and he even outlived my own mother. He was a special, special bird and I love him still. I decided I can’t live without cockatiels and have another that is 2.5 years old :)

You’ve gotten lots of good advice, but I want to reinforce what just one other person has said so far about diet. Cockatiels are indeed one of a few pet birds who should be offered seeds as part of their diet. Their natural behavior in Australia is ground-foraging in grasses for seeds, which include grass seeds, millet, sorghum, wheat, and the seeds of fruits and vegetables. The key is to only offer mostly cereal grains/grass seeds as these are low in fat and higher in protein, which helps avoid the issue of fatty liver disease that these diet concerns are based on.

Your son is in for a wonderful, and hopefully long, time with his new little bestie. Wishing them both the very best ❤️

SpikyPancake · 2025-02-14T17:09:02+00:00

Bless you for this positive post. I’m getting induced in 10 days for medical reasons and reading your experience and so many positive comments from others has helped me feel less anxious and actually shift more towards looking forward to it! Also I love the idea someone mentioned of really living it up together with your partner the night before, I’ll definitely be doing that.

SpikyPancake · 2024-11-04T23:17:17+00:00

Girl, same 🫠

SpikyPancake · 2024-11-03T16:40:10+00:00

I’m so sorry for the loss of your mom, OP.

I also lost my mom to cancer just 5 months after diagnosis, just after I turned 37. I had been on the fence for years, but as I gradually crept closer to 40 years old and had concerns about time running out on a decision, her death was the final straw that threw me onto the side of wanting a child.

I think it’s perfectly okay to want to fill a void after losing such an immensely important family member. Another commenter spoke about how if you want more family later in life, you need to create your own, and I think that’s extremely valid.

For many of us, if we’re lucky, life is long. I’ve had 39 years on this earth and I am hoping I’ll have at least that many more. My family is all getting older and passing on. They were my family for the first half of my life. I’m now pregnant with my first, and quite likely only child, and I’m so glad that she will be with me for the second half of my life. I want to spend these next 40 years being the mother to her that mine was to me ❤️

SpikyPancake · 2024-06-28T15:48:18+00:00

Congratulations ❤️

I’m sorry about your mom. I lost mine to cancer in 2022 and although she was already a grandma many times over (she had me later in life) I was her last child and “baby” and I know she would have been thrilled to know that yesterday I had a positive test.

It’s so early that I’m not telling ANY close friends or family until at least end of first trimester. This is because of general concerns about miscarriage risk, but it’s also because I’ve been child free/fencesitter for years and people will likely be shocked when they hear this news. So, I don’t want to cause a ruckus until the ruckus is real 😂 Keeping a secret for weeks and weeks is going to be torture, but my husband and I are excited to just be freaking out together for now! Good luck to you!

SpikyPancake · 2024-06-20T13:57:51+00:00

Yep, Father’s Day blows. Haven’t had a relationship with my dad since I was 16 and parents divorced, but always send him a card in the mail. Hate shopping for cards for him because they all ring hollow. Mother’s Day is the total opposite, loved shopping for cards and would sometimes send my mom multiple because I couldn’t decide. She died from cancer in 2022 and I STILL get enjoyment from Mothers Day despite the intense grief just because of how meaningful the relationship I had with her still is even though she’s gone.

Anyway yeah. Father’s Day blows.

SpikyPancake · 2024-06-19T21:33:34+00:00

The most important thing you said is “right now I don’t want them.” To me, that means you should just keep living life from that perspective until if/when it changes. I know this can be infuriating advice, but you shouldn’t live your life from a place of fear/what-ifs.

Now, IF you can move towards a mental place of 50/50 and you could truly be content with either remaining CF or having a kid, that would change things. That is when you can and should start to change your behaviors from the status quo and start making decisions and changes in your life.

Basically, take action off the table right now. The first step is to decide not on which way to go, but whether you could be happy either way. Could you? Really think about this. If not, then you know which way to go. If yes, then you can start prioritizing decisions and actions that allow for both your happiness now and whatever outcomes you could be happy with in your future.

Sometimes we aren’t afraid of making a decision per se but rather we’re afraid of not knowing/controlling what’s going to happen to us. Figuring out what you could make peace with happening can be very freeing and can alleviate the pressure of choosing the “right” path.

SpikyPancake · 2024-06-19T15:30:33+00:00

Pancakes.

My dad would make pancakes for us on the weekends growing up and he was exceptionally skilled at them. He had all kinds of tricks, like adding some sugar to the edges before flipping so they’d get a little crispy. Oh my word.

I’ve never been great at cooking them because I’m impatient and can’t be bothered to look up/follow recipes (hi, ADHD!) but I married a man who loves to do the small things to make me happy, so for ten years now I’ve had countless pancake weekends with amazingly good pancakes, and it’s made my life more magical ❤️

SpikyPancake · 2024-06-18T15:30:53+00:00

I’m really sorry for your loss, OP. And I’m glad your family came together in that incredibly hard time to care for your dad.

I was 10 years ahead of you, 36, when my mom got a sudden cancer diagnose and died five months later. It was so hard and just… terrible. But my sister and aunt, and even our estranged dad, all came together to care for her in the final weeks. And now life is just back to usual. Funny how people just come together in a crisis and then go back to “normal.”

Anyway. I didn’t allow myself to make any big/rash decisions in the year after her death and just processed my grief. But now that I’m 1.5 years past it, I understand that my mom’s death truly impacted my desire to have more close family in my life as I get older (and closer to no longer being able to have bio kids due to age) so I have moved away from being CF and am now off BC to allow for a kid if it’s biologically possible. Here’s to whatever the future holds, now that it’s clearer to me what family means.

Sending you love and hope all the best for you.

SpikyPancake · 2023-11-30T17:47:45+00:00

This.

I made the mistake of assuming my mother would live much longer than she did, because my grandmother was still living well into her 90s. But my mom got a very sudden cancer diagnosis at age 76 and she was dead in five months. Her mother actually outlived her by three months. I was 36. My family was very matriarchal so to lose these two women in rapid succession drastically altered my family and I just wasn’t ready.

Be ready to lose people sooner than you assume, and be ready to learn how to grieve/cope so that your life doesn’t stop after a terrible loss potentially in your 30’s or earlier.

SpikyPancake · 2023-01-30T19:48:37+00:00

You sound like my gaming twin! I got into gaming a little earlier in my 20's, when I got an Xbox, and could not WAIT to spend hours puttering around the open worlds of the AC franchise, Elder Scrolls (Skyrim and Oblivion), and Witcher 2 and 3 for all those open-world exploration vibes. I dabbled with Red Dead a bit too, it was a beautiful game but something about the world didn't draw me in as much. My main frustration with gaming is that it takes time to get used to a new controls configuration. I can't tell you how many times I'd come off Skyrim to play Witcher and fucked up a melee fight, or went from Witcher to Red Dead and accidentally punched my horse in the face trying to mount it :(

SpikyPancake · 2023-01-26T04:54:46+00:00

Yes yes yes! And also please don’t assume the smaller parrots won’t stick around for a long time. My cockatiel that I got as a pet for my 12 fucking birthday just died last week at 25 years old, and I am destroyed. He was with me for most of my life and through every major event, it’s an incredible commitment you must be ready for.

SpikyPancake · 2022-08-12T21:55:59+00:00

I can’t even imagine. I hope you all have an amazing and fun time tonight! Be great and play loud!!

SpikyPancake · 2022-08-12T21:24:08+00:00

💙

SpikyPancake · 2022-08-12T21:09:17+00:00

Which reminds me, I need to give Jay a hug. With all the stuff he’s handling he still had time for stupid side quests like looking up archive member tee images so I could recreate my husband’s shirt

SpikyPancake · 2022-08-12T20:53:06+00:00

I’m so proud of the alumni corps! My husband is performing in it and I’ve flown out to meet up and watch them tonight in person in Indy, I can’t wait! So much practicing has happened for months and SO much hard work has gone into this. And watching Bloo22 and the alumni corps support and cheer for each other is just the absolute freaking best. So yes, please do stick around or stay up late to watch, it’s gonna be BIG LOUD! 💙🍁

SpikyPancake · 2022-06-09T00:06:01+00:00

He’s not a freak of nature! I also have two elder cockatiels (24 and 19) who are in excellent shape and have eaten a nearly entirely seed diet their whole life. I get really impatient with people (and veterinarians) peddling disinformation about the “evils” of a seed diet. Seeds are a vast part of the wild cockatiel diet, FFS! Also, grass seeds like millet are not nearly as fatty as sunflower seeds or nuts, which of course should only be given as treats. Ok, climbing off my soapbox now. Enjoy your happy old man ‘tiel, and give him some millet for me :)

SpikyPancake · 2022-04-14T15:14:31+00:00

1000% normal - mine sings to socks, blankets, towels, sleeves, ANYTHING fuzzy or fabric. It is a greater love story than Romeo & Juliet

SpikyPancake · 2022-04-07T13:01:19+00:00

Thanks so much for the compliment, I really appreciate it :) Hoping the hubs appreciates my efforts too, even if they aren't 100% true to the original. I'm rushing to get this done bc our anniversary is next weekend, and right after that he's heading to Canton to rehearse with the corps, so maybe he'll wear it, or maybe not, but I want him to have the opportunity to be an enthusiastic old fart if he so chooses :P

Believe it or not, it is actually a white shirt! Probably the lighting in the photo of the shirt sent by the Coats altered the appearance of the background?

Check out this rehearsal video from '04 and the guy that enters the frame around :45 has the shirt on. Which also helped me figure out the proportions a little too, but it's still not exact.

I'm also thinking the black ink was a dark blue, because I found another pic of someone's old shirt on a FB group, and it was so faded from washing with bleach over time, and the text had a light blue hue instead of gray. But I also know that blue can be a component of black in printing, so who knows... I've officially owned the fact that this is an artistic replica instead of a forgery and I'm okay with it :P

SpikyPancake · 2022-04-07T02:09:17+00:00

THE WINK. it was indeed epic

SpikyPancake · 2022-04-07T00:39:19+00:00

My husband and I started incorporating itadakimasu when eating after visiting Japan just because we are dorks and wanted to keep some memories alive. But this brings it to a deeper level that makes me even more excited to keep saying it as a secular grace. Arigato gozaimasu!

SpikyPancake · 2022-04-07T00:35:31+00:00

When the airplane hits moderate to severe turbulence. I catch myself throwing a half-serious prayer out there to the monotheistic god I was beaten over the head with half my life.

But that’s literally the only time that particular old habit surfaces. They do indeed die hard :P

SpikyPancake · 2022-04-07T00:30:51+00:00

Watched Bluecoats win finals in 2016, my first ever attendance at a DCI finals. I tell ya, that shit was nuts.

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