50 years old

[Lynn85213]

I had my first (and only) child at 30 years old and had pre-eclampsia. He was born 2 months early and I had to have a c-section. I am now 49 and think I may be pregnant. I am very worried about having pre-eclampsia again as i almost didn't survive the first time. I really don't want to have another child at 50 yrs old but feel terribly about aborting. Any comments?

[trish]

Welcome! I think before you worry about it you should take a test! Hang in there.

[kerisue]

Whether to continue a pregnancy is such a personal decision. If you are pregnant of course you're going to worry about getting preeclampsia again- a visit to a perinatalogist/maternal fetal medicine specialist (the high risk pregnancy docs) might help give you a better idea of what your chances of developing preeclampsia again would be and how they would handle your pregnancy medically.

[mom29]

I had my youngest just before my 47th birthday. I saw a MFM for the whole pregnancy and he got us both safely through it. I have chronic hypertension and type II diabetes. I developed superimposed pre-eclampsia and delivered at 33 weeks. My sweet little girl weighed 3 lbs. 15 oz. and only spent 10 days in NICU!

When I told him I didn't think I'd get pregnant again since I was now 48 he told me about a pt. of his who was in her early 50's who had triplets, & twins. She made it safely through the pregnancies. A good MFM who will watch you closely is key.

Feel free to pm me if you have any questions.

[mom29]

I call our little girl our 25th wedding anniversary present since I was in the hospital on our anniversary (my dh was home sick with a bug he caught from our other kids) and she was born two weeks later.

[amberstrika]

Just wanted to chime in and say that I had my first child 9 years ago, with PreE and had another just last year with it as well, and in the 8 years between them the advances in medicine for dealing with PreE were astonishing. I can only imagine how different things are from 20 years ago to today! Test have improved, MFM specialists are better equipped to handle high risk pregnancies, and the threat of PreE is taken much more seriously. I would take that into consideration if I were you. Medicine has come a long way in 20 years.
As a side note, my mother had PreE with me in 1984, and went on to have 2 more children 16 and 18 years later. Neither of those pregnancies were PreE pregnancies at all.