As I lay in bed beside 4 year old Lizzie, both of us feasting on Throat Coolers and watching reel-to-reel programs on Nick Jr., hosted by repetitive intervals of Moose A. Moose rallying us to be thankful, it occurred to me that there was more to my particular malaise than met the watering eye (and streaming nose).

Singing along with Moose, I concurred that H1N1 was the fluiest and our noses were the gooiest, everywhere we go. But as I rolled over to feel Lizzie’s forehead, I was also feeling angry, resentful, depressed and sore. Obviously, there was a little more tooiet.

The day after Thanksgiving was my 49th birthday. I got to spend it making chicken noodle soup and dragging the kids—whining and screaming under fever-induced protest—off for yet another visit to the pediatrician.

When I got home, Frank became nurse and marched me off to my room for some quiet enjoyment of my abject misery.  I took a shower and stood there wondering if I should even bother with the moisturizing body lotion.

These days, it seems to me that I could trowel a gallon of lard and spread it all over my body, but my skin would still feel as dry as bacon fried so hard you’d need a pickaxe to remove the carcinogens.

And then enlightenment dawned. I was forty-nine. I felt like I had been on permanent PMS all week. When, exactly, did I think the perimenopause boom was going to drop? In my seventies?

I had just written a piece on another FPM subscriber who had walked the same thorny path of perimenopause while trying to raise her little girl—after feeling sick all the time, Leonora went out and found the cure. I decided to follow the bread-crumb trail through the woods of my misery and get in touch with her doctor.

Dr Vernon Redd, Chiropractor, Neurologist and Clinical Nutritionist who treats women for perimenopause and menopause has indicated that depression, weight gain, loss of libido and memory and emotional problems, muscle pain and an increased cancer risk can be related to hormone imbalances during “the change”.

Redd states: “Your ratio of progesterone to estrogen should be 30 to 1, that is 30 times progesterone to 1 part estrogen.  Most women are in a state of estrogen dominance in that they either have too much estrogen or too little progesterone or both.”

As we age and begin entering menopause, our adrenals have to take over making the progesterone.  But most women are suffering degree of adrenal exhaustion so they don’t make enough progesterone.  Pack in some child care into the equation and you can see how it might become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Redd points out that, although menopause can make child rearing more challenging, it doesn’t have to.

“I had one patient in particular” he explains, who was in her early 90’s who was a real-estate agent and was still working 40 hours a week.  Getting older doesn’t mean you have to fall apart.”

There’s more to the adverse effects of menopause than estrogen/progesterone imbalance. Dr Redd goes on to explain that excess insulin and cortisol  (caused by eating too many refined sugars and starch such as bread, rice, and other grains) ages us too. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone that breaks down tissue when in excess and regulates blood sugar levels.

Love your kids? I do, and I think it’s time to start fooling Mother Nature into knowing how young you really are.

It appears that unexpected immersion in a Yummy Stepford Mummy culture is a rite of initiation for every new mom over 40.

In fact, according to some older mothers, it’s a midlife mom parental pandemic.

Lisa Cohn from Portland, OR, who had her third baby while in her fifties , says that she started looking for alternatives after a few “adventures in the park” meeting much younger moms whom she felt weren’t interested in speaking to her and with whom she had little in common.

“I felt really isolated at first. I really wanted to get together with older moms so we could discuss some of the issues related to being older…including nursing, having much older children plus a baby, how different it feels this time around to have a baby.”

A few months ago, Lisa got lucky with Geezers and Tots, a socializing and play-date Meet-up Group for over-40 parents and their children.

“This group has been really important to me”, says Lisa. “I no longer feel isolated. I’ve met some people I really like. I love getting together with other parents who have kids the same age as mine (toddler) and just hanging out with them and talking about the kids. It’s always fun and satisfying.”

Forty-one year old Leah from Seattle, WA–who has a 16 month old and a 2-and-a-half year old–weathered a similar social storm as a new midlife mom. She experienced a depth of isolation caused by a complexity of contributing factors—mostly to do with age differences.

Aside from not having much in common with younger moms, she says that many had “not been college educated or had well built careers like me before they became a mom.”

She goes on to point out they did not understand the fertility issues she was dealing with, and many were lacking in the kind of maturity that can only evolve from time and experience.

A mom with a mission, Leah launched a new Meet Up group in the Seattle area called 80s Ladies with Babies, which currently boasts 77 members.

“I strive to build a supportive group of moms who get together for play-dates and socialize”, says Leah. “I’m working  especially hard to build a group that is open multi-culturally and is not cliquish. It’s important to be connected with like-minded moms to build friendships , community, and decrease isolation.”

Tamara, another midlife mom from San Jose, CA is on the lookout for a similar group. At 41 with a 13-month- old, she says that she doesn’t seem to be able to “click with the younger moms”.  Worse, she finds that “a lot of mommy groups are cliquey and I feel like I’m in high school trying to fit in.”

Stepford Moms Under Thirty-Five gotcha feeling like the only warm body on the playground? If you can’t beat ‘em, start your own group.

When were we hit with the “big bang” explosion of modern family life, one that left us sick with the demands of parenting in the new age, and virtually vomiting undigested stress over the days of our lives like the detritus of a karmic kinder piñata?

It wasn’t like that when I was growing up. Life was simple then. Little things mattered; and they were remembered.

Toys were treasured and maintained for their rarity and value—either as a hand-me-down from an older sibling, a prized Christmas gift, or a memorable “win” at the county fair. You could actually count them, polish them, and store them with care in your bedroom closet.

In fact, my father still has stored away the rocking horse my brother received when he was 5 years old in the 1950s.

It’s the age of instant McGratification.

Forget about impromptu games of street hockey, or lacrosse, when kids obligingly pulled the goalie nets off the road every time a neighbor gently nosed his car home from work. Gone are the twilight hours when parents would stand on the veranda, cup their hands over their mouths, and sound the call for kids of all ages to come in from the trees, gardens and sloping lawns next door and prepare for bed.

Gone are the days of Huckleberry Finn. And I highly doubt we’re the better for it.

These days, moms are powered by pedophile paranoia, multitasking madness, and mini-cab moonlighting.

As we gather breathlessly around our children’s music, hockey, ballet, soccer, gymnastics, art and what-have-you classes (a different flavor each day of the week) like personal body guards to budding royalty, we are nothing more than frenetic adrenaline burn-outs, each sounding like Minnie Mouse rushing out of a Disneyland fun den, after sucking back on a helium hookah.

Speed talking, fast driving, manic making of snacks and lunches—that’s my life—it’s all fast-forward and I realize I don’t have the wheels for it.

There are days when I long to slap my hand to my chest, reach up my other hand beseechingly to the sky and say “I’m comin’ Elizabeth, I’m comin’”,  just like Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) from the 1970s TV show, Sanford and Son used to do.

I just want my house to stop spinning and land somewhere—even if it’s on the Wicked Witch of the East. I thought perhaps it might be just my age.

That was until I happened upon a recent article in Time by Nancy Gibbs, entitled The Backlash Against Overparenting, aptly beginning with a hallmark opening “The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids.” It’s a must-read.

According to the author of Simplicity Parenting, the average kid today has 150 toys (and I’ll wager at least 80 of them are “free” gifts from the McMarketing guys). He says that when life is “a series of improvisations and emergencies” with a stress level leaving parents feeling “beaten down, mentally and physically” it’s time to simply the family process.

Payne says that, even if we are at the point of saturation and burn-out, feeling that simplification is (quite simply) an overwhelming exercise in futility, there’s still stuff we can do to tone it down, little by little.

In a nutshell, the keys to “simplicity parenting” are threefold: 1) streamline your home environment to reduce toys, clutter, and sensory overload; 2) establish predictable routines to ground you and your kids like “pasta nights”, and time anchors for doing things, and 3) make sure you put down time in the schedule—you know, a good old fashioned “coffee break” in the midst of Munchkin Land.

Frankly, there’s a rosy sadness in me as I peruse this book. Had life not changed so drastically from growing up in the 1960s and 70s, the concept for this book would never have spawned from the author’s creative imagination.

It’s hard to believe that we need someone to re-educate us on how to enjoy the process of just being parents and kids, taking pleasure in hanging out together in the brief bubble of the weaning to tweening years, in the creation of our own family myth and ritual to be passed down to future generations.

On the other hand, Mr. Kim John Payne, M.Ed., I wonder what took you so long.  I think I see Opie strolling down the lane in the distance with a fishing rod slung over his shoulder…or could that be Huck Finn?

Yes, it was all so simple then.

It was just before midnight, that Frank face-planted himself on our bed. The house was, at last, so silent that you might hear a guilty Tootsie Roll Pop drop on the wooden floorboards.

My husband, measuring a full 6’ 5”—a former offensive lineman for a big-12 college football team, ex-rugby lock forward for a well-known UK university/club and competetitive swimmer at state level—was manfully attempting to squeeze back the tears. (I could tell.)

“That was brutal!” he choked.

I was too weak to comment; a limp smile of commiseration would have to suffice.

“Never again!” he declared, rousing himself to a croak.

With the fraction of emotional tissue I still had living within, I did feel a flicker of sympathy. (Only a flicker.)

It had been a long, dark night into Alex’s 7th birthday slumber party. (An oxymoron. Children do not slumber at these events.)

It may come as a surprise that, by midnight, we were far from feeling our age.

It’s because we were feeling our parents’ age.

We were bewitched, like Odysseus by the sirens. Only in our case it was the tender, pleading voice of our apple-cheeked little boy when he asked: “Mommy? Daddy?  May I please have a slumber party for my birthday?”

As the parents of eight young boys (of varying sizes between 7 and 8 years old) dropped their children off with that special “You are braver than I” expression, or the “Better you than me” wink of the eye, Frank and I still didn’t get it.

We didn’t get it when the children brightly asked to open all of the birthday presents and assemble them one-by-one (incompletely) so that, by nightfall, the family room had become an instep-stabbing stew of Bionicle pieces, Lego bricks and Hot Wheels cars.

We didn’t get it when the crowd separated into several scrimmage lines that broke out like an avalanche into forbidden areas of the house, screaming through hallways, up and down stairs, across the kitchen and into bedrooms, armed with walkie talkies, spy cars and (normally innocuous) domestic tools now intended for violence.

And we still didn’t get it when, at 9 o’clock, we put a Hot Wheels movie on our pretend-cinema screen in the living room to “wind them down”, they exploded into a rampageous mob.

We did start to get it, however, when 10 o’clock struck and there were little or no signs of abatement.

If those kids thought they were giving us old fools a damned good education, they were more than up to the task.

That was when Frank sunk into an armchair and, for a brief time, became an observer, rather than a referee.

“This is like being trapped in a saloon full of drunken, brawling sailors on a Saturday night” he said, failing to keep the awe from creeping into his voice.

“Laundry” I replied, realizing that my hearing was beginning to go.

“What?”  he replied uncomprehendingly. Was his hearing fading too?

“Frank, I really need to fold some laundry right now. In our bedroom. I won’t be long.” (My tone was wheedling now.)

I figured no wife ever got shot while folding the laundry.

After eleven, my guilt overcame me and I emerged from our bedroom, mildly resuscitated—and now as determined as a kamikaze pilot, to the nail the target.

And there was Frank, in The Thinker’s pose, having sunken further into his chair as the party revelers danced around him, like the masses at Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve, long after the ball has dropped in Times Square.

He was a broken man.

And I—well, I was his comrade. There was going to be no more pacifist Quiet Police. No more “Shhhhh! Use your whispering voice please!”

No more Mrs. Nice Mom.

In that moment, I remembered my mother (long ago passed away) when she caught us, as children, surreptitiously jumping on our beds and giggling, long past the bedtime hour.

“That’s it! All of you! GET TO BED! NOW!”

And we knew she meant business.

In a modern world that panders (sometimes to a fault) with reverence to the whims and demands of the “whole child”, there’s still something to be said for old fashioned methods.

On the count of “three”, there was not another peep from nine sleeping bags, lined up on the family room floor, all in a row.

Happy Birthday to all and to all a good night!

Those feeling a glimmering of concern for Frank should know, he is now in recovery. This was aided and facilitated when, the next day, Alex came to sit on his father’s knee.

“Daddy? That was the best birthday party I ever had.”

Hours after Alex was delivered by C-Section, I lay gasping on a hospital bed still trying to comprehend how I’d been flayed like a cod fish and robbed of the precious living cargo that had roomed within me for nearly nine months when the nurse arrived with my newborn and jammed his mouth over my tender nipple like a woodsman firmly planting an axe.

On his first “latch”, Alex’s bite force felt like the “lethal banana teeth” of a freshly hatched T-Rex.

I’m sure people on the street heard my pitiful scream as I waited for the visual fireworks of agony to subside. This new brand of post natal torture pumped up the volume on my synaptic receptors with a violent suddenness that left me an octave short of leaping for the window ledge.

Mercifully a ministering angel arrived in the form of lactation consultant Marianne Brophy who floated into the room with the soothing reassurance of a Red Cross nurse at the Battle of the Mammaries.

Her almost supernal wisdom in the ageless bonding of mother and child and gentle, expert guidance marked a milk-shed moment in my life as a mother.

I was later to learn that I was far from universally singled out for lactating greatness. Midlife moms are cutting a distinguishing swathe in the nursing business.

With looming menopause, and feminist backlash against breastfeeding, you might assume that fewer midlife moms (having been weaned on the feminist equal rights ethic) would nurse.

In fact, the opposite is true.

According to a recently published survey from the Public Health Agency of Canada, new moms over the age of 40 are more likely to nurse than the average mother—over 90% initiated breast feeding between 2007 and 2008.

It supports the old adage that age begets wisdom. (Or, rather, is it determination being begot?)

From vital colostrum (packed with antibodies) to enhanced bonding through hormone-stimulated receptivity to baby’s cues, it is widely acknowledged that nursing nurtures wellness to wellbeing.

But the long arm of nursing reaches even further, extracting the gold standard of post natal wellness from the baby teeth of scientific research. A 2007 California study showed that, although women giving birth after 35 are at increased risk for breast cancer, this applied only to those who did not breastfeed.

However, for moms in front lines on the maternity wards, the end of a day’s hard labor inspires only common sense. Equality is a social issue that can be defended and fought for in the cloisters of academia or in HR departments, or in feature articles that generate controversy and media hype.

In the meantime, while the “to feed or not to feed” debate rages, almost every mother will give her kid the elixir of life if she possibly can. Hands down.

Brophy highlights the need for a stronger infrastructure supporting onset of nursing (a most tender and vital beginning) in hospitals and maternity care facilities. Health professionals need to be teed up on the tricks of the trade, in order to grasp the fleeting opportunity for success.

However, there is still a tide of social censure on breastfeeding mothers and this is compounded with midlife moms—the whole idea of granny-aged nursing moms flies in the face of the popular dewy-eyed Venus-de Milo-style-image of a young mother with her baby at the breast.

And this further puts us at risk of making the lame assumption that any challenge to nursing for over 40 moms must be due to age.

Lisa Cohn, a fifty-two year old mother from Oregon who is currently nursing her 15 month old son may be a case in point. Cohn, who had her first two children at 31 and 41 by vaginal delivery was “overflowing with milk” following those pregnancies.

However, when she gave birth to her third child by Caesarean at 51, it was hard getting started and the baby slept a lot. It took months of working with a lactation consultant before they could go with the flow.

Cohn, an author who specializes in parenting and environment, wasn’t sure if the problem was caused by her being an older mom.

Marianne Brophy argues that age has no bearing on our ability to nurse. “Interventions such as caesarean section or labor medications may cause mother and baby to get off to a slow start” she says.

In the end, Mother Nature presides over birth and nursing with her system of checks and balances that have been in place since the beginning of humanity.

Once a woman has conceived and given birth, what’s age got to do with it?