Serena Williams for President: After a Harrowing Childbirth, a Heroic Comeback

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Serena Williams for President: After a Harrowing Childbirth, a Heroic Comeback

The beautiful Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. popped out into the world this world having no idea who her mother is—tennis world-champ Serena Willams—nor what her mom was about to go through in the next few hours: a life-threatening pulmonary embolism that would most likely have gone undetected if Williams hadn't lobbied hard to get a CT-scan.

Williams had to plead for a scan and a heparin IV drip because the nurses and doctors ignored her initial requests, despite the fact that she's Serena Williams. They eventually listened, likely because she is in fact Serena Williams, and the treatment saved her life.

Too many black women in the U.S. aren't as lucky when they face complications in childbirth, and evidence keeps mounting about how racial bias in hospitals is leading to a rising rate of maternal mortality among African American women—three to four times as high, according to the Centers for Disease Control, as the already exorbitant and rising overall rate of maternal mortality in the U.S. (See this NPR story about Shalon Irving for a shocking and heartbreaking recent example of a woman who wasn't as lucky as Serena Williams.) If anything good could come of the 36-year-old Serena Williams's terrifying near-miss, it would be

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Senator Tammy Duckworth's Quote of the Week:" A 50-Year-Old Mom Is the New 40"

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Senator Tammy Duckworth's Quote of the Week:" A 50-Year-Old Mom Is the New 40"

The announcement by Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) that she's pregnant at 49, and due to give birth in April right after she turns 50, is impressive enough. But the fact that Duckworth is a double amputee who wears prosthetics on both legs after losing them in the Iraq War in 2004—and the fact that she already has a daughter—should certainly catapult the senator into top running for the Total Badass Award 2018. (The award doesn't officially exist yet as far as we know, but there's no time like the present to kick it off.)

Duckworth will be the first-ever Senator to give birth in office, adding to her already long list of firsts:  The first woman with a disability ever elected to Congress; the first Asian-American woman ever elected to Congress from Illinois; the first Thailand-born member of Congress.This Sunday, Duckworth told ABC's Face the Nation , "I feel great. I'm thrilled and happy." She talked about the challenges of getting pregnant both times, and opened up about what it's like to serve in Congress as a new mother. Here are some highlights from her interview:

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The Good News, Bad News, and Good-Bad News About Fertility Stats for Older Moms

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The Good News, Bad News, and Good-Bad News About Fertility Stats for Older Moms

Here's the money quote in yesterday's New York Times report, "The U.S. Fertility Rate is Down, Yet More Women Are Mothers":

"In the mid-1990s, it was almost unheard-of for a never-married woman in her early 40s with a postgraduate degree to have a child, according to the Pew report. Today, 25 percent of women who fit that profile do." The NYT story's findings are like a roller-coaster ride

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Word Meds for Winter's Home Stretch

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Word Meds for Winter's Home Stretch

"The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer.  Minute by minute they lengthen out.  It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change.  It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day, until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour."-  Vita Sackville-West

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One Mom's Journey from "I Give Up" to a Surprise Pregnancy

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One Mom's Journey from "I Give Up" to a Surprise Pregnancy

Brooklyn mom Erin Scanlon's little boy is about to turn one, and sometimes that still seems unreal. A couple of years ago, Erin and her husband were convinced they'd never get to be parents. When she was 37, Erin—who is now 40 and a divisional CFO for a financial services company—tried to conceive naturally, then eventually took a friend's advice to start fertility treatments immediately. Multiple rounds later, nothing was working. When Erin finally did get pregnant, she suffered a miscarriage and found out she needed surgeries for cysts and endometriosis. Exhausted and frustrated after the failed treatments and multiple surgeries, Erin and her husband decided to just give up. And then... guess what happened. For more about Erin's inspiring story, check out our exclusive Crunch Time Parents Q&A:

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5 Reasons To Be Optimistic About 2018. Seriously.

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5 Reasons To Be Optimistic About 2018. Seriously.

This morning, I Googled "reasons to be optimistic in 2018." Nothing came up. Ok, only "reasons to be optimistic about technology in 2018," or "reasons to be optimistic about the Packers in 2018." Just specific little niches of life that merit good cheer in the coming year, for some people anyway, but not the big-picture positivity I was looking for. Tellingly, as I was typing in "reasons to be optimistic in...," Google's predictive text tried to add "2015" or "2016" or even "2017" (ha). But not 2018, the year that has pretty much everyone going, "Holy F'ing F, what are we in for now?" So here's my own little list of reasons to cheer up this January.

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Word Meds: Don't Call It Meditation

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Word Meds: Don't Call It Meditation

“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day—unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.” —Zen proverb

Wise words. "But I don't even have 20 minutes!" "An hour?! That'll get me fired!" Totally hear you. But do you have five minutes? Three? Before January 1 sends us all into a resolution-making frenzy, or makes us want to denounce all resolutions forever, let's all just try this:

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Stuff to Buy: Chic Finds for Moms-to-Be and Babies

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Stuff to Buy: Chic Finds for Moms-to-Be and Babies

I did an epic eye-roll when a maternity clothing shop opened across from my NYC apartment years ago. This was way before I had kids, way before I could even fathom the thought. But watching that maternity shop open up right in between a cool Brazilian cafe, a swimsuit boutique, and an atmospheric old Little Italy butcher shop, all I could think at the time was, "There goes the neighborhood." What a difference a few years can make. Walking near my old Nolita block earlier this week, I came across a beautiful maternity clothes boutique called Hatch, and this time my first thought was, "Why didn't I know about this when I was pregnant?!" Turns out Hatch is somewhat well-known, but I missed that boat. Anyway, here's a tip on what to shop for there, online or in brick-and-mortar (hint: hospital "bundles" that include non-frumpy gowns and socks you won't want to take off), plus a couple of other pregnancy and baby clothing finds in case you're holiday shopping or stocking up for yourself:

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Here's How Pop Culture Can Handle the "Older Mom" Issue With Humor and Grace

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Here's How Pop Culture Can Handle the "Older Mom" Issue With Humor and Grace

If you've been reading this site or checking out my posts elsewhere, then you know I've been preoccupied with the issue of how the pop culture media handles "advanced maternal age" pregnancies. I still believe every woman, celebrity or not, has a right to privacy about her pregnancy, childbirth, or anything else to do with her body. But I agree that the growing number of celebrities having kids at 40-plus might be creating the illusion that it's always an easy proposition. What to do about this?

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Word Meds: Is Living in the Moment Totally Overrated?

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"Some people in my life don't want me to zone out so much. They want me to be in the moment... Don't bother. The moment is mediocre at best." —John Mulaney

If you've been following Crunch Time Word Meds over the past few weeks, you know I've been obsessed with "the moment." Being in it, or not being in it, and trying to stay present, and struggling to fight off all the constant distractions that keep us from noticing what's going on right this second. And so on. So let's switch it up this week, shall we?

My husband and I were watching "Night of Too Many Stars," the John Stewart-hosted comedy special and autism benefit on HBO. The special, most of it anyway, is hilarious, and it helps fund an outstanding cause too. The show also introduced me to the very funny John Mulaney, a stand-up comedian whose credits include SNL and The Comeback Kid. During his comedy bit on the HBO special, Mulaney went on about this whole "living in the moment" business. And he blew a huge hole in the idea that we should all be trying desperately to live in the moment at all times. His was a badly needed, albeit tongue-in-cheek, contrarian view on this subject, since I've been beating myself up for constantly failing to grab the moment before it flies away, again and again. Have you?

Anyway I'm still trying to LIVE IN THE MOMENT, damn it. But meanwhile, here's a little more of Mulaney's you're-off-the-hook bit: 

"All day long I wander into traffic walking like Charlie Chaplin, listening to a podcast while thinking about a different podcast... Let's all try right now. Let's all be in the moment in silence right now. Sucked, right? That was boring. You've got to zone out. You have an imagination. You have a movie theater in your brain that plays fake arguments that you win."

For more from Mulaney and a huge A-list roster of comedians including John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Sarah Silverman, Samantha Bee, Billy Crystal, and dozens of others, check out the HBO special, and find out how to donate to excellent autism programs that need everyone's support.

Photo by Eric Nopanen via Unsplash.

Meghan Markle Is 36 and Engaged to Prince Harry: Cue the Handwringing

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Predictably, it was only a matter of minutes (seconds?) between the announcement that Prince Harry is engaged to 36-year-old American actress Meghan Markle, and the tsunami of comments about Markle's ticking biological clock.

It's too bad the following points need to be made at all, but here we go: 

  • Markle's decision about when or if or how to have kids with Prince Harry is her business, and both of theirs, and that's all. What we said about Gwen Stefani, and every other over-scrutinized celebrity of advanced  maternal age, still stands: Leave her ALONE already. 
  • Should Markle decide to have one or more kids in her late 30s or 40s, she can make that decision in her own time, and she has plenty of options. 
  • Going on about Markle's "advanced maternal age," without mentioning that Prince Harry is fast approaching 35 himself, is insulting. Even though women are the child-bearers, both women and men over 35 should be aware of the potential factors and risks they might face in bringing a human into the world—and this is not intended to alarm anyone, since "advanced age" parenthood is a more popular and viable option than ever before. And parental age brings its own benefits too. In any case, we're guessing the new royal couple are smart and informed and don't need nasty, judgmental, "concerned" gawkers, thanks very much.  

Moving on: The only upside to this public handwringing about Markle's age, and the suddenly rampant speculation about her pregnancy plans, would be if it raised awareness about maternal health issues that women of all ages can face—especially in the U.S., which has a shockingly high rate of maternal mortality, actually the worst maternal death rate in the developed world.

In fact, the U.K., Markle's soon-to-be home, is improving its maternal health outcomes at a much faster rate than the U.S.: In Britain, according to the medical journal The Lancet, "a man is more likely to die while his partner is pregnant than she is." Meanwhile in the U.S., the maternal death rate went up by a staggering 26 percent between 2000 and 2014 (see link above for more). So let's focus on the important health-related issues that we can actually work together to solve, taking the U.K. as an inspiration and a concrete example of how this is possible. And let's leave the waste-of-time B.S. for another day, can we?

BTW: Romper just posted a great piece about the Markle debacle, and why everyone needs to back off. Definitely worth the five-minute read.

Photo by Mark Jones via Wikimedia Commons.