Opinion

Pushing the limits of motherhood into the 60s

Frida Birnbaum, 63, with her 3-year-olds. (j.c. rice)

Aleta St. James peered in the bathroom mirror and applied a layer of anti-wrinkle serum, age-defying foundation and eye makeup. Her children had other ideas.

“Mommy, mommy, mommy!” her 5-year-old twins yelled.

Chaos.

“I want to!” shrieked Gian as he pulled hard on the white shades covering the wrap-around windows that overlook the Hudson River toward New Jersey. “Up! Up! I want to see the sun!” His sister, Francesca, laughed defiantly as she climbed on top of the 40-inch TV loudly airing “Dora the Explorer.”

These rambunctious twins would exhaust any mother — much less one in her 60s.

“You’re getting a slice of my crazy life,” said St. James, 62.

As her contemporaries mull retirement and bought winter homes in Florida, St. James bore two children, whom she is raising as a single mom. “I’m ecstatically happy with challenges,” she said. “As unhinging as they can be at times.”

She juggles a 40-plus hour work week as a life coach and emotional healer at the Goddess Repair Shop in Midtown while she and her nanny take turns shepherding the kids to school, play dates and doctor appointments from a cramped Hell’s Kitchen apartment they all share — the nanny’s husband lives with them, too.

“My family has always been unconventional,” said St. James, whose brother is Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa. “I’ve always marched to the beat of my own drum.”

A close male friend provided the sperm, and St. James chose a donated egg from a clinic in New Jersey. Her life, once filled with travel and freedom, is now made up of booboos that need kissing and Scooby-Doo episodes that need watching.

St. James, although an extreme example, represents the largest growing segments of motherhood: over 40, ready to get pregnant and willing to use $25,000 donor eggs and in-vitro fertilization treatments to do so.

Two of the oldest moms in the world actually live in the New York area. Besides St. James, Frieda Birnbaum of Saddle River, NJ, gave birth three years ago when she was 60 years old. She’ll be 78 when her kids graduate high school. Her husband will be 81. They have a grandson around the same age as her sons.

“Am I still the oldest woman with twins?” Birnbaum asked with an unmistakable hint of pride. “It just amazes me that people still care.”

Birnbaum already had two children, one with a child of his own, now in their 30s. But after two decades of focusing on her career as a psychoanalyst, she decided she was ready for another nursery go-round.

An overseas fertility clinic helped her conceive son Ari, now 10. She thought she was done with it all — “but my husband was adamant about having another,” she said.

Her husband, Kenneth, 66, wanted another baby partly to keep Ari company and partly because he thought it was fun. “It brought me back to reliving the early years of my marriage,” he said as he balanced his toddler sons, Jaret and Josh, on his knee.

After a failed pregnancy in her mid-50s, Kenneth convinced her to give it one more shot. This time at 59 years old, even after a terrifying miscarriage scare, it stuck.

“We went to the doctor and he told us we there were two sets of feet,” he said. “I started screaming. The response was pure euphoria.”

Now Birnbaum sees clients at an office in her house from 8:30 a.m. until mid-afternoon. She dismissed her full-time nanny six months ago and looks after the children herself.

Birnbaum might seem like an anomaly, but she’s part of a movement. Birth rates were down overall in the US by 2% between 2007 and 2008 — but women over 40 bucked the trend and saw a 4% increase. The average age for new mothers has hit a high of 27 years old and continues to increase.

Many of the middle-aged set use donor eggs because after 42 most fertility doctors agree that the egg becomes increasingly abnormal and no longer viable. But unlike eggs, the uterus is nearly ageless. Donor egg pregnancies have a 55% success rate of pregnancy.

But just because people can have babies, doesn’t mean they should, say some fertility experts. “I’m critical of the super-old having children,” said Dr. Arthur Caplan, a bioethics expert at the University of Pennsylvania. Older age makes for higher-risk pregnancies, he says, citing increased chances of diabetes, high blood pressure complications, even death. The children, meanwhile, have an increased risk of learning disabilities, blindness and cerebral palsy.

“I think a fair line to draw is that if two parents’ combined ages are over 110 then it’s time to rethink having another baby,” said Caplan.

But Dr. David Keefe, OBGYN chair at NYU and a trained psychiatrist, says the health risks are so low, old mothers shouldn’t be deterred. His own mother was in her 40s when he was born. “Maturity is a real asset in motherhood,” he said. “These are women who really want this. They have the money, the time, and most importantly the love.”

Birnbaum and St. James do not see what all the fuss is about.

“I think many women are late bloomers,” Birnbaum said. “Society needs to change the way it sees women and age.”

Both women point to the fact that the most formative moments in a child’s development happen in the first six years. They also both admit that, like any mother, they have fears about what would become of their children if they were “hit by a bus,” but dismissed illness and frailty that come hand-in-hand with old age.

“I don’t feel any differently about that than I did when I had my first child,” Birnbaum said. “I don’t think that way. I’m a healthy person and I take care of myself. Age is truly just a number.”

Birnbaum has discussed plans with her husband to make arrangements for their children in the event that something happens to them. St. James has already named a close friend as a guardian. But she’s not worried.

“I’m going to be stronger at 80 years old than I was when I at 60,” she said. “How I look at it is that I have to stay alive and healthy until I hit 120.”