Becoming a mom later in life

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Becoming a mom later in life

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My advice to women starting families in their forties is to get yourself emotionally, spiritually, and physically fit. Which, this job, unlike those of us who had very full lives before, the job of being a mother is going to pull on your resources in ways that, even running a company, a multi-billion dollar company never drained on you because you never did that job on an hour's sleep. Okay? And this job of being a mother is it's 23 hours a day. And not only that, even if you created your own company and it was your baby of a sort, it's actually not the same thing as an actual baby. And the emotional highs and lows throughout the day of being a mother, are something that certainly I was not prepared for. And so you need to have your resources about you. And eating well, getting some kind of a spiritual life where you also understand it's all temporary, and not to get caught in any one 24-hour period, it is not the definition of what it means to be a mother. So learning flexibility, which I think also very challenging for career women in their forties, to not be in control of everything all the time. I'm exaggerating; not every woman is like that. But there's a certain amount of control that's exercised as a career woman that you really have to give up as a mother because you have to learn how to improvise. You have to learn how to be on the fly, in the moment, with very little sleep. I know it sounds like a military experience, actually. And it's boot camp; it's frontline. So the best preparation is to know ahead of time that this is going to be something unlike anything you've done before.

Watch Video: Becoming a mom later in life by Dani Klein Modisett, ...

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Dani Klein Modisett

Mom & Producer

Dani Klein Modisett is the creator/producer/director of the shows “Afterbirth…stories you won’t read in Parents magazine,” and “Not What I Signed Up For.” These are live storytelling shows where acclaimed actors and writers perform original, funny stories about how marriage and parenting challenges them in unexpected ways. The NY Post raved about Afterbirth… calling it,"the Vagina Monologues for the stroller set.” After playing to sold out audiences for five years in Los Angeles and NYC and also making stops in Boston and San Francisco, an anthology of stories from Afterbirth was published as a book by St. Martin’s Press. Dani is a contributor to Huffington Post, Parents Magazine, and the LA Times. Before having children, Dani worked as a comic, performing across the country and participating in the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival with a solo show she wrote called “The Move.” She also taught Stand-up comedy at UCLA and now teaches a workshop at I O West called “Writing For Performance.” Afterbirth is in production as a web series for the launch of Disney’s website for Mom’s, “Not What I Signed Up For” is being developed as a pilot for television with Jerry Weintraub’s company. Dani is a graduate of Dartmouth College and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.

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Transcription: 
My advice to women starting families in their forties is to get yourself emotionally, spiritually, and physically fit. Which, this job, unlike those of us who had very full lives before, the job of being a mother is going to pull on your resources in ways that, even running a company, a multi-billion dollar company never drained on you because you never did that job on an hour's sleep. Okay? And this job of being a mother is it's 23 hours a day. And not only that, even if you created your own company and it was your baby of a sort, it's actually not the same thing as an actual baby. And the emotional highs and lows throughout the day of being a mother, are something that certainly I was not prepared for. And so you need to have your resources about you. And eating well, getting some kind of a spiritual life where you also understand it's all temporary, and not to get caught in any one 24-hour period, it is not the definition of what it means to be a mother. So learning flexibility, which I think also very challenging for career women in their forties, to not be in control of everything all the time. I'm exaggerating; not every woman is like that. But there's a certain amount of control that's exercised as a career woman that you really have to give up as a mother because you have to learn how to improvise. You have to learn how to be on the fly, in the moment, with very little sleep. I know it sounds like a military experience, actually. And it's boot camp; it's frontline. So the best preparation is to know ahead of time that this is going to be something unlike anything you've done before.