I had my first IVF and first daughter in the United States; my second IVF and second daughter in Canada, two years later. There is little cultural divide, fertility-wise, between the two countries. My American reproductive endocrinologist, like my Canadian, was a strange amalgam of cautious aggression and hopeful pessimism, and both men seemed to want to simultaneously scare and reassure me as they prodded and poked my aging eggs. The clinic in Canada had massage chairs and a huge fish tank; the American better magazines and logo. Needless to say, stirrups are stirrups, no matter which side of the border I was on. Obstetrically, my file was stamped “AMA” – Advanced Maternal Age – in both countries, winning me extra ultrasounds and blood tests each time. Neither obstetrician cared whether I dyed my greying hair during the first trimester (I didn’t anyway, a triumph for the alarmist-pregnancy industry).

Motherhood, on the other hand, could not have been more different from one country to another. Perhaps it was a first-time mom thing, but in the United States motherhood was a much lonelier affair. Short of hanging around my fertility clinic, it was hard to find moms like me – older moms, single moms. I did eventually find a community of Single Mothers By Choice but we mostly found each other online – Internet moments stolen during work hours, chat groups and listserves crowded with moms too busy to talk when their children were with them or awake. I always had a sense that there were a lot of us out there, but only ghostily so, known more for our avatars than our actual children.

Canada, with its 12-month paid parental leave policy, is a whole new ball game. This place is filthy with mothers and their kids. Monday to Friday, morning and afternoons, the playgrounds are packed with new mothers. We line up to get our newborns into the free Ready-to-Read program Thursdays at 10 am at the local library. We crowd the cafes and swimming pools, indoor playspaces and malls, bookstores and zoos. Each museum has an over-the-top kids zone. Mom-and-tot playgroups abound. I know it sounds like Park Slope on Saturday morning – but this is every day, every city, across the country. Just after 9, as the commuter rush on the subways and streets subsides, out come the moms and strollers onto the sidewalks, heading to meet other moms and kids, to soak up their year of full-time motherhood, to preserve sanity, to compare stories.

Here, I’ve found oodles and oodles of older mothers. When there are 30 moms at a playground, 25 moms in a singing circle, a dozen moms at the wading pool, 100 of us at the drop-in center, it is easy to find a few kindred spirits. And I don’t just look for grey hair or fine lines around the eyes. So far, it has been easier than that. We older moms are the ones who look comfortable. We’re wearing comfortable shoes. Is it generalizing to say we have more curves than the young moms? Or that our hair tends to be shorter?

Perhaps an example illustrates it best. In the summer, my friend and I were at the local park with our two year olds. She’d had son via IVF at 45, I started younger. We’d both used the same sperm bank, though we hadn’t known it at the time. We both had glasses and greying hair, we were wearing mom jeans, running shoes, some neutral coloured t-shirts. We are both single and happily so, and we both dress the part, to put it crudely. Across the park we watched three young moms in fancy dress and shiny hair, exotic birds to our owls. All three were lovely. Despite the sandy, sticky, dirty enclosure and sandy, sticky, dirty children around us, they wore airy dresses and flimsy sandals; their hair was either cropped cutely short or worn carelessly long. They radiated good health. They chatted like animated school girls. They had infants and older children, and unpacked snacks and offered breasts to nurslings. They could have equally starred in a commercial for makeup or diapers – I almost looked for the film crew. My friend and I talked about them a bit, about their beauty, their animation. They were like the cool girls in high school, easy to spot at 100 yards. But God, how good it felt to be us! “I wasn’t ready in my 20s or 30s,” my friend said. “I could never have done it.” Looking at the young moms, I could only think of the places I was traveling – and had yet to travel – at that age. I was in my career ascendancy in my 20s and early 30s, and yoghurt tubes and Bjorns were nowhere on my radar.

Don’t get me wrong. I may be an owl, but I look fantastic — because I look like a mom. In the United States, I was back at work by now, and I was expected to look professional, no kids for camouflage. I imagine I looked fat and tired. I’m still both of those things, but in Canada the ubiquitity of new moms and the omnipresence of my children gives me plenty of cover. I’m a single mother and am never without my children (12 months of maternity leave means 12 months without childcare.) Look at me. I have one on each arm. My older daughter makes it nearly impossible to stop talking. My younger one means it is nearly impossible to stop moving. We are always looking for fun, for friends, for juice boxes and mittens, for somewhere to sit, for a pretty leaf, for friendly dogs and darting cats. We turn our heads for fire engines, we go out of our way to walk through puddles, and we accept any offer of hot chocolate. Age is no barrier to being a busy mom, and as I accompany these two little girls through our whirling lives I have a hard time believing anyone has noticed what kind of shoes I’m wearing or whether I bothered with makeup. When I had my first baby, a good friend told me to always wear bracelets, because that was the only part of me that would show up in photographs – my hands as they held the new baby. Hands full of children. What could be more beautiful?