To think I’m leaving having kids too late at 31 and single?

Also as a woman there's a saying 'mothers baby, fathers maybe.'

As a mother the baby is always yours. You can't guarantee what the father will do whether you've been together since school or met later on.

At 31 you have lots of time to meet someone. And it may work, it may not. Noone can tell you. Plenty of people are in happy relationships that end or can't bear children. You'll get the best advice from a doctor not from Mumsnet. Good luck!

I don’t think you can dictate how it’s going to happen OP…

it’s very easy for people to say ‘find a guy to marry now’, but life isn’t like that.

id say that if you meet someone who you think you could build a life with, don’t let the opportunity pass you by, as it gets harder to find decent men as you get older ( most of the decent ones get snapped up).

But equally, don’t settle for a guy who isn’t quite right for you. No projects!

you still have plenty of time. If I were you, I’d not worry, but also don’t leave it too long.

you can still focus on your career while carving out some time to go on lots of dates.

If you just don’t meet someone, consider IVF with sperm donor- so much easier than being stuff with a wanker ex.

The people saying you should have met someone early...they're kind of making me laugh.

I was married at 24 and the marriage was awful. Getting married young is no guarantee it's a happy or healthy marriage. People are scaremongering you with stories of dating in your 30s and 40s but you only have to read how many people are married and miserable.

You've massively overstated miscarriage stats - they are about 1/3 at 40 (though go up sharply after that) not 75% and at 35 they are still relatively similar to younger age levels e.g. c.20%.

This.

I focused on the career, now in my 40s and trying to find a good guy is like trying to find a unicorn. I know a ton of great women my age wanting to find a good guy and settle down, I know zero men in this position. All my male friends are married (usually to someone they met at uni or in 20s). If one of them were to become available, they’d be snapped up in 5 mins and have their pick from a big pool of amazing women (their age & younger!).

If a partner/family is important to you, don’t just assume it’ll happen by itself.

I hope it all works out for you.

There’s no way anyone on here can know without a magical crystal ball.
If it’s very important to you to have kid/s, I would make it a priority now if I was you.

This is soo true, never clicked until I read that but yes!!

Just because you appear to have had no luck, doesn’t mean someone with half a brain cell wouldn’t.

‘a mate’😂😂

I mean 31 isn’t too old to have children . Fertility dips considerably at age 35. So you’re definitely not too old but I do think if I were you I’d be making decisions now .

You have a few options-

Meet someone and know they are the right person to raise children with. Don’t settle though- just read MN threads about useless partners - it’s like having an extra child!

Freeze your eggs now so you don’t have to rush and settle with someone.

Or- get a sperm doner and go it alone.

I would definitely freeze your eggs, get your AMH tested. Then you can enjoy your 30s and not worry or put pressure on yourself. A lot of my friends are similar and have done the same

Unfortunately this poster isn’t as inaccurate as you think. A quick google tells me:

“Up to 35 years old, about 70% of your eggs are chromosomally normal, which then decreases to about 50%, and by the time you reach 40 you can expect about 10-15 % of your eggs to be chromosomally normal. Once an egg becomes abnormal, this can’t be reversed and egg quality can’t be improved.”

Fertility and egg quality are directly related. So yes there are lots of factors that go into a healthy pregnancy, male factor, womb lining etc but the egg really is crucial which is why the evidence shows for older women having IVF success rates are higher with donor eggs from younger women.

What twaddle.

Honestly the nonsense on threads like this astounds me.

It's not! You can check out the studies if you want, but this is from a BBC article which links to the research:

For a woman in her 20s, a quarter of her eggs may be expected to have chromosomal abnormalities – this increases to up to 40% for a woman between 30 and 35, and “goes up simply exponentially from there on”. Beyond the age of 35, the frequency of these chromosomally abnormal eggs increases by 0.5% per month, so that for a woman in her early 40s up to three-quarters of her eggs will have chromosomal abnormalities.

Chromosomal abnormalities generally result in miscarriage

A few years ago, I would have said you're fine, plenty of time! I had my kid later in life. But the truth is, you have no idea what the future holds unless you get some tests done. I thought I had plenty of time but now struggling with secondary infertility...

You never know how things are going to work out with relationships etc. People get married at 21 and divorced at 30 and all sorts. I have just found myself single at 35 after a 3 year relationship. So sometimes you just have to see if things line up or not.

I wish to god that I had done this.

I sleepwalked into having children with the person I was in a relationship with through my 20s. Accidental pregnancy turned into family and now I can't leave. I wish I had had your foresight to realise that dating with the goal of finding your family is the way to do this.

It depends on how quickly you're comfortable moving from dating to baby. The truth is at 31 and single you've got to be ready to move fast when you do meet someone you're happy with.

I think you have plenty of time, but I'd be actively dating if children were important to you.

I met my husband-to-be at 30, one child only at 38 after three years of trying. I made the decision on my 30th birthday that I was going to put in more effort to find a good man instead of a pretty boy. I'm glad we had our child a bit later. We had quite a few years being able to travel and do very well in our careers. I stopped working for five years to be a sahm. If we'd been a lot younger, that may not have been an option open to us. I was very happy to be able to bring up my little girl without childcare. It was a lovely time, a privilege that not everyone wants or gets, but it was perfect for me.

This is stuffed full of inaccuracy , where did you get the idea that 3/4 of a woman’s eggs ‘are’ malformed by 40 and ‘will’ cause a miscarriage? Fertility is about a confluence of factors, one being age, womb lining, hormonal timing, ovulation regularity, sperm count and many other things. Yes, 31 is a little late. I conceived at 32 after 3 years of trying and some intervention (Clomid) due to irregular ovulation. The consultant said to me, and it was only her that I relied on for advice , something along these lines, that ‘if you are prone to fertility issues these will happen whether you are 28 or wait until 38. If you are regularly ovulating you should be able to conceive throughout your thirties although it may take longer the older you get. But this doesn’t tell us about your partner’s fertility’. I’d recommend just getting an ovulation kit and checking your cycle . Egg freezing is one thing but the number of successful pregnancies from this is still very low.

People on these threads always blithely suggest freezing your eggs, as though it's a magic bullet to stop the clock. It's not. Success rates for IVF are low and it's expensive and hugely invasive.

If it's important to you that you have a biological child then you risk huge disappointment if you decide to delay it at this point in your life. For every woman who easily gets pregnant at 45, there's another who struggles in her mid/late 30s. You may be one of the lucky ones. You may not. If it's something that is a priority in your life plan, you need to get cracking and actually prioritise it.

Sorry if this sounds blunt. I think it does a huge disservice to women to tell them they can have it all. Sadly that is not a given and women should be telling other women the truth, not lying to them because they think the lie sounds kinder.

Met my dh at 34.5, married on my 36th bday and had dd1 10 months later. Dd2 at 39, 4 months before 40. Had planned on a smaller age gap but changed jobs and had to wait for enhanced mat entitlement.

Dh is same age. We had already travelled, started careers, lived alone, had flats etc so felt like great timing for us 😀. We appreciate every day how lucky we are.

I split from my lazy ex at 30. I knew I wanted kids so I focused on dating and being VERY picky. I wanted a man I could have a family with and specifically looked for that kind of man. I think who you choose to have a child with is the biggest decision you will make. It worked for me.

Well I’m screwed thought I was going to have kids with my ex partner been together for years and was thinking about kids. I’m 37 tomorrow, so you have plenty of time. Don’t just go for any old person as your worried about not having them, anything can happen you just don’t know