What's the latest you'd have a baby?

[worrywilma]

I'm 37 and ideally I'd like to wait another year before trying for our first baby. But I'm fully aware that time is not on my side!

My career has only just started to take off......oh to be 28 again 🥴

I know millions of people have their first in their late thirties, but I also know a lot of those people wish they had started sooner.

I'm in a pickle.

45 was my cut off and I ended up having mine at 41.

I would start as soon as you can so you have time for any intervention were you to need it and wished to choose that path.

OP, you want to wait another year (38) before you even start trying for a baby?!

There's a huge difference between starting to try for your first baby at 38 and having a first/second baby at that age. You have no idea how long it will take and if it will happen at all😐

It’s not really the point of the post, but I am 40 with an adult child and another who is younger but has finished their GCSEs last year (I was and are still married for anyone who is wondering). U e still got enough energy to do stuff, I couldn’t have a baby now, I would be exhausted 😁
Thats just me personally though

Alright girl! bloody hell 😂😂

Yes, I'll be trying for my first in the next 12 months which may lead me to 38 or over. It's not ideal but we've never been in the position to even think about it before now.

If I could turn the clock back, even 5 years, I would.

There was a thread on the conception board this morning from someone trying for a baby at 52......which is madness to me.

@worrywilma I think anything over 40 is madness personally, due to the much increased risks of birth defects

35 was my cut off for a while. It was 33 when I was in twenties and clearly had an idealistic view of meeting a nice man made of husband material.

I finally met a lovely man in my late twenties, we had loads of fun and travelled, worked out arsed off, got married and I had baby 1 at 33 as it turns out. I’m hoping to have baby 2 in the next year or so tbh as I know too many woman around my age who struggled - including after conceiving easily first time. I really want another though so I don’t want to risk having problems. I don’t think I want to do the baby stage much later tbh if I can avoid it but who knows. But you’ll also hear from plenty of women who conceived easily in their forties. It was also being told on here to not hang around if I definitely want another which made me reconsider my initial plan of waiting a few years.

Well fertility beginning to drop at 32 is very much not the same as it dropping off a cliff at 32 is it, which I think is along the lines of what you originally said. Apologies if I'm wrong, I'm not trawling back through a long thread.

Second apology, I have reread this and take your point! Ignore my nonsense! I'm surprised though as it is not what I have always read up to now.

Countdown to pregnancy has a good age & fertility calculator if anyone is interested in this: https://www.countdowntopregnancy.com/tools/age_fertility_calculator.php

At 37 you still have a 1 in 10 chance of conceiving each month. But the risk of abnormalities and miscarriage is a lot higher. At age 45+ the risk of downs syndrome is 1 in 30 😮

@SarahAndGoose no probs. I'm curious as to what is it you have read so far though that gave you the impression fertility dropped off later on?
I too had that impression but it was only anecdotal and as soon as I actually read into it I saw that it drops off much earlier.

I don't think it's a good idea to ask about other's cut offs. Because if everyone says under 37, there's not a lot you can do about it.
I had mine under 30. I'm now nearing 50. I definitely would have found the physical side harder at 40yo, but if I hadn't had my babies earlier then that wouldn't have stopped me. If I got pregnant now, I would go ahead, and I would love it in some ways, but I think it would be much much harder on my physical strength.

What I would say is I wouldn't leave it because of fertility though. I know two or three people who started trying at 38/39 and it didn't happen. That year could make a difference to whether you have a baby or not.

Most people where I live are grannies at 47… so 37 is well past it…. I was an ‘older’ granny at 50….I’m 59 now with 3 GDs all well at school ….couldn’t imagine running round after little GC in my 60s….but we are all different

If I were you I wouldn't wait. I would start trying immediately.

35 was my cut off and I had DDs at 29 and 31 but even then it took a year for me to conceive and we were both young, fit and healthy. You just never know.

Obviously you may get pregnant immediately and I hope that you do but miscarriages, fertility issues and ectopic pregnancies etc all do happen and are reasonably common. You just don't know which way it's going to go until you roll the dice which is all to say, you'd be crackers to wait any more time if you want a baby. I'd get trying now.

First at 37, second at 39. DD (my youngest) is off to uni this year so I'll be 60 when she finishes. It makes no difference to me, I'm fitter now than I was at 30. Older, yes, but definitely fitter.

DC1 at 37, DC2 at 39, was v lucky and conceived both v quickly - would have tried for DC1 until 45. Would have much preferred to be early 30s but that's not how it happened 🤷🏻‍♀️

My cut off was 42.

I do have an Acquaintance who had her first at 43 and a second two years later but she did have difficulty conceiving.

I saw a graph in the last month or so that showed it by age - I'll try and find it tomorrow. It was in a discussion about the chances of having a baby in your 40s - from 40 to 44 it dropped to almost nil.

Personally I'd crack on. I got pregnant the first month we tried when I was 34, but found out I had had a missed miscarriage at the 12 week scan, and then it turned out to also be a partial molar pregnancy. This meant that there was a 1% chance developing into a type of cancer and needing chemotherapy. I had to be monitored while my HCG level returned to normal again and this took 4 months. So 7 months after finding out I was pregnant at 34, I was 35 and reeling a bit from everything to be honest. It took another 2 months from being cleared to start trying again until I actually felt ready to start again, and I'm not pregnant again yet.

If I would have had to have chemo, it would have been almost 100% effective, but I would have had to have treatment for 4 - 6 months, and then wait another 12 months after finishing before being able to try again.

It's really really rare for this to happen; 1 in 700 chance or something. But it's made me realise how little control we have over when we get pregnant and what actually happens when we do.