AIBU to wait until I'm 33 to TTC?

[FeuDeRussie]

Hi, I'm new here, no DCs yet but have been lurking on MN for a few months out of curiosity as I'm starting to think about children. DH and I are a bit ambivalent about if/when to start a family. We think we'd probably like to, eventually, but are having such a nice time being married and it just being the two of us, that ideally we'd like to have as much of this 'just us' time as possible, because I know once you have DCs we'll never get that time back. But...is 33 cutting it a bit fine? We'd like 1 or 2, no more. We are 30 and have been married 2 years.

Do your worst...am quite prepared to be told I'm being selfish, overthinking, overplanning etc and if that's the majority opinion from you experienced people I will rethink my attitude :)

I wouldn't say you are being unreasonable but perhaps a bit naive. Sure plenty of people have children into their late 30s but the average woman's fertility starts declining at 27 and starts falling off a cliff at 35 while miscarriage rates rise steeply. Society has changed so much over the last few hundred years and for lots of reasons it makes sense for people to wait longer and often they haven't found the right partner but unfortunately our bodies haven't evolved enough to catch up with this.
I started ttc at 27 and had DD at 31 after IVF, while infertility was very tough I at least knew I had time on my side - as with natural fertility IVF success rates are much better under 35.
I would try and imagine your life without kids, if you think you'd be fine with that then wait as long as you want but if you think it's something you would regret not doing/having then just bear in mind the longer you leave it the lower your chances of having a child are - and especially if you'd be thinking about a second.

Oh, I'm sorry to be the party pooper, but I think if you know you want children, you do need to think about the potential downside of waiting. Some young looking, young feeling women have low and rapidly declining egg reserves. As someone who got pregnant in the first month of trying when I was 33, I wish I had started earlier. I lost that baby at 10 weeks, lost another at 5 weeks and then couldn't get pregnant again. I cannot describe the sadness. I have been extremely lucky and after 3 rounds of ivf and thousands and thousands of pounds, we had the world's cutest baby (FACT) when I was 36. Other people on that journey have not been so lucky.

I know it's just anecdote, but I don't want others to think that it's all ok in your mid 30s. If anything goes wrong, if you have any issues, you don't have much time to find out and rectify it before your fertility heads off a cliff.

Of course you might wake up in 6 months time and suddenly be broody. Then all logic goes out the window and you absolutely must have a baby, now, now, now!

Bear in mind too that if you want more than one, with some reasonable age gaps, you could be still having children in your 40s. I have seen with some older friends (though not all) that pregnancy and young children have taken more of a toll on them than on me, and they would say the same. It is a fact that you have that bit more energy when you're younger and even a few years can make a big difference.

I would definitely agree with this! My first pregnancy (aged 37) was horrendous, I was exhausted the whole way through. This one at 39 has been much better until the end, when I am totally exhausted again (not that unusual of course). But various pregnancy & birth professionals have told me that there really is a huge difference in the general energy levels that pregnant women have as they get older. It's partly just natural variation, and every pregnancy is different, but it's generally harder the older you get.

My MIL has commented several times (not rudely) on how different my pregnancies have been to how her 3 were. Mine have just been so much harder. But she had her kids at 22, 24 and 29. I had a lot more energy at that age too, pregnant or not!

Hmm. Much food for thought here. Ideally, I wouldn't want to be having children in my 40s, but we only want 2, max, so hopefully I won't be.

It is helpful (although sad) to hear the stories of struggles to conceive, as I think it makes me a bit more realistic. I am a natural optimist!

Yanbu.
I had dc at nearly 31 and nearly 36.
Yes, I had mc too but all in all got pg very easily.

Whiteshoes I'm very glad to hear it all turned out well and with extreme cuteness!

I waited until I was 34 (three years ago) and am still waiting.

Think carefully about it. I know it's hard though.

This is a difficult one for me to answer because I know my experience is not usual. But since you asked... I ttc at 33, fell pregnant immediately (one period between coming off the pill and falling pregnant), had an uneventful pregnancy and produced the light of my life DS at 34. Brilliant. Two and a half years later went off the pill expecting the same result, but instead, menopause (not caused by going off the pill, in fact in hindsight the symptoms were there, but I was still menstruating semi-regularly). So I would I do things differently? I don't know.

We only had DS when we were ready so I don't regret his timing. But I do grieve for the child I didn't have and won't have. DS is almost 6 and it still stings when he asks for a brother or sister, or asks why I didn't get more than one egg (which is how I explained why we only have him and why some moms have more than one child because they had more than one egg), and I cried only last weekend when he asked why I don't ask Jesus to put another egg in my tummy because he learned at Sunday school about a couple in the bible who prayed for a baby and got one.

Wow, sorry OP, I got carried away a bit. It's the first time I've written it down.

The choice is yours and certainly don't do anything you aren't ready for. But if you are umming and aahing then I would say rather have a child now than put it off, especially if you want more than one.

I chose the opposite to you, DH and I started to ttc when I was 29, and one of the reasons was not wanting to risk having problems if we waited. Also, I wanted to be younger and have a bit more energy for dealing with newborns and toddlers, and to have two close together if we could.

DH and I did a couple of big holidays and really enjoyed the last few months before I got pg the first time. Are there things you want to do before having kids? Maybe you could think about fitting in the things you want to achieve before having kids, and what can reasonably wait till after?

I'm not sure there's enough information out there in RL i.e. outside Google searches and MN and the Daily Mail, about the risks of waiting. Certainly when I was 34 I in no way thought of myself as someone with declining fertility. They don't tell you at school or at doctor's surgeries.

I think I'm going to discuss the risks more with DH and see what he thinks. Maybe if we try to imagine the reality of it together - of realising we couldn't conceive, of deciding whether and what fertility treatments we wanted, of having MCs - we'll get a clearer idea of what we want, and whether we really would be happy to risk not having DCs at all.

I don't know Ariel, maybe it's calmed down a bit now but there did used to be a hell of a lot of 'OMG WOMEN ARE LEAVING IT TOO LATE TO HAVE BABIES' hysteria in the press (well, in my grandma's Daily Mails, anyway).

I don't think you're unreasonable to want to wait, but your body may have other ideas.

I you can afford it, get some basic hormone level tests and a sperm analysis done now. Then you'll know if your fertility is good now.

My DH and I wanted a few years together, but we knew I have fertility issues so started trying before we were married. we'll have at least 18 months married before kids due to infertility, so I recommend being in a position of knowledge before making that decision.

That's good advice Gin, I'll ask the doctor about it next time I'm there. If it's not too expensive it could be worth it.

Ariel I had a colleague who decided to TTC at 40, she went to her GP to seek advice and tests who was far more relaxed (too relaxed?) about this ladies age and said they would have to TTC for a year before being referred for tests.

Why not decide not to try right away but to have another think in 6 months' time? If you decide to wait 3 years then you might end up finding excuses to stick to that plan when you don't necessarily want to. Things could change hugely by this time next year.

Feu I'm thinking very similar things at the moment and all of these comments are good food for thought! I don't know what to do either I'm thinking, "Just one more holiday, just one more promotion, just one more boozy Christmas..." I think the fact that parenthood seems like such a grind doesn't help!

I wonder if it's worth getting your fertility tested? The only people I know who have done this were ttc but surely if you went to a private clinic they'd be able to do it for you - the friends who had it done as far as I know were charged separately to any fertility treatment they then went on to have.

I only say because none of us in here, nor you, know what your eggs are like, or what your husband's little swimmers are up to, and those are the really crucial questions as to whether you should wait or not.

I know.

The point I'm making, if you leave it until you are actively broody at 34, like I did, you'll probably be fine, but if it does take ages, and then you go to the docs and then you wait for a referral, and then you wait for treatment, suddenly you're 37/8 and your fertility is...how was it put?... "falling off a cliff" and any treatment you end up getting is less likely to work anyway.

But it's so difficult, because in my late twenties and early thirties I did not want babies.

I waited til I was 33 , but that's only because I didn't meet DH until then !

We married 6 months after meeting , and had DS 10 months after the wedding .

DD arrived 2 years later . Got pregnant second month both times .

We both knew we wanted children straight away , and were lucky it worked out for us .

Oops I obviously spent a bit too much time on that last message as it has already been suggested.

NewNames, I'm with you though. All I used to hear about parenthood is that it was the most wonderful thing you will ever do in your entire life (from people with brittle, bright voices and mad staring eyes ) or that it's a tiring, monotonous, thankless grind.

I decided it wasn't for me.

Parenthood is hard, definitely, but it's great too. I know I sound like a rep from some parenthood-selling board, but I always wanted children and even then I worried that the reality would be far harder than I envisaged. So far, it hasn't been, in fact the two years since DS was born have been the best of my life. It is tough in a lot of ways, but fantastic too. It's wise to be wary of jumping into having children but I think it's easy to get caught up in the negatives. At some point you just have to take the plunge!

Cailin we have decided to have another think about it when I turn 31, and then probably will do again when I'm 32 (assuming one of us doesn't suddenly become extremely broody!) When we were around 28 we started discussing DCs and were just going round and round in circles not getting to a decision, so said to each other 'right, in two years time we will surely know'.

We don't

In an ideal world, our fertility would be top notch and we'd be able to leave it until we were 45 33 to start a family.