Aibu to think that 36 is still relatively young to have a child?

[Hdaniels11]

I have a Dd who's 9 and a Ds who's 6 and i'm thinking of having another baby. I'm 36 now and was amazed when i find out once you turn 34 you are classed as a geriatric mother! I always thought 25-38 was the prime time to have babies. Aibu to think you shouldn't be classed as an older mother until you are in your 40s?

Well, they would. Because, you know, statistics.

Totally proved wrong though, again by statistics. It's a gradual slope in the 30s, no "cliff". Some very unlucky people with issues, sure, and that's heartbreaking. But many of those would also have had issues in their 20s, too. There's become some kind of myth about 35 that doesn't bear scrutiny in medical studies.

Like the previous poster said I think if you had fertility issues at 36 you'd likely have had them a decade before too. I'd have thought you're fertility wasn't massively different at 36 to your "prime" years anyway. Many people I know got pregnant quicker the second time around too.

Did you study maths at all? 🤣🤣

*your not you're!

On the rare occasion I see a woman in her 40s, with a toddler, and she says she's the mother, I always wonder if her school age/teen daughter had a baby and she's raising it. I don't think I have actually EVER seen a pregnant woman in her 40s. (or older!)

🤣🤣🤣

Comedy post of the day. 🏆

I think that poster was talking about the old days before IVF etc.

He does.
DS was born when DH and I were 32. We don't live in an affluent area and we are much older than his friends parents. It's never failed to nark him.

Oh dear, how unpleasant. It would have been a good idea to move somewhere with people with less repellant attitudes.

I think that poster was talking about the old days before IVF etc.

The poster said "I've never seen..." so wasn't speaking only about the past.

And in any case, multiple posters have pointed out the many women have had babies well into their 40s, for generations, before there was any choice. So biologically it's not remotely unusual for a proportion of women that age to still be fertile and carry healthy pregnancies.

To suggest it's odd for someone to have a third child in their mid-late 30s is jusy bonkers, and bears no resemblance to the norms in the UK when you look at birth statistics.

And I'm not referring to iVF either.

How do you know it's not IVF though? Many people don't shout about it. I think it's entirely normal to have a 3rd at 36. They obviously don't have fertility issues it's not young though in a purely biological sense.

I got pregnant within 2 months at 35 and 1 month at 38. Not everyone past 35 needs ivf for goodness sake

How do you know it's not IVF though? Many people don't shout about it.

Because I talk openly with many, many people my age about these things and for example not one of the women in my antenatal class had IVF and the youngest was 32, all of us FTMs? And because statistics bear this out. Many women in their 20s have IVF. In fact the two people I know who conceived that way both did so in their late 20s. The needed it due to genetic conditions which they knew might necessitate it hence they started trying for families much earlier than others: they were very open about that.

I think it's entirely normal to have a 3rd at 36.

Exactly my point!!

In fact, a third baby at 36 generally means that you started your family earlier than average.

The statistics from the HFEA don't match this , the average age of a woman undergoing IVF was 35.7. 40 percent of women are under 35 undergoing IVF. 21 percent of all cycles are women over 40. Using their own eggs has only a 5 percent success rate in over 40 , using donor eggs pushes it up to 30 percent per cycle. I do think this information would be helpful for women who are wondering when to start TTC. Of course 36 for your third is fine as you probably won't have fertility issues to begin with.. Biologically though it's late in reproduction terms.

Had my third and last at 32. I personally wouldn't want anymore in my late 30s/early 40s but I can understand why women do at that age.

nope

Definitely not young, but not unusual.

Don't worry about the terminology though. I had a friend who was classed as an 'elderly prim' because she had her first baby aged 30.

As women age, the demand of pregnancy can be different. It's just a way of defining that so they can offer the right support to the right women. It's not a criticism or a personal slight.

My nan had my dad at 40 in the early 1950s, the doctor wouldn't even admit she was pregnant until she was 6 months gone and kept saying she was going through menopause. When my mum had me in the 70s she was 24 and the oldest mum in her first time mums group by 5 years! In the early 2000s I was the youngest at 25 by 8 years.

36 is normal in society but old medically. No one is saying not to have a baby at that age, as many do, but you can't call 20 years after people start having babies on the younger end nor be unaware of the risks.

Well you could take my year group at school as your sample. I went to a private all girls school so most people spent their twenties studying, travelling and building careers and had kids later. The first big wave of pregnancies started around our mid thirties and at almost 40 it hasn’t stopped. Pregnancy and birth announcements come through all the time, either for 1st, 2nd or 3rd babies. At 36 I knew at least 25 people who were pregnant!

Obviously some people did struggle with fertility (myself included) but it was due to conditions that would have affected them at any age, or was an issue on their husband’s side. The vast majority of people I know who wanted a baby between 35-40 were able to have one.

I would consider 36 to be young. But to be “relatively young” to have a baby, of course not. I assume the “relative” in this means relative against all the other people having babies rather than relative to the population in general and so no, on the spectrum of when women are able to have babies, it is certainly well past half way and so could not be considered relatively young. It is not unusual of course, but that is another thing.

The only way 36 is young in any sense is if you're 96

My sister had a baby at 42 normal conception. Her friend 43 normal conception

The statistics from the HFEA don't match this , the average age of a woman undergoing IVF was 35.7. 40 percent of women are under 35 undergoing IVF. 21 percent of all cycles are women over 40.

Firstly, most of those will be people trying to have their first baby, not their third.

If the average age is 35.7, then over 50% are younger so yes, it shows fertility issues occur at much younger than 35 for many who are afflicted.

And your own stat shows that only 21% of those having IVF are over 40! So the vast, vast majority are not.

What would be interesting is to look at the proportion of babies conceived via IVF compared to children conceived naturally at different ages, and whether these were first or second or third babies. Without this it's hard to see how it really relates to the OP.