do you think that it's possible to have a sensible conversation about awareness re falling fertility in the light of the other thread....

[Heathcliffscathy]

sorry about the humungous thread title...

but do you think we could talk about the question of putting off career to have babies/being aware of falling fertility as you age without resort to handbags at dawn?

i know it is a terribly emotional thing for all of us (me included massively). but is there room for discussing whether there should be a cultural seachange back to having your children younger...to avoid the pain and heartache of waiting til you're in your forties to start and struggling?

I just don't understand how any half-informed person could not know that female fertility declies sharply with age, especially after 30. Many academic studies have said so. The media (especially tabloids) have been scare-mongering about it for decades. There are entire stupid comedy movies and sitcom plots written about the "biological clock ticking away" when a woman turns 30.

Reproduction/Sex ed classes talk about menopause at 50 or even younger.

How could anybody of normal intelligence not pick up on all that?

lljkk, sorry but we are trying to discuss this calmy, without judging, without passing comments like yours.

It's just like anything else - we know that cancer is there, but hope that it won't happen to us. We know that eating too much bad things makes us fat, we do it anyway. We know that exercising is good for our health, but we don't do anough of it. It doesn't mean we're not normal intelligence.

Well, I am pretty well informed, concieved ds first go at 34 and have been ttc for six months now at 37. I knew that fertility declines after 35 but I had no idea how steeply.

Well said BlueberryPancake.

Until recently, I didn't know how common miscarriages were (approximately 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage). I did biology up to A Level, and I cannot recall being told once about declining fertility levels in women, and about miscarriages. Admittedly, the sex ed part of the biology course I did was rubbish (they also failed to mention AIDS, and having come from SA where all sex ed mentioned AIDS about 50 times a second I was a bit )

Leningrad - I remember reading the same article, think it might have been in Sunday times??? The statistic was that 'of women having children over 35, 19% were over 40'. Hope that clears up the confusion!

Having said that, I read at the weekend that women having babies at 40+ was now at 19% and I didn't really understand that. It read as if 1 in 5 babies is born to a woman who is 40+ and I can't believe that is true but can't find the stats.

Leningrad: This WAS quoted in several papers. But the actual figures are that "Of mothers aged 35 and above" the percentage of those which are in their forties has increased from 8% to 19%.

I saw that figure too and had to investigate!

Did it say what percentage of women giving birth were over 35?

lljkk - if you are not thinking much about having kids, a lot of that stuff goes right over your head. Or you vaguely are aware of it, but maybe it doesn't fit in with your partner saying - i'm not ready yet, and maybe you don't feel ready yourself either.

i knew fertility declined, but i had no idea exactly when, or how dramatically. i also was pretty clueless about how common miscarriage is over the age of 35, as others say.

the reality in my life is that my three best friends were also late starters - two conceived their first at 35 and the third at 39. All three have now had their second, at ages 37, 39 and 42, though one (the 39 year old) had two miscarriages in between.

So within that subset - i also conceived at 35 but miscarried. pretty dead on with the statistics. For them, waiting didn't turn out to be a problem in their goal for two kids. For me, the jury is still very much still out, as I turn 40 this year.

Great thread and interesting discussions.

I think there are a few things around this.

There is a lack of knowledge amongst women; about how the female reproductive system works (when I read Taking charge of your fertility when planning TTC with DS, I was astonished at how much I didnt know).

There is a total lack of knowledge about not only how it gets harder to fall pregnant when you get older, but also how it does become harder to carry a baby to full term with few complications.

Whilst this information is out there; I think that unless you are in a receptive mode - i.e. really open to understanding and taking this information on board; it generally gets ignored.

I have a good friend, 33 in a relationship with a great guy. But she is having doubts about staying with him. She seems to think she has time to meet someone else and start thinking about ttc when she is 35 (and that is if she meets someone else and they are in the same place). We are very close and you know what it came down too?

What would she be more devastated by? Staying with a guy (who a year in is not ticking all the boxes and therefore she compromises on some of the things she is looking for in a person), but he is ready to have kids and they can start ttc while she is still 33 - so you could argue stands a better chance of having DC's

Or meeting mr perfect, but maybe not definitely managing to have children.

But I can say this for sure; she is trying to make the decision without all the facts. When I asked her whether she knew why it got harder. She said no. And asked me why. I was less than 15 seconds in and she said 'you know what, I lied, I don't want to know'

And I think there you have it. The women who want to know find out. The women who dont ignore because they dont want to hear it.

This thread has got me thinking we need to get on with ttc a third, Im 33 with a DS and DD and really want another DH is nearly 35 but wants to wait a year or 2! makes me think we might regret waiting! Time to throw caution and contreceptives to the wind! BTW I love my career and am lucky its teaching part time, but the progression through the career ladder was a fluke more than a plan! All I knew was at 25 when I married babies were not on the cards, 2 years later broodiness hit me like a brick! I was a head of dept in a nice school by this but had a few rocky years. I thank god I wasn't single god knows what I'd have done. I have 2 friends who've had their 1st baby mid thirties whilst waiting for the right bloke, they've fallen in love and ttc within 2/3 months the urgency is much more evident in relationships when you're older. Thankfully both my friends have DD's

I have to agree with Crokky. I got married at 24 (already pregnant with DS) and when I told people that I met they would often say 'Are you sure it's the right thing, you're awfully young' as if I was going to suddenly question my 5 year relationship [hmmm]

But, I was incredibly lucky to be in a position to continue with my accidental pregancy. I have a partner who's 5 years older than me so was that further advanced in his career etc. Also, my DM had all her children in her early twenties so I had a good role model.

Sometime though I wake up in the night scared. I'm quite bright (Oxford educated)and I would love to work but it's not practical at the moment. I hate the thought of being in my forties with nothing to do apart from dust the glassware! I reassure myself with the example of my DM and her best friend who both started their careers in their late thirties.

I agree with lljkk, I can't see how any literate woman couldn't possibly be unaware of the increased difficulties of conceiving over 35.
However, so much of it depends on the cards life deals us. Dal2's post raises a v interesting dilemma.
I left the love of my life when I was 30 bc he was determined he would never ever have children and have never really got over him.
Two years later, I had a 6 month relationship with somebody who was keen to ttc asap, except he changed his mind about our future and fucked off.
One year later, I stupidly had a relationship with a much younger guy and wasted precious months of my fertility teaching him how to give women orgasms. He then caught on to my underlying broodiness and fucked off too.
And this time last year, I met a top bloke, who unfortunately neglected to tell me he wasn't quite 'over his ex', whom sure enough he fucked back to and swiftly impregnated.
Anyway, now aged 36, with a tragically sporadic sex life, I stopped insisting on contraception when indulging in nookie with obliging single mates. I never lied and told any of them I was on the pill, in fact I would warn them that they shd withdraw. One time, one of them didn?t and I'm currently 6 1/2 months pregnant with his child and about to be a single mum.
So incredibly lucky in the fertility stakes, incredibly unlucky in love? Certainly. Mistress of my own destiny or selfish cow? Most days I feel I'm both.

I've got some American CDC graphs from 2002 (I know it's not GREAT but it's start)

Births by maternal age - around 2% are to women over 40

But MsIna - you didn't have much luck persuading the men you were with did you? And actually it shouldn't have to be a decision between being a mother and being with the man you love - but for many of us that's what it becomes. I wonder how many women who waited until their late 30s/40s to have children waited not simply because we were too busy having fun/building careers before then but because our partners were not interested in a family before 35. I have a very middle class highly educated group of friends (very privileged, public school educated) who have known one another since our teens. Not one of the men has had a child before the age of 35. Not one.

I suspect that any woman that had tried to get a single one of those men to become a father before then would have been considered a manipulative ball breaker. I hate to say that because those men are my friends but it's true.

What about this table?

Some interesting stats about births across the Gloucester area with a column for the UK

From this you can extrapolate (if you are a bit dull):

BIRTHS 2005
No of births by maternal age group - all ages 100%
No of births by maternal age group - ages 16-19 7%
No of births by maternal age group - ages 20-24 19%
No of births by maternal age group - ages 25-34 55%
No of births by maternal age group - ages 35-39 16%
No of births by maternal age group - ages 40+ 3%

Good one Clair, that is interesting as you can compare against the 1960s (excuse MN wobblyness of columns):

Age: < 20| 20?24| 25?29| 30?34| 35?39| 40+
1961 : 7%| 31%| 31%| 19%| 10%| 3%
2007 : 6%| 19%| 26%| 28%| 17%| 4%

I'm part of the growing band of 40 somethings having babies. I didn't even think about having a family simply because I never met the right guy...I just felt being a single mum by choice wasn't for me. But did I know the risks in leaving it? - heck yes! and it hurt like hell as I really wanted a family. A month before my 40th I met my lovely DP - 6 mths later I was preggie....I was SO shocked. Not as shocked as discovering I was pregnant again when DD1 was 8mths old. I really thought I'd missed the boat and I know I'm very blessed to be this lucky.

So at 43 I've got two under 3...and yes, it would be lovely to be a decade younger...but I wouldn't swap my set-up - with all this love and security for anything. Holding out for the dream worked for me but I knew the risks.

All very interesting.

Luckily for me, my mother kept reminding me as my mid-20s slipped seamlessly into the late 20s how women's fertility declined from 30. She was very specific. As it happens we had DD when I was 30 and at 33 am expecting again (very early days though so it's a secret).

From the stuff I've read here I think we were unusual in that DH got a lecture from his GP when he turned 30, just before we got married, about not leaving it too long and how his heavy-drinking, smoking and rubbish-food-eating ways would affect his fertility.

He wasn't at all offended - although wryly amused - and it was his idea to start a family; before that we'd decided to start trying 'in a few years'.

I have tried to talk about this nicely to a couple of friends who are now 33-35 and just starting out ttc as I think all the info about when you are fertile in your cycle etc. is really useful and I am sure from what some of them have said that they have not been timing it right and am not surprised it has taken a couple over a year now. I am hoping that with better fertility info that will improve, have tried to encourage them to go to dr's for tests just in case as if there is a problem then surely it's better to start the assisted conception process sooner rather than later? But when I have raised this it seems to scare and upset so I have stopped doing so now.

My own background is met DH at 20, married at 24, ttc at 27 and conceived straight away but it was ruptured ectopic after which I thought we were completely screwed as I've now only got one fallopian tube, but luckily we conceived DS only 3 months after EP and now am 25 weeks pregnant with no. 2 at age 32, again v soon after ttc. When we 1st started ttc I honestly wasn't that bothered but thought, well, we're married, we're happy, we have a home, I've earned a decent maternity package in my job, it would be a bit silly to wait... after my EP it was absolute agony and all I could think about was motherhood. I would have been severely depressed if DS had not come along so soon. Feel incredibly lucky and am sure it helps that we did not wait any longer to ttc in the first place. Was worried I was unreasonable to wait at all to ttc no. 2 but with jobs and tiredness and coping with new motherhood generally we honestly didn't think we could have managed it any sooner. I would not want anybody to have to go through the pain I did and I know plenty of women have to deal with repeated MCs before a successful pregnancy and really feel for them.

My pet bugbear is men who live with women from their early 20s to early 30s and then dump them, they are often "nice" men who don't want to hurt their girlfriends but they steal their fertile years!! I will tell DS that he must not mess ladies around from mid-20s onwards and that if he wants kids he should start thinking seriously about it from that time on too.

I started to ttc dd aged 27 when none of my friends had dc. I was very clear that I wanted to start a family then so that I could potentially have 3 children withreasonable age gaps before I turned 35. Luckily I have had no probs conceiving dd or dc2.

I have several close friends also aged 31 who are married and one has been ttc for almost a year. One has said how she feels too scared to ttc as she doesn't feel ready yet but she does worry about leaving it too late. In any discussion of this nature a good single friend of the same age always says "Ooh don't worry, you've got heaps of time, women have babies in their 40's these days etc etc" and I want to scream at the first friend not to listen to the second who just doesn't want to hear that her fertility will decline massively post-35 because she isn't in a position to ttc yet.

Really interesting thread. I had dd at 41. Do I wish I'd been younger - hell, yeah. I didn't put motherhood off for career or skiing holidays or ignorance about fertility, I put it off for a combination of reasons: being in a relationship with someone who didn't want them, being anorexic and not fertile, being a lesbian and not feeling entitled or seeing how I could make it happen. Then when I finally decided to make it happen I was 35 and it took another 6 years to get dd. I would have loved more children.

I do think women should know that it's best to have your children before 35. I also think women who do it later should not be demonised, ridiculed or endlessly caricatured in the Daily Mail. I think that the vast majority of women I have known who have had children late have not been ignorant or selfish, but couldn't find the right person to have children with. Men's contribution to this situation is always overlooked.

The answer, then, isn't just telling women not to be so silly and expecting that to sort it out. Interestingly, I'm doing some work on teenage pregnancy at the moment and coming across teenage girls thinking they're infertile as a significant factor. They read all this stuff in the media about women's fertility problems, have a couple of episodes of unsafe sex, don't get pregnant, decide they're obviously infertile and then DO get pregnant.... The RCOG should be warned to be wary of unintended effects!

Within my group of friends there is an ostrich-like approach to fertility. Im 29 and am the only one of my friends with children. I have asked what they think of the subject and the general consensus is that they feel sorry for me "stuck" with 2 kids (2 and 6 months) while they are out partying. Most of them believe that I have been careless with the contraception and been "caught out" rather than actively ttc.
They plan to start when they are about 35. When I explain to the girls about it getting harder they just look at me as if I've grown a second head and say that it'll be fine because they are healthy and active. They know that there are risks but just don't see it happening to them.

I think part of it has to do with the way we were educated. It was an all girls school where we were told that we could achieve anything we wanted and to a large extent (education/careerwise) that has happened so they can't quite get the head round the idea that they might not get what they want in the end.

My male friends are actually more interested in having kids but are scared of raising the subject with their girlfriends in case it scares them off!

This thread has made my mind up ttc #3 will start next year instead of 2011!