How old is too old to have kids?

[rightageforkids]

I am 40 and have no kid. Dh doesn't want. We got married late and now he thinks it's too late. He has become a workaholic with no time for anything else :(
I still hope that one day there will be kids or at least a kid. I know I am dreaming.
How old is too old for a woman to have kids? I used to think 40 (just to be fair to kid).

I hope it happens for you op. I would go straight for donation and get on with it.
You make me ashamed...I can't cope at 39 with my last. I resent how my life has gone back to nappies and nights awake. Please do it for you. It is special, I dont appreciate it x

I'm 41 and 31w pregnant. After 6 mc in 3 years I had almost given up hope of a second child and the emotional strain had me on my knees. I had 43 in my head as a cutoff but that was more to do with the age gap since DS.

Most people I know had their DCs in their mid-late 30s.

Choas I was 39 when I conceived my one and only dc. Conceived naturally. Never had a miscarriage. Had a perfect pregnancy, no extra monitoring. Went into spontaneous labour at 39+6. Gave birth vaginally without instrumental assistance. And without bloody pain relief although that was not really through choice. My son has no chromosomal abnormalities. It's not all doom and gloom. Obviously this is all anecdotal but I have 3 or 4 min friends around the same age as me with the same story.

My father was 42 when I was born. It wasn't a problem when I was a child but in the last two years (he's in his sixties now) the burden of his age has been palpable. I worry about him literally every day now. This is exacerbated by the fact that I am an only child and his last two wives died. He has good friends and a girlfriend but his relationship with her has cooled considerably recently so that has also worried me. I think that he also regrets not being a bit healthier for his grandchildren (he's actually in really good shape for his age). In some ways I think that being a bit older made him a better father but, through no fault of his own, I have found that I have little support in the years to come. If you decide to have children later on in life please have more than one.

This is clearly very important to you. You need to have some frank and open conversations with DH to find out what he want and why.
40 is right at the cusp of it being too late, for some it will be for others they may have one or two children still. Don’t stick your head in the sand though.

Well I'm 40 in May and currently sat with my 8wk old pfb on my knee! Haven't yet ruled out a sibling for him yet either.

It’s selfish because your kids are going to have old parents when they are barely out of their teens and lets be honest your more likely to die when your older leaving your younger kids behind then when your young! If your 40 having kids your statistically going to have less time with them, it’s hardly rocket science.

But no one has any idea how long they are going to live when they are 25, 40 etc. A 25-year old could develop non life- threatening health problems that affects their ability to parent before the age of 30. They may die tragically in an accident at 34 or at the age of 60 from cancer. Someone who has dc at 40 might live in good health until 85. It is just impossible at individual level to predict and stats based on population mean nothing. So it is much harder than rocket science actually.

Shimmershimmerandshine

Well, yes, no one knows when they’re going to die.

But fairly safe to say that more likely health issues in 60s/70s than 40/50s. And if you have had a child at 45, then that means your teenager is picking up the burden.

I speak from experience.

I just can’t get over how many are saying “oh it was fine for me, and I gave birth at 43/44/45”

All well and good. But what about your children. Aged parents at 18 Years is not fun.

To be honest if you are a good parent then I think most kids are able to recognise that while it's not perfect to have an older parent, if they're a good parent it's worth it. I lost my mum at 22 and never for a second thought bad of it, as she was so brilliant and the perfect mum for me I could see easily I was lucky to have her for 22 years and would prefer that to any other mum for decades longer!

The point is that there are no guarantees canyouguess. And arguably many health issues start before 40, so if you are in good health then in some ways for some things the odds are in your favour. You obviously had a difficult experience, but it's anecdotal and won't be the case for everyone with older parents. So people declaring older parents as selfish on mass are being very narrow minded.

Let’s not forget as well that historically women started young and had babies until they no longer could. So losing parents young has always been a fact of life.

A friend in my hometown had her first at 29. She moved halfway through the pregnancy from one area to another. In her first antenatal group she was the oldest Mum by far and the subject of many of these ‘oh but you’re so old your kids are going to be orphaned so young!’ Comments. In her second group she was the youngest by almost ten years. She was really struck by the different socioeconomic views on it. And that she was in the wrong in both places which just goes to show you can’t bloody win :)

The average where I live now seems to be mid to late thirties for a first baby. I was 36. I didn’t meet my dh until I was 33 so I’d never been in a position before where having a baby was desirable or possible.

You can be a great younger mum and you can be a great older Mum. Age is not the main, or even a major, determinant of how good a parent one is.

Op’s Issue really is that she’s in the last chance saloon and her DH and her want different things. She needs a serious chat with him and if she does want a baby, she may need to go it alone.

Not everyone can have children at the click of a finger. It can take healthy couples up to a year to conceive and some unlucky ones experience miscarriage. It's not something that can be planned for a specific age from my experience so I find those people saying "beyond thirty is too old in my opinion I had all line in my twenties" rather ignorant.

Indeed. If I'd got pregnant and it had stuck when we first started trying I'd have been 29 when I gave birth. Some time and 3 miscarriages later... If my current pregnancy works out, I'm likely to give birth around my 31st birthday. Luckily I didn't have any irrational hang-ups about doing it before I was 30, since - as I've learned, but some women have apparently been lucky enough not to have to - life has a way of laughing at your plans.

I find those people saying "beyond thirty is too old in my opinion I had all line in my twenties" rather ignorant.

To be honest regardless of issues with planning anyone who says 30+ is too old to have a baby is being ridiculous. Fine to say Ideally I personally wanted to be in my 20s if possible because that's just personal preference.

FWIW op I'm the same age as you and a staggering number of my contemporaries have had babies recently. One of my uni friends who is 2 days younger than me is pregnant with her first. I had my first at 31 and second at 34 and tbh in some circles (work particularly where we have a lot of London based people) I feel like a fairly young mum. People are that I have a 9yo. Out of my school friends I was the first to have children.

Or 134.

Just playing safe.

Blah blah blah older parents are selfish, blah blah blah, younger parents are ignorant blah blah you aren’t allowed to feel your parents were selfish to have you in their forties because being an older parent is fine...

Honestly will you give your heads a wobble?! Why do people get so nasty about other people’s choices/feelings?!

People are entitled to make their own choices about their own reproductive issues.

All this bun fighting actually is of no use to the OP. Her age is not even the main issue. Her husband doesn’t want to TTC.

The fact she is focusing on her age rather than her husbands clearly expressed feelings worries me TBH as the only thing that is wrong re reproduction is abuse and coercion which impinge on autonomy. I worry the OP wants to bombard her husband with ‘we aren’t too old though’ rather than respecting how he feels.

I am 43 and almost three months pregnant. If it is that important to you try Ivf, don't waste any more time.

And what if you have a child with severe disabilities in your 40’s who will need life-long care?

No there are no guarantees in life but actually, old age and death are guaranteed whereas early death is merely a possibility.

But e.g. someone having a baby at 48/49 (yes, less likely but still possible,) is much, much more likely to have a baby with severe disabilities, and assuming she goes on to have the baby and doesn’t decide to terminate the pregnancy she will be in her mlate 60’s by the time that child is becoming an adult, and will be looking at old age and retirement just about the time when the child moves into the care of adult services who are inadequate at best.

What happens to that child if the parent has to go into a home themselves and what happens to them when that parent inevitably dies?

Even more so if the woman is being advised to go off and have a baby on their own....

Children with severe disabilities are born from all aged mothers and lifelong care is just that. But that will likely involve outside support so the situation is the same whether you are 22 or 42

Agreed Primark.
I am an older mother ( 53 and my youngest is 3 ) . My youngest one is adopted and has v severe complex disabilities . I also have 3 birth children ( all grown ) and a long term foster child aged 11 who also has v complex needs.
Both of my children with sn were born to v young mothers who were in their 20s at the time of their births. As was i when i gave birth to my first child who turned out to have Aspergers. So there are no guarantees at any age though i take the point that downs syndrome is a higher risk the older you get .
T bh I am genuinely shocked at the animosity leveled at older mothers by some on here ( along with mothers of larger families ).

I am an older parent and lost two pregnancies where the children were severely disabled. The risks are very real but fortunately with such early screening nowadays the number of children born disabled have gone down.

My mum died at 49. So you cant use the old age and death card. We cannot plan life only do what we do. Go for it op and ignore those who made the same choice but somehow feel superior because they were younger.

So you cant use the old age and death card.

What are you in about? It’s not a card! It’s reality. The older you get, the more like you are to be afflicted with many many more conditions that lead to death.

I haven’t seen a bun fight @Offred

40 def isn’t too old. Once you have kids/kid you def don’t look back and say I wish I didn’t have them (well some night)
Not sure how you can convince dh though if he has made his mind up.
I had my first at 33 and second at 43.
My second has tired me out so much, made me realise why people have kids in their 20s, although I’d not go back and change a thing.