A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:I suppose the purpose of this question is to hear from women who have started a family after the age of 30. Those of you in the UK might have seen that a top fertility doctor has just said publicly that women who want kids should try before they are 30 or risk never having them. I'm 2 months from turning 30 and I ended an almost 6 year long relationship a few months ago because he wasn't interested in starting a family for 'at least 10 years'. I'm obviously far from even meeting anyone else, and I'm now slightly freaking out that I've left it too late. I'm also feeling pretty resentful towards my ex for stringing me along for so long with no intentions of actually committing to the future he kept promising me (although I do know that is a little irrational as I don't want those things with someone who doesn't want them too).I really don't want to become a crazy desperate woman, and I'm hoping the experiences of others might help calm my fears. Thanks in advance.
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female
reader, deirdre  +, writes (3 June 2015):
I read the story you are referring to and I also heard the doctor in question speaking on a news channel last week. I hate to hear these stories in the news because they are just scaremongering people and putting unnecessary pressure on those who already feel they have limited time left.
Conceiving after 35 *can* be harder, not always. My mum had me at 42, my grandmother had her at almost 44. There were no complications in either case and in fact my mum was told 9 years previously that she needed a hysterectromy and would never have another child. I wouldnt be here if she had listened.
I think it is far better to wait and have a child with the right person or even risk having none at all, than to have a child with the wrong person because you are feeling under presure. I am 26 and I feel like time is flying past sometimes, when I see acquaintances on facebook with 1/2 kids and getting married. I totally agree with chigirl and mjf78. Who knows, the right person will (hopefully) come at the right time. Adoption is also a possible option (although not for everyone) should things not work out as you had hoped. Try not to worry too much for now, you are still young. X
A
female
reader, chigirl  +, writes (3 June 2015):
 "So one person, (BTW Chigirl the OP doesn't state that it was a man, it could have been a woman) makes a claim. So what? Doesn't mean we all have to listen.
MJF78, I did not mention in my post that I thought the doctor was either male or female, so what is your point? I don't see why the gender of the doctor is of importance, or why you think my post implies that it was a male doctor.
Please explain.
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reader, anonymous, writes (3 June 2015): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThank you to everyone who responded, you have all been a great help and I feel a lot better now :)
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female
reader, Anonymous 123  +, writes (3 June 2015):
 OP I'm 32 and I chose to do a PhD and get into the teaching profession. I still don't have a tenured job and when I do, I will most likely be on probation for a couple of years, which means that I personally cannot ever imagine getting pregnant and jeopardize what I have after having worked so hard for it.Not just me, many senior colleagues of mine have chosen to go the same way and have put off having babies till their late thirties. It's a combination of both choice and compulsion. Our lives have changed because more and more women choose to have a career as opposed to women in previous generations who got married early and were home-makers. Hence, logically, they had children early and fertility was normally not an issue.That, however, in no way means that fertility declines the day you turn 30! Its a gradual process and yet many women go on to have babies well into their 30s'. Maybe it becomes a little more difficult to conceive but its certainly not impossible!OP dont pay attention to all that you read in the papers or what solemn looking women tell you about having children early, while sermonizing. Yes, "society" believes that women should have children early because that's what is at some level ingrained in us, because everyone is scared of the "what if it doesnt happen" scenario. That's why people gently try to push women into having at least one child before 30, just to be safe. Doesnt necessarily have to be logical, though.
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male
reader, mfj78 +, writes (2 June 2015):
Some great comments on here. You mention a "top fertility doctor" but he sounds more like a quack to me. Certainly after around 30 a woman's fertility will decline and the chances of complications rise BUT you wont wake up on the morning of your 30th birthday and suddenly find it harder to conceive or produce a healthy child than when you were 29. Its a slow, steady thing like aging or growing up. It happens but too slow to actually feel or see it if that makes sense?Here in the UK there is a lot of headline grabbing BS to sell papers and gain tv viewing figures. There is a well known UK paper that almost every day has on its front page the latest "ground breaking" breakthrough against heart disease, cancer and arthritis. Three things which effect my family. Its sells papers.So one person, (BTW Chigirl the OP doesn't state that it was a man, it could have been a woman) makes a claim. So what? Doesn't mean we all have to listen. Newspapers and tv shows are good at offering a mouth piece for both the knowledgeable and the ignorant alike, with self claimed "Top scientists" or "experts in their field" getting the most column inches. TV shows and papers never say "and here's the view of a junior doctor, on probation and yet to be let loose on a real patient." Instead they call that person an "expert". Many women now are having children in their 30s...Advances in technology and medicine, as well as financial and social issues, have meant more and more women are leaving it later to start a family. A friend of mine was mortified when, age 27, she was described in her medical records as being a geriatric mother! That was back in the 1980s and now sounds laughable. Many couples in their 20s cant afford to move into their own place let alone have kids, and with the job market and student debts being such an issue so many women are waiting. Bringing a child into this world is a huge responsibility and not one to be done to beat a calendar. For sure you don't want to hang around be neither do you want to rush into anything you later regret. Being a single parent in your thirties can be just as tough as being a teenage parent.I also think that its possible that your current concern is part of a bigger issue we all experience when we hit, or are about to hit, 30. Most of us, and I know I did, get to thirty and are confronted with their own mortality and a huge sense of passing of time, with the realization that we are suddenly X amount of the way through our adult life with no turning back. I got to 30 and suddenly thought "What the fu....! THIRTY!? where did that come from????" One minute you are a young adult, late teens or early twenties, planning your future, full of dreams and hopes, whole life ahead of you, a year seems an eternity....seemingly the next minute you hit thirty and it shakes you into realizing how fast life flies by and how much time has passed seemingly in a heartbeat. At 21 years old middle age, loss of fertility, it seems a million years away. Never going to happen! BAM! What seems like the blink of an eye later and you suddenly realize that if your 30s fly past as quick as your 20s middle age will soon be here. Suddenly the things you havent done that you dreamed of seem like a panic to fullfill: the ambitions, the plans, the things others have done and you thought would have been successfully completed by your 30s seem like mega urgent things to do right now. You realize that some of the things you once thought were a certainty are unlike to ever happen. You stop thinking "By such and such an age I will be doing X, Y and Z" and start thinking "I haven't done such and such!" with a realization that you probably never will in some cases. Hitting thirty for a lot of us makes us, for the first time in our lives, start looking back rather than forward to some extent. Its normal, its probably healthy and something that comes to pass. But for childless women hitting 30, although an arbitrary age that hardly takes away their child bearing abilities overnight, it can be hard to come to terms with the realization that one moment you plan to have kids "one day" and seemingly the next minute your worrying you have left it too late.You may feel your partner strung you along but we do spend most of our 20s in a bubble. Still talking about "the future" or "one day" in an arbitrary fashion as if we have all the time in the world because it seems that way. Your partner probably didn't want you to loose valuable time in a relationship with him when he didn't want kids, but he probably felt like most of us do at that age, men especially who don't have the biological clock so much, that it was something to consider more seriously "in the future." Now that future has flown to the present faster than any of us think it will in our 20s. You have Another thing I will add is that when I was a kid in the early 80s most men aged 55 plus wore comb overs, jackets with leather elbow pads and horned rimmed glasses. They didn't wear jeans and didn't shave their heads...55 plus in those days was considered "old". Sounds laughable now doesn't it? The point im making is that these days to be a pregnant at 35 or even 45 is very different from being a mother at that age just a few years back. In the same way nobody batters an eyelid seeing a man of 60 in jeans these days, womens changing roles in society along with modern medical advances and current financial constraints mean that to be pregnant over 30 now is the norm, rather than the exception. Best of luckMark :-)
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female
reader, Euphoria30  +, writes (2 June 2015):
Dear OP,
I am 32 and I know more women that became mothers in their thirties than I know women who became mothers in their twenties. All of the babies are healthy.
Give yourself some time to digest the breakup, calm down, there's no reason to panic.
Be happy that you and your ex had an honest talk and that you have given yourself the chance to start a family sooner than in ten years (which is quite late).
Look, some doctors are just very insensitive. They look at some statistics of a recent study of theirs and they need to get their name in the newspaper. If you panic every time a medical "expert" says something, you'll end up totally paranoid about germs, food, air, age, exercise, cancer and so on.
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female
reader, chigirl +, writes (2 June 2015):
I despise such statements, because they completely leave out the most important part of family planning: that the woman CAN NOT GET PREGNANT ON HER OWN!!!!
"Women who want children should try before they are 30", oh BS. How are women supposed to have children on their own? They can't. This statement is purely for those women are ARE IN STABLE RELATIONSHIPS already and have been putting it off. This statement does NOT APPLY TO SINGLE WOMEN who can not possibly make children on their own, not before or after the age of 30. It's biologically impossible, as this doctor, and all doctors ARE AWARE of, yet fail to highlight when making such statements.
No one is encouraging women who are single to have babies on their own, with a complete stranger from a one night stand as the sperm donor. No matter how close they are pushing 30.
And when all this is said, another point is that this sort of thinking, that women "must" have children before some age or other, ultimately only has one goal: to hold women down in society. Heaven forbid we should actually finish our educations and get a career. No, we should be popping out kids...!
Unless MEN ARE GIVEN THE SAME MESSAGE, then screw these sort of statements. Biologically women can have children way past the age of 30, same as with men. Yes, we only have a certain amount of eggs, but sperm quality also fades. In addition, older dads are NOT more active or capable of handling stress than older moms, so ANY age argument being directly solely on women should make your warning bells go off. The idea that we can't have kids past 30 holds absolutely no ground in reality.
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A
male
reader, CMMP  +, writes (2 June 2015):
Where I live it's more common to have kids in your 30's than in your early 20's.
Fertility does go down and complications do go up, but it's certainly doable, just make sure you're as healthy as you can be.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (2 June 2015): I was 34 with son and 40 with daughter. And I saw loads of older pregnant mothers when I went to the Gyno. Just don't leave it past 35 years old but then did I listen to my own advice?
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A
male
reader, Garbo +, writes (2 June 2015):
 My wife was 33 when we got out first child. She was 35 for the second. We were too busy with our careers.
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female
reader, CindyCares +, writes (2 June 2015):
 Lol ! As Honeypie notes, ... maybe we never got THAT memo here in Italy. AVERAGE age for first childbirth is now around 31.5 , and 25 % or 30% , can't quite remember, of all children are born from mothers over 40.
In our society iT is like this because we are broke, and because we are selfish , and maybe things SHOULD be different, we should be less " spoiled ", and most definitely we should be less broke, as a society : ). But, it is what it is, so,as far as your question is comcerned... come over here and you'll have scores of healthy beautiful "bambini " saying : nyah nyah nyah to your scientist.
Of course, it is undeniable that fertility declines in time, and there's a first noticeable " dip " in fertility after 35 ( not 30 ) and a much more dramatic one after 40 .
But , it's a matter of percentage of course ; if we say that a woman has a ( and I am totally inventing numbers here, I don't know the stats, it's just to explain a concept ) that a woman has a ( let's say ) 97% chance of conceiving in one year of attempts at 28- and a 95 % chance at 31,- that would be true obviously, and obviously as well, 95 is less than 97- but, in the greater scheme of things, it does not really make a huge difference .
Anyway , FWIW, I had my child after 30, my sister both her girls after 35, and ALL my friends and acquaintances ( (but one ) also at 30 and after. Special mention for two ladies I know who got pregnant ( naturally- no assisted procedures ) at 46 and 47.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (2 June 2015): In the UK the average age for a woman to have their FIRST child is 30. That means for every 25 yr old there's a 35 yr old giving birth for the first time.I know the article you mention and what he was trying to get across to women is that they shouldn't put off having children until their late thirties/forties then think it will be easy to get pregnant. In today's celebrity obsessed culture we see numerous female celebrities in their mid 40s claiming to have got pregnant naturally which is probably not true.That leads the general population to imagine that getting pregnant at 45 will be a doddle, which it won't.It is true that a woman's fertility does drop as she ages but I could give you numerous examples of women who've had children in their 30s including both of my grandmothers who were approaching 40 when my parents were born.You did the right thing in leaving your relationship although it must have been a very painful decision but you do have time to meet someone special and have a family of your own.
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female
reader, Honeypie + ♥, writes (2 June 2015):
 Look at Italy. PLENTY of late mom's there. And there is ALWAYS the option to freeze eggs. Which can help you have children in your late 30's, early 40's if so desired.
I had my first at 30 (almost 31) second at 33 and 3rd at 35. All healthy. My second pregnancy was a tough one, with contraction early one and bed-rest, but the other two were a breeze and I breastfed all 3.)
A good friend of mine had a insemination from a donor at 39, because she wanted a child and didn't have a partner. She is happy she did it. Baby is healthy.
But yes, the longer you wait the harder it becomes.
Doesn't mean it becomes impossible. Each woman is different.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (2 June 2015): You want a baby/family etc.-great you identified a need, a burning desire.Now you just need to do something about it! Getting rid of somebody who doesn't want those things with you is a good first step.The next step is to try and find somebody who wants those same things too-with you.I'd start looking, but not put pressure on myself to find "the one" if I were you. Let things happen naturally,organically.But HOW you look is almost as important as WHERE you look.You know there are dating websites out there whereas both partners have already sides have already stated how many children they want and are just looking for somebody to start a family with?Not so popular in the UK, but fairly popular in Scandinavian countries I think? If you like blond men-go on a holiday there?:P
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A
male
reader, SensitiveBloke +, writes (2 June 2015):
 You should be wary of one-off scare stories in the press! Your fertility will start to decline, but many women have children in their 30s, so stop worrying.
Next time you get together with someone, make sure they don't string you along again. Make it clear early on in the relationship what your expectations are so you have the opportunity to part company sooner rather than later.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (2 June 2015): I wondered about this myself because I am 27 and have no resire whatsoever for children now. I would like them oneday but feel I would be too old by then, my mum had me and my sister at 21. Howver at the same time my relative tried for children in her early twenties she had many miscarriages and tried ivf, in the end she was told by the doctor she couldn't have children, so she gave up with it. Years later she randomly got pregnant in her late 30s. Fast forward she is in her early fifties and has 2 teenagers. So I don't think anyone knows enough about the complexity of childbirth to say what is possible or not.
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