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Chit Chat
Best age and time for TTC
ETA; Spin-off from the TTC at 42 thread. Thought it would be interesting to hear everyone's thoughts and experiences.
When a couple decides to start TTC is something that is very personal to them that they normally have put a lot of thought into. The "best" time or age that a couple starts TTC is very subjective to each person's situation.
With that being said, when do you think the best time is for TTC and at what age?
For DH and I, we want to start TTC in January 2016. By that time we will have been married a year, 25 years old, both in full time jobs (Lord willing), and in a considerably stable housing situation. I really want to have our first child when I'm 26 and be done having kids in my early 30's. I know things happen so, of course, that could change.
What about you? When will you start TTC (or when did you start if you already are or have kids)?
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Re: Best age and time for TTC
FI is definitely ready to start TTC as soon as we are married as he feels his window of being a 'young dad' is running out. haha. (Cuz we are sooooo old).
We have some important life things that I would like to get sorted out before we start TTC, mainly moving back closer to our families as well as living in a city that has better health care.
Alas, FI wants me to have a baby and I'm not sure what the ideal time is. I'm 26 now, and ideally I would want 4-5 years of just us time before we start TTC, but I also want to have it over with before I'm 30, so I'm not sure when we'll start TTC.
SO and I have always talked about having kids around 28, ideally done by 30. But now we've both decided we want PhDs which we probably won't be finished with until we are 30. We haven't discussed in detail how that will change our plan. At this point we are thinking it won't but it's so impossible at this point to know what our lives will be like in 3-4 years. Hell we aren't even sure what state we'll be living in.
I don't have the words to express how much I want a baby.
Should I have started earlier? Perhaps. But I didn't want to be a single parent (not that I have anything against them) and I hadn't met the right person. DH and I knew that we wanted a baby together pretty quickly but didn't start trying until after we were engaged.
My ob/gyn always told me that I needed to start TTC by 36. We did that. We know that we have fertility issues that make a pregnancy unlikely. We don't know how long we'll spend trying or how much money we'll invest in the process. It's a tricky subject. We would have more options if we had started earlier.
Do I love the idea of having a kid at home when I retire. No. But that's not enough of a reason for me to give up the dream.
I guess DH and I aren't huge travelers and don't have the itch to go to too many places at this point in our lives for that to be a deciding factor. Now, if we had the desire that we absolutely had to see Italy before we had kids, that would change things.
Well. Sort of. The amount of frozen drinks I'm having today isn't healthy, but damn my throat feels better.
This is so true. I don't want kids at all, so I have no perspective on the topic, but all of my friends wanted to have their first by 30, done by 35 back when we were younger.
Now we're all 33-36, and they all just started trying in the past year. Everyone had different reasons, but it's interesting how many people pushed back their timelines.
The long of the short of it is you probably have just as good of a shot of getting pregnant between 35 and 39 as you did before 35, but there really is no good way to know for sure. Sure the risk of chromosomal abnormalities increases with age, but they are still quite small. I personally had friends with babies with chromosomal abnormalities at age 28 and 29 respectively, so don't feel that your age protects you from such things. Wait and have children when you and you partner are ready- don't feel like you need to rush because of some clicking biological clock.