Best age and time for TTC

luckya23 · March 2015

I'm already 33, and still don't feel at all ready! I suppose we need to decide soonish, because I already feel old physically.

thisismynickname2 · March 2015

I don't think there is a best time. Every couple should decide for themselves.

What is not cool, and I'm not saying anyone here has done it, is to judge others' choices. I've seen that in real life, comments like, "Well, you're 31, you need to get on it." Um... no.

ashley8918 · March 2015

Well, I was 17 when i got pregnant with my first, so i didn't really get a chance to think about "the right age".

But for me, it's more about where I want to be in my career/life than my age. H and I plan to have one more child, and we will start TTC when he is finished with school, we own a house, and I am at a point in my career where I am interested in holding a particular position for longer than a year (Management in my case).

redheadbride15 · March 2015

chloe97 said:
I think that there is a lot of misinformation about the risks associated with having children after 35. This article really explains well what doctors know and what they do not know know about having children later in life.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-long-can-you-wait-to-have-a-baby/309374/

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.

THIS is a really important point. All women over age 30 who may want to start a family should read this article because it's an enormous relief after hearing for so long that TTC after 35 is a terrible idea. As I've heard it explained, the only reason why people use 35 as a "cut-off" is because it's the age at which the risk of having a kid with a chromosome abnormality is greater than the risks associated with the screening tests for chromosome abnormalities (namely, amniocentesis) - this is why they recommend the screening for women over 35. But this risk is still extremely low. Bottom line is everyone should keep an open mind and go talk to their doctor to hear the numbers before they jump to conclusions about how old is too old.

charcoalandblush · March 2015

If you had asked me when I was 18, I would have told you that I'd have my first kid at 22 or 23.

At 22, I would have told you 25 or 26.

Now, at 25 (turning 26 next month), I'm thinking 35 is sounding like a pretty good time to have my first kid.

I thought that once I had a stable job and income, a nicer place to live, was in a stable relationship, etc. that parenthood would be less scary. It's not, at all. It's actually way MORE scary because I have all of those things and STILL feel like I don't have my shit together. I feel like FI and I are barely able to take care of ourselves/each other at this point. I get home, cook dinner, do laundry, tidy the apartment, catch up on work, watch one TV episode, and I'm completely dead by 9:30pm. I can't imagine adding a crying baby to that mix. Also, my student loan payments are so crushing there's no WAY I'll be able to afford a kid until they're done.

I'm really sad that I'll be an older parent. DF's parents were older when they had him (I think 37 and 40) and there was just so much they couldn't do as far as being physically active with their kids, that kind of thing. And if we wait as long as I expect to to have kids, they probably won't live to see their grandkids hit high school. I thought when I was younger that it would be so great to be a young mom, keep up with my kids, and be an empty nester and really enjoy my 50s (when I would actually have the time and money to do the things I want to do). I still wish that was the case, but I just wasn't in a position at 22 financially, mentally/emotionally, or relationship-wise to do that. And I honestly don't think I will be for a long, long time.

Blergbot · March 2015

I always thought late 20s would be ideal, but I didn't meet H until I was 31, and I doubt I personally would have been ready in my late 20s.

My parents had me "later" for the early 80s, but now 33 (my dad) and 35 (my mom) seems totally normal today (my mom had her first, my brother, at 30). I feel like, if anything, I had advantages in having older parents. They were more financially stable, for example.

I just had my first at 33, and IF we have another, I'm guessing we would wait 3 years (I plan on getting an IUD that lasts for 3 years, and that seems like a good gap between kids). So I'd be 36. Technically that's a "geriatric" pregnancy, but I've been told to ignore the labels.

Waiting until my 30s worked for me, but it's not for everyone. Good luck in whatever you decide!

LabLove86 · March 2015

While I think the 'best time' to have kids in a relationship is when both partners agree it's the right time.

For Fi and I - we both know we want kids. I would really like to be done having kids by 35 - not only for the heath reasons and non-health reasons listed above but mostly because I want to be young enough when they're grown up to enjoy them as adults, to enjoy my retirement, and if my possible future kids have kids of their own I would like to be a young enough grandmother to enjoy them.

By the time we get married in a year and a half, I will be almost 31 and Fi will be 33. Fi wants to have a year or 2 married before we start TTC. I would like to be pregnant by the time we have our first anniversary. We have loosely talked about "not trying but not preventing" for the first year THEN actively TTC if not by then. We will see - all of this is 2-3 years away so in the mean time life could happen.

STARMOON44 · March 2015

I think there's no such thing as a best time. And that imagining you can a) identify such a time and b) actually stick with that timeline is laughably naive.

WinstonsGirl · March 2015

I've never really had a good time since I've wanted kids less and less as I get older. I'm 35, DH is 44 and he has said for sure that he doesn't want to be having kids at 50 (he's on the fence so doesn't mind not having kids). I finally did the math and realized that he would be retiring when the kid was still in high school and that sold it for me.

Personally, too late is if you want to retire and the kid is still in school (not Uni) cos then you're still stuck with them and possibly can't travel as much as I'd want to if you don't trust your kid home alone for weeks/months on end

rcher912 · March 2015

I love everyone's responses in this thread. It's refreshing to hear such candor and yet no judgment, either.

I also think that culture and region play a big role in when women/couples feel like they're "ready". Higher cost of living area = maybe you end up waiting a little longer because you don't feel so secure. Utah and places with tons and tons of kids around, maybe you feel more comfortable a little earlier.

But I definitely think that financial stability is #1 for me. I'm ready when my career and finances are stable enough that I can take the time to focus on my family and hopefully send my kid to private school...

I'm 27, I'll be 28 when I get married and that is no time soon, lol.

manateehugger · March 2015

Stability in general is our biggest issue too. Financially, we're fine, but we do live in separate states at the moment (not exactly conducive to TTC/baby raising). Basically, H needs to get out of the army before we visit the issue. So late twenties, early thirties for us.

beethery · March 2015

The best time for me to TTC is when I don't have to ask anyone if they think it's a good idea or not.

teddygirl9 · March 2015

I'd always pictured 27 as the perfect age. I'm now 25, NEY and not getting married for ~2 years according to SO, which puts me right at 27. I'd also want to enjoy being married and whatnot for a bit at first, which push it to 29 or 30. I don't think that's SO bad anymore. I used to be like 'omg 30 and just having a baby, no way!' but it's seeming more and more ideal. I'd also like to be done by 35, but ideally sooner than that.

ashley8918 · March 2015

teddygirl9 said:
I'd always pictured 27 as the perfect age. I'm now 25, NEY and not getting married for ~2 years according to SO, which puts me right at 27. I'd also want to enjoy being married and whatnot for a bit at first, which push it to 29 or 30. I don't think that's SO bad anymore. I used to be like 'omg 30 and just having a baby, no way!' but it's seeming more and more ideal. I'd also like to be done by 35, but ideally sooner than that.

When was having a baby at 29 or 30 ever bad?

teddygirl9 · March 2015

ashley8918 said:

teddygirl9 said:
I'd always pictured 27 as the perfect age. I'm now 25, NEY and not getting married for ~2 years according to SO, which puts me right at 27. I'd also want to enjoy being married and whatnot for a bit at first, which push it to 29 or 30. I don't think that's SO bad anymore. I used to be like 'omg 30 and just having a baby, no way!' but it's seeming more and more ideal. I'd also like to be done by 35, but ideally sooner than that.
When was having a baby at 29 or 30 ever bad?

If you read the sentence I wrote after, you'd see I was pretty adverse to it.

ashley8918 · March 2015

teddygirl9 said:

ashley8918 said:

teddygirl9 said:
I'd always pictured 27 as the perfect age. I'm now 25, NEY and not getting married for ~2 years according to SO, which puts me right at 27. I'd also want to enjoy being married and whatnot for a bit at first, which push it to 29 or 30. I don't think that's SO bad anymore. I used to be like 'omg 30 and just having a baby, no way!' but it's seeming more and more ideal. I'd also like to be done by 35, but ideally sooner than that.
When was having a baby at 29 or 30 ever bad?
If you read the sentence I wrote after, you'd see I was pretty adverse to it.

Yes, obviously I just can't read.\

teddygirl9 · March 2015

If that's not the issue, then I'm confused as to your question. It was 'so bad' when I was younger. Now it's not. Cool.

FiancB · March 2015

Ugh, I'm torn. My parents had me when they were in their 40s. I would really prefer to be a younger parent.

At one point I said I wanted to be pregnant at 25. Well, I'm going to be 28 this week. I would really like to TTC really soon but I am not even close to having an established career. Considering getting pregnant while in school, which isn't ideal, but I'm not so sure doing it in the middle of a career search or in a budding career is much better. And being at least a year from finishing school and about a year after that to become competent, well I only want to wait so long.

Plus between career and kids, kids come first for me. I'd rather screw myself out of time in a career than time with my figurative kids. But I don't want to completely screw finances over, either. Ughh. IDK I think if I hit 35 and am still childless then we will just go for it. We think we want more than one, so that's another factor.

luckya23 · March 2015

teddygirl9 said:
If that's not the issue, then I'm confused as to your question. It was 'so bad' when I was younger. Now it's not. Cool.

Well back then 30 was unimaginably old!

princessbuttercup09 · March 2015

FI and I go back and forth a bit. We're 24 now and will be 26 when we get married. Originally we planned to wait for 6 months or so before TTC but now we're leaning towards trying right away. I teach and it would be great to have a baby in the summer when I have more free time. We're both a little baby crazy anyway.. Haha. We're just ready to have our own littles running around.

hellosweetie1015 · March 2015

Well. My mom, when I was born, was almost 31. My dad was 34. When my baby sister was born, she was 40 and he was 43.

I don't think there's an ideal timeline that works for everyone. I'd like to have one before 30, but if it doesn't happen then I'll be fine. My sister is as normal as can be expected given my parents and her siblings, and I'll likely have amniocentesis or something anyway since my grandmother (dad's mom) had two daughters with some serious chromosomal anomalies - neither of them lived, and I think at least one of them was stillborn.

What I'm most concerned with is how ready we will be. I don't see us being anywhere near ready by 30, frankly. 27 (which is how old we will both be on our wedding day) is not so very far from 30, in my mind, and at 26 I feel like I'm not even capable of caring for myself. I want to be stable as an individual myself, I want FI to be stable as an individual himself, and for us to be stable as a couple, before we TTC. I want to be sure I/FI could take care of our kid(s) if the unthinkable happened and left one of us a single parent.

teddygirl9 · March 2015

luckya23 said:

teddygirl9 said:
If that's not the issue, then I'm confused as to your question. It was 'so bad' when I was younger. Now it's not. Cool.

Well back then 30 was unimaginably old!

It still is! But yeah, that was when I was like 18. And had everything figured out, obv.

julieanne912 · March 2015

I turn 33 in May, getting married in September. We'll probably start TTC in December or so... my work is very busy through the summer, and I'd like to take a couple months off after having said hypothetical baby, and I'd hate to do it during our busiest time. I also only plan on having one kid.

Up until the time I was 28 or so, I didn't even want kids in any way shape or form. I don't know what changed my mind but I'm excited about my one hypothetical child

mrscomposer · March 2015

I was one of those ones who wanted to be married and barefoot & pregnant at 20... but didn't get married until I was 30. So there went that - and my desire to have kids, really. We're not planning on having kids, but at the same time, both of us still throw out the occasional 'if we DID have kids, we'd....'

We're in the camp of not planning to have kids, but if my BC fails (highly unlikely, as I'm as close to perfect use as possible), we'd likely plan for a sibling.

As to timing? I have 18 months left in this career, then I'm going back to school full time for two years. Then J is going back to school full time for a year. Moneywise, we'd need to wait until after that in order to build up our nest egg again - which puts me at 35+. And that already makes me tired. I would have wanted to be a younger mom, just for the energy.

redwoodoriginal · March 2015

I used to think I'd be having kids when i was in my mid to late 20s, but it was more thinking along the lines of "well by then i'll be married, have a solid career, financial stability, a house, etc...." .... Then I grew up, LOL.

No, for me it's less about age - my mom had me when she was 38, my dad was 45 and i'm perfect ;-) . I never felt that older parents with little kids was a hardship. I have friends in their 20s that had kids with genetic abnormalities. I work in the NICU and half our patient population consists of babies to teen moms with disorders and born super early, and moms in their 40s with perfectly normal kids, so I no longer see age as the issue to be super worried about. Will i worry more if I have a kid at 40 vs 32? maybe a little bit, but being a NICU nurse I know i'm going to be paranoid regardless (haha) so I just take it all with a grain of salt.

For me, it's more about a time of when you are in a better financial situation (having a job, having SAVINGS in case something happens to that job), being with a partner you feel will pull their equal weight (aka, for me, not considering watching the baby to be "babysitting" - it's not babysitting when its YOUR kid!!!), being finished with grad school, and in a stable, secure job (again, with savings in case the job flops), and being at a point where you and your SO can have a decent amount of leave from work to care for said child in the first few months. That, to me, is more important than an arbitrary age to start or be done having kids. So, our TTC plan is in one year, we'll be 29, but if it doesn't work, we'll put things on hold for another year or two b/c of work/life and then we'll start trying again when I'm like 31/32. I'm not even concerned, I'm more just gonna be bummed b/c my ovaries are like LETS DO THIS and im like shhhh... we need a year to get to a place where I think we'll be "ready" for a baby.

Besides, you never know, you could say you are done having kids and then WHAM! hello little one! We had a mom last week who was in 40s, had two teens like 16,18, had her tubes tied, and ended up pregnant 16 years later. So, you never know!

porkchops926 · March 2015

I agree with a lot of people here that I'd prefer to be a younger parent and enjoy my 50s. Unfortunately, life doesn't always work with your own personal timelines. FI and I didn't start dating until we were 28. We will have just turned 34 when we get married. A lot of figuring out life and becoming stable was involved before we were ready to be engaged. Sure, I really wanted to be married by the time I was 27, but that didn't happen, and frankly, I still have days where I feel like "omg am I really getting married? But I still feel like a kid!"

So, unless we start TTC the night of the wedding, I'm guaranteed to have a kid (if we have one) after 35. And even though that freaks me out a lot, it's just the way it is. Personally, my mother had me at 40 in the early 80s after years of trying and then giving up. And you know what? I didn't notice that my parents "didn't keep up with me" Sure, it was obvious that they were older than other people's parents my age, but they were 10 times more awesome because they had been around the block per se, and were more even tempered, less obsessive, and more understanding than my friends' parents.

I think that there's risks and benefits for whatever age you have kids. It's hard to not beat myself up and be so worried that I'm older and my timeline is shot, but I'm coming around to realizing that it might not be such a terrible thing, maybe better in some ways. It all depends how you look at it.

chloe97 · March 2015

porkchops926 said:
I agree with a lot of people here that I'd prefer to be a younger parent and enjoy my 50s. Unfortunately, life doesn't always work with your own personal timelines. FI and I didn't start dating until we were 28. We will have just turned 34 when we get married. A lot of figuring out life and becoming stable was involved before we were ready to be engaged. Sure, I really wanted to be married by the time I was 27, but that didn't happen, and frankly, I still have days where I feel like "omg am I really getting married? But I still feel like a kid!"

THIS ^^^^^

FI and I met when I was 33 and are getting married when I am 36. My good friend met her husband when she was 38, got married at 39 and are now trying to get pregnant at 40. Though it sucks that we don't get to enjoy married life without TTC and yeah our risks will be a bit higher as older moms, I thoroughly got to enjoy my 20s and early 30s and a free person and I feel comfortable that when we do have kids that we will be able to financially support them.

Many of my friends who got married and had kids in their 20's used to come visit me and tell me about how much they envied my freedom and ability to do what I wanted when I wanted. At the time, I wanted to be them- at the time I was so desperately afraid of ending up alone and childless. Now, I thank god for those years because I learned a lot about myself and a lot about life that I look forward to sharing with my kids. And for those who worry about being an old parent- think of it this way- having kids later in life keeps you young. It's all in the state of mind!

emmaaa · March 2015

I love hearing everyone's thought process (or lack thereof even) when it comes to having children or deciding that children aren't the best for them.

DH and I are still young (24) so obviously our "timeline" could and most likely will change. I think it is important to be flexible as to when you want to start a family because, Lord knows, once you have kids you have to be flexible on a lot of things.

I think the best advice I ever heard was: "If you keep waiting for the perfect time and circumstance to start having kids, then you never will. There isn't a "perfect" time but when the time comes, it's perfect"

levioosa · March 2015

I don't judge other people's timelines, but I do wish I had gotten my act together a little earlier in life for my own kid timeline. I'll probably be in my 30's when I have kids, which is fine, but I do wish I could have had them in my 20s instead. I just prioritized my health, education, travel, and independence instead, which was what needed to happen for me. I know I'm still in a more selfish phase of life, and bringing a child into it right now (school aside) would be much more difficult than it needs to be. So we'll wait.

kvruns · March 2015

southernbelle0915 said:

Maggie0829 said:

Oh yea, and this too. (I don't think it sounds horrible.)

I know a lot of adults pushing back retirement because they had kids later in life and simply can't afford to retire because kid-related-expenses/reasons. It sucks, but that's their reality. I do not want that for my own life.

I want the kid out of the nest and off our payroll by the time they're done with college. We plan to pay for college and related expenses with the understanding that their responsibility in the deal is to be self-supporting afterwards

I keep telling my FI this but he doesn't get it. I'm 32, he's 39, so if it's gonna happen it needs to happen soon and he's still going to be an old dad. He keeps saying he wants to retire at 55 or something and I'm like you realize that's not going to happen if there is a kid in the picture because that kid will be somewhere around HS age and unless we win the lottery that won't be happening.

For me, sometimes I wish I'd gotten married younger and had kids in my late 20s so that I could have them out of college and still be youngish and travel or whatever. Not that you can't travel when you're older, and there's no guarantee of healthy even at 50, but you know what I mean. FI's dad and stepmom travel a lot and are 65-70 although I know they can't do as much as they'd like because of pain/tiredness/etc but I know that is the reality for us.

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