Amen!This is me. No shame
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A friend of mine was trying for six years before she had an IVF baby. If its a real concern you can freeze your eggs. I was 23 when I had my first and I didn't get pregnant straight away.
I think for most people on this thread, not getting pregnant/someone pregnant is the end-game so fertility isn't really a priority. It's certainly a worry for single friends of mine in the 35-40 bracket.
A lot of women have been sold a bit of a myth with that. Freezing your eggs is no guarantee and the success rate is still pretty low. IVF too. If you’re that keen to have a child, the younger the better really I’m afraid!
See I'm in that age bracket and I feel more relieved that there's only a few more years to go before I need to stop worrying about unintentionally getting pregnant than worrying that I'm running out of time or it getting more difficult!
It's super variable and difficult to know. I've got friends in their early-mid twenties who've had to resort to IVF, but my grandmother had her only child at 41 in the 1960s. We know so little about fertitlity tbh compared to some other areas of medicine, it's something that we want to be in full control of but a huge element of it is just a lottery.
I wonder how much of fertility is luck and how much may be down to genes? My grandmother was 36 when she got married in the 1940s (absolutely ancient back then) and got pregnant straight away. She had her first child 10 months after getting married. This was 1944. She then had another in 1945, 1947, 1948 and finally her last in 1950 when she was 43.
A friend of mine had a baby last year at 42. Her partner is 52. First child for both of them. They're only together about 3 years, but she got pregnant in the second month of trying.
It’s very much to do with biological compatibility and timing. And despite evidence to the contrary, conception is actually a bit of a lottery. I agree that you just never know and you can struggle young as well as older. but that’s why they say younger I guess, because you have more options if you struggle earlier. With the high rate of known miscarriages (1 in 8 I think), and growing with age, I honestly believe if you really want kids you shouldn’t wait until it’s statistically a lot harder.
The rate of miscarriage is much higher than that - 1 in 4. Amongst my friends I know of at least 3 of us that had one.
I never felt like I would be missing something or that it would be too late because I was a babysitter when I was a teenager and it sealed my conviction to not have kids.
However if you want kids and can't carry them (getting pregnant) there are loads of options : IVF, adoption, sperm donors, volunteering. Otherwise you can date a single father too.
However if you want kids and can't carry them (getting pregnant) there are loads of options : IVF, adoption, sperm donors, volunteering. Otherwise you can date a single father too.
I definitely think working with kids has made my decision for me. In my last job I worked in a creche looking after kids for 2 hours at a time. Then I became a childminder and got to experience what it's like being cooped up in the house with kids on a rainy day, hearing them bicker and realising that most of the time, it's actually a bit boring. Don't get me wrong, I love the kids I look after, and I love to see them grow and develop, but I've helped to bring up more than 50 of them now and been through the terrible twos and potty training with most of them, and I think the magic of it all is gone!
See this is a sensible approach. I think the biggest issue (most) women have is that they don’t feel complete unless they have a baby themselves. I still maintain that if you are a truly maternal, loving women you should be able to be just as fulfilled with an adopted child. To me, that’s far more noble than bringing yet another child into the world.
The thing is, none of those are ‘easy’ options. I always feel a bit uncomfortable when people say ‘well you can have IVF or adopt if you change your mind later on’, as if either of those is as simple as nipping to the supermarket and picking what you want. IVF has fairly low success rates and involves (for the woman, at any rate) taking drugs that can really mess you up. There are very few babies available to adopt, there are age limits and restrictions if you have certain illnesses in your family (like Huntington’s, for example) and the reality of adoption is that you’ll probably be taking on an older child with significant issues in their past that may very well affect their present and future. And dating a divorced/single dad comes with a whole host of problems and it sure as hell isn’t easy to end up in the role of wicked stepmother.
I suppose what I don’t like is that saying things like this plays into the rhetoric that women can’t be trusted to know their own minds and make a decision that kids aren’t for them, and what society needs to feel comfortablewith women choosing not to have kids is this list of possible ’solutions’ to our ‘problem’ of childlessness. ‘No’ is a complete answer to the question about kids!
Why babies though? There are lots of children that need adopting. And there is fostering too. At the end of the day if having your own biological kids aren’t an option then what else can you do? And then non of these are an option then perhaps it’s just not meant to be. Sorry, I realise that’s controversial but you do have to wonder! Sometimes you have to make peace with reality.
The point I was trying to make is that ‘most’ people who want to adopt, go into the process wanting to adopt a baby rather than an older child, and that’s just not the reality of adoption. Kids don’t get removed from happy, caring and stable homes. The process to remove a child can take years and a child who has lived with that kind of neglect for a few years is likely to be challenging to care for, and may come with a whole host of issues that someone who wants to be a parent may not be prepared for.
There’s a big difference though between someone who is childfree by choice and someone who cannot have children. I feel terribly sorry for anyone in that position as it must be heartbreaking, but it’s not the same issue as someone who has chosen not to have kids and who has to put up with being told ‘oh well, you can change your mind later on because there’s all of these options’. It’s not a phase or a rebellious period - for most women it’s a considered decision and that should be respected.
I’m childless, but not by choice. I am 39, chronically single and so am pretty much resigned to the fact that realistically, motherhood isn’t going to happen for me. It’s the only career I’ve ever wanted, since I was about 9, so it’s really hard seeing friends and family have babies ( my sister and two of my cousins have all procreated at least once and my other two siblings don’t seem to want children). I have babysat since I was 12 and have worked with children ( nanny, after school care provider, doing homework help and English lessons, tutoring, working in a crèche to teach under 3’s English) since I graduated. In my mid 20’s I was massively broody, and used to cry about it a lot. However, I cannot afford to have a child, and my heart is full of love for the children I teach/nanny and my niece, nephew and my cousin’s offspring. I think I would find it much harder if I were in a relationship and we were trying unsuccessfully to procreate, so this is definitely a better position to be in. Who knows, I may meet someone soon ( my brother is getting married this coming weekend) and it’ll all work out for me somewhat how I’d planned!
A woman at work was off yesterday because her child was sick. Today she has a midwife appointment for the second and she only works 3 days anyway, so why she can’t make appointments on the two days she doesn’t work! Anyway, they asked me to pick up the slack. I said no. Firstly that’s not what I do and secondly if her workload is 5 days worth per week, they need to find someone who can do 5 days! I’m not very popular but I’m not a dogs body. I’m highly educated and have 13 years experience and expertise and as they pay me a substantial daily rate, you’d think they actually want me to do what I’m qualified to do!
I’m completely with you on this. It used to happen all the time where I worked - everyone requested part time hours when they came back after having children, always granted by HR despite our department continually explaining that our job didn’t work as a part time role even with job share. It was a shambles. Deadlines constantly being missed, full timers being expected to pick up the slack (in unpaid overtime), while the part time staff stuck ridgedly to their contacted hours. It all lead to an undercurrent of bad feeling and an unspoken divide between staff, which was unfortunate, and not really the staff’s fault - it was down to weak HR management who weren’t prepared to properly handle requests for part time working. I’m not saying they should have necessarily declined the requests, although they don’t have to blanket agree to all of them, but they could perhaps have offered alternative part time roles in more suitable areas / departments.
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