Photo by Stephanie Himel-Nelson
I’m 37 years old and trying to have a baby. Thirty-seven doesn’t seem old to me, but apparently you can’t trust the eggs of anyone over 35. Timothy Leary would approve!
When I was in high school, I remember thinking that 30 sounded so old. I figured my life would be over by then, so it seemed like a good time to have children. When I met and married my husband at 22 (an age that seems insanely young to me now) we both agreed that 30 sounded like a good time to expand the family, but we had plans first. We had plenty of time!
So there was graduate school and a move across the country, law school for me and lot of carefree childless traveling. Then my career was oh-so important. I couldn’t possibly have children until I had settled in at a firm and established myself. Then we had to buy a house and save more money. You get the idea. There was always something else we had to do to make sure the time was right. We had plenty of time!
When my husband and I were first talking about trying to have a baby, a co-worker in the office shared a chart he and his wife had reviewed, showing a dramatic decline in fertility after age 35. It didn’t scare me. I just laughed it off. I mean, we hear about people like Celine Dion having babies in their 40′s regularly. We had plenty of time!
Or maybe not.
You see, we may notice the headlines about Celine’s pregnancy with twins at 44, but do we read the article that mentions it took 6 cycles of IVF to get there? Not always. Luckily, we managed to pop out two kids in my early 30′s, despite all the unexpected problems we had. But now, we’ve been trying for baby number 3 for more than a year now and I can’t help but wonder if all of this would have been easier if we’d had children in our 20′s instead of waiting for everything to be perfect. Are we risking our chance to have families if we wait? I think we do women a disservice by not talking about the realities of fertility after 30, 35 or 40 more often.
How about you? If you’d known earlier in life that you would have fertility problems, would you have started earlier?
2 Comments
I’m 25 yrs old and we are currently trying to get pregnant with baby #3. All I had to do is just look at my husband and we were pregnant. It’s been more than a year and we cannot conceive no matter what we do. I don’t think it always has to do with age.
Oh you’re right, Michelle. It doesn’t. But for those of us over 35, it often does. (-; Good luck to you! I know how frustrating it can be when you *know* you can have babies but it’s just not happening.