When is the best time to have a baby?
For all of us who always thought we would get pregnant at some point, the question is always when is the best time to have a baby? Since I waited till I was 40 years old to try, I feel like marching into colleges across the country and talking to women about the notion of them having it all – it just ain’t so. If you want to have your own child, you cannot wait till you are in your late 30s much like all the actresses in Hollywood that you read about – because your chances greatly diminish after age 35.
I was speaking with someone who is 36 and his wife is 33 and they are thinking of starting to try next year – I nodded my head, yes, don’t wait, I said.
But what about a career? you ask – well there’s that and there’s everything else but what I’m saying is if you know you want to bear children then you have to think within nature’s timeframe, not Hollywood’s or the business world.
In your thirties, contemplating having a child is daunting if you are a) with a partner who doesn’t want a child, b) not with a partner, or c) working on tenure, career, or other major goals that you don’t want to interrupt. But contemplate you must.
When I think back to my early thirties, I wish I would have been more proactive instead of believing I had time remaining. And while I did take action at 40 and did get pregnant numerous times and did lose all those pregnancies, I do believe that right now at 49 is the perfect time because I am with someone who shares the same vision of having a family I do.
So maybe there is no right time, maybe like T wrote in her letter, we are always and never prepared for major events in our life, and maybe one day when we wake up and we’re mothers, all that has gone before will seem perfectly orchestrated.