[prue~c]

A few weeks ago, I was at a bbq when I got into a rather awkward conversation with a woman I slightly know.

She was having a cuddle with my boys, and said she couldn't wait until she had children. I know she is in either her very late 30s to early 40s, and is in a steady relationship, so I asked her what she was waiting for. "The right time,"� she replied. "I've just got too much stuff I want to do first. It's never too late!"

I just couldn't help myself. Call me rude, tell me it's none of my business, but yes, I told her she was running out of time. Rapidly. If she was so keen on having kids, she needed to start trying, sooner rather than once she had done all of her "stuff"�. Stuff is always there. Fertility is not.

Scrolling through my list of friends on Facebook the other day, it struck me how a good number of these women, many hitting the big 35, were child-free. Many of them are old school friends. I went to a selective school which prized education, career and academic achievement above all else. Every issue, the Old Girls' newsletter is filled with the career stories of past students but the valete never recalls how great a mother the deceased was.

To my great embarrassment, I never even knew how to get pregnant until I actually wanted to. Of course I knew the mechanics of the whole affair, but sex-ed at school focussed on how to avoid pregnancy, with condom on the banana type stuff. Not once was it mentioned that if you wanted kids, you better get cracking before 35. It was all about HSC, uni, then of course post-grad studies, travel, career, meet a partner, buy a house, then a few years later, start thinking about starting a family.

So I look back on the Class of '93 and see a bucketload of over-achievers. Lots of mums - which one expects in a class of almost 200 girls - but also lot of women whose biological clocks are ticking like crazy.

Of course it's perfectly fine to be child-free by choice - some of my best mates are - but what about those who don't choose it. I have a girlfriend who hadn't met the right� guy by her late 30s, so she took matters into her own hands and visited her local fertility clinic. Four miscarriages and ten IVF cycles later, she is the mother of a gorgeous girl, but she never expected it to take five years to get there, just scraping in to motherhood by 45.

Because IVF, that great saviour for the career girls and those who didn't meet Mr Right until later, is lauded as the solution. Only by the time you get to the stage where you need it, it becomes apparent that it's not necessarily the safety net the mass media had promised.

And while recent comments by a prominent obstetrician suggesting older� mothers were selfish, condemning their offspring to a life taking care of geriatric parents were greeted with outrage, I agree with him to an extent. Not that women of a certain age shouldn't be having kids, but that if they want them, and KNOW they want them, they should pull their socks up and get on with the job.

Many years ago, I made a pact with three gay friends that if I hadn't met The Guy by 35, one of them would put his hand down for the job. Given that they now live in Shanghai, San Francisco and Paris, it's lucky my now-husband came along. Would I have been prepared to put in the call had he not arrived? Probably not. To tell you the truth, until I met him, I wasn't even sure I wanted kids, and I definitely didn't want to be a solo mother. But I know there are plenty of women out there who want the child more than they want the relationship and to you, I say go out and investigate your options. And to those who are in relationships and waiting for the 'right time'�, get on with it and stop practising. As one of my best friends once told me (who went the solo route at 27), you'l never regret the children you have, just the ones you don't.

This post has been edited by EBeditor: 14/11/2011, 09:41 PM

[CherryAmes]

You mean it's not infinite - it is finite.

[**Mel**]

I am 38 and struggling to conceive my second child (I thank 'whoever' everyday that I do have one gorgeous daughter already)

I didn't meet DH till I was 32, married at 34, had DD at 35 - I knew my clock was ticking.

Poor DH is 9 years younger than me! LOL

DH's friends' girlfriends/partners/wives are in their 20's and treading the same path I did - career and house first, babies later, much to my chagrin.

My biggest regret in life is that I didn't hit 30 and say "Ok, well Mr Right isn't here yet, let's freeze some eggs"

[prue~c]

Yep CherryAmes. You got there as I was editing on screenon the ipad. . Cue red face.

[Guest_ToddlerTamer_*]

Yes, I agree OP. There is so much in the media about women having babies later in life (especially celebrities), people seem to think it is the norm. After I gave birth to DS at age 36, my OB told me to get straight onto TTCing if we wanted another. DH on the other hand, plus friends and family, kept saying I had lots of time. Even now that I have just turned 42, people are still asking me if we will be trying for our next child soon. We've decided just to have the one, and I sometimes find it easier to joke around and say "I'm too old now". People all say I'm not though.

Then I have a friend who is 41 and still looking for Mr Right (in bars and nightclubs) so that she can get married and then have a baby. I've gently suggested that if she is desperate for a child (which she says she is), she might have to go it on her own, not wait for Mr Right. She said "no, that won't be necessary, I've still got time". Mmmm, ok ....

That's not to say women can't and don't have babies in their early 40's, and that's great if they are happy doing that. I just worry about friends who are in their early 40's and think they have all the time in the world ......

[hollysmama]

I think it's just that we don't realise what we don't have until we have it. I know many married women my age and older that aren't even thinking about children yet and I always think to myself, what are you waiting for? But life is so easy without kids and people always say that you have to make these huge sacrifices when you have them that it gets couples thinking they have to be financially stable and get all their 'stuff' out of the way before they have them. Then when the time does come it's too late. I was one of those people who just wanted to get it out of the way. I met DH at 26, then had my first at 30. I may not have been ready at the time, but I didn't want to leave it any longer and I'm so glad I didn't.

[Likeemunusual]

I've just hit 30 and had the same thought - forget what is or isn't done and just get on with it. So I am in the prep stages of TTC. We will hopefully start trying mid-next year.

[Guest_ToddlerTamer_*]

Also, a colleague at work just had a baby at age 32. She and her husband had been planning to have kids eventually, but this baby was "an accident", she said. She was saying how annoyed she was that she'd fallen pregnant accidentally and had a child so early, as she'd wanted to wait a few years. I told her that I thought 32 was actually a good age to have a baby, but she said it was going to stuff up their plans.

[ubermum]

My husband and I wanted to wait till it was "the right time". When I hit 30, we decided we would just do it. I knew someone with fertility problems and definitely wanted to have two before 35, just in case. The thing is, it's never the right time. Your career can always be further progressed, you can always own more and have more money. Fertility however, cannot be bought, IVF doesn't always work and some people have been struck with menopause at a young age.

To be perfectly honest, if I had my time over, we would have kids in the year after we married. Which for me, would have been 25.

[prue~c]

QUOTE
you'l never regret the children you have, just the ones you don't.
People regret their children every single day.

Stop spouting this bullsh*t.

Just quoting a friend Ferdinand.