What age is your personal cut off on having kids?

[Anonymous]

I haven’t read every reply so it’s possible I missed it, but for all those saying 35-36 because after that you’re AMA, have you read this Atlantic article? The data used to determine AMA status is wildly outdated.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-long-can-you-wait-to-have-a-baby/309374/

That said, I’m 36 and while I’d love another, I’m too risk averse (and pregnancy averse!) to try now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t read every reply so it’s possible I missed it, but for all those saying 35-36 because after that you’re AMA, have you read this Atlantic article? The data used to determine AMA status is wildly outdated.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-long-can-you-wait-to-have-a-baby/309374/

That said, I’m 36 and while I’d love another, I’m too risk averse (and pregnancy averse!) to try now.

Not from the article. Just listened to my OB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wanted to be finished by the time I was 30.And I was. I just wanted to get it done and out of the way.

Np I don't get this attitude at all. To me, having something done and "out of the way" is something you talk about that is an unpleasant experience, like taking a greyhound bus across country or a root canal, not having children.

Not the PP but I felt the same way. For me pregnancy was extremely unpleasant. Vomited daily including the day I gave birth to my daughter. So yeah, it was like a root canal. Love my children though!

But did you feel this way before even having the first kid? I understand if you got really sick with the first one but wanting one more kid. I do not understand this attitude when u have no previous personal experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just had my 3rd at 35 and it was so much harder of a pregnancy than my 1st at 29 and my 2nd at 32. No additional risks or problems and everything was normal, resulting in a healthy baby, but I was so sick for the first half of my pregnancy and so dead tired for the second half. It was just overall very hard and I was miserable in a way that I was not with my first two! So I’m 100% done. And would be done even if it was my 2nd kid. If I was having my first at 35 maybe I would try to get pregnant again but not push past about 37 at delivery.

Dp. Probably also harder because you had two kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wanted to be finished by the time I was 30.And I was. I just wanted to get it done and out of the way.

Np I don't get this attitude at all. To me, having something done and "out of the way" is something you talk about that is an unpleasant experience, like taking a greyhound bus across country or a root canal, not having children.

Not the PP but I felt the same way. For me pregnancy was extremely unpleasant. Vomited daily including the day I gave birth to my daughter. So yeah, it was like a root canal. Love my children though!

But did you feel this way before even having the first kid? I understand if you got really sick with the first one but wanting one more kid. I do not understand this attitude when u have no previous personal experience.

DP I don’t have kids and feel this way. I don’t get being excited about the physical reality of pregnancy. Makes me understand why Christians think women have been cursed by God... because the burden of pregnancy is a big one!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People are ignoring that the 1/19 statistic is at age 45 when most women can’t get pregnant with their own eggs anyway. There is not a sharp increase in risk at age 35. It’s a gradual increase over the years.

Exactly, and this was my point. For older women, the biggest issue is even getting and staying pregnant, it is not birth defects. And even on the subject of birth defects, age isn’t the only factor. If 95% chance of success isn’t high enough , then is 97%? 99%? 99.5%? Why is a couple of percentage points a deal breaker? Even young, healthy women have children with birth defects, so there’s always a risk. And having a birth defect already puts an offspring at higher risk too - should a deaf person not risk having children? What about a blind person? Surely being deaf or blind affects a child “for a lifetime”?

I am not arguing that birth defects don’t matter and women should “go ahead and risk it!” I’m saying the risks, overall, while higher, are not statistically significant. Most pregnancies in older women end in miscarriage, often very early on, because nature takes care of all those defects on its own the majority of the time.

[Anonymous]

Some of us set the cutoff where we did to avoid higher risks of miscarriage AND birth defects.

[Anonymous]

I'm 31 and have 3. My first one at 24, second at 29 and third at 30. I am done. After being pregnant back to back, I couldn't imagine putting my body through that again.

[Anonymous]

45 - 50 if adopting a school age child.

[Anonymous]

I had my third and last at 33. I’m happy with that, but I started in my twenties. If I had started later and wanted 3 children, I probably would have been fine going up to late thirties.

[Anonymous]

People need to learn the difference between relative risk and absolute risk.

The relative risk of downs and birth defects does increase with age, and the rate increases quite a bit as you get over 40.

BUT-as others have pointed out-the absolute risk stays super low.

All that being said, for me my last pregnancy at 34 with a toddler was pretty horrible. I think I’m done. And unless you’re rich, I’m not sure it’s the best decision to be having kids after 40. But I recognize I have no business really having an opinion on this.

[Anonymous]

To twist the question - what age is your husband's cutoff (especially if you have an older husband). Is his by 40 too or is 50 ok? What about above 50?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To twist the question - what age is your husband's cutoff (especially if you have an older husband). Is his by 40 too or is 50 ok? What about above 50?

DH is 5 years older and feels too old now at 42. We started having kids when I was 30 and he was almost 35 and have the youngest kids from his group of college friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To twist the question - what age is your husband's cutoff (especially if you have an older husband). Is his by 40 too or is 50 ok? What about above 50?

My Husbands cut off was my cut off because I was the one carrying the child. I am also older then him so that was a factor.

Different people have different risk thresholds. What seems to me like a perfectly reasonable risk, a 5% chance of having a child with Downs when I was 40, strikes someone else as far more risky.

Just because I was more risk acceptant does not mean that someone else's concerns are not valid.

My OBGYN let me know that I was considered a high risk pregnancy because of my age but she also explained that was the only reason. My personal health history was not problematic and there was no reason to believe that I was going to have problems during my pregnancy. Because of my AMA, I was able to see my doctor more regularly and she was looking for early indications of possible issues.

We ended up with one child because I did not get pregnant a second time and we did not want to risk a multiple child birth by having fertility treatments. And then we finally started getting enough sleep (DS was an awful sleeper) and the idea of reliving the sleep deprivation with another new born was abhorrent. So we stopped trying when I was 42.

But that cut off is going to be different for different people for a wide variety of reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:37

Had my first at 30 and second at 32. Considering a third at 35 if all goes as planned. But if doesn’t work out for some reason I’m ready to just be grateful for my life and move on.

But this is more due to spacing purposes than my age. I don’t want to be hanging on to baby gear and continuing to mommy track myself at work for years to come, or end up being in the baby stage and older kid stage at once. I’m ready to get past the crappy sleep and diaper stage for good!

Same, had mine at 30 and 32. I'm now 35 and I was planning on the final one this year, but we were not in a place where that was a good idea. If that changes soon, I'll seriously consider it, but otherwise I'm done. They're 3 and 5 now, life with them is pretty easy, I don't want to be in the baby stage again at 40.