Is 33 a good age to have a first baby?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think anyone should have a kid before 35 even with IF being a risk. Go read the thread on general parenting from the 31yr old with two kids who feels trapped in her life. Go use these years to get a lot of travel and fun out of your system before you have kids and/or put in some hard years in your professional life. First at 40, second at 45.

Oops. It was off-topic:
http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/498538.page

OP here - well, life is a game of trade offs... and for many people, waiting to 40 and 45 would mean living without kids, no?

I feel the opposite. I'm 31, with 2 kids, and yes, life is stressful. Do I have lots of extra time and money? No. Do I have 2 wonderful kids, with whom I had easy-ish pregnancies and (luckily) basically no concern of health risks, chromosomal abnormalities, etc. since I conceived them both before age 30? Yep. Do I have some friends who can't grasp why I don't pop out for happy hours last minute? Yes. Do I get to go to the gym every week? No. Do I still travel (with kids, occasionally a weekend with just husband)? Yes. Making good progress in my career? Yes. Sleep 8 hours or more a night? No.

Here was my (and DH's) thoughts -- have kids earlier because there is NO question that it's safer/easier for mom and baby. Our HHI is more than 2x now versus what it was at 23, and I work 75%. We lived in DC right out of college on a much more modest income. We can make it by as 'poor' upper middle class at 32, with 2 kids. Older DC is in a Montessori school. Not the most expensive one, but it's not as if we can't afford a good preschool for him. We bought a fixer-upper townhouse, not a bright and shiny new place with a yard. We're still young enough to burn the candle at both ends a little to make it work. Our young kids don't care which zip code we live in, or mind that we aren't vacationing in Europe every year.

This way, the kids will be 'out of the house' when we're 50. At that point, we will (according to plan), have much more disposable income to enjoy our free time, and still be young enough to do things besides shuffleboard. Perhaps this is a reaction to both having older (35+) parents ourselves. I don't feel like we missed out on something glorious being childless and 30-35-beyond. The peak of our career and personal lives (45-55) is NOT when I want to be dragging around to teeball and elementary open houses and having to make sure someone's available to stay home on the 10th snowday of the year.

It took me a long time to meet the right person. Until I did and had kids, I used to envy people like this poster. I myself was born to mid-30s parents, and based on that I thought the best time to have kids was in your 20s. I felt I'd missed out--on time with my future grandkids, everything.

Now I am mid thirties and have kids, and I realize how all-consuming it is, and how many things you have to give up after you have them, and how much maturity and life experience it requires to be a good parent. And I'm honestly glad I was forced to wait.

+1! My third will be 8 when I'm 50. I have a cousin with grandkids the age of my kids. I'd be so resentful to have given up my 20s and early 30s to parenthood, but my parents were considered ridiculously late when they had kids at 34 and 38 in the 1960s. Now they'd comfortably the norm. My mother is in her 80s and with life expectancy so long, I have no doubt that I'll live to see grandkids. I'm just happy to have lived a little before I had kids. I'm not the only mom in my late 40s on the playground. I'm in a crowd. You'll have many contemporaries, OP!