Home > Health > MOMania > Recent Comments
20 Most Recent Comments
My situation is a little different. I have two girls, ages 3 & 7, but I recently remarried. He has no biological children, but has become a wonderful father to my girls. The conversations we had revolved around me trying to get my tubal ligation reversed to give him the opportunity to have a “real” (read: his DNA) child of his own. I am 30 and told him that he had two years from the time we got married to decide whether he wanted to give it a shot or not. I figured not only was it fair to him to let him have that opportunity, but it also gave him the chance to see what parenting was all about and if he even wanted to go down the road of midnight feedings, diapers, colic, shelling out even more money for daycare, etc. Common sense prevailed and he decided two daughters were enough (he only wanted another child if it was guaranteed to be a boy) and that we already had our hands and finances as full as we wanted to manage right now. I keep telling him if it is meant to be, it will happen. After all, my mother had me two years after having her tubes tied! I picked 32 because of not wanting too big of an age gap between the kids, and not wanting to start all over again and putting my life and career on hold to pop out another child to satisfy some male desire to “carry on the family name”. It was fair all the way around and in the end I think everyone was happier because nobody was forced into a decision they didn’t have a say in.
I just had my first baby in Aug. ‘05, at the age of 24. I always said I wanted to be married and have a baby by the time I was 25, I turned 25 the next month. This am in the shower I was thinking, I want to have another baby by the time I’m thirty, and be done. My mom didn’t have her first baby until 30, and the last one at 36. She never seemed like she was older than any of my friends parents, she was/is really cool. The funny thing is, my in-laws all became grandparents in their mid 40’s, and my parents in their late 50’s.
By GR : “As with many plans, things don’t always work out the way you want - everyone should have an open mind when it comes to setting this type of deadline and respect what others do as well. “
These are true and wise words. We started trying (or should I say, stopped preventing)when I was 26, which I think is a perfect age. It took us 10 years and the talents of many medical professionals to get our twins. Those magic cut-off points seem a lot less valid when it’s your child you’re longing for, not some abstract baby.
A woman’s body resists conceiving after age 35 and more so each year. Ask your OB/GYN how many of these celebrity moms 45 and up likely conceived without help or even with their own eggs. Seeing them in the news gives women the hope that they can postpone having babies, but it is false hope, by and large. My advice is that you certainly wait until you are able to provide for children, have a safe home, health insurance, etc. But with the human body there are no guarantees. Don’t let time make the decision for you.
As much as I love children and would love to give my husband a child to call his own, I am 41 and have no intention of going through those baby years again. We are able to out to dinner, dancing etc. without worrying about a sitter or little ones getting sick while were out. I wouldn’t give this new life (believe me it is) up for anything!
Thanks for the encouragement, Jenn. You are right. There is no “perfect” time. Only God’s time. And it is different for each woman. Ya’ll have a good day.
Oh, and Wants 2 Be youngmom—
There’s never a “perfect” time to be a mom… we were waiting until we were financially “ready” to have our kids, and fate intervened. If we had kept putting it off until we reached whatever next point—buying a house, getting a promotion, whatever, we would have always found an excuse not to have them.
Go with your heart….
I would have loved to have two children by the age of 35, but it just didn’t happen. As with many plans, things don’t always work out the way you want - everyone should have an open mind when it comes to setting this type of deadline and respect what others do as well.
I’m a great example of this. I didn’t get married when I was 31 and we tried starting a family when I was 34. Due to some infertility issues that required medical intervention, I did not get pregnant with my son until I was 36; he was born when I was 37. After that we decided to let fate take its course, and almost 4 years later he is an only child. Yes, I do regret that he doesn’t have a sibling, but I have learned to deal with it and be happy with what we have.
Yes, it is rough chasing a preschooler around when you are in your 40s, but there are also some benefits - in my case, having achieved everything I wanted to in my career, becoming a SAHM was a pretty easy decision. We are also in a better financial position now than when we were first married.
Finally to answer Theresa’s question, age 35 is taboo - but I don’t think it should be that way. I was absolutely miserable on my 35th birthday because I wasn’t a mother yet.
I had my two kids at 25 and 28; I’m 29 now. Even though my first child was a surprise, she was conceived right on “schedule,” as in, by when I had always wanted to have children.
I thought it would be easier and more fun for me long-term to raise my family in my 20s and 30s and travel extensively after they’re out of the house, when we’ll have more money to do that.
Plus, my mom died when she was 46 (I was 21), so it really drove home the idea that we may or may not have the time we hope/want/pray to be able to spend with our children if we put it off.
My sister, a nurse, has decided that she doesn’t want to conceive children after she turns 35—not because she thinks she’ll feel too old/lack energy, but because her eggs will start deginerating at that point and the risk of birth defects isn’t worth it to her.
My mother was 48 when my sister was born. Yes, she was a surprise and a change of life baby. My mom spent a good part of my sister’s childhood fretting that she’d not live long enough to see my sister grow up. My mother’s only sister dropped dead at 52. My sister is now 34 and my mom is 82. My dad is 86.
Having a child “late in life” kept my parents young in more ways than one. They were health conscious. They had to stay in tune with the younger generation. My dad worked until he was in his mid-70’s.
It was interesting to watch them and their friends. They all had children in the same age bracket…the baby boomers, but my parents had many more. The age span of their ten children ranged 22 years. My parents always seemed younger than their counterparts. However, the flip side to that was when all of their friends were taking vacations, etc., my parents still had young children and teenagers at home to worry about. They were still going to parent-teacher conferences, open house and soccer games. My dad was 70 when my sister graduated from high school. He was older than some of her friends’ grandparents.
Up until about five years ago, we tried to have another baby. Two of my really good friends had babies then, at 37 & 38. My one friend has two boys, now 3 & 5, who fall under the autism umbrella. She’s beyond stressed and exhausted all of the time. All of the preplanning could not have prepared them for what they face on a daily basis. I’m not saying that she has autistic children because she waited to have children. Now they’re planning for their retirement and long term care for their oldest child.
My other friend’s older child is autistic, too. She waited until he was 8 or 9 before she had another. She quit her job to be a SAHM with the second. She says having a toddler at 40 is a completely different ballgame than having one at 30.
Today, at 43, I would be totally freaked out if I became pregnant again, but would survive. I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like to deal with the obnoxious teenage attiutude at 60?! I was a stay at home mom with our son. I enjoyed it. I was on the run everyday, and I’m not complaining. However, at this point, our lives are becoming our own again. I’ve got my own time, and I work part-time. Our son is in high school, and the week days and nights are busy with school activities and sports, but the weekends belong to us once again.
I do wish that my son had a sibling, but that’s life. You don’t always get what you want. He has 25 first cousins who he knows well, despite the miles that separate them. He’ll never be alone.
Age 35 is my cutoff age for kids.
I know this is going to sound a bit harsh, but I don’t think I will ever understand women over 40 having kids. Most new moms over 40 that I have seen look like grandmothers with gray hair (or obviously colored hair), wrinkles and all. I saw one woman (who I discovered was about 45 years old) with a newborn baby that looked like her grandchild. I came very close to asking her if it was her grandchild until I heard her older, but still too young, child say “mommy.” My reaction was, “she’s old enough to be MY mother.”
Your energy level after 40 starts to go down and for those that think having kids over 40 will “keep them young,” they are just fooling themselves. Kids require a lot of your energy and attention. Those kids will just end up with a mother that’s tired all the time and end up sitting in front of the TV all day.
What about retirement and college? If you are 60+ years old when your child graduates from high school (the age of most high school seniors’ grandparents), how will you fund your retirement and their college education?
Having kids later in life also can lead to kids that are slow to develop, asthma risks increase, and not to mention birth defects. I say don’t risk it. I would stop right at age 35.
Well, I went to college, lived on my own for a year, then married my college sweetheart at 23. I am 25 now, and would love to have a child right now. But I don’t feel like I can, because he went back to school and now we have all that debt to think about, and we don’t own a house yet. It looks like I will be 30 before we even try, and that bothers me b/c I wanted to be younger than my mom was when she had me. Oh well. I guess there’s never a perfect time. And I want to be a stay at home mom, so we better wait till we have enough money coming in.
At this point, I don’t intend to have anymore children but I know I could not, in good faith, father a child at age 62. Even if my health was good at the time the baby was born, odds are continually diminishing that I would live to see that child graduate high school, college, etc. I would not want my child to grow up worrying that I could go at any moment or having to care for an aging, senile dad as a teen.
Of course, life taking its natural course could call me any day now even as young and healthy as I am. We just never know.
I am content with the 2 kids I have. I don’t have to produce a baseball team to be happy.
Raevena, I had never heard of Fifth Disease until my son was about the 20th kid in school to catch it. Unfortunetly by the time they show any symptoms (his was just redness on his face)they are past the contagious part and have already infected everyone else.
When I was in elementary school, I rarely got sick. My school practiced good, thorough handwashing and taught good hygiene. Of course, I was taught the same at home and rarely got sick BEFORE elementary school because I came from a clean home and a clean family.
One area we focused on was cross-contamination. I absolutely can’t get over people who wash their hands and then turn off the spigots with their bare hands, or people who handle raw meat and then, without washing their hands, open a refrigerator door. My gosh, don’t people THINK?
What can you tell me about Fifth’s disease? Do you know of any incidents of motrin causing allergic reactions in children?
People get sick the most through bad food preparation. An food-born illness can have flu-like symptoms. Wash your hands before you prepare your food. Don’t use the same utensil on cooked meats that you used on uncooked meats. Use a new plate for taking meat off the grill and not the plate the meat was on before you put it on the grill. Cook your meats to the proper temperature for the proper time (parasite poisoning on gone way up since sushi has become a dinner option in the US.) And finally, your food should be in the 40 to 140 degree range for a total of 4 hours. This includes preparation time as well as cooking and cooling down time.
Just this practice alone will cut down on how sick you and your kids are. My kids are teenagers and we rarely are sick.
DPR — Happy to see you back.
Hey Perry — I did an interview with an allergist that will be published in the next few weeks and you are completely right about the allergens and being raised on farms. This doctor said that the exposure to many animals (like a farm environment) prevented kids from having allergies. Oddly, one dog or one cat is actually worse than having multiple dogs or multiple cats. He said the reason they believe is in the animals’ poop. he said they believe the “endotoxins” (not sure on the spelling of this word) found in the animals’ poop helps prevent the kids from developing allergies. Fascinting stuff!! — We’re planning to run the allergist q&A in March.
Are we too clean? Recent study in Scandanavia showed that children raised in a city were more likely to have alergies that those raised in the country with animals. Early contact with natural organisms appears to give the immune system a kick at the right time. There was a time, my time, when kids played outside nearly all the time before antibiotics. Now we try to provide sterile environments. We pay a price.
Theresa, I agree with all of your comments except for one. I happen to work in the environmental field and can prove that air filters do help in containing and preventing viruses in your home. Mold and other bacterial spores live and hide throughout your home and without treatment they can cause cold like symptoms and plain out make you feel bad all the time. A GOOD air filtration system will trap these spores and you dispose of them when you clean out your filter. I can show you analytical results of pre treatment and post treatment of the bacteria these filter systems pick up in your house that would amaze you. The key is to invest in a more advanced (although more expensive) filtration unit. The small cheap ones work but you have to change the filters continuously. I don’t work in the selling of these systems, we just treat infected houses and the homeowner places a system of their choice after the treatment, so it’s not like I’m trying to push everyone to go by one, I just know for fact that they do work.
