Skip to main content

The Age Old Question

A couple of friends and I recently found ourselves debating the question of just how old is too old?

When I think back to being a child and my hopes and dreams for the future, having a child in my late 30's was definitely out of the question.  But as the years went by, the opportunities have been numerous, but they never felt right. It was never the right person or the right time,and it's important to me to have both of those factors right.

As such I find myself approaching my 38th birthday and just about to have my first child.  Do I have any regrets?  No.  It does mean I'm extremely unlikely to have the big brood of kids I always hoped to have, but it means that I can be the best parent I can possibly be to the one I do have.

In terms of age, yeah in comparison to other first time mums in my area, I'm definitely older than the average.  But, I don't feel old.  I'm glad I'm doing it now though, I think much longer and I might have started to worry that I wouldn't be able to be healthy  or fit enough to run around with a growing child, to keep my energy up and stay involved in all the fun things we're going to do together.

Interestingly, a recent article on Parentdish identified that the number of over 40 first time mums is on the increase and for the first time ever is higher than the number of teenage pregnancies. I think this does depend on where you live though.

I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts about the right/wrong age to have children. When did you/dp you plan to have yours? Do you wish you'd done things differently?  How old is too old?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

At the halfway point

Today was all about the 20 week anomaly scan.  To say I've been looking forward to this is an understatement.  Since I had my dating scan at 13 weeks, all I've wanted to do is see our baby again. Unsurprisingly a baby of mine and D's is an awkward bugger and we had to do the scan in two stages because baby did NOT want to stay still, making it difficult to get a proper look at it's heart.  Baby is now fondly known as wrigglebum. Wrigglebum appears to be doing fine, nothing obviously wrong, and growing at normal levels.  I couldn't ask for anything more!  Can't believe that the next time I see wrigglebum may well be in my arms!

I can see a rainbow

I've been doing a lot of pondering lately about how little say we have about a lot of things in our lives.  We can't control the health and happiness of others. We can't control their actions. But we can control how we choose to live our lives and what positive influences we can make. In trying to find something which expresses how I feel about life right now I stumbled across this. Life’s like a movie, write your own ending Keep believing, keep pretending We’ve done just what we set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you. “The Magic Store”/Rainbow Connection” (Reprise) – Kermit and the Muppets The Muppets are making their little movie, all planned out, but then in typical muppet fashion chaos strikes. Despite everything a rainbow appears.  While life has a habit of creating unwanted chaos, throwing a spanner or two in the works; sometimes we need that to re-focus on what our priorities are.  2017 brings a new chapter for my little family. ...

12 months

2015- 2016 - otherwise known as the year things got hard. Grandad died. Tom lost his fight with cancer. Cancer took my dad from me . All within the space of 12 months. When so much is taken from you in such a short space of time, it's incredibly hard. I was very close with Grandad and still miss him terribly. With Tom and my Dad... Hell... It doesn't matter that you know it's coming, it still tears a hole in your heart. Being a parent to a young child who couldn't possibly understand grief and the loss of loved ones, I never really fell apart. I don't know if it's strange, 4/5 years down the line, I found myself reflecting on them and really feeling that sense of loss. More so than ever. I think I felt like I wasn't allowed to grieve, to fall apart, and didn't really deal with things. Fast forward to 2019 , an equally hard year for very different reasons. Again no option to fall apart, but this time I've dealt with things in a much ...