Having A Baby At 38 – Why I Waited

Fashion Details:

Fun fact about the photos in this post…they are some of my favorites.   They are from last summer when I was 8 or 9 weeks pregnant and living in a hotel because our condo wasn’t ready.  Even though our life was chaos, I am so incredibly happy because so many wonderful things were falling into place.   And you’d never guess it was 85 outside and I was beyond nauseous and starving at the same time!

Having Kids at 38 – Why I Waited

Today’s post has been in the works for a while now.  It’s a topic that is near and dear to my heart because it directly relates to my life and the personal decisions I make. I’m talking about having a baby and why I waited until I was 38 years old to have one.  And yes I waited, it was a conscious decision to have a baby later in life.

 

I am one who doesn’t follow a traditional life timeline.  I bought my first home at 25, got married at 35 and started a blog at 37.  There is nothing traditional about that. Life is made up of experiences and accomplishments and the majority of them fall onto your life list.

 

What Is A Life List?  

It’s the conventional and not so conventional experiences that you want to have in life.  There is no standard life list, it’s personal to you. My “life list” looks like this;

• Be financially independent
• Have a solid career
• Live alone
• Buy a home
• Buy a car
• Date an amazing man
• Marry an amazing man
• Travel with my husband
• Have kids
• Take family vacations

 

I set out to accomplish everything on my life list, but knew my age wasn’t going to dictate when I would accomplish everything on the list.  My goal was to fully experience each item on my life list and truly take it in. I didn’t want rush through any of the experiences regardless of my age.  

 

A lot of people take a conventional path in life and knock the items off their life list in a more traditional fashion.  Married by 30, kids a couple years later, followed by a house and a dog. While that works for a lot of people, it’s not what worked for me.  I always knew I wanted to have kids, but I never had a set timeline for it to happen.

Feeling Pressure

Of course there was pressure and the feeling of being left out.  While all my friends were off dating and getting married I was single.  When they all starting having babies I had just started to seriously date.  And when their kids were all starting school, I had just gotten married. Even though I wasn’t doing the same things they were, and I was sometimes sad about it, I knew I was on the right path for me.  

 

When I met Mike I was 32 and I knew he was “the one”.  He was the one I wanted to marry and check off the other items on my life list with.  When we got married, I was 35 and he was 40! Our ages never mattered to me, it was more about the experience. I was finally married to the man of my dreams.  I wanted to experience everything that happens in a young marriage. Travel was at the top of our list as well as truly experiencing the city we lived in. We went out to dinner a lot, morning runs along the lakefront, lazy weekend brunches and just lived life.  

 

My Biological Clock Didn’t Tick 

The one thing I did noticed during the first few years of our marriage was that my biological clock never ticked.  I’ve heard about your clock ticking and my friends would talk about their biological clock and I just couldn’t relate.  Was mine broken? Did I not have one? Did this mean I didn’t want kids? Or was I just enjoying my life with Mike? So many thoughts ran threw my head.  

 

With all these thoughts I also had to field all the annoying questions from people.  Like “when are you moving to the burbs” and “when are you having kids?” Let me tell you, I hate questions like this, especially the kid question.  So I gave people my honest answer…. “we will have kids when we have them.” Go figure, no one liked this response.

 

I actually didn’t care if they liked my answer because I didn’t like their question.  It’s the most invasive question people can ever ask. It’s basically asking you when you are going to have sex with your husband.  My view has been and will always be, it’s no ones business outside of a marriage. And therefore you will never hear me ask someone when they are going to have kids.

People’s Reasons for You

When the questions stopped people decided to come up with their own reasons as to why I wasn’t having kids.  I’ve heard just about everything there is to having kids later in life. A few of my favorites include:

• You have old eggs, you won’t be able to have kids.
• You’re going to be too tired to take care of a baby at your age.
• If you’re not going to have a baby it’s ok, I’ll still be your friend.
• You can’t possibly have a kid naturally at your age.
• If you’re waiting to be ready for kids, you never will be.

Some of you are probably shocked, but it’s true that people actually say these things.  Instead of finding offense in these questions,  I find humor in them.

 

What has always been so hard to communicate to people is that having kids doesn’t have to happen by a certain age because society wants it too.  And it doesn’t happen at the same time for everyone. That is life and it’s completely ok. If we all did everything exactly the same it would be a pretty boring world.  I believe having kids happens when you are fully ready to experience that life list item.  This is something that people don’t understand or want to hear.

What Others Say

People always say you are never ready for kids you should just have them.  I actually don’t believe that statement. There will be a time in your life when you are ready for kids.  I’m not talking about financially ready or even knowing what to do with a baby, I’m talking about being ready to take on the responsibility of another life.  This is when your biological clock will tick.

 

My clock started ticking towards the end of 37 and after talking with Mike we knew we were ready.  We didn’t announce it to anyone, we just knew that if it happened we would be ready. Flash forward to January 2019 and we have a beautiful baby girl and couldn’t be happier!

 

Age doesn’t dictate when you are to do something in life, like get married, buy a house or have a kid.  Age is simply just a number. Life events are made of personal decisions and when those events fit into your life timeline.  That is why everyone’s life timeline is so personal.

 

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