Hellobee Boards

I was 34 when LO was born, DH was 44, so I think I can weigh in...

PROS:
1. Patience! We are very patient with our son and go with his flow, I attribute this to our ages, neither of us were this relaxed when we were younger
2. Perspective-we've seen friends have kids, seen different stages of life and relationships, and can bring that to our parenting.
3. We got to live our lives, and so we don't resent our LO for limiting us, plus hopefully we have fun stories to tell him as he gets older!

CONS:
1. Realizing that we actually love this parenting thing, but are running out of time, so we can't decide now to have a huge family

PROS: stability with my identity, personal life, career and finances; having had at least a decade for myself, my friends, travel, nights out, etc.

CONS: higher sleep needs (for me); knowing i won't be able to keep up with my LO as much if i had had him younger

Pros: we had time to become financially stable so I could SAH, we got to do a lot of fun stuff like traveling before babies came

Cons: your body doesn't bounce back as fast, I really noticed a difference in pregnancies between 1st (at 35) and 2nd (at 38), it was harder the 2nd time. Higher risk of miscarriage and birth defects (I also had diminished ovarian reserve). Just the fact that you will be much older when your kids hit college, get married, etc..

Sure, I'd be happy to:

-Finances/Career - DH especially is at a point in his career where he is doing well. I could be doing better, but I have made certain choices that value other things. DH is also at a point in his career where he manages more people which gives him more flexibility. For what he does, if we had LO when he was younger, he would not have had the ability to leave the office and structure his time they he does now.

-Never feeling like we missed out on anything - We got married, had lots of experiences (particularly travel) and built a very strong foundation, so I feel like we had many experiences to look back on. That doesn't mean the transition to being a parent isn't hard. Obviously younger people would argue that they may have done the same, but I know my personality and I felt more ready for the life changes I went through becoming a parent.

-Lots more perspective on life and being very focused and directed about what I want out of it and for my LOs.

-Feeling very comfortable telling people to MTOB as a new mother. I was 35 when I had LO. Are you seriously going to tell me how to run my life and raise my kid? No thanks.

CONS
Time and spacing - My cut off is 40, but I would hope that if we had another one it will be closer to 38. I think the need to be completely conscious about time is there, if you are not interested in having children close together.

Older grandparents - DH's parents are much older now, but it's not like we see them much anyway...I think he is much more aware of this since they are his parents.

Agree with SeptCA about the fact that you are more advanced career wise and having to balance whether you can take a step back or not.

Quite frankly I can't think of too many cons, but that's probably because having kids 35+ is pretty normal in my circle, so I don't know much else.

@babycanuck: No. I live in an academic town and many of my friends have advanced degrees and careers. I think because of this, they had children a bit later. I'm surrounded by people in my age range who are pregnant right now.

People are really happy for us, especially since we went through infertility treatments. But it's different from when you're first round of friends got pregnant--not in a bad way, just not as wide-eyed and amazed, if that makes sense!

@babycanuck: Not really. At the youngest, my friends had kids in their early 30's. I still stayed close to them even with the change. I don't know what it's like being the odd person out in this respect since so many of the people I know have had kids in their mid to late 30's, which is pretty common where I live and in my social circles.

@babycanuck: Well, the people we were first friendly with at our church had kids before we did so now their kids are almost teenagers and ours are 5 and under. We now mostly hang out with people who's kids are the same age as ours. We haven't stopped being friends with the 1st people, we just do more with the younger. It was hard when our age friends were having kids because we were dealing with infertility and couldn't get pregnant. That may have caused a wall to be thrown up, I know just to keep myself sane I may have distanced myself from those people.

Pros—got to enjoy 20s and early 30s doing whatever I felt like doing, establish career and gain flexibility, buy a home and be financially stable, so I felt mentally and financially ready to have children; having lots of friends conceiving >35 created a nice support system for us where we could all relate and our kids can grow up around each other being of similar age,
Cons—that my parents passed away right before I had kids and they never got to meet them; being so worried that I would have trouble conceiving and then the stress of feeling like I had to conceive again so quickly in order to have 2 before I couldn’t conceive anymore; more testing while pregnant and worries being what they call an advanced maternal age; worried I’ll be so old when my children go through their adult milestones; feeling tired all the time, I do remember having so much more energy in my 20s

I'm almost 35 and still working on having our first and we met when I was 28, which is actually when I had always wanted to have children by. So far I'd say the same as PP. Pros: we are financially stable, have a home, done some amazing travels and had lots of time to just the two of us. Cons: I never wanted to be an "older' parent cause I wanted my great grandmother and grand parents to be around for a long time in my kids lives. And now that I'm older, it means my grand parents and parents will be older and my children will probably lose their great gps' and grandparents at a much younger age.