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yep! It sucks, because there is pressure TTC as it is, but the added age factor sucks.. then it adds stress which doesn't help.. I just got pregnant again, and I just turned 39. I don't like that I am this age, because it adds pressure to the pregnancy as well. But, there is nothing I can do to change the situation, I can only choose to stay positive and hopeful. Good luck to you!!

@mrsjazz: it was certainly different and in many ways easier. I think it helped simply having the experience of being pregnant before. I had a rcs and found recovery easier too.

To answer the question about being in a race against time, yes, that's exactly how it felt. We're so conditioned to believe that after 35, your ovaries shut off and it's impossible to conceive. Then I read the article in the Atlantic that refutes that theory and things calmed down.

I had DD when I was 36 and we always planned on having two. Unfortunately DH had an illness right when we would have been starting TTC. So it got pushed back by 8 months! I def felt like the clock was ticking!!! My deadline had always been before I turned 40 and time was just running out. We then ended up at an RE and that wasn't the greatest experience. Luckily though we are newly pregnant and hoping for a healthy 9 months. (I'm 39)

If I could go back in time I'd try sooner and earlier. Putting it off only made it harder and more stressful.

I wish I had a penny for every time someone told me "oh you have plenty of time" to have babies... bc honestly you don't. I don't want to scare anyone but it's just the facts.

Yep. I'm 36 this month. We have 2 healthy boys but just lost our third son at 18.5 weeks to spina bifida. Prior to that had 4 chemical pregnancies and my repeat loss testing showed abysmally low AMH for my age. Technically our recent loss was not an age related factor, but our decision to roll the dice and face potentially even more heartbreak again for a third child weighs heavily on me. If I was 30 I don't think there would be a question of trying again. But at age 36, I know so much can go wrong. And bad things happen to us, not other people. So I just don't know.

I did when we started TTC #2, and it got worse as we lost one pregnancy and then another. I turned 35 right after the second loss and I became worried that I'd have to see an RE and delay things further if we had yet another loss. Luckily, we got pregnant soon again afterwards and I am relieved that this pregnancy seems to be going well so far.

When I take a step back though, I see many of my friends who don't even have kids yet or just had their first, so I think the pressure was self-imposed. Honestly I just want to be done with the baby stages while I still feel relatively young.

@Ajsmommy: exactly! I hate when people say the " oh so and so just had a baby and she is 42". It puts this idea out there that EVERYONE can easily have a baby into their 40's. I am of the same mind set. I tell it straight. I'm not doing anyone any favors telling them they have plenty of time.

@pwnstar: well, the facts for me are all my hormones tested perfect (fsh, amh, lh, prog, etc) and i get pregnant relatively easily, but I still have had some losses.. When I discussed the possibility of those losses with my Dr, and wanted to investigate further (thyroid, blood clotting, anatomical issues, etc) my Dr said we could, but that the most likely cause for the struggle is simply as you get older, the quality of your eggs begins to decline.. She said she still believed I would be able to have a baby, but it may just take me longer.. I pursued ALL the testing, and came back with nothing.. My Dr's simplistic answer was most likely right.

God willing this pregnancy goes well, then this will go to show that having a baby at 39 is totally not a problem.. for me..

I am never trying to scare anyone.. but I simply wish all the people who told me don't worry, you have tons of time wouldn't have said that.. even if my outcome is good, and I get my second baby, I wish I had even started sooner.. Being a mother is HARD, and I feel it is even harder at my age.

I also don't give the advice unless someone asks me what my opinion is.. Unsolicited advice is the worst!

I think my perspective is a bit unique to what others have said so I will chime in. I'm 40 now -- almost 28w pregnant with 39 year-old eggs from IVF. We did IVF because we discovered last spring that DH has severe MFI.

Funny. I had read that Atlantic Monthly article several times over the years to buoy my hopes, but what it came down to was him not me. Had I been younger, maybe my own fertility could have compensated a tad for his lack thereof, but it was still a still a snowball's chance that we could have gotten pregnant without major intervention.

So interestingly, my own fertility "facts" played out much like the RE and the fertility stats predicted. I am luckily quite fertile but the egg quality wasn't great. So thankfully we did one huge retrieval and got a bunch of eggs. Fertilization was predictably okay. And the amount of embies that grew to day 5 were also a predictable few, most likely due to quality. But I got pregnant on the first shot and feel really lucky about that. I'm pretty sure that I could have conceived without IVF if DH had better swimmers, however I may have experienced loss(es) due to quality in the process.

So, looking back, would I have started earlier or felt more urgency? No. DH and I married late and his severe MFI was already a thing that we didn't know about on the day we met. So my advice to my younger self would be to expect the unexpected and if there's any way to get your mate tested early on for sperm issues -- especially if you plan to hold off childbearing, do it!