If you want to, and you can, it's not too old!
And, if a woman does get pregnant, she will need to have an amnio among other tests to check for age-related birth defects.
Ya only "need" to get testing if you are going to do something about it if you get a result you don't like.....
I'm 43 and pregnant. You don't NEED to have an amnio. Testing is your choice. I saw a genetic counsellor and had a nuchal translucency u/s at 12 weeks. The chances of downs before I went for testing was 1/50 after the u/s & blood work my chances decresed to 1/500. Spina bifida & Edwards syndrome were also tested for. Both of those were very very low chances. Based on my numbers they did not think amnio was needed. I would not have had one done anyway because of the risk of miscarriage.
Getting pregnant in your 40's is hard. I took clomid to help my chances.
Your general health is important too. Right now I am at 31 weeks and was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Age is a factor in that. Eat well, exercise and take care of yourself...it will help.
My Midwife told me when I had my second child at 40 that lots of women used to. Back in the days when big families were the norm women were having their last babies in their 40s.
It's possible and truly a decision only you and your husband can make. DH is 6 years younger than I am and this is my second marriage. My first DD is 11 and her sister is turning 3 this month. DD#3 is due mid March.
It works for us.
Fave reply! Send me some of that baby dust!
I just turned 35 and I was thinking I might want to have anothor one, But I think im getting to old..My mom had me at 40 ..My whole life all I ever heard her say was how old she was..My friends thought she was my grandma...
I wonder how she felt in her 30s; she probably already felt old. There are some people who feel old even when they are in their 20s. In my circle of friends, the old-feeling women were those who married in their 20s and started families. I still feel FAR younger than my friends did at 25, sitting here at 40.
My dad has, with the exception of his physical self (football in HS combined with our genetics meant bad knees from his early 30s), has always acted young. My husband's dad acted old from when he was young. People feel and act differently, even when they are the same age!
LOL, read the replies. Younger moms say no way, older moms say no problem.
I'm noticing that too. : )
There's a reason we're designed to have children when we're younger.
Oh gosh, if only I had had babies in my 20s with the utter losers I was dating. Would have been so much better to get with the program then, rather than the crazy thing I did, of waiting for the right guy to settle down with....
That stuff drives me nuts, like most women who have babies later have purposely waited...they married at 18, but refused to have a baby until they were 38.5. Most of the things these things are OUT of our control, either biologically or simply not having the right person in our lives...
I hear a lot about the risks of Down's Syndrome increasing with maternal age. Yes, the odds do "increase" but they go from being a 0.01% chance at age 25 to being a less than 1% chance at age 40.
Also, 75% of children with Down's Syndrome are born to mothers younger than 35.
Excellent, fact-based post!
well, my mother is 41, her boyfriend of 7 years is 33 and they're having a baby that's due in the summer.
BTW...i'm 23....
Yay! I have a half-sister who is 25 years younger than me.
She is the LIGHT of our family! I don't think my dad and his wife could have survived without her, which sounds really heavy on her, but she just prances through life with a light shining from her, beaming goodness on everyone. She's been like that since she was 3 months old (when I met her), at least. She's now 15 and a cheerleader and keeps her mom and dad really young!
My stepmom was about 41 when she found out she was pregnant with her. Thought she was in early menopause, had just started nursing school...finally her friends bought her a pregnancy test. Stepmom had stopped cycles, felt weird, quit smoking overnight, and was craving citrus fruit...her friends could figure it out!
Stepmom had her boys at 28 and 31, thought she was done! She wasn't!
Why don't you walk a mile in their shoes before you make that assumption because when you say something like taht you are really just being a judgemental. Or better why don't you tell my friend that she was just an ungrateful kid because she bemoaned the fact that her mother was older and died of alzheimer's before she was even 30 years old. You can tell her how ungrateful she was when she was crying at her casket that she wished she had more time with her mother.
I know my friend only wishes that she was as fortunate as her brothers to have had much more time with her when she wishes her mom hadn't waited so long to have her and that is as far from ungrateful as one can be.
Speaking for my friend and judging by the few posters here who have mentioned having older parents I can say that their wish wasn't to never be born at all, just a wish that they were born sooner.
But that makes no sense. She couldn't have been born earlier. Her mom might have had a child before then, but it wouldn't have been your friend. Your friend was created in that blip of time with that ONE egg and that ONE sperm...no other combo would have created HER.
I've thought about what would have been, if DH and I had gotten married when we first met...which is what I wanted to do (big Dharma and Greg fan at the time, LOL). If we'd eloped immediately and had a baby, how great would that have been? But the likelihood that we would have done everything exactly the same, so that the two unique and specific bits of us were available on the exact night they ended up getting together, is ridiculously low...and therefore, we might have had other kids, but we wouldn't have had the boy we have NOW...and that's just too sickening to think about.
Your friend's mom might have had others...but they wouldn't have been your friend.
It's awful to lose a parent, especially before your own life really gets going. My mom died at 55, when I was newly 30, due to a medical error and misdiagnosis (rather, missed diagnosis). It SUCKED. I wished I had more time with her, too.
ETA: Please remember, that not everyone gets to "choose" when they have children. DH and I were married 15 years before DS was born.
Ayep!
Here's the funny thing. My mom was 25 when she had me. I always, ALWAYS, thought she was ancient! I had one friend whose mom was older than my mom, well, to have had a FIRST baby that is. Everyone else had these crazy-young moms, and I felt that was "normal". I had one friend who had a living great-great-grandmother who was relatively young; that's how young the women in her family started their families (and my friend went with the program, was pregnant at HS graduation) I had two friends with older parents, but my friends were their last; bonus babies as it were.
My FIL was something like 45 when DH was born. Any kids were a surprise for FIL, because he'd had some bout of the nasties while in the Navy during WW2, and had been told there would be no babies. When he married my MIL she was pregnant with another man's baby, and FIL raised him as his own, and was very surprised 9 years later when DH showed up. ANyway, FIL was old from when he was young. It's not a surprise that he acted old as he started getting old. But then he was a very spry 70+ year old! So it's like he was 65 from the time he was 25, and just stayed there until the end.
So much of age is so relative.
Also, being a lazy parent has its advantages! I always knew I'd be one of them; I was a lazy oldest sister and a lazy babysitter (though also a good and fun babysitter), and I'm the same way with DS.
There was no "running around after a toddler" in my household, LOL. There was, and hopefully will be again soon (knock wood), watching the crazy kid running all around in a safe environment. I wouldn't have been running after a toddler even at 22! Laziness has its advantages.
Yeah, I love being a parent and constantly wish they didn't grow so fast so I realize this is the best part of my life. That being said, I STILL don't want to do it again when I'm in my 40s. Not because I hate doing it but because there are a lot of different things I hope to do at that stage of my life. And if my kids are anything like my brothers they will still be living at home at that point anyway so I may still be "raising" them then, ya never know! 
And my dd will be in her late 20s and 30s when I'm in my late 40s and 50s which is why I said that I might like holding my own grandbaby at that stage of my life. It's up to her whether that happens but I'd still rather be going through the grandparenting stage then than the parenting stage. I certainly hope she doesn't make me a grandmother when she's only 22 though! However, if she is married and financially secure and that's what she wants, it won't be MY decision. I had her at 24 and had been married for 5.5 years by then and felt pretty secure at that point so you never know. She is almost 5 now and amazing in every way and I have no regrets about having her young. I did the college thing AFTER she was born so there is no right or wrong path...just like you said.
My sister was born when mom was 40. Dad died last year and I do have to bite my tongue when my sister voices her feelings that she should have had "more time" and she thinks that because she was born late in their lives (although she is only six years younger than me). She sounds bitter. She also will "complain" that her children didn't get to know their grandfather as long as they "should have" (her youngest is 10). I know she is anything but ungrateful and her feelings are valid but sometimes I get upset because she acts like she's the only one who has sustained a loss. Guess what, it hurts to lose a parent whether you are 25 or 55 and you always wish there was "more time". At some point your parents won't be there for something, whether it's a wedding, a grandchild's birth, etc. We celebrated Mom's 85th birthday yesterday and even if she's around 10 more years we will feel it wasn't long enough!
But someone seems to be.
