The Baby Question

I’m feeling clucky. My very best and dearest friend has just had her first baby. He’s absolutely adorable. It might seem strange to some being this late in my life, but this is the first time that someone I truly love has had a baby. All of my school friends live far away and most of the friends I have now are more the ‘professional’ than the ‘family’ type. We are all in our 30s (some of us closer to 40) and until now, none of us have had children.

Career hasn't been the only thing holding us back. For some it’s finding the right person to make a family with, for others it has been illness and disease and for some the timing just isn’t right.

I never really thought about having children as I was growing up. I mean, I never gave it any thought; it was just something that I assumed everyone did once they got married. So I thought I would have a family, and I imagined it would be about the size of my own (2 parents and 4 kids) and that was that. Then life intervened. Yes, I went ‘off the rails’ a little in my late teens so my mum put a ban on boyfriends. I wasn’t so far off the rails as to disobey her so from 16 until 24 I never really had a proper relationship.

 Following that I was finished university and starting a career and in the middle of all of that getting to know more about these things called ‘men.’ I had one to go home to every night, I had shared a house with my brother since I started university, and he drove me mad. The mess, the smell... the mess! But we had a great friendship and to this day I know that he is the one person, besides my husband, that I can rely on. The men I was meeting were interesting and many of them had firm views on family so I started to think more about my own goals and what I wanted from family life.  Then I met my husband.

At first he was firmly in the no children camp. I spelled out quite clearly to him that I was in no way that sure. And he was happy enough with that, as long as we kept the conversation open, i.e. he didn’t want to be ‘tricked’ into anything! Not long after being married we had a pregnancy ‘scare’ but the tests came back negative. We realised then that we both somehow or someway wanted a family, but definitely not then! He is a very serious and thoughtful man, many of the reasons he is unsure about having children come from worry over all the things that might go wrong. I am also being really careful to be sure that it IS that I want a family and not just that I am worried about time running out!

So this blog will track our thoughts and the process we go through as this journey reaches some sort of destination. I would love to hear from any other women in their late 30s or beyond who are considering starting a family. Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences.