Worried time is going to run out for me to get pregnant

[MomaMary8]

I am 33 and recently married.

So what will it be like by the time I start trying at 34 or 35? Also, how will I ever have an actual family if I start at 35?

Oh honey, you DO have a family. When you got married, your family began. Now you will have to wait and see if your family will include biological children.

My doctor says a lot depends on your own mother, and my own mother had her final baby at 39. So there is no history of early menopause in my family. My mother also cites all these women she knows who had their first babies at like 37 or 38, but many of these women had miscarriages before that. I know I could use Vitex or natural progesterone to lengthen my luteal phase, but still…

Your fertility will be your own path. I know the doctor said to look at your mother’s history, but in reality, you may be very different. My mother and I got married at the same age. She tried for years to get pregnant and then was only able to have 4 children. I was pregnant the first year of marriage and had my last child at the age of 41.

Anyone else ever been in my situation? A Catholic friend who is also dealing with health issues told me that she is just “handing it over to God”. I am trying to too, but would love to hear from someone who has been in my position or who has any advice. We will definitely use NaProTechnology, but I still worry. I also wouldn’t do IVF or any of those things, as if I couldn’t get pregnant I would see it as God’s law and I don’t believe in test tube babies. And adoption is so expensive that I don’t see how we could ever afford that.

In case people are wondering, I didn’t get married till I was 33 due to health issues. I lost years of my life to ill health from the ages of 25-31. Please don’t reply if you are going to criticise my age. Not everybody is lucky enough to marry their perfect husband at 27.

No, I have not been in your situation. All I can tell you is that I have had five children over the age of 32.

Go to Our Lady and poor out your worries and sorrows to her. She will help you have the faith to trust in God’s plan for you. God bless!

 

[Xantippe]

Galbin said:

“Xantippe, my other issue is that while my husband has the same beliefs as me regarding IVF and other infertility ‘solutions’, he seems to feel that if we do not conceive then we shouldn’t adopt/foster. If we did, I just don’t think he would love the children properly. That plus the money issues makes adoption/fostering unlikely to happen. We did discuss this before marriage, but as I said, I was very into “what will be will be” then, and thought I’d be fine if I never conceived.”

Bummer.

The nice thing about foster care is that it’s not a total lifelong commitment, so you could try it and see how you both manage. (After our last baby was born, I was finding myself thinking seriously about doing foster care. Babies are just so sweet and precious!)

If five years from now nothing has happened and you still want children and your husband is still solidly against fostering or adoption, I think you should do marriage counseling. Denying you the opportunity to raise children is a pretty big deal, maritally speaking–the equivalent would be if he had a particular career vocation and you put your foot down and made him drop out of medical school or leave a job he loved. That’s how big it is. If you manage to have biological children, it’s a moot point, but if no biological children appear, I think it’s worth pressing the point.

Also, one way to demonstrate that you are serious is to save money for your future children. Cut back on your newlywed nesting a little and make sure that you have savings that can eventually be used for kids (whether biological or adopted). If you can’t save now, you can’t be a SAHM. (I didn’t do this when I was your age, but I should have!)

“My endo does rx progesterone cream for PMS before. Maybe I should resume taking that.”

Talk to your doctor, but I think that’s a really good idea.

“My hubby is totally easy going and doesn’t mind one way or another if we have children. So he can’t really understand this. He also says that we have loads of time. It’s just different for men, as they don’t understand the whole biological urgency.”

You do have time, just not loads of time.

 

[Auntie_A]

I have one more anecdote: I knew a woman, non-Catholic who couldn’t have children so she tried in vitro and she had a baby. Years later she went on Metformin and suddenly became pregnant. She had dealt with PCOS and she swears it was the metformin…I told her that her husband might have had something to do with it, too.