When is the best time to get pregnant?

Here’s are some of the hard truths that I have learned about motherhood: it is not convenient. It is not easy. It is unpredictable, wild and utterly transformative. And it certainly does not fit neatly into whatever life plan you might have.

Like many women, I went into my pregnancy thinking I had it all figured out. I’d read the books and the blogs. I’d talked to my friends with children for first-hand advice. I did everything that one can possibly do to be prepared. I had a perfect (and, yes, somewhat neurotically over-planned) timeline of how my pregnancy and post-pregnancy would play out.

Yet, when that little person finally came into the world, I was caught off-guard by how much she demanded of me and how deeply everything she did seemed to affect me. I thought that I had planned for everything, but this 3.1-kilo bundle of joy managed to turn my whole world—and all of my plans—upside-down.

Not that I minded in the end.

There’s no single “right” time in a woman’s life for an event as monumental as giving birth. Here are some factors to consider when deciding what might be the right time for you.

Choosing to have a child in your twenties comes with a number of physical advantages. For one, your fertility is as good as it is ever going to be. Your body is more resilient at this stage and will bounce back from the pregnancy faster. The risk of common conditions such as Down Syndrome is significantly lower.

However, this decade is often a time of instability in a woman’s life. It’s a period when many women are busy establishing their careers and, as a result, need to work long hours to prove themselves. It’s a time when many women have limited savings and may not be 100 percent sure what their future holds. In other words, it can be a challenging period to take on a variable as significant as a child.

Waiting until later in life to have a child brings the advantages of stability and maturity. Women are more likely to have the financial security to support a family, as well as a strong sense of what they want. It is also far easier to put a career on hold when you have already built up a professional reputation.

Choosing to wait is often a sensible decision, but choosing to wait too long can have serious consequences. A woman does not generate new eggs as she ages and the older eggs get, the more likely it is that they decline in quality. The risk of a spontaneous miscarriage rises to 25 percent at 35 and 51 percent at 40.For women around the age of 35, the risk of having clinically significant chromosome abnormalities is about 1 in 200.

In the end, there is no perfect time to give birth. It’s important to have an honest, open discussion with your partner about family planning when deciding what’s right for you.

References.

1. Mayo Clinic Staff: Healthy Lifestyle – Pregnancy week by week – Pregnancy and you blog – How old is too old to have a baby?. Available from: http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/pregnancy-week-by-week/expert-blog/pregnancy-after-35/bgp-20055825. Accessed December 7, 2014.

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