Comment by helloworld11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by helloworld11 | Hacker News Reader

Taking aside all of your emotional concerns, you should know right away that women absolutely can have healthy biological children at or past the age of 39. Obviously I can't speak for your wife and her specific health or reproductive situation but in general, the idea that "the window has closed" is more often than not totally false. Look into this in more detail with real medical professionals. One interesting observation comes from the article I link to below, which points out that many of the supposed female fertility window statistics are actually based on extremely old information from pre-modern times. Worth reading for a bit of optimism and perspective.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-lon...

noteworthy quote from the article:

"The widely cited statistic that one in three women ages 35 to 39 will not be pregnant after a year of trying, for instance, is based on an article published in 2004 in the journal Human Reproduction. Rarely mentioned is the source of the data: French birth records from 1670 to 1830. The chance of remaining childless—30 percent—was also calculated based on historical populations.

In other words, millions of women are being told when to get pregnant based on statistics from a time before electricity, antibiotics, or fertility treatment."

>Taking aside all of your emotional concerns, you should know right away that women absolutely can have healthy biological children at or past the age of 39.

Definitely check with doctors OP, if this is something y'all truly want. I have friends around your age who are happily playing and traveling with their toddlers. They'll be older for some life events but also more settled (financially and emotionally) than I ever was at my kid's young ages.

Not trying to give false hope, it just reads like you personally decided something was true but that may not be the case. It does read like you may want to talk with someone, it is extremely helpful if only for voicing your ideas similar to here, most therapy folks I've known are very relaxed and just there to listen/help. Best of luck.

As I said in my own post, he and his wife should absolutely talk to a fertility doctor or even several specialists for their specific context. My point was that in general, most women can have children well into their 30s and even 40s, and that much of the claims to the contrary are based on absurdly old information. The link was for a general dose of optimism in case general worries about age itself are the main problem.

We were married (and trying) for over a decade with only an ectopic to show for it before our “happy surprise” was born 6 months after my 40th birthday.

There’s the small matter of my husband hitting retirement age about the same time our Überraschungsei hits university, but hopefully post-secondary in Germany will continue to mostly be living expenses.

There's also adoption and foster care (which can lead to adoption).

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