At 36, I’m Worried About Not Having A Baby – Or Missing My Chance To Have One

I turned 36 this year, and the realisation that I was steamrolling towards my 40th birthday hit hard. I’ve made peace with ageing to some degree — as the years roll by, I realise more and more that age really is just a number, and I can do whatever I want whenever I please, regardless of what society deems appropriate. Except when it comes to fertility.

It’s a cruel reality but sadly, our bodies haven’t caught up with our independence. While the age of new mothers aged 30+ rose from 37 per cent in 2001 to 51 per cent in 2019, our fertility declines from the age of 30, and sharply after 35 — a fact I’ve never been more aware of since getting my own fertility tested in 2021. At 36, I’m quickly dropping from “you’ll likely fall pregnant easily” to “it’s going to take some time, and you may need assistance”.

I'd thought that getting my fertility tested would add a sense of urgency to my wishy-washy, do-I-want-kids-do-I-not mentality, but here I am, still not trying for a baby. Now I’m just anxiously avoiding the leap into motherhood instead of blindly avoiding it. 

There are reasons for this, but they extend beyond the obvious “do I want kids”. For me, it's not as simple as that. I want to share some of my current worries because maybe you’re also feeling it too right now and just want to know you’re not alone.

At the top of the worry list is the constant questioning around my window of time. When I was 35, I said I’d start trying at 36. Now that I’m 36, I’m saying 37, maybe even 38? Can I wait until 38? 39???

In a perfect world, I would have the freedom to wait until I was definitely ready. I don’t feel ready at all — I love my independence and the ability to travel at a moment’s notice. To go out until 3am and sloth around all Sunday. The bubble I live in with my boyfriend and our dog. I want children; I just don’t really want them right now. I want them when I’m done with exploring and experiencing the things you can really only explore and experience when you’re childless. 

It is the most frustrating element of fertility; that we can’t know the exact day our bodies will cease to contribute our half of procreation. That we can’t know the moment when our egg + our chosen partner’s sperm will come together and form a healthy embryo — and when that option is no longer available. 

I feel like I’m playing chicken with an invisible opponent. Will I crash? Or will I swerve at just the right time?

This swings both ways. What if I regret waiting too long and miss out on motherhood? Will I really live a full life, or will every day be tinged with sadness? 

Even scarier is the other option – what if I regret having children? What if I lie prostrate on the floor, my baby screaming its lungs out in its crib, me crying in unison and wishing for my old life that I can never get back? What if I hate my children because they stole that independence I love so much?

It’s not like you can return a child. They’re yours for life, they go wherever you go — they’re at the centre of everything. 

I wanted some insight into this fear because surely the mothers I know have been at rock bottom with their kids. “Rosa’s tantrums are short, fast and loud and that helps, I think,” my friend Josie says. She suffered a miscarriage before conceiving, so when she feels overwhelmed, she says she remembers how fortunate she is to have Rosa in her life. She also reckons you forget the shit bits.

“In the early days, I had moments where I sometimes wondered about life before Rosa, because honestly, the newborn phase sucks in my opinion. But I feel like I got a bit of amnesia or something because when I think back now it’s hazy — or maybe it’s just because I love the toddler stage and feel like it was all worth it.”

My friend Rachel also has a toddler, and a similar take. “I’ll have a moment where Nell is having a meltdown, and I’m tired, and I can be so annoyed with her and then a minute later, she’ll come give me a hug and all is forgiven,” she says. 

She said something else that really hit home for me. “You’re totally allowed to have periods where you regret a baby and sometimes I think it’s fear of the feeling more than anything else. You’re allowed to feel the feeling. You don’t need to be afraid of it.”

How often are we afraid of a fleeting thought, when really, a feeling is just a feeling and we make the choice not to act on it?

The obvious answer to the previous anxiety, and the one that friends of mine with children often repeat to me, is that you can’t understand the love for a child until it’s in your arms. The mother bond is, apparently, so strong that it overrides the allure of your old life. For the most part, anyway. My mum friends will be quick to tell me that they have moments where they miss being child-free, but wouldn’t actually trade their life to be child-free.

I get that as a concept but of course I don’t get it as a reality. I have some idea of a bond that overrides your own selfish desires – when I got my dog Teddy, I had a meltdown because he intruded on my whole life. I didn’t expect it, but once I'd adjusted, I know I would be devastated if he wasn’t around. When my partner and I go on holidays without him, we spend most of our time looking at his photos. We adore him, so naturally that trumps the moments when we miss our old, dog-free life.

What if I don’t have that mother bond, though? Does everyone get the bond? I’ve heard stories of women not bonding with their child. I know that many women suffer through postpartum depression, and have to work hard to find their bond. When the fundamental pull that draws you away from your old life and into this new, exhausting one is some sort of invisible feeling, it’s terrifying to imagine not having it.

Rachel never understood that bond until it happened to her either, because with other people’s children, she felt nothing. 

“The bond is like having your heart on the outside of your body. I can’t imagine a world where Nell doesn’t exist; I can’t imagine her not at the centre of all my decisions. I’m so tired and exhausted, and she can be such a rat and the first thing I’ll do when she goes to bed is look at photos of her.”

Josie agrees. But while she did feel the mother bond immediately, she also has friends who didn’t and had to wait for it to develop.

“It’s okay if you don’t have the bond immediately,” she says. “It’s survival at first. I wasn’t in any kind of love bubble. I had 'Fuck, what am I doing! Fuck, I’ve got to keep this thing alive.' It wasn’t until she was like four months old when I got into a bit of a rhythm and started understanding her that I felt the love connection or thought about it, I suppose.”

I’ve researched enough to know that you don’t just “fall” pregnant. At least, most people with a uterus don’t, especially not in their 30s. The risk of miscarriage is high, but even if you’re fortunate enough to carry full term, you can face months of false starts, phantom pregnancies, and hopeful peeing on sticks only to be let down by period blood the following morning. 

This makes me anxious because I worked with Josie during the year she was trying for Rosa. I remember that initially, she was excited, but after months of dashed hopes, the seemingly endless cycle of waiting and being let down became more and more devastating.

“There’s a lot of cruelty with trying to conceive,” she says. “You’re only super fertile for a couple of days and they don’t teach you that in school, but when you’re actually trying, it’s like doing a maths problem trying to figure out the right day to try, and then the waiting game to see if it happened.”

She eventually took a few months off to counter the constant disappointment, because it was starting to make sex a chore and was also impacting her relationship.

Still, she got through it. She says when she did fall pregnant, it made the struggle worth it.

Josie also worried about the impact it would have on her relationship; a fear I share. Even when my partner and I got a dog, we saw a shift. I can only imagine the change a baby brings.

She says that while her relationship with her partner is different now, it's been for the better. “A child is super challenging; probably the most challenging experience in a relationship. But it bonded us - we became this well-oiled machine, an incredible team,” she says.

For Rachel, having a baby had the opposite effect — she split up with her partner a couple of years after Nell was born. Still, she has no regrets. “It was the right decision and it was actually empowering for us. You’ll either get the connection with your partner back or you won’t, and either way, it will be okay. You still have the beautiful experience of having a kid together and that’s what my ex and I have at the centre of our co-parenting relationship now.”

This is a physical and mental fear, because I hate the unknown. Of course, change happens all throughout our lives, and we adapt and develop because of it, often without even knowing. But when you have a massive life change that also comes down to a decision you make — to try for a baby or not to — that’s terrifying. 

If I don’t become a mother, I will change. But I can at least somewhat see that trajectory: I’d invest time in work and travel, and I’ve experienced both of those ten times over, so I can kind of gauge what the future might hold. But a baby? I’ve never had that experience. How will it change my mind? Who I am, fundamentally? My physical body?

“Your body becomes someone else’s for nine months, and longer if you breastfeed,” Josie explains, saying that it took her a while to adjust to the irreversible changes Rosa’s arrival brought with it, like boobs that just weren’t ever going to be perky anymore, a popped rib and her C-section scar.

She says that it’s a strange feeling to give your body to a tiny human, and have that tiny human fundamentally transform it. But she also looks at a lot of the changes as evidence of her experience and now takes pride in them. 

Rachel told me that Nell did a complete 180 on everything she knew. That's a scary thought, but she sees it positively. “I think before I had her I was a really selfish person,” she explains. “It’s nice having something that takes me away from that. I was also really specific about what I wanted for my life and I hadn’t planned for a baby, but when the test was positive, I just felt like I wanted it. I’d had a termination in the past and I knew then that I didn’t want that pregnancy, but this time it just felt right for me.”

Talking to Josie and Rachel hasn’t completely shifted my fears — I’m not loving the idea of becoming a mother just yet. But it did cement the fact that having a kid, just like many of life’s mysteries and wonders, is an experience you can’t completely understand until you're in the trenches.

Of course, you don’t need to have children. I know I will still live a rich and fulfilling life if I don’t have kids, and if I knew deep down that I didn’t want them – just truly did not have the urge – I would be so happy with that. But more and more, I’m starting to feel like my anxiety is driven by fear, and not by what I truly want. 

I do want kids. I’m just scared of the unknown. Now doesn’t feel like the right time, but I have a feeling that in the near future, I’ll take the leap.