What's the Best Age to Conceive

Cheryl Baker: My problem was that I had too much growing up to do before I started a family. So it was the right time for me to have children at 40, but biologically I think it was the wrong time. I think I should have been perhaps five years younger; maybe 35 would have been a good idea. Ingrid Tarrant: Why do you think that though? Cheryl Baker: Because I discovered at 40 that -- I discovered rather at 30 I am -- I couldn’t have them naturally and I needed IVF. Now apparently they are doing all these tests now and finding, the women who leave it too late are coming up with these problems. My problem was that my tubes were blocked, my Fallopian tubes were blocked and my gynecologist said that I could either have an operation or I could go for IVF. If you have the operation there is a possibility, there is 1% chance it could go wrong in which case I would have to -- and I couldn’t take that risk. So I had the children at 40. Rachel Royce: And you were lucky, weren’t you, because not everyone conceives by an IVF? Cheryl Baker: Well, it was the third time and they said that because you are 40, the age thing that looms over you, because you are 40, your chances of getting pregnant are much, much less. Ingrid Tarrant: Also there are chances of having a child with a problem -- Cheryl Baker: Yes. Female Speaker: Do you worry about that? Cheryl Baker: Of course, I am really worried about it, because you read every magazine and every article and it all says that the chances of having a child with Down's Syndrome but yeah, all these things are far greater, one in a hundred -- Rachel Royce: There is such a small window of opportunity for us to get it right, isn’t it? Let's say you are at university or when you are at that kind of stage, stage school, for you whatever it was, you fall in love then, that is right age to me, isn’t it? So when you are 20 some years, you go on and have a baby, that’s ideal, but how many of us do that? Ingrid Tarrant: And you can almost understand it, for some not to be necessarily be married. I want a child, I want somebody to father it for me and I would bring out that child on my own. You can understand that yearning inside, well, if I haven’t met somebody, and I am unlikely to, why do I have to wait till I meet the person to father that child? I want a baby. Cheryl Baker: I could think along those lines. Ingrid Tarrant: Did you? Cheryl Baker: Yeah, when I was about 34-35, because I was finished with a long term relationship one I had been in for 7 or 8 years. And I thought, now, who am I going to meet, I've got to settle down with someone, fall in love with someone, I want to start a family and I am 35. I am going to have to go and find someone who I think is a musician. I wanted the child to be musical and I wanted him to be the right high and I thought, which is actually a good way of doing it? No, because they [Voice Overlap] yeah, go shopping. Ingrid Tarrant: You did almost go shopping, because that’s what Steve is. Cheryl Baker: He is. He is all the things I wanted, he is a bit short and a bit bald. Ingrid Tarrant: Did your genetic thing worked? Are your children musical? Cheryl Baker: Incredibly some. Ingrid Tarrant: Oh! Then it did work. Cheryl Baker: Yeah! Ingrid Tarrant: But it, I want blonde, blue eyes, sort of like 6 foot, and you design a baby. Rachel Royce: I think one of the problems, and you would probably think this is quite controversial, but since abortion basically came widely available and contraception, men no long have to take responsibility for getting a girl pregnant. So in my mother’s generation if a girl got pregnant, the man stood by her. If a girl gets pregnant nowadays, the man can turn around and go, well, that’s your fault. You have it or not -- I am not standing by you. And I think that’s one of the problems why women are getting married young, when couples are -- because the men don’t have to. They -- that obligation. Mara Lee: I am not going to -- back I think, I got married quite earlier, I was 23. And we started trying to have babies at 25, when I was 25, he was a few older. And I had two miscarriages, bang, bang, and all sorts of complications, and I remember thinking, oh, bloody hell, how much earlier do I have to start? Rachel Royce: -- them. Mara Lee: No, I don’t really. One of them was particularly nasty and at the end if I hadn’t got all of the cells out from me, so they take me to a hospital to scrape everything away, it could potentially have gone cancerous. So there was talk of -- and if your hormone level goes up, we have to monitor you every week and if the hormone level goes up, that means the cells are growing which means you will chemotherapy and I was thinking -- that I did started out to try and have a baby at the young age of 25. And so we just sort of gave it a rest, and we have been traveling all over the world actually through in our jobs. So to have -- Ingrid Tarrant: -- you get to think about it. Mara Lee: Exactly, toured Europe for six months and came back with a six weeks old souvenir which is my daughter. I came back six weeks pregnant with her. It's kind that kind of thing, I don’t think there is a right age, because I have tried to do it young. Other people in your situation sure will be desperate to have the baby and yet it couldn’t have worked and maybe they are still childless. There is always exception to -- Rachel Royce: I don’t think women have to have that fertility thing in their head. I have a friend who was planning to get married and she was talking to me, she was 33. She said, I am planning to get married in a couple of years. I maybe going to have to wait a couple of years before we have kids. And I said, don’t, because I have read about it and I knew, and I knew people who couldn’t have children quite close to me, because as far as it goes and I advised her, don’t wait, have a baby straightaway. And she did try and she is still have to have an IVF and she says to me, now, well, thank goodness you said that to me Rachel, because I might have to wait too long for babies. Ingrid Tarrant: The awful thing is I think that women are actually planning it too much like a timetable. I am going to get married when I am 34 and I am going have a baby. I am going to wait two years and I am going to have it 36. So they wait two years, but I am not going to have a baby. Because it's become fits in their mind; that’s what they are going to do and it is proved that this happens. It's -- psychologically it's such a pressure on the body, it's when she is off. And you often hear about then -- Rachel Royce: I think we have -- Ingrid Tarrant: No, it is preferred, but it's like they are so desperate. You are trying so hard that you over-try, and it stops functioning. It's like the squeezing the thing. Rachel Royce: Like the stress thing. Ingrid Tarrant. Yes, exactly, you are putting the whole body under pressure. And so often you read about these people that can't get pregnant, their last thought is IVF, but in the meantime it's that what I can do, oh I will adopt, or I will get a -- this isn't likely -- and then they get pregnant and they stop thinking about it. It's a very weird thing. And we have been to regimented. Generally speaking, they are saying, the younger you are, the better it is. Now they have started saying 19 or something. But the body might be right for having babies at 19, but, no, hey, how can you do it, you are a child. You have had no responsibilities at all. Everything has been done for you. I mean, it's exceptional if you have been out fending for yourself for several years at the age of 19. Most are still looked after and have parental guidance and everything. Rachel Royce: The reason you have your baby when you are that age, you have parents still around to help, bring the mother home. Mara Lee: This is going back. Ingrid Tarrant: This is your childhood almost. You haven’t outlived yourself. You haven’t started, you haven’t played the fields -- Rachel Royce: But you may can get very narrow age when you can't have a baby. So you can't have them when you are teenager, because you are too young, you can't even in your 30, so there are just the 20s. I mean, there is this terribly narrow bandwidth. Ingrid Tarrant: No, I suppose the perfect time is such and such and then you’ve got between that and that, haven’t you? Rachel Royce: Okay, but maybe they shouldn’t make such a fuss about teenagers having babies. Why not? Ingrid Tarrant: But they should make a fuss about it, because they can't handle it. And alright, fair enough, if they have got parents that are quite happy to take on that responsibility, then -- Rachel Royce: But I think we used to, didn't we? I mean, my grandmother’s generation, they were having babies at 18 and 19 and they went on to have big families. Cheryl Baker: That’s what I was going to say. I mean, you only have to go to look at history. And biologically, we are supposed to have children very young and then we are supposed to die when we got through the menopause, because that's what used to happen. By the age of 50 we were all finished and unfortunately our body clock hasn’t moved on with our way of life. Our way of life really we should be start having periods in our early 20s and stop it -- Ingrid Tarrant: Things have changed because the children are having them earlier. So we are changing, there are sometimes we are having a lifestyle that there is -- yes, it is, but we are changing. It's going all completely out of the spot. Mara Lee: So best age? Rachel Royce: When you meet the right man. Cheryl Baker: Yeah. Absolutely right.