I am turning 35 but have wanted to have kids for over 10 years now. Unfortunately, no relationship I ever found worked out and I’m stuck being single. Ever since my late 20s, I’ve had severe health issues result from infertility problems. It got to the point where I needed major surgery with a prolonged inpatient hospital stay in my late 20s, and a follow-up outpatient surgery procedure a few years after that. I’ve tried getting pregnant on my own using IUI and donor sperm but so far nothing has worked out with that and it’s getting expensive. Adoption is also out of the question, due to expenses and wait periods that are much more than even IUI, but truthfully if I had a choice I’d rather have the experience of being pregnant and carrying my own biologically related baby anyway. I keep trying to find a guy who is willing to have a kid but it seems that the older I get without kids, the harder it is to find a guy who is interested in this and who also doesn’t already have kids of his own. And before anyone gets defensive, the reason I do not want someone who already has biological kids of his own is because the few experiences I had with dropping that standard led to bad endings that taught me why it’s best to just go for guys who also don’t have kids yet but want kids, plus guys with kids are in no rush or desire to have more it seems. As a result, I am absolutely dreading turning 35, the official age that everyone says marks “geriatric maternal age”. What should I do???
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TL/DR: I am turning 35 in a few weeks and still childless not by choice, single not by choice. I’ve had nothing but failures with relationships and dating. What should I do to improve my situation?
4 comments
If motherhood and experiencing pregnancy is your desire, I would continue to work toward that. I didn’t marry until I was almost 35 and we both had fertility issues so went straight to IVF after we both had procedures for issues causing infertility. At that point IVF was the only option.
I would keep working to save up for this. We worked extra jobs to help pay. There are organizations that you can apply for grants. Look into those. Are you set on having a biological child? If not and you just want to experience pregnancy, look into embryo adoption.
I’m turning 40 in July and my latest transfer “stuck” so God willing, we are on board with our 2nd IVF baby.
Wanting to have a relationship mostly to have kids isn’t going to appeal to most guys besides religious fundamentalists I’m afraid. What can you offer a single guy?
I don’t know what I can advise you to do besides working on improving yourself and perhaps focusing less on the having kids part and more on the building a connection with someone.
What exactly are you expecting to get out of having kids? Try to seperate the different things you want out of it from eachother into as distinct and specific things as you can manage. Perhaps there are ways to gain some or all of what you’re wanting from the experience without having biological children yourself.
Sometimes we’re asking the wrong question.
Theres really nothing you can do except keep looking for someone who also wants kids.
I personally think being a parent is a wonderful thing. I dont care if we share the same dna or not.
You can seek about freezing your eggs or going to a sperm bank.