Future LPN student 25yo. Deadline for having a baby? Husband 27

Trauma Columnist · Oct 29, 2015

Moved to prenursing.

BeachsideRN, ASN · Oct 29, 2015

I had my first baby at 35. You're still young. I was actually told that I would likely have trouble conceiving. So hubs and I started trying while planning our wedding. LO and behold 7months later we were pregnant. I would talk to your OB/gyn about your fertility questions. They can check your hormone levels etc to give you an idea of your fertility status.

BeachsideRN, ASN · Oct 29, 2015

And as an aside, having a 2 year old makes nursing school a bit more stressful.

FutureLPNNursing · Oct 29, 2015

Thanks for the reply. I will definitely ask my doctor on how to go about checking my hormone levels even though I'm not trying for a baby just yet. The time I was planning on trying for a baby is twards the end of my LPN program which is January 2017. And I will have a gap in between before I start my RN and was thinking I could use that time for a baby. But then yet I don't know if to just wait but by that time I will be 28 and my husband 30:(

2girlsandapug · Oct 30, 2015

I waited until I had a stable career (not nursing) before having my children at 30 and 33 (husband 35 and 38).IMO if you want to ultimately be an RN then put that as priority number one. I am changing careers/returning to school and life as a student and mom to a 6 month old has been hard. I wish I had figured out I wanted to be a nurse before I had kids. If you decide to have kids first, It's totally doable, and I'm doing it but it puts a variable into your studies like nothing else :) you're still young, try not to worry about your age too much :)

FutureLPNNursing · Nov 27, 2015

Ugh this is a hard decision really and it probably sounds crazy that the school I will be going to is 3hrs away from home, I will be leaving to go to school so really I would have no help with the baby other then paying for child care and working nights 3days out the week. I know it is not a right time to have babies specially if Nursing is what I want to do and will do.

nalie2, ADN, BSN, MSN, RN, NP · Nov 28, 2015

28 is still a pretty young age. More and more people are choosing to have kids later in life this day and age. I'm 30 and I plan on having kids when I finish school in 2 years. I would rather have a stable income to support a kid than to be stressed over having a kid while in school. Who knows what the quality of life could be.

NurseGirl525, ASN, RN · Nov 28, 2015

Does hubby know you are putting him out to pasture at the ripe old age of 30? :dead:

You and hubby are still very young. You are fine. I would hate to know what you think of me at 39 and boyfriend at 41 getting pregnant a couple of months ago!!! My son was born right after I turned 30. Hubby was 35. We still had the energy to chase that young whipper-snapper around. :roflmao: Last I checked, we were both of sound mind also.

Sorry to be a smarty pants but I have seen several posts like this recently. I think I should have a baby right now because we are old!! And all in their twenties. It's going to be ten times harder to navigate nursing school with an infant or toddler. Infants and toddlers don't give a crap that mommy has a paper due, clinical, and a test this week. Promise they don't!!

lovesbunnies · Nov 29, 2015

My twins are two years old and I'm about to finish my first semester of nursing school. I have a ton of support from my family, but there have still been many days where I've felt like I just don't have enough time to get everything done. My twins have always been pretty easygoing and well-behaved, even as infants, but they're also very energetic and require a lot of supervision/attention. On the days when I'm at home with them, it's very challenging to find time to study/read/work on assignments.

If I'm understanding your situation correctly, it sounds like your child would be in day care and you wouldn't have any support around to help out when needed. I think it would be very difficult to be successful in school in that situation. What happens if your child is sick and can't go to day care? What happens if you need to be at your clinical site early in the morning and the day care center isn't open early enough? Regardless of your child care situation, it's important to consider what you're going to do when the unexpected occurs.

As for your ages...25 is not old. 30 is not old. Most likely, you would not have trouble conceiving now, nor would you have trouble conceiving in a few years. I say "most likely" because I know all too well that infertility can strike at any age. I struggled with infertility in my early 20s, but my situation was certainly not the norm. If you have long, irregular cycles, that might be a cause for concern. If you've been having unprotected sex around the time of ovulation (actual ovulation, not when an app on your phone claims you're going to ovulate) for at least a year, that might be a cause for concern. Not getting pregnant from occasional unprotected sex that was not timed around ovulation isn't really a cause for concern. It's also worth mentioning that sex that's timed perfectly with ovulation is not a guarantee that you'll get pregnant. On average, in the absence of any fertility problems, you have about a 20% chance of conception each cycle, even if your timing is perfect.

So, in short, wait. Focus on school.

FutureLPNNursing · Nov 29, 2015

Yes I'm still thinking about what to do but as of right now I'm just going to concentrate on starting my LPN program and passing successfully and maybe towards the end of my LPN program I will see about the whole baby situation. I at least want to have my first year of Nursing a success and go from there. After that I would only have 11 months of school for RN. And yes I will not be living at home with my husband I will be 3hrs away. He's able to help financially and he can travel up to see me on his days off we have been together for 7years. I haven't really actually tried to get pregnant or even had sex around my ovulation but it was just a concern of mine that I've had unprotected sex without Plan B about 4 times this year and nothing. I have just read threads online that once you hit 30 it gets difficult to conceive. But I also understand it can happen at any age. I'm sure I can have kids but still those times that I had unprotected scares me and kinda anxious to know if it will be hard to conceive or not, and feel like I'm at the right age to start having kids. But then again I have goals.

LPNtoRNin2016OH, LPN · Nov 30, 2015

I am three years in to my LPN to RN bridge program. I started with my first two who were 2 and 4 at the time and gave birth to my youngest last winter 2 weeks before finals. While I would never change anything about my kids, take me advice, wait till your done with school!!! It would have been so much easier but I had my first unexpectedly so there was that.

We did decide to have our third in the middle of pre-reqs because of age though I will say. And not because I was afraid I couldn't get pregnant at an older age but that we didn't want to be raising babies our whole life since we started young. If I would have waited till after school, NCLEX, and holding a steady job for FLMA purposes, I would have a large age group between my first two and my youngest. I also didn't know want to face daycare issues in my RN career that I have faced in my LPN career so that's something to think about. At this point, with three kids under 7, daycare and working full time is pointless. So I go to school and work PRN. I have had to pass up a lot of LPN opportunities because of the daycare issue. This way, my older two will be in school when I start as an RN, and my youngest will be the only in daycare.

And another thing I wanted to mention about that you haven't yet got pregnant even w/ no protection. My first was a shocking 21st birthday present so not planned. When we tried for my second (I was 24) it took 8 months and I gave up. Figured my first was a fluke but really what was happening is that I had not been on birth control since the birth of my first, so my cycle was super irregular like it always off BC. One month after I gave up (and picked up my new BC RX at the pharm) I was pregnant. So with my third, I timed to get pregnant immediately after my last BC pill, and I conceived that cycle. SO it is VERY likely you just don't know your fertile window. I used an app as well, looked for the signs of ovulation, and bingo!! I also have endometriosis and that didn't even stop it.

You can always do anything you set your mind too. But I have given up a lot to go through school. Missed time with my kids, my husband, etc. And that's been really hard. In a perfect world, I would have finished my education and then had the exact same children I have now. But I certainly do not regret anything either.

Good luck!