Having children before 30

I believed that I got married late, despite being married at an age that some people would regard as being the ideal age for a man. Looking at my children as most of us do, I always wished that they were a bit bigger and I had married earlier. As a medical doctor, although non-practising, I am called often to give my opinion on various health issues, and one gives my own views based on medical facts. Somethings it may seem that one comes across as being out of touch or not politically correct. Until occasionally, someone in authority or who has the necessary perceived expertise and experience validates one’s statements. Professor Geeta Nargund is such a person. She is a consultant gynaecologist at St George's Hospital in London a fertility specialist, so it seems she has an idea of what she’s talking about. She advised that women who are thinking of having children should start taking steps before 30. "As women get older, they experience more complex fertility problems, so treatment tends to be less successful and more expensive." She was so much concerned that she wrote the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan that the government should teach fertility lessons in schools. Some people decided that they should leave it searching for miracles, hope, probability, faith, chance, or IVF. She was also a concern about the increasing burden to the NHS as IVF does not come cheap, on the NHS, it comes to £3,435 on average to fund a round of IVF (at a private clinic, it may cost anything between £6,000 and £15,000 for every cycle).

NICE has guidelines in offering ladies IVF https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg156/ifp/chapter/in-vitro-fertilisation. There are that if a lady is under 40 years, she could be offered 3 cycles of IVF after having regular unprotected sex for a total of 2 years Or using Artificial Insemination after 12 cycles. For women aged 40 - 42 years of age can be offered 1 cycle of IVF when all of the following condition apply
1. They have fulfilled all the conditions for those before 40 years.

2. They have never had IVF before.

3. Fertility tests show that the ovaries response to medication.

4. The doctor has advised you on the risks of fertility treatment in older women.

But these are just guidelines, and their application varies from trust to trust. And one can image what will happen in the age of NHS cutbacks and savings.

There are biological or medical facts that the older a couple are, especially the female, the higher the mortality and morbidity in pregnancy. For women, The lower the fertility rate and the higher the incidence of congenital malformations. The Prof immediately came under fire for stating the obvious, as she was thought to be attacking hard-working females who want to have their own children and already had a tough job trying to be on par with their male colleagues at work now will have time off early in their careers to start their families. This will certainly put them at a disadvantage and maybe put them as second-class citizens in an increasingly complex and competitive world that takes no prisoners. But the fact is that western countries have had decreasing birth rates due to various factors. The rising cost of childbirth and child-raising, increasing number of women in the workforce, the later average age of marriage and childbirth, an increasing number of unmarried people and changes in the housing environment and social customs. The effect of decreasing populations may be great in the short term, i.e. enough to go round. But it will be terrible and disastrous and in the long term. Less labour and expertise, skills, etc., to maintain their economic advantage. Germany, for example, is at zero growth. Germany is said to have the lowest birth rate in Europe and the demographics do look gloomy. The government of Angela Merkel, aware of this problem, has decided to throw money at it. There is a new "Elterngeld" or "parents' allowance" introduced 5 years ago. The maternity cash benefit is paid leave for 6 weeks pre- and 8 weeks’ post-confinement (post-natal leave is extended for multiple births). Pre-natal days lost for premature confinement can be taken after confinement with much more benefits. It has cost her government over £16.1 billion since it was introduced. The ideal is that the government is aware of the problem and is making significant steps to control this. For a country to maintain its current population, each couple must have, on average, 2.1 children if there are no wars or massive epidemics. This is known as considered the replacement rate, i.e. Birth Rate = Death Rate. And in Germany, it was low, i.e. the population, in general, was decreasing. A quick solution to this is increasing immigration or allowing people to enter the country from developing countries. But this has its problems already. The people who are allowed in are a totally different culture. This would lead to xenophobia and a rise of the nationalistic and far-right parties in these countries. Then there is terrorism, especially when the immigrated population is not well integrated into their adopted countries. The UK has been spared from this because immigration is still high, the UK economy is still in great shape, the net migration was larger than natural population growth – the balance of births and deaths. “Within the EU, people are coming to the UK for employment. It’s a combination of the push factor – high EU unemployment – and the pull factor – a strong UK economy and availability of low-skilled jobs. Outside of the EU, the study has been a key factor.”

The next stage is seeing how I will cope with having teenagers in my 50s. Already they could run loops around me with their techno-gadgets despite the fact, I am trained as an IT Consultant. There are websites, tablets, and mobile devices linked to our main wifi network that are supposed to download stuff without our knowledge. Although we try our best to stay two steps ahead of them, with access and time being our constraints, they will soon catch up in this rapidly changing world.