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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   2111 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for August 16, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

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  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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We're wondering if we should try to have a third child or not. Currently we have two daughters, 4 and 1.5, and I'm 36. If we were going to try, it had better be soon. Several of my mid-thirties friends are currently pregnant with a third baby, and some others have already had three or four. I feel worried about getting pregnant, but there might be something wrong with the baby, since I'm getting older?

I think you should try for a third. As others have said, an increase on a small number is still a small number, and the potential upside of another child sounds like it would be worth it for you.

Depends on your views on medical screening and subsequent abortion.

When dealing with a sample size closer to Dunbar's number than to population-level statistics, I don't think there's much difference in health outcomes, personality traits, or other factors based on maternal age. For what it's worth, my mother was older than you when she had me and I turned out normal, or at least as normal as any of us who post here are.

As anthem said, the absolute risk of having a baby with issues because of advanced maternal age is still rather small.

If you want a third kid, I wouldn't let that stop you, especially since you'll likely have fertility issues if you delay it more than a handful of years.

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