Becoming a Mom at 35: The Regret I Didn’t Expect

There are some things in life you understand only after you experience them. For me, motherhood is one of those things. I became a mother at 35, and becoming a mom has been one of the most beautiful, transformative experiences of my life. I love being a mother in a way I could never have fully understood before having my daughter. But motherhood also brought an unexpected realization. I wish I had started sooner.

That is difficult for me to admit because I understand that timing matters. I understand that life does not always unfold according to the plans we make for ourselves. And as a woman of faith, I ultimately believe that my daughter came into my life according to God's timing.

Still, I can believe in God's timing while being honest about something else: for many years, I allowed fear, finances, cultural messages, and the assumption that I had plenty of time to influence how I thought about motherhood. And now that I am on the other side of that decision, I see things differently.

The Message That Children Make Life Harder

For years, many women in my generation have heard some version of the same message: Enjoy your life first. Build your career first. Travel first. Become financially secure first. Buy the house first. Figure yourself out first. And perhaps most importantly: do not have children until you are completely ready. There is wisdom in preparing for parenthood. Children deserve stability, love, protection, and responsible parents. But somewhere along the way, preparation started sounding more like postponement. We also began hearing children discussed primarily in terms of what they cost us. Children are expensive. Children interfere with careers. Children make traveling harder. Children take away your freedom. Children change your body. Children disrupt your sleep. Children complicate relationships. Children make life harder.

None of those concerns are entirely imaginary. Motherhood is hard. Raising a human being requires enormous sacrifice. But I now realize how incomplete that picture was. We talked extensively about what children require from us without talking nearly enough about what they bring into our lives. The love. The laughter. The tiny hands reaching for you. The privilege of watching another human being discover the world. The strange way ordinary moments suddenly become important. The realization that your life is no longer centered entirely around yourself. Yes, motherhood requires sacrifice. But I no longer automatically view sacrifice as loss. Sometimes sacrifice is simply what happens when we discover something worth giving ourselves to.

The “Big Postponement”

I think of what happened to many women of my generation as the Big Postponement. We did not necessarily decide that we never wanted marriage or children. We simply kept moving them further down the timeline. After college. After establishing a career. After earning more money. After paying off debt. After finding the right person. After getting married. After getting a better apartment. After buying a home. After the next promotion. After the economy improves. After we finally feel ready. There was always another milestone standing between the present and motherhood. Financial concerns were especially powerful.

And they were not unreasonable. Many millennials entered adulthood during or around the Great Recession. We faced student debt, rising housing costs, expensive childcare, uncertain employment, and a cost of living that often made traditional adulthood feel financially out of reach. So we postponed. We told ourselves we were being responsible. Sometimes we absolutely were. But I have started wondering whether some of us quietly turned financial preparedness into the search for financial perfection. There is an important difference. Preparing responsibly for a child is wise. Believing that every financial variable must be solved before having one can create a finish line that continually moves. There will always be another expense. There will always be uncertainty. There will always be something that could make waiting another year seem reasonable. Eventually, waiting itself becomes the plan.

The Illusion That We Have Unlimited Time

There is another uncomfortable part of this conversation. Many millennials grew up in a culture obsessed with youth. Thirty became “the new twenty.” Forty became “the new thirty.” We were encouraged to explore indefinitely, find ourselves, reinvent ourselves, and reject traditional timelines. Some of that was liberating. Women should not be told that their entire value is determined by marriage or motherhood. Women should have opportunities for education, careers, independence, creativity, travel, and personal growth. But empowerment should also include honest conversations about time. We cannot assume that every opportunity available to us at 25 will exist in exactly the same way at 35 or 40. I think I subconsciously believed I had more time than I actually did. There was always another year. Another birthday. Another season. Thirty still felt young. Thirty-two still felt young. Thirty-four still felt like there was time. And suddenly I was 35 and becoming a mother for the first time. I was incredibly grateful. But I also began thinking about all the years when motherhood seemed like something for “later.” Later arrived much faster than I expected.

Adulthood Is Not Something We Can Postpone Forever

I also think my generation received a complicated message about growing up. We became adults legally, professionally, and financially while sometimes continuing to think of ourselves as much younger than we were. We joked about “adulting.” Marriage became something that could happen eventually. Children became something that could happen eventually. Buying a home became something that could happen eventually. Settling down became something that could happen eventually.

There is nothing inherently wrong with taking a different path. Not every woman wants marriage. Not every woman wants children. Some women desperately want children and cannot have them. Others meet their spouse later in life, experience infertility, endure loss, or face circumstances completely outside their control. This is not about declaring one timeline morally superior to another. It is about questioning the assumption that delay is always freedom. Sometimes delay is necessary. Sometimes delay is wise. Sometimes delay is beyond our control. But sometimes we delay meaningful things because we have convinced ourselves that adulthood will be waiting whenever we finally decide to arrive. Time does not work that way.

“But Having Children Is Hard”

One of the most common reasons people give for not wanting children—or postponing them—is simple: It is hard. And they are right. Babies cry. Sleep changes. Schedules become complicated. Your money is no longer entirely your own. Spontaneity becomes harder. Your priorities change. You worry about another human being constantly. Parenthood exposes your impatience, selfishness, fears, weaknesses, and limitations. But I have started questioning when “hard” became synonymous with “not worth doing.” Many of the things we celebrate most in adulthood are hard. Building a career is hard. Marriage can be hard. Starting a business is hard. Getting an education is hard. Caring for aging parents is hard. Maintaining meaningful relationships is hard. Becoming emotionally mature is hard. We rarely argue that something has no value simply because it requires sacrifice. Yet conversations about parenthood can sometimes reduce children to a calculation of inconvenience. I absorbed some of that thinking. Now I wish I had questioned it more.

What Motherhood Gave Me

Then I became a mother. And suddenly the theoretical conversation about children became a real little person. My daughter was not an abstract expense on a spreadsheet. She was not a lifestyle inconvenience. She was not the end of my identity. She was my baby. And loving her rearranged something inside me. Motherhood has given me a different understanding of time, love, responsibility, and purpose. Things that once seemed enormously important became smaller. Things I barely noticed before became precious. A smile. A sleepy face. A tiny hand wrapped around my finger. Watching her learn something for the first time. Hearing her laugh. Seeing my husband become a father. Watching our little family take shape. These experiences cannot be represented accurately in a financial projection. There is no spreadsheet column for wonder. There is no calculator that can measure the value of watching your child discover the world. Parenthood costs something. But it gives something too. And I wish our culture talked about both sides with equal honesty.

Do I Regret Waiting?

In some ways, yes. I regret allowing fear to have as much influence as it did. I regret believing that financial security had to look a certain way before motherhood could begin. I regret absorbing the idea that children primarily represent limitation. And I regret assuming there would always be more time. But regret is complicated. Because if everything had happened differently, I would not necessarily have this child, at this moment, within this exact life. And I cannot imagine my story without her. So I do not look at my daughter and think, “You should have come earlier.” I look at her and think: You came when you were supposed to come. That distinction matters deeply to me.

There Is No Perfect Time

If motherhood has taught me anything, it is that the “perfect time” to have a baby probably does not exist. You can save more money. You can get another promotion. You can move into a larger home. You can create the perfect nursery. You can make detailed plans. And life can change tomorrow. That does not mean people should have children irresponsibly or ignore serious financial and personal circumstances. It means that there is a difference between being reasonably prepared and waiting for a guarantee that life will never become difficult. That guarantee does not exist. At some point, faith requires accepting that we cannot control every variable. For me, that realization ultimately brings me back to God.

God's Timing, Not Mine

I can look backward and wonder what would have happened if I had become a mother at 28, 30, or 32. But those are imaginary lives. This is the life I was given. I became a mother at 35. And perhaps part of my journey was needing to become the woman I was at 35 before I could fully understand the gift I had been given. There are things I wish I had understood sooner. But I also believe God was present in the waiting. He was present in the uncertainty. He was present in the years when motherhood seemed distant. And He was present when my daughter finally arrived. My timeline was never entirely mine. That has become strangely comforting. Because motherhood has shown me how little control we actually have—and how much beauty can exist when life does not unfold exactly according to our plans.

What I Would Tell Younger Women

I would never tell another woman when she should have a child. That decision is deeply personal, and circumstances vary tremendously. But I would tell younger women something I wish I had understood more clearly: Do not make permanent decisions based only on temporary fears. Do not assume that because something will be difficult, it will not also be beautiful. Do not assume that financial uncertainty automatically means you are incapable of building a family. Do not let social media convince you that freedom means having as few responsibilities as possible. Do not confuse endless youth with a meaningful life. And if you genuinely want marriage and children someday, be honest with yourself that “someday” is not an unlimited period of time. You do not need to panic. You do not need to race. But you should not be afraid to acknowledge what you truly want either.

Motherhood Did Not End My Life. It Expanded It.

Before becoming a mother, part of me worried about everything I would lose. Freedom. Time. Money. Sleep. Independence. And yes, motherhood changed all of those things. But what surprised me was everything I gained. My life did not become smaller. In many ways, it became larger. There is another person whose future matters to me more than my convenience. There is another human being whose childhood I have the privilege of helping shape. There are Christmas mornings, bedtime prayers, family dinners, ordinary afternoons, first words, first steps, questions, discoveries, traditions, and memories ahead of us. I understand now why parenthood cannot be explained entirely to someone who has not experienced it. You can describe the work. You can describe the sleepless nights. You can calculate the cost of diapers and childcare. But it is much harder to describe the love.

If I Could Go Back

If I could speak to my younger self, I would not tell her that she had failed. I would simply tell her not to be so afraid. I would tell her that money matters, but money is not everything. I would tell her that children require sacrifice, but sacrifice is not the same thing as misery. I would tell her that growing older is not something to fear, but neither is it something to pretend will never happen. I would tell her that she does not need every piece of her life perfectly arranged before allowing something beautiful to begin. And perhaps most importantly, I would tell her that she is not actually in control of the timeline anyway. God is. Today, when I look at my daughter, I understand both truths at once. I wish I had understood the beauty of motherhood earlier. And I believe she arrived exactly when God intended her to. Maybe that is one of the great paradoxes of life. We can learn from the years behind us without wishing away the life they eventually produced. We can acknowledge regret without living inside it. We can admit that fear influenced our choices while still trusting that God can work through those choices. And we can stop waiting for life to become perfect before we allow ourselves to truly live it. At 35, I became a mother. I thought I was bringing a baby into my life. I did not realize how completely she would introduce me to a new one.