I have talked about this issue with a number of staff and industry colleagues over the last few years. my conclusion for what it is worth is:

There is no good time to have a baby, don't waste too much time on this you can’t solve it, you can just make the best possible compromise at the time.

The window of fertility is limited you need to go for it while the chance is there it might not always be.

Relationships come and go they don’t all survive waiting for a baby, having a baby or the work places and attractive colleagues, the ups and downs of life, you can’t fix that, so go for gold, its all you can do.

Unlike a partner, a job, your current area of expertise, your wider family, a child does not really come and go, they endure and grow and evolve like you, so what is important now in your social setting may not even be there in 3, 5, 8 or 10 years.

Some times it is wickedly too easy to get pregnant and some times its cruelly too hard to get pregnant or to hold a pregnancy, you will not know which cards you have been dealt until you try. Fertility diminishes rapidly with age and fertility clinics are big on marketing on dreams, when you drill into the independent success rate data of women in their late 30s and over 40s its a trail of tears with some rays of sun shine.

Do not be: swayed; fooled; blind side; deterred or forced to feel anxious afraid or a failure cause you cant give that child the TV version of a nuclear family or the one you had, it’s a myth peddled by socially conservative politics and religions, go for it. Millions have grown up with out Dads due to war, politics and depression, The US civil war, WW1, WW2, The Korean War, Vietnam, the great depression, The Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, Ethiopia, Biafra, Kampuchea, the Division of the Raj in 1947, the creation of Bangladesh all killed millions of Dads and the mothers raised beautiful successful men who have gone on to be great brothers, fathers, uncles and grand parents, so go for it.

There is nothing more important than the planet and the next generation so if you have the chance, I would say do it