I’ve always wanted kids, but it seemed a far-away thing to me until very recently - like last year maybe (I’m 28). Then I started thinking, “Damn, I need to have a kid before I turn 35.” And now I often wonder how it would feel to be pregnant and actually have a child that I would have to be responsible for - for the rest of my life! More concrete thoughts than I had before, so to speak. (Before it was just, oh, babies are cute, I want one at some point.)
Another woman whose biological clock seems to be missing.
I had a plan. My plan was to finish college, start a career, get married, be married for a few years, then have a baby, wait a couple years and have another. Thankfully, I met a man who liked my plan. The plan went according to plan and I had my baby at 29. After having my son, I changed the plan…I decided I wouldn’t have another child until I felt the tug on my heart to do so, instead of having more kids because it was in the plan.
I have one child.
I have just never felt that ticking or yearning for a baby. I wanted to have kids, but it was more of a matter of course that I would have at least one kid, than a physical or emotional longing.
What biological clock? I’m 42 and using lateral reproduction, thank you much.
I’ve never particularly wanted kids of my own, more like being terrified I’d be as lousy a mother as my mother, her sister, their mother, and the mother of my grandfather on that side. The other side isn’t very kiddy-huggie, but they do ok; I always preferred people who had high expectations of me to those who treated me as a kid, anyway. While the terror has disappeared, I still can’t say I want kids: “happy to be the crazy aunt” could be one of my mottoes. I fully expect to be the person answering the hard questions for my nephews… it’s already happening, and it happened for their father and uncle way back when.
49, sterilized at a young age and hysterectomy last summer. Clock was always broken, never actually ticked once …
Ever since it dawned on me (or it dawned on my body) I’d have my degree in 9 months or less… So around fall of 2007. And each year it is ticking a bit more. 
I’m very happy for my friends, but I also get pangs of envy every time I see they’re getting pregnant or having kids.
I’m 27.
Despite seeming evidence to the contrary - I had a kid,my first and only, at age 39 - my biological clock never started ticking. I was quite happy as a childless person. It was a difficult (though definitely not regretted for a moment!) decision to have a child, and it was based on some extremely personal events in my life completely unrelated to the biological clock idea.
Never. I’m 35. I can smile and nod at women who talk about how they need a baby, like STAT, but they are like aliens from another planet to me.
Woman 43 here. Never heard ticking, and had an SO who didn’t want kids, so that worked out fine.
Then, at 35, I got a depression that lasted about five years. I could have done the sensible thing, gone to my GP and start taking antidepressants. I’m a psychologsit, for crying out loud. But I didn’t do the sensible thing.
Instead I turned my life around totally. Got divorced, got a new husband, all in one year. New husband wanted kids. I thought: " I’m 38, I can’t wait any longer, so lets just do this thing and try to get pregnant. Maybe that will be the thing that will make me feel better.". At 40, nearly 41, my son was born. My husband is 35, so his young agile sperm may have helped with my aging eggs. 
It all worked out fine. My life is different now with my son. Not better or worse. Just different. And a whole lot more tiring.
About 25-26. Always wanted kids.
Didn’t get married until I was 27 but got pregnant with first of 2 boys not long after that.
My biological clock has never ticked. If it even thinks about starting to tick, I will get the nearest heavy object and bludgeon it severely until such thoughts disappear.
I grew up never wanting kids, then accidentally pregnant (despite copious amount of contraception) at 17. Still didn’t really want kids, but didn’t want an abortion or adoption even more, so I had my son. Spent my 20’s vehemently not wanting any more kids and rather resenting the one I had…
Then 30 hit, and it was indeed like the Big Ben of Fertility was booming in my ear. It’s the weirdest thing ever, this overwhelming CRAVING to be pregnant and have a baby. It’s quite horrid, actually, especially considering that I’m still not crazy about kids, my own or anyone else’s.
There have been a few echos of BBoF in the years since, but thankfully I can’t safely have any more pregnancies, so a medical condition is keeping me safe from my own hormonal impulses.
I’ve wanted kids since I was younger, but didn’t start to get that yearning feeling until I was about 27 and I had an accidental pregnancy and loss. Once we started trying (and have been so far unsuccessful except for one more loss), the feeling grew. I’m 30 now and each cycle of ‘Not Pregnant’ gets harder and harder. I am really ready to have kids, and so is my husband. It’ll happen one way or another, but the waiting is tough.
:nodding: Neither side of the family was very kiddy-huggy. My cousins are either onlies like me or they have only have one other sibling. In turn, the most children their children have is 4. Everyone else either has none or 1.
I know for a fact my reasons for not wanting kids stems from witnessing what my mother went through when I was a child. I don’t know if it was PPD coupled with whatever demons she had or just the demons themselves, but she went through utter hell and, of course, as a kid, I thought it was my fault. Then I overhead her best friend saying that “she had been so happy before getting pregnant”. I made up my mind right then and there that I wasn’t going to intentionally follow in her footsteps. And I didn’t. The kicker? Nobody in my family was surprised.
I’ve always kind of wanted kids, but it wasn’t The most important thing in the world. I have endometriosis and have known since my late teens that getting pregnant might be tricky, and mostly I thought it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it didn’t happen.
Then, about three years ago at age 27, the Big Ben of Fertility (nice term, WhyNot) struck. We decided we wanted to get married first, which we did last summer, and we’ve been trying ever since. No sign of babies yet, and it gets harder and harder with each passing month. At this point I struggle a bit with being really happy for others when they get pregnant, especially if I know that they haven’t really been trying. I have a great husband and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll be okay, but I do desperately want us to be parents.
The most surprising thing for me is how much I want to be pregnant. Before the BBofF I was pretty certain that I at one point would like to have a kid, but I was pretty indifferent to my own fertility in the matter. Now I really want to experience having a baby grow inside me. The fact that adoption is an expensive and time-consuming process might be a part of it, but it is also a pretty powerful biological urge, for me anyway, and that need only showed up in the last couple of years.
I started to know that I wanted kids, at some point, when I was 18. I had a really bad “baby fit” when I was 25 and in a dead-end rotten relationship… I was still young but the longer I stayed with that jerk, the less chance I had of ever getting what I wanted. When I was 27 I finally dumped him and met my husband.
We took a year to get married and waited nine months after that to start trying to conceive. We got our positive pregnancy test on our first wedding anniversary, when I was 29, nearly 30. I feel like the timeline worked out well, though I was pretty scared for part of it.
I had issues about having kids when I was growing up, and through my 20’s, even.
Thanks, Mom! Your utter disappointment and bitterness with your lot in life rubbed off on me and damaged my biological clock.
I spent all my fertile years trying desperately to avoid pregnancy, successfully. I got pregnant exactly a year after I got married (no birth control) and it was a major shock and surprise! I never never never thought I would get pregnant, and though I hadn’t been trying to after I got married, I thought ‘let’s leave it to fate, what will be will be’. We would have been happy being childless (except for lots of pets). Well, I did have a daughter, and it’s been a trip, let me tell you. She is a beautiful, intelligent, successful young lady, the pride of our lives. I apparently did a good job as a mother, she turned out so well but of course it’s not all ME… Wish now I’d had one more. But back then, just having a child and raising her was so exhausting, terrifying, and exhilerating, all my emotions and energies were put into her. I couldn’t think at the time, maybe have another kid?..No, I was almost 40, there were some questions about genetics, be glad for the one I already have! And I am!
Exactly - me too.
I won’t pretend to know what it’s like having trouble conceiving, but I do understand this visceral, hormonal, animalistic craving to be pregnant. Weirdest thing ever, and I’m guessing it’s just as hard to deal with as craving a child. Sure, you can get a child through adoption (if you’re dedicated, lucky and have the time and money for the process), but you can’t satisfy the pregnancy craving except by being pregnant. That must suck big time.
I’ve always felt the opposite. There’s no way in hell I’m putting my body through that! That - plus my firm belief that most of the world’s problems are rooted in human overpopulation - mean I’m neverever having my own kid, and I am 110% fine with that. I don’t really want to be a parent (I’d be willing to take in a friend’s child if absolutely need be, but that’s it) and Mr. Horseshoe doesn’t like kids, so it’s a nonissue and always will be. I like interacting with the little kids next door, for a little bit at a time, but I mostly feel about small children the way most people feel about huge dogs: “Aww, cute! And so well-behaved! But … I don’t want that thing in my house.”
I was, for a week, the sole caretaker of a baby (babysitting situation - parents had to leave town) and it taught me everything I need to know, good and bad, about what it’s like to have a baby. It wasn’t bad or anything (cute baby! smart, too!) but that one week was plenty for me.
What is this “clock” of which you speak? 
A question for women who have already had at least one child… does the desire to be pregnant come on even after you’ve been through pregnancy? Because I used to looooove to imagine how neat it would be to be pregnant, and now that I am, I’m having a hard time imagining I’ll ever want to do it again. The thought makes me queasy. Not that there’s anything that doesn’t make me queasy right now…