My new-ish girlfriend is clearly having a lot of anxiety about completing her family. So I'm asking the hivemind for an objective general timeframe that I can keep in mind when this discussion comes up again, and for general advice about navigating this situation.
Context:
My girlfriend and I have been dating for a couple of months. We met as mom friends on the peanut app about 6 months ago, stayed having weekly playmates with our kids (her [M7], my [M6] and [F5]), and things evolved from there. The boys are best friends.
She is more than year post-divorce, I left my husband almost a year ago, already filed for divorce but he is dragging it out. This is both of our first serious WLW relationship.
We both have professional careers (she's an engineer and I'm a scientist/postdoc preparing for a faculty position). We both have primary custody of our children and spend every other weekend the kids are with dads together, plus at least weekly playdates. The kids do not know we're dating yet.
The situation:
Before we started dating, we had talked about her wanting to have another baby, particularly a little girl. Also discussed me being happy with the family I have but also open to having another baby, just not carrying. I've had a hysterectomy and have zero desire to be pregnant again. It has always made me very sad that my daughter won't have a sister, and she would be such a good big sister!
She brought up last night (not out of the blue) that having a baby is weighing heavily on her mind. She really wanted to be done having children by 35, and she feels like she's running out of time. She wanted to gage how I would feel if she were to get pregnant, and the various logistics. This being her baby, not suggesting we have one together.
I took some time to gather my thoughts and texted her later along the lines of "if you feel like it has to be now, I support that and I'd still want to pursue our relationship, however because this is very new and your priorities will inevitably shift as the baby gets closer, I worry about how that will halt the development of our relationship." I told her that because the relationship is so new, we don't have a basis for how we will navigate conflict and things will get messy and confusing.
She also acknowledges that she doesn't know how she can logistically do this by herself right now in her financial situation and because her job doesn't offer maternity leave. She mentioned leaning heavily on her best friend, who lives in another city.
I told her that I could see a future where we blend our families and have a baby together, but that we would need to give ourselves time to see where our relationship goes.
We ended the conversation with her acknowledging that now doesn't feel like a good time, and me suggesting that she table the idea for a short time and focus on improving her work/financial situation in the meantime. She agreed to try to put it out of her mind for 3-6 months and revisit.
Bonus content:
She makes good money, a little better than me, but just bought a house which imo was not a good move – mortgage too high, not a great neighborhood, house needs work, which I'm helping with as I can. My condo is bigger, cheaper, and in better condition but I rent (by choice, it was the better option in our area). Both of our homes are too small if we all lived together. So blending families down the line might be complicated. Also her and her son don't particularly like dogs, and I have an obsessively attached 3yo Boston!
I really like her, but I don't like the pressure her biological clock brings to the relationship, and I don't have a history of making good judgment calls on relationship pacing.
Any advice on pacing and discussing this going forward? I don't want to ask her to "wait on me" if this is something she truly feels like she needs to do urgently, especially if things don't work out with us for some reason.