'I never felt an obsessive desire to have a baby.' Experts explain what it means if you've never had 'baby fever.'

As a teenager, I was led to believe that there would be certain periods in my life when I would be hit by the wild, consuming urge to become pregnant and have a baby. 

There were myths about how and when this would happen that I came to believe inherently, one of these being that 'baby fever' came in pre-determined peaks. The first wave, I was told, would strike you at 21-years-old, and the next in your late 20s. Only, I turned 21 and then more recently, left my 20s behind entirely and I still haven't experienced the strong physical urge to become pregnant.

When people talk about that obsessive desire to have a baby that emanates from deep within their uteruses (uteri?), how it forces them to hyper-focus on children, reach for tiny baby articles of clothing, and clutch at friend's kids, I find myself at a loss. 

Even though I love being around children and intellectually, I enjoy the idea of being a parent, I have never received the "Go!" message from my own body. I can confidently say that I have never once in my life felt 'broody'. I can't even really comprehend what that would feel like.  

So, is baby fever a myth after all? 

And if it is, in fact, a real phenomenon then what does that say about women who don't experience it? 

What is 'baby fever'? 

The fact is that a deep, burning desire to procreate is a documented and studied phenomenon, although it appears in the literature under alternate names, including 'baby longing' and the far more disturbing-sounding 'baby lust'. 

Listen to The Quicky discuss becoming pregnant later in life. Article continues below. 

One US study from 2011 distinguished between baby fever and the more clear-headed, rational decision to conceive a child. The researchers asked participants if they ever have "a bodily desire for the feel, sight and smell of an infant next to you" and found that on average, women rated the frequency of that experience at around 4.22 on a scale of 1 to 9 (in other words, they seemed to be experiencing baby fever fairly regularly). 

Dr Nicole Stamatopoulos, a general obstetrician and gynaecologist, told Mamamia that in every woman's menstrual cycle, there is a point around ovulation when she may find herself more aroused by the idea of becoming pregnant. Dr Stamatopoulos said that this will typically happen anywhere in what she refers to as a woman's "reproductive years" from 15 to 40 years old. 

Dr Stamatopoulos also said that it is most likely women will experience these strong urges through their 20s and early 30s, when women's bodies are best equipped to give birth to a baby vaginally. However, she said that, putting aside these physical considerations and societal pressure, these urges can carry on into a woman's 40s, too. 

We should also note that baby fever isn't a feeling relegated to women, regardless of what we see in the media and the kinds of conversations we tend to have with friends. The feeling seems to be experienced by both men and women but to differing degrees, with one Finnish study reporting that around 70 per cent of women had felt 'baby longing' at least once in their life, while 54 per cent of men reported the same. 

What causes baby fever?

This is a complicated question. Baby fever is a highly subjective and under-researched topic. 

Finnish sociologist, Anna Rokirch writes that the desire to have children is dictated by combination of physical age, falling in love, previous pregnancies and exposure to babies of kin and peers. 

Interestingly, according to one US study from 2012, it seems that positive experiences like playing and cuddling with children are more likely to lead to the onset of 'baby fever', while negative experiences tend to keep that switch flicked more firmly in the 'off' position.

Brisbane-based obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Gino Pecoraro told Mamamia that he certainly sees women deciding to have children once other women within friendship groups fall pregnant. 

"Once you get in a friendship group that has one baby, then within the next two to three years, certainly we'll see a whole heap of other people and they know each other and they say hello to each other and their babies in the hallway," he said. 

Dr Pecoraro said that he can see the evolutionary benefit of this occurring, in terms of how babies can be cared for within social group. But it's also difficult to assess causation in this situation scientifically. "Whether once you start having children, you change how you socialise or who you socialise with, or whether it's the friend's baby that [caused a person's desires to have their own baby], I can't answer that." 

Besides a person's social circles, personal lifestyle preferences may also come into play when it comes to developing baby fever. 

The same US study mentioned above found that people who are more comfortable with the idea of trading time, intimacy, financial resources and energy, were more likely to report baby fever than those less willing to sacrifice those commodities. 

Although, again, it's difficult to draw causational lines and it may be the fact that baby fever leads some people to dramatically reassess their priorities. 

Then, there may also be signals from a woman's biological clock that drive her urges to become pregnant. Dr Pecoraro believes that amongst the women he sees in his clinic, baby longing is sometimes driven by the growing awareness that the window of opportunity to conceive is simply closing. 

Dr Pecoraro notes that many women approaching the age of 35 will make an appointment to discuss becoming pregnant because they have been made aware of the natural decline in fertility that tends to happen beyond that age. 

"You can almost sense the fear, that they don't want to – for want of a better term – miss out. It's almost a bit of FOMO," he said.

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Is baby fever a prerequisite for becoming a parent? 

Dr Pecoraro told Mamamia that there is a certain subset of the population who will always report ambivalence about having a child, some of whom may decide very early on in their lives that they do not want to have children and will stick to that decision. 

Then there are others who may change their minds. 

"All of a sudden they meet the right person, or their life just changes and they get to the stage in their career where they say, 'Is this all there is? I need more to life than just performing really well at work and making other people happy and they reassess their thinking – but that's a normal thing that happens to human beings," Dr Pecoraro said. 

But the unruly sensation of wanting – needing – to have a child isn't necessarily a prerequisite for becoming a successful or caring parent. 

There are also many people who have become parents who did not report experiencing that strong baby longing before doing so – the feeling of ambivalence related to pregnancy isn't uncommon. One US study from 2020 found that 15 per cent of mothers surveyed reported "I wasn't sure what I wanted" when asked about intention in their own pregnancies. 

Besides this, there may be something to becoming pregnant without a feverish desire to do so. Dr Nicole Stamatopoulos said that there is a certain risk with baby fever that somebody may leap quickly into becoming pregnant without making necessary considerations. 

"If there is that urge of, 'lets make a baby now' baby fever, the spontaneity of conception is more likely but the likelihood of being on folate or updating your vaccination status is less... the more measured approach in your health is where you want to be to get pregnant versus that spontaneous 'We're away for the weekend enjoying each other's company' type of thing," she laughed.

Elfy Scott is an executive editor at Mamamia. You can follow her on Instagram or Twitter, or contact her through her website. 

Image: Canva.