While my mom and grandma might not have reached complete menopause until 41, that means that they likely stopped getting their periods around 39/40 and were probably not well equipped to have children by the time they were in their mid-late 30’s. My life plan doesn’t really leave room for that.

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That said, until very recently, my distant fertility goals were nowhere near the front of my mind, outside of my general obsession with babies. I am sure that many young women are starting to plan for families at this point in their lives, but, for me having children is a distant reality. So, it may seem that this is a bit of an extreme approach, but after bearing witness to a close family friends’ fertility journey (she now has two unbelievably cute twins), the perils of conceiving later in life became more poignant, and hence, my anxiety more pronounced. And, after a very brief pregnancy scare, I found myself actually thinking about having a baby, granted it was only for a literal second. I still don’t want to have a child for many years, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t slightly concerned that would be my only chance to have a natural pregnancy. Don’t worry, I was not pregnant, and even if I was, I would have made the decision to terminate the pregnancy. But, the brief moment of “what if” thinking has stuck with me. Thus, I have decided, instead of sitting and stewing in my fear for the next many years, to be proactive and make some decisions that could contribute to my child-bearing success. I am lucky to have the support from my family, but the costs associated with fertility treatment are unbelievably high, both emotionally and financially.

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The average cost for one round of fertility treatment is about $20,000, and the average number of rounds that women go through is 2.1, bringing the total cost to upwards of $40,000. By being proactive, I am hopeful that one round of treatment will be sufficient, but $20,000 is a huge amount of money, and given our current political situation, healthcare, insurance, and coverage for women’s healthcare, are definitely up in the air.

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This doesn’t even account for the emotional and hormonal changes that accompany the process. For people who know me very well, it is generally easy to identify when I am on my period, for as much as I hate when someone asks me “is it that time of the month,” especially men, my irritability and impatience levels skyrocket for about 4 days out of the month. In fact, when I was in high school, my dad started putting my periods into his calendar, so that he could be forewarned of my demonic behavior. We can discuss that parenting move another time, but the point is that I am definitely not at my best, granted, who would be while blood was streaming out of their vagina. During a period, women release one egg. During egg freezing, the goal is to produce multiple eggs to be released and stored, requiring up to two weeks of daily hormone injections. Frankly, that’s fucking scary. I don’t mean for my dad and his fear of my wrath, but for me and my emotional state.

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The reality is, I want it all. I want the family and I most definitely want to run shit. I am so lucky to have so many models of women in my life who have achieved this seemingly insurmountable goal, but I am also not guarded against the internal battles that they face. My mom, for example, has asked my sister and me on a number of occasions if we felt like she wasn’t home enough while we were growing up (my dad has never, but that’s no surprise). Do I wish that my parents were home for dinner more than four nights a week while I was growing up? Sure. Do I hold any resentment towards them for that? Absolutely not, but, the guilt my mom feels is not blind to me. Not only do I not resent my mom, but rather, I am eternally grateful for having her show me that it is possible to be a phenomenal mom and a kick-ass professional. Though my parents were also financially stable enough for my mom to take a full year off after both my sister and I were born, and to hire nannies to look after us for most of our childhood.  That is just not a guarantee for me or my future. Do I hope to be able to do the same? Sure, but I definitely can’t bank on that being the reality.

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Though I wouldn’t dare attempt to speak for the female gender as a whole, birth rates and age statistics paint a fascinating picture regarding the conundrum I find myself in. In 1970, the average age that women had their first child was 21.4 years (scary), and in 2018 that number was 27 (CDC). Further, the average birth rate in 1970 was 2.48 births per women and today that number is 1.93 births per woman. I joke about this, but I genuinely struggle with the reality that biology has not caught up to feminism. Women are having children later in life, in their late thirties and early forties, to ensure that they are in a place of economic and financial security, career stability, etc., which, is an option that I might just not have when I am ready to start a family. While my body is telling me to get on it, my professional aspirations are saying “hold up, you have shit to do.”

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One thing is for sure, I am not willing to sacrifice either of my goals at the expense of the other. It isn’t going to be easy, but I am going to have it all, probably.