Photo courtesy of Evgeniy Isaev
My biological clock is ticking. Yes, I admit it. I’m one of those women.
Way back when, when all I cared about was living it up, travelling, bar-hopping and drinking copious amounts of alcohol, you would have never thought I would be the one to start worrying about the viability of my eggs and whether or not I would fall pregnant.
But it is a reality all around me – the older I get, the more women I seem to bump into that are having trouble conceiving a child. I’ve been on the listening end of woeful stories of miscarriages and IVF treatments and I feel the sense of disappointment and sadness from each of these women as they recount their experiences. I sit there and wonder how such loving, mature women could find themselves in this situation, in the prime of their life, with all their ducks in order and yet cannot conceive. What kind of a cruel hand did they get dealt? It’s like a sick joke really. When you’re ready to have kids, you can’t and the irony is, that there are some women who aren’t nearly as prepared or even deserving, and they pop out kids without even trying.
I’m in a loving relationship with the man that I am destined to grow old with. We haven’t started trying to have kids but we’re also NOT not trying either. I’m twenty-eight years old and I know I want to have my first child before I turn thirty so if I fall pregnant, we know we’re prepared for the responsibility. But I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I couldn’t fall pregnant. I wouldn’t be able to face thinking there was something wrong with me or something wrong with my partner. I’m not sure how I would deal with the fact that perhaps it was just not in the cards for us.
No one tells us this until it’s too late of course. As teen aged girls, we spent our time worrying about the condom breaking, missing the pill, getting a prescription for the morning after pill, worrying about falling pregnant. As you get older and you find a strong reliable partner and you become financially and emotionally prepared for children, you find that your body doesn’t cooperate, and you can’t have them. No one ever tells you along the way that this might happen. We all assume that we can, and no one ever tells you that you might have issues.. until, well, you’re having issues.
Now I’m not in the space to have kids right now, but each and every woman I know struggling to have kids have given me this piece of advice – if you are in a happy relationship and you’re settled, whether you are married or not, don’t wait. Go for it now. You never know when your boat has sailed and you don’t want to be another woman walking through the IVF clinic, taking natural herbs and supplements and monitoring your menstrual cycle daily, hoping and praying that you DON’T get your period and hoping that you might just make out those double lines on the pregnancy test…
