Mother’s Day. But instead of a being a guest of honor, you’re Auntie to your brother or sister’s children who are visiting Grandma.
You’re happily married … so, why no babies of your own? Busy Miss Important can’t take time away from her glamorous career to have a child? You know that you have a limited window of opportunity within which to procreate before your eggs will have passed their expiration date. Smarten up, ladies! You may live longer and look younger than your foremothers, but your fertility remains exactly as it’s always been. In terms of your reproductive system, 40 is not the new 30.
If children are a vital component of your life plan for happiness, what are you waiting for? A more convenient time to be pregnant? There is never a convenient time to be pregnant — or get married, or go on a vacation. You have to make the time for the things that matter most. Yes, your career is important, but ask any mom who is also a titan of industry, and she will probably tell you that for all of her celebrity and professional success, her greatest accomplishment — what she values most in her life — is her children. Babies aren’t speed bumps on the highway to corporate superstardom — for most women, they are their most joyous miracles.
Your 20-year-old self can’t imagine that there will ever come a time that your eggs are no longer viable, especially since the overriding concern of sexually active women during their college years is not getting pregnant. It’s hard to believe that you might ever have difficulty conceiving a child, but fertility clinics and the offices of reproductive endocrinologists are filled with anxious and heartbroken women. Don’t be one of them.
Articles written by doctors about fertility rates each tweak the data a little differently. We want this to go our way, so we pick the articles and studies that put our personal situation in the most optimistic light. Girls, be more realistic, before the Mother Ship sails! If you know that you want to have children, you put your life goals at risk by postponing starting a family until after you’ve established your career. Sex education classes should teach young women about more than just contraception and STD prevention — the curriculum should include an explanation of the limitations of their fertility and the disappointment they may face if they delay motherhood for too long.
By your mid-30s, your best childbearing years are over. You are in your biological prime to procreate between the ages of 16 and 28. Visit your OB/GYN after age 35 and your file is marked “AMA” or Advanced Maternal Age, and yours is considered a high-risk pregnancy. Freeze your eggs, you say? A surrogate? In-vitro fertilization? Adoption? Trying to have children other than the old-fashioned way is wildly expensive and usually fraught with disappointment. If you’re going to attempt any of these extreme measures, you have to be very rich, very lucky, and very patient. Don’t count on it.
Of course, not all women want to be mothers, and some who very much do start early and pursue maternity with devotion, but they just can’t conceive or sustain a pregnancy, and this is truly heartbreaking. If you know that motherhood is a crucial component of your life’s happiness, think about starting your family sooner rather than later, when your chances are better to conceive, carry, and deliver a healthy baby. Because simply, there is nothing that will fill the hole in the heart of a woman who learns that she has waited too long to bear the children that she has always dreamed of.
Plan to have your babies young enough to lessen the possible nightmare of infertility treatments or the heartbreak of childlessness. And remember that taking care of young children requires energy. In your 40s, you won’t have the stamina or patience that you had in your 20s or 30s. Think seriously about having your babies while you are able to be with them enthusiastically and energetically. And think about your grandchildren! You will want to be young enough to enjoy them, and around long enough for them to get to know you.
And when you have children, if you can stay home with them and share the wonders of their infancy, do so. Honestly, why did you have children to begin with? Embrace your kids’ babyhood and childhood for their sake, and for your own. They’ll be gone in 18 years, which will go by a lot faster than you can imagine, and those years are filled with irreplaceable memories that even you, Busy Miss Important, won’t want to miss.
Corporate superstardom, an influential network of friends and colleagues, and a dizzying schedule of high-level appointments are all good things. But your own children — now that’s the Mother Lode.