My age has never been a scary thing to me. Sure, I’m not a huge fan of it but when it comes to myself growing older, I’ve never really had an issue with it. To clarify, I’m not looking forward to growing old but growing a year older doesn’t terrify me. Sure, there were the fun birthdays that came along with some new part of life; a drivers license, voting and (the occasional) casino trip, being able to drink legally, renting a car, paying for my own insurance (wait, that’s not fun). Once those were gone I still wasn’t bothered by my birthday or by growing a year older. It just was what it was and it usually meant a big party and free drinks (bonus!). So, I haven’t been overly concerned with this year. When I tell people I’m 29 the most common thing I hear in response is “are you ready for the big 3-0?”. Prior to a couple of weeks ago I would have said absolutely, bring it on. But, suddenly those two little numbers hit me like a ton of bricks. And now, NO, NO, NO! I am NOT ready.
The catalyst for this sudden change of heart was a comment made, with love, by my mother. In her defense, I don’t believe she even knows what she said and she certainly would not have said it if she knew it was going to hit me this hard. We were on our way to do a little Saturday shopping and were chatting about anything and everything (a typical mother-daughter day). Somehow my birthday came up, well actually, turning 30 came up. I told her how I really wasn’t dreading it and that we weren’t planning to do anything special. Then it happened, the words came out and the panic started. “You don’t have much time left”. This comment was in reference to my biological clock. And in that moment, it hit me, she was right.**
What’s funny is that this isn’t the first time I’ve thought about this. I was having a conversation with a family friend over the holidays. She was talking about her daughter and said that she was “really old when she had her”. For reference, she was 26 when she had her daughter (old, shmold). Now, this particular family friend isn’t aware of the difficulty we’ve had getting pregnant so I quickly played it off and changed the subject so as not to make her feel uncomfortable with what she had said. But in the back of my mind I remember thinking, super old? Jeez, what does that make me?!
Don’t get me wrong, I know that I have years and years left to continue to try to conceive a child. Science is an absolutely beautiful thing and allows us to pursue our dreams long past the ripe age of 30. The reasonable, level headed part of my mind is telling me I’m being ridiculous thinking of 30 as a big deal. But, suddenly it’s like I can see a massive, blinking countdown and I can hear the ticks of every second… each tick a second closer to my Uterus’s death sentence and about 15 dogs instead of children. Insert crazy laugh here. I get it, I’m panicking over nothing but the fear and the disappointment feel real. Suddenly, on the drive home from Church yesterday, I realized why exactly I was feeling this way. In the back of my mind I have been holding out hope that we would be able to conceive, carry and deliver a baby on our own. No more science, no more treatments, no more tracking. Just a baby conceived out of love on a night with one too many glasses of wine, or a romantic night out, or in an unexpected moment of passion. You know, the way you always assumed it would happen (thank you rom-coms)? From the conversations I’ve had with women who are going through something similar and there is one word that describes a common thread: HOPE. It’s miserable. Hope that this is going to work on its own. Hope that God was just giving you a little extra time to get things in order. Hope that this was meant to be. Hope, the same damn thing that makes the Two Week Wait a frustrating, exciting, nausea inducing time. It’s what makes you do “just one more” round and what makes you take yet another pregnancy test, just to be sure. It’s what makes you buy another pack of ovulation kits and makes the disgusting progesterone suppositories seem worth it. It’s important to have, but sometimes, it makes accepting our circumstances a little bit harder to swallow.
So here I am, swallowing our circumstances (ew). We still have time to do this our way, the way we thought it would happen (see, I still have hope). BUT, we have LOTS of time to explore other options we haven’t tried to allow science to help us out. So, instead of dreading every tick-tock of the biological clock, I’m just going to suck it up and keep telling myself that 30 is nothing to be afraid of, and I’m going to believe it, too (well, I’m going to try to anyway). Oh, and I’m going to embrace 30 by starting to lie about my age… guess who is 26 now?!
** My mom has been one of our very greatest cheerleaders as we have been TTC. She is usually the most hopeful, positive person about the process. I firmly believe if she really knew the outcome of her statement she would be devastated. Thus, we haven’t talked about it and will continue to keep it on the down low. **
Larson's Big Adventure 