Let's Talk Babies

Ticking biological clocks, and fertility difficulties. Perks of growing older, huh? Time to own the fears and get informed.

- Bree Player

For most of us, the ”magic” number is 30 — ideally, we’d be happily married to not a fckboi, be the CEO of a conglomerate, have a place of our own and two kids (twins, please) with another one on the way. Key word being ideally. While some of the aforementioned things are easily doable, certain things are up to fate. Read: getting pregnant.

Anyone who isn’t a millennial probably grew up being cautioned that all unprotected sex = a sure case of pregnancy. But as we get more informed, that’s not always the case. Statistics show that women between the ages of 20 to 24 have an 86 per cent chance of conceiving, while women aged 30 to 34 have a 63 per cent chance (but this doesn’t mean you can go and toss out your condoms, OK!?). A significant drop, but that’s not all — the chances of women of all those ages becoming pregnant after trying for two years is 90 to 94 per cent, meaning some, who would be technically classified as infertile, end up conceiving in their second year of trying.

Despite these stats, infertility is still on the up, and we’re being conditioned to perceive our ovaries and their functions as fragile and fleeting. The feelings of urgency and negativity intensify if we aren’t in a LTR or in the process of being ”locked down”. Infertility can be a very real and distressing experience, but perceived infertility has its own complications.