Why aren’t we honest with each other about the fertility journey?

I’m halfway-decent at blogging (well, somewhat) and I never really block as a writer, although sometimes I completely shit the bed on narratives. The hardest part for me with articles is usually the opening hook, and this one ain’t no different! Let’s try this approach.

A few weeks back, I was sitting at this bar/restaurant with my friend from church, having lunch. We have these other friends who used to go to that church, right? They’ve been married three years and, poof, no kids. So my friend at the lunch says to me, “Why do you think they don’t have kids yet?” I paused and was like “Well, I mean, why do you think we should even be allowed to discuss this?” He nodded.

About a year before that, I had gone to my cousin’s wedding, which was about 250 deep as COVID was beginning to spread (late February ’20). I have no idea how I didn’t get COVID at said wedding, but goddamn, I guess it’s just luck. At that wedding, literally six different speeches involved an adult standing up and alluding to the 19,246 babies that my cousin and her new dude would have. I’ve been to probably 11 weddings like that. While I get that the point of humanity is to spread the seed forward, and that a 47 year-old woman with no kids is considered useless to biologists, I also think those types of weddings are shitshows. I mean like…