Kind of a different boat here, but still relatable. I'm glad I found your piece. Since the very. beginning. of covid, fertility has been on my mind. It's not that I want to rush right to having kids. It's that I want to do a lot more "living" before it happens, and when covid started, I was already 35, with life *just* beginning to look like it was going to grant me the freedoms I'd worked so hard to establish for myself. I wanted time to travel the world, meet a partner, actually have time to enjoy being just a couple with him, and THEN start a family — but nope, covid, whole world closed. Indefinitely. So I've been left to wonder, must I lower my standards once this all ends? Must I throw all those dreams in the trash? Just so that I don't lose my window?

It's something I've wanted to write about for over a year now but never bothered because it felt frivolous to complain about wanting to travel and date when people were watching loved ones get sick and die (or were actually getting sick and dying themselves). But after my household went through covid back in October and I nearly lost my mother (still with us, thank God), I realized, "Yeah, my dreams still feel important. In fact, worrying for a loved one's death makes the fear of not fulfilling these dreams hurt even MORE, because these are joys I want my loved ones to actually be alive to see me experiencing."

I also felt bad complaining about it when my friends who were actual parents were tearing their hair out and self-soothing with alcohol at being stuck 24/7 with their own children. I felt weird about lamenting the kids I wasn't even sure if I was ever going to (be able to) have. It actually stung a bit each time they complained about their children, though, and I realized, "Yeah... those people don't realize how lucky they have it."

So, all to say — THANK YOU for writing about it. It's a real issue, it's gotten eclipsed by so many other issues, but it sincerely matters.