My husband, Nate, and I used to assume we’d have kids. We were both from the Ozarks and married young — plenty of time. But as our friends began to replace papasans and beer bongs with bouncy swings, we instead moved to New York City and later New Orleans (and then back to New York City). We got our first passports. I got a staff job at a magazine and found my career to be exhilarating.
As we grew up together, we fell more in love, but the desire for children never arrived.
By the time we had been married for 11 years, I was 35 years old and Nate was 37 — the age range my friends were dubbing the “closing door moment.” We knew we should make a final decision about what our family would look like. Did I need to freeze my eggs? Did I even have eggs? How would children fit into the life of a travel writer? Did we want children at all?
While many people I knew were catching baby fever, I ached for a dog, and found myself covertly snapping photos of strangers’ pets on the street. Once, during a cocktail party, I told a fellow guest that I’d prefer to give birth to a puppy. No one wants to hear that confession. People instead want to hear that you love the smell of babies. But that wasn’t our life … not yet, anyway.
