In the immortal germ line of human beings - that is, the eggs that sit in the ovaries - they actually sit there in a state of suspended animation for up to 50 years in the life of each woman.
A young woman in her teens has about 300,000 eggs in her ovaries. By the time she is menopausal, none are left.
I don't consider 41 being in prime of life. Even if I conceived a child tomorrow I'd be 52 by the time it was 10. I'm not sure I'd have the energy, and I find that quite scary.
I felt that the biological clock was some myth to keep me from doing what I wanted to do. And so I rebelled against it in the '90s. I thought it was a backlasher, some sort of faulty data. But it's real. I'm glad I woke up before my body was just like 'uh-uh.'
It certainly would have been adaptive for ancestral man to have a chubby wife during stressful times of famine. Not only would she have had more calories to burn, and thus more energy and endurance, but since fat stores estrogen, she would have remained fertile for longer.
Skinniness is a new fashion. It reflects an obsession with youth, a suggestion of pre-adolescence when a female's fertility can be dominated. It implies vulnerability, feebleness and fragility.
I don't think a lot of women know how much their chances of having a child diminish as they age.
When I say, 'I want women to have control over their bodies,' I mean that I want women to know and embrace their fertility.
Woman does not forget she needs the fecundator, she does not forget that everything that is born of her is planted in her.
We decided to try in vitro, because both Peter and I felt we couldn't handle another failure. When I miscarried after that, we had to come to terms with the possibility that this wasn't meant to be.
It is during fertility that a female loses herself and enters that cloud overly rich in estrogen.
Money is a tremendous advantage in just about everything, but in terms of reproduction, if you're a poor woman and you are infertile, it's like too bad, so sad. And if you are a wealthy woman, you can kind of buy whatever you want.
It really is a biological bummer that a woman's chief moneymaking years align with her most fertile. It sucks. I wish that there was some way you could invert it.
One of my best friends had a tough time getting pregnant, and her situation had me really thinking about freezing my eggs.
Early thirties for women is a very intense time. If you want kids, and you're not in a relationship, there's an urgency there, so they're forced to mature quicker. It's easy for a man in his thirties to be immature - you can have kids into your fifties, whereas women just can't.
Maturity is most rapid in the low latitudes, where pineapples and women most do thrive.
The typical white American woman in 1800 gave birth seven times; by 1900, the average was down to 3.5.
I went through about seven years of trying. And through artificial insemination. And through medication. And all of which was unsuccessful.
Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside, A teeming mistress, but a barren bride.
I'm a very fertile Puerto Rican.
