| I celebrated my 32nd birthday a few days ago. I'm one year older than my wife. We've been trying to get pregnant now for 3 years. We tried IUIs (very different from IVF, think "turkey baster" a few times, to no success. Ironically, it wasn't until we stopped trying to get pregnant that we got pregnant. We did a one-week intensive marriage counseling program (strongly recommended, not cheap, worth every penny of the $6k cost) and it possibly healed so much in our marriage we got pregnant _the week after the counseling_. After trying, with great adherence to all the best practices, for the prior 3+ years. I blame in part the extremely high housing costs in US metro areas. We are both in tech, but also want to live in a nice place (Golden, CO). Housing affordability is a joke, I have no doubt that the price of housing affected our child-rearing plans. We bought a house in Golden (barely. Inflation and all, it's a stupid rigged system oppressive to everyone.) Now I want to fix the housing cost problem here in Golden, in Lakewood, and ultimately in Denver. It'll take some years, but if all goes according to plan, I'm going to die, peacefully, in my sleep, in about 80 years, within 150 feet of where I'm sitting right now. I've got time to work on these affordability problems. |