At 41, I decided to have a child so my parents could become grandparents

• My husband and I always thought we would remain childfree.
• But recently my mother told me that she wanted to be a grandparent.
• Now we have decided to have children and we are happy about this decision.

I’m 41 and until recently I thought I would remain childfree. I am the oldest of four children, but we have all held off on having children for various reasons. For my part, I’ve spent my adulthood pursuing my dreams as a writer and performer in Los Angeles. After decades of trying not to get pregnant, I still have the fear that I might be a teenage mother, as one of my stand-up parts says.

My parents live in rural Minnesota, where most of their peers have had grandchildren for ages. During a visit home last September, my mother, unable to hold back her tears, told me how sad she was not having grandchildrenespecially now that she is retired. “It’s not what I imagined,” she said, her voice broken.

The conversation with my mother made me change my mind

Her confession devastated me. My parents, lifelong teachers and coaches, have focused their entire lives on family and children. They deserve grandchildren, if anyone has them. Unfortunately, my brother, who is most likely to conceive at this point, lives in Sweden with his wife and they plan to stay there. Even if they have children, they won’t do it live down the street or even a short plane ride away; An entire ocean will separate my parents from their grandchildren.

Around the same time that my mother was sharing her longing for grandchildren, it suddenly seemed to me that everyone I could think of in the LA creative scene—actors, writers, comedians—was pregnant or Finding your way around new parenthood.

I fell down the rabbit hole on a fellow author’s Instagram account. She was one single mother long before that baby boom, and I was scrolling through a decade of her daughter growing up backwards. Even in the highlight reel on social media, it was clear that there had been tough times, but also great joy and fulfillment. I surprised myself by thinking, “Maybe I want that one day.”

At the beginning of the summer, my parents and I met in Phoenix for a larger family reunion. For years it felt like time had stood still – I was in my 30s and they were in their 50s and we would all remain frozen in time forever. But on this trip I felt that era was coming to an end. We were having so much fun, but an invisible hourglass next to us was slowly emptying, whether I wanted to admit it or not. My 40th birthday was only a few months away. All of our gray hair grew, one strand at a time.

For the first time I felt my fertility fading. Would I really pass up the chance to develop a relationship as deep as the one I shared with them—a relationship that was now moving into its next phase?

On another recent visit home, my parents produced an article about the “active grandparent hypothesis,” a theory that suggests that active living helped hunter-gatherers live long enough take care of their grandchildrenand left it on the dining table. My father pointed: “Hey, read this… Interesting article!” My parents are eternal realists, stoic with a pinch of optimism. They are runners, walkers and cyclists and are constantly training. Maybe evolution would keep them around long enough to spend time with the offspring of their own late bloomers.

My husband and I began to seriously think about having children

They did their research and I did mine. I started Googling everything I could about pregnancy (geriatric in my case), birth (daunting), and parenthood (manageable? even fun?). I read a lot of articles and started interviewing moms and other experts for my podcast. My husband and I had honest conversations about what we wanted our future to look like. We chatted back and forth – sometimes having a child seemed like the most obvious life-affirming decision, while other times we couldn’t imagine sacrificing our child Freedom to travel or the time to immerse ourselves in our work.

We were both ambivalent at best when it came to children. But that devastating conversation with my mother and our Arizona trip opened my mind to a possibility I hadn’t seriously considered before. Soon after, my husband’s brother and his wife were completely childless Carrying out fertility treatmentsand my husband fell in love with the idea of ​​our future children being cousins. Now we are planning our own egg collection. Our shared vision now looks very different than it did 18 months ago, I’m starting to get excited about this change of plans.

My mother said, “Don’t have a child for me.” But the truth is, I kind of do that – and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I see how the relationship with parents and the rest of the family can be deepened through the birth of children, and I want that for all of us. And considering how my decisions affect the other people in my family? This makes me think that maybe I’m good at this motherhood thing after all.