Easter Egg Hunt
Happy Easter! This weekend we celebrate the resurrection of Christ, or, in my case, the mass distribution of Cadbury Mini Eggs.
April sunshine and loosened restrictions have made this spring feel like a genuine resurrection. Over the last two years, we’ve watched seasons come and go from the same apartment window. Stores closed, snow fell, and now the whole landscape of our neighbourhood has changed.
The building next door was demolished six months after we moved in. We’ve stared into a giant abyss of debris for the bulk of the pandemic. Today, that pit has turned into a three-story construction site. While we’ve been stuck in place, our neighbours have built themselves up to our level.
In that same time, I started to build up my life. I’ve gotten married, taken significant steps in my career, and have grown as a writer. The next step, presumably, is to start a family.
This Easter, I have a different kind of egg on the brain
Hot Cross Bun in the Oven
Holidays are more magical with children. While I write beside a pile of discarded chocolate egg foils, I’m reminded of how Easter used to be.
The Easter bunny loved hiding candy in the cervices of VHS casings, in the buttons of the Papasan upholstery, and balanced atop picture frames. He knew enough not to leave any in places where the dog could find them and get sick, and I quickly learnt my own the rules of the game: don’t wake anyone before 10 am, don’t spoil dinner with chocolate, and don’t let grandma see how many Reese’s cups the bunny left.
Inevitably, the corner couch would harbour the best-hidden chocolates until July.
I have the fondest memories of egg hunts and Easter dinners, but providing that same kind of childhood in Toronto gets less and less feasible by the hour.
Family members and acquaintances are forever curious about my baby timeline. They discuss it like it’s as simple as planning Sunday brunch. Beyond the physical trauma of birth, there’s a financial burden that I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for. Our one-bedroom condo isn’t meant to hold more than two, and our dual income is barely enough for the modest lifestyle we maintain. My job caps annual salary increases at 2%. With inflation, we are quite literally taking pay cuts as we progress.
Whenever I explain the stress, I’m met with a church-like refrain that infuriates me beyond reason: “there’s never a good time.”
There may never be a perfect moment to rip a human life out of your birth canal, but there are better times than others. For the most significant decision of my life, shouldn’t I prioritize preparedness? If it’s never going to feel attainable, why do it at all?
The phrase also refuses to acknowledge that life has changed. In recent years, women have wanted to have fewer kids and start having them later. In 2016, more women over 35 had babies than women in their early 20s. In Ontario, people who changed their family planning timelines over the pandemic largely cited affordability concerns in the GTA as the main reason.
Women need to set themselves up financially before having children. There’s no world where I can stay at home with a child and live in this city. Any dream of taking extra time off from work has been shattered with the rise of the housing market. Millennials are trying to build their nests with scraps on the side of the road.
Moreover, pregnancy directly affects the number of career opportunities available. When the cost of living is a significant factor in family planning, that time off becomes a bigger concern. If I know I’ll have to jump back into my career to afford children, I want to make it as high up the ladder as possible before I go. I also need to be emotionally ready to leave. Part of my identity is, and might always be, my work. Am I prepared to watch my peers continue to advance while I’m on leave? Will I be comfortable coming back into the same role I left?
At this point, wanting kids simply isn't enough to justify having them.
Rihanna has been talking about her desire to be a mother in the public eye for over 10 years, including an assertion that she would happily conceive independently. She chose, however, to wait until she became a billionaire before bringing a baby into the world. That's not likely in the cards for me, but her hustle is admirable. She made her fortune, built her businesses, and then felt ready to focus on family.
Very few of us will ever have that luxury.
Even fewer of our children will.
While the financial stress is a factor, the perpetual fear of climate change and global politics is enough to make me question if it’s worth creating new life. If we are struggling this much to feel stable, what hope is there for the next generation? I’m worried that we'll be raising children in a crumbling world, one where they'll be perpetually struggling to make ends meet. I'm not sure that's how I want to raise a family.
I want the Easter Bunny, chocolate for breakfast, and holiday magic. I don't think that's an unreasonable dream.
The Empty Womb
The crux is that, even though we need longer to set up our lives, our bodies maintain an ancestral timeline. A uterus can only hold out for so long. In waiting to find “the right time,” many of us are leaving our eggs to melt between the couch cushions.
To date, very few women in my social circle have had an easy time getting pregnant. Approximately 1 in 6 Canadian couples experience infertility, a number that has doubled since the 1980s. The pandemic has only made the situation bleaker. In 2020, the fertility rate hit an all-time low of 1.40 children per woman.
Many factors could be causing the decline: more screens, GMOs, birth control...To me, the most obvious answers are age and stress. Canada is considered a “late” childbearing country, with mothers averaging 31.3 years old at the time of delivery. The longer we spend clawing our way into financial stability, the greater the toll on our bodies. My neck and shoulders already carry the weight of my anxiety. How foolish to assume my ovaries are unscathed.
When thinking about my financial timeline, the thought has occurred to me that freezing my eggs might be the best solution. At 27, I’m positive I want to have multiple children. I’m equally as positive that I won’t be ready for several years. During that time my basket of eggs is thinning.
Freezing eggs, however, is not a cheap solution. It costs over $10,000 for the procedure, not including the annual storage cost and eventual IVF cycle to implant them. Freeze and Share programs, where egg donors can save their own eggs for future use, are on the rise. More and more women are waiting later, and having the assurance is worth the invasive surgery, hormonal injections, and sharing your DNA with strangers.
Otherwise, you might be left doing a much more challenging egg hunt.
I am on the trajectory of starting a family. I have a partner, and we’re financially moving towards children as a goal. For us, egg freezing is extreme. That said, we’ve talked about how long we are willing to try and how much money we would dedicate to getting pregnant. Having children naturally is not guaranteed.
Genetically, I’m not going to fight to pass down our family history of mental illness or my chronic pain. I would much rather spend the time and expense adopting, though that journey comes with its own unique challenges. One of which is letting go of the pregnancy experience. I can’t confidently say I’m ready to give that up.
And so the perpetual cycle of stress around fertility begins: "Do I want to be pregnant? Can I get pregnant? Am I willing to not be pregnant? Why do we even want to be parents? What does my life become if I'm not striving to have a family? Is this self-talk ruining my chances?"
When I pause in the spiral, I look down at my pet rabbit and think about how blissful it must be to live purely on instinct. I gorge on mini eggs while he grazes on hay. It's not the magical Easter of my childhood, but it's something. At least there’s a bunny involved.
She Has Risen
In the face of everything telling us not to have children, focusing on the positive takes discipline. I’ve never imagined a life without kids, nor have I wanted to. That doesn’t mean I’m blind to the realities around me.
It's not practical or even advisable to have a baby right now. Nothing about the state of the world inspires confidence in its future. When I’m feeling cynical, it’s hard to see parenthood as anything but self-indulgent. Willingly bringing life into a known bad situation feels irresponsible, no matter how much I try to spin it.
On the flip side, choosing to have children is a radical act of optimism.
Britney Spears has long been one of my role models. She is a beacon of hope and a physical embodiment of resilience. Last week, she announced that she is pregnant after 13 years of having a forced IUD in her conservatorship. I couldn’t be happier to see her getting the life she wanted - the one she was prevented from having for so long.
The construction next door is one example of how a building comes to be. By contrast, the condo we live in still isn’t done after seven years of work. Not only is there no “one size fits all”, but there’s also no perfect way to build. Maybe we’ll opt to freeze my eggs, maybe we'll jump right to adoption, or maybe we’ll move out of the city to financially make it work. If there will "never be a good time", we will create the best possible time we can. It's all we can do.
If Britney can find her way to a family, I have faith that we will too.
Oh baby, baby
