There are a dozen reasons why, according to nobody but me, I shouldn’t have had trouble getting pregnant. Sure, I was old. But my mother had been too. She was 36 when my sister was born and 40 when I was born.

Shouldn’t I somehow have inherited my mother’s fertility? I’m not sure exactly how of course. Through osmosis, photosynthesis, something. I mean we were pretty close, I looked just like her, and we lived in the same house for 18 years. Clearly the dominant fertility gene should have rubbed off on me somehow. And my sister and I were both born in the sixties. Haven’t our lifestyles and technology and our environments progressed so much in forty plus years that our reproductive systems should have been more durable? (Yes, I AM aware that not one of those is rational but there you have it.) […]