Everyone knows someone who said she wasn’t interested in kids, or said that she would try for a baby “later” only to then decide that her “biological clock was ticking.” But now, you don’t have to only hear that ticking inside of your head: you can display it with the help of a useful app!
Mira Kaddoura, an artist from Portland, Oregon, came up with the idea after her doctor asked her if she planned to ever have kids. When she replied that yes, she had always assumed she would, the doctor informed her that if she was serious, she shouldn’t put it off much longer.
Kaddoura—who hasn’t said her actual age, but given her countdown is likely in her early 30s—has posted her clock as part of the project, showing it ticking down to zero. She has even taken to sometimes wearing a belt showing the clock. She claims that posting the clock for the world to see is therapeutic, in a “face your fears” sort of way. “Being conscious of a reality, and well-informed only makes you make better choices,” she told The Globe and Mail.
Doctors have recently been trying to get the message out that fertility is a finite time period, and starts to decrease much earlier than many women think—there is usually a sharp decline in a woman’s fertility between the ages of 35-39. “We see a 50-year-old pregnant celebrity and no one talks about all the medical help she got or the donor eggs she had to get from a 23-year-old woman,” she says. Physicians say that in a society where people are getting married later and later in life, it’s important to be educated so that they can make an informed decision about having kids.
Is an app like this a precursor to a helpful discussion, or just a hurtful reminder?
The Wonderful Cynthia Hill is filling in this week so our hard-working Mummy Buzz can take a much-needed break.
In between ballet lasses, Glee Club lessons, swimming lessons, and karate lessons (none of them hers), mom of four Cynthia Hill works full-time as an administrative assistant, does the occasional community theatre production, edits other people's stuff, and writes her own, like her novel, Idol Hands. Her new book should be available later this summer.
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