“Will Sally Have a Baby Before All Her Eggs Die?” A Word Problem

HydraGT6 hours ago

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QUESTION: Sally wants to graduate from college, establish a career, marry an ideal partner, buy a home, and have a baby by age 27.5, the national average age for women to give birth in the US, and a peak time of fertility. If she takes a gap year to backpack around Europe, will she have a baby on time (before all her eggs die)?

Factors to consider:

Sally begins life with two million eggs.
Due to a natural and ongoing process of follicular death in the ovaries, which has no regard for Sally’s wishes, by age 18, Sally will only have 300,000 eggs.
While galavanting around Europe for one year, 12,000 eggs will also travel from her womb.
At 19, she begins college. She learns she is bad at math and will never be a marine biologist (calculus required). Two years pass, and 24,000 spawn are reabsorbed back into her body.
She spends a year “figuring things out.” She breaks up with the guy she met in calculus, so she takes French instead, and dates a music major. She loses douze mille œufs de plus.
She spends two years “settling for a degree in communications.” She leaves the musician who used air quotes when discussing “monogamy.” She squanders 24,000 “children.”
At 24, she graduates from college. She spends three years kissing frogs. She finds an ideal partner and a job in marketing. She sheds nearly 40,000 future humans from her body.
Over a year of planning the perfect wedding, getting a raise, and starting a 401(k), she turns 27.5, and fails to have a baby. Her body casts off 12,000 in gametes.
During one year of the honeymoon phase, she is let go from the marketing company as a result of a merger, she listens to her mom constantly say, “You’re not getting any younger,” and 12,000 Einsteins and LeBrons evaporate into thin air.
After one year of trying to have a baby and looking for a job with insurance (because people need insurance to have a baby, and her husband is an English major who is always working on a book), Sally says goodbye to 12,000 potentially high-risk dependents.
Over a year of getting a “whatever job with insurance,” questioning if she can have a baby with a man who is always “working on a book,” and turning 30, Sally will be down 99 percent of the eggs she had when she was a fetus in her mother’s womb.
One year of a divorce. (-12K eggs)
One year of freezing eggs. (-12K in eggs and -12K in her bank account)
One year of realizing maybe men are not for her. (-12K eggs)
One year of dating women. (-12K eggs)
One year of realizing, unfortunately, she is straight. (-12K eggs)
One year of meeting a decent guy who is pretty nice. (-12K eggs)
One year of just getting married at a courthouse, and the death of both of her parents. (-12K eggs)
One year and two rounds of failed IVF treatments. (-12K in eggs and an empty 401K)
One year of using sex to avoid the pain and disappointment of life, and then miraculously having a baby! (-12K eggs)
One year of turning 40 and discovering that having a baby without a village is not ideal. (-12K eggs)
One year of taking apart all the items from her baby registry and building a time machine. (-12K eggs)
One year of traveling back to her sophomore year in college, and becoming 20 again. (-12K eggs) (Once she hits the speed of light, +276,000 eggs)
Three years of using the confidence gained from building a time machine. She makes it work with calculus bae and marine biology. She also takes Spanish because it’s more practical than French. (-36,000 huevos)
Two years of planning the perfect wedding while avoiding all of the red flags in her relationship. (-24,000 prospective buns in the oven)
One year of enjoying the honeymoon phase and landing an entry-level job in marine biology, despite realizing she hates animals. (-12,000 reasons to live)
One and a half years of trying to get pregnant and successfully having a baby, while quieting any voices of doubt in her mind. (-18,000 possible gender-reveal fires, with over 200,000 to go!)