>by delaying parenthood - I was just being selfish.. I minimized "shared time on earth"
Exactly. My advice to anyone is not wait. If we hadn't, we would have found out sonner that we needed to go through that process. It's not a "wake up and schedule an appointment tomorrow" kind of thing, it's a treatment of last resort and you can burn years trying, going through evaluations and alternatives first.
Yeah I give same advice, if you know you want kids and found your partner just start soon. We didn’t have many fertility issues just weeding out some unfortunate genetics, but I’ve seen people try for years and it’s really taxing on both the individual and relationship.
The stuff we weeded out was on my wife’s side and the boy ended up being my clone. We joke about it as if we weeded out all of her genes. Even small things like his cowlicks and how his teeth are coming it are exactly like mine which I never would have expected to even be possible (I never gave it much thought tbh)