Modern Fertility (YC S17) is a proactive way to test fertility at home
An excellent, important product — and stellar branding! While this product is a massive technical improvement, its biggest value might be getting couples to think about fertility earlier.<p>I admit as a career-minded professional, I underestimated how quickly the reproductive window closes biologically and how much higher the risks are for Mom and baby as the years pass.<p>My wife and I went through IVF and learned quite a bit, e.g.: You may have to wait a year before an insurer will begin to cover treatments or you may have to scrounge for cash to pay for them. Once you find a clinic, there&#x27;s a multi-month process to get started. Maybe you miss a dose of the IVF drugs due to an illness and have to postpone for a cycle or two. In the case of IVF, you may not get viable embryos or they may not implant. If they do implant, there&#x27;s a scarily high risk of miscarriage.<p>And if you want to have more than one child you need to factor in the 40 weeks of pregnancy, recovery, and adjusting to sleep deprivation before you get to start the whole process again. On their own, these are small delays, but compounded they can take up years, and if you&#x27;re starting in your mid-30s and working with a five-year window, they can make the difference.<p>It took my wife and me two years of financially and emotionally draining treatments before we had success. Our second run was smoother, but our first child was diagnosed with Leukemia (she&#x27;s good now) at the start of my wife&#x27;s 2nd trimester. Had we waited another quarter, it&#x27;s very likely we would only have had one child. I can say unequivocally in my career there has been no bonus, promotion, or professional recognition that comes close to matching that value.<p>Despite our challenges, we were lucky. We met a couple that struggled with infertility. Turned out after a lot of testing, the husband was sterile. The wife wanted to carry a child from an egg of hers fertilized by a donor. The man didn&#x27;t want to raise a child that wasn&#x27;t his biological offspring, so they split and she had to renter the partner market in her mid-30s under extreme time pressure.<p>Apologies for the overly personal PSA, but I wish I had this information in my twenties. If you want children, you need to treat the process with all the seriousness you treat your career. This product is a great tool to do so.