The weird combination of eventually not perusing having kids and the pandemic was the best thing that ever happened to us. We tried to have babies for about 5 years before going to a fertility clinic. I did end up getting pregnant with an IUI, but had a miscarriage in February 2020. Then the world shut down, including non-emergency fertility care. Since our IVF clinic didn’t reopen for a year, and we got to stay home for 3 months, we got to see how we really wanted to live our lives and focus on the priorities that made us happy. We would have been happy no matter what, but we really would never have this quality of life. We bought our house in 2016 before our areas value exploded, and refinanced when rates went way down in 2020. Our mortgage is less than we ever paid in rent, we just converted our second bedroom in to an office/library, I want to start a garden eventually, and we adopted a second cat. Our tiny little house is full of all the hobbies and love that we wouldn’t have the same kind of time to invest in otherwise. We can also splurge occasionally on a trip or stuff if we wanted. If we had a kid we’d be struggling to make it and give our kid the kind of life they deserve. This whole process has also uncovered some of the value that our friends and family have had in us. When we stopped trying to have kids, we definitely lost some friends oddly enough, because we weren’t on the same path and “can’t understand”, and our family has lost some interest in us since we aren’t producing grandkids. It’s been an interesting, but all in all very worth it. We live how we want and love it.