Like Hilary Swank, you, too, can have your first baby at 48 years old. I just hope you don't bank on it.

After Swank recently announced she was expecting twins, the website Jezebel posted about celebrities who had babies later in life. I worked my way through the article, shocked, as the writer confidently proclaimed Swank's parenthood was proof that "pregnancy can happen on our own timelines."

This isn't the first time a celebrity pregnancy has been used to prop up the false but increasingly common idea that fertility is permanent.

And as someone who underwent fertility treatments in my 30s, I worry that posts like these give regular women a false confidence in their ability to have kids whenever they want. When the rich and famous get pregnant later and later, as Janet Jackson did when she was 50, us regular, non-Janet-Jackson-types might think our path to parenthood can be just as delayed.

The Jezebel post argues it's annoying to have to think about freezing your eggs at 21 years old. I'm sure it is. But you know something else that's annoying? Giving yourself so many hormone injections that you need two different sharps containers for the upstairs and downstairs in your house.

The writer also says that freezing eggs is unfairly expensive, which is unquestionably true. Some other things that are unfairly expensive: IVF, donor eggs, surrogates, adoption lawyers and twins.

I hope, though, that most women will see past the Instagram posts and won't look to millionaires with access to the world's finest fertility treatments to determine whether they will be able to have children whenever they want.

I was young for fertility issues, which often start intensifying after age 35. Nevertheless, it took my husband and I six years to have our first child.

The pregnancy was tough, not just because I was on the cusp of 40 but also because of complications, which can increase both with age and the use of fertility treatments — though it's not clear whether those are the cause or merely a correlation.

Being a parent to young children in your 40s (to say nothing of your 50s) also can be phenomenally difficult, both physically and emotionally.

Do I regret waiting to have children? No. My kids are here and they're wonderful, and I don't know what would have happened if I'd started trying earlier.

Nor do I believe women should be forbidden birth control or abortion. We all should be the authors of our own destiny.

I do, however, wish that as a young woman, I'd had a better understanding of the risks of waiting.

I wish that I would have known that I was risking a chance to have a child without medical treatment, to have a child who shares my or my husband's genes, to carry a pregnancy, to have a child at all.

There are some who will make the same decision either way. They're as happy to adopt or live child-free as they are to carry a child related to them — and thank goodness for that.

And those who want to be parents but don't have a partner or money must make a difficult decision. Would they rather compromise their present — parenting without help or a financial cushion — or compromise their future — one in which they may not share a biological connection with their child or be able to be a parent at all?

And all of that is no guarantee that you can have children at all, no matter what age you start trying.

These aren't easy questions, and they're not fair. But they are, in a sense, just the first of the long series of difficult, unfair questions that parents must answer.

Biology — life itself, even — can be demanding, bizarre and cruel, and that's true no matter who you are. Even if you're Hilary Swank.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

Photo credit: DanEvans at Pixabay