The other day, I got my period on cycle day 30, and my first thought was: Didn’t I just have this?

Which is funny, because for most of my life, the opposite was true. Periods were rare, unpredictable guests. Ovulation was more theory than practice. And now — after eight years of infertility, anovulation, PCOS, and three IVF babies — here I am, suddenly having the most textbook, ovulatory, 30-day cycle imaginable.

Call it a Christmas miracle. Call it “just relaxing” (please don’t). Call it a sick little cosmic joke. Because of course I’m ovulating regularly for the first time in my life at the exact moment I am very, very done trying to get pregnant.

What surprised me most wasn’t the timing; it was the frequency. Even working in women’s health, I don’t think I fully appreciated how often women are just… dealing with hormonal side effects. When you really break it down, there’s maybe one week a month where something isn’t happening. Bleeding. Bloating. Mood shifts. The kind of low-grade irritability that makes you wonder if everyone else is being annoying or if it’s just you.

And then there’s ovulation cramps: a sensation I apparently unlocked in my late-thirties, just for fun.

Friends keep telling me I’ll be “that person” who gets pregnant naturally after years of infertility, and maybe I will. But honestly? I don’t know if I want to. Not just because our family feels complete, but because IVF, as brutal as it is, gave me something I never had before: predictability. Control, for lack of a better word. I have PGT-tested embryos in the freezer. I know the odds. I know the plan. Why would I trade that for the anxiety of rolling the biological dice and risking miscarriage?

This cycle doesn’t feel like a gift so much as a reminder: our bodies don’t always move on our timeline. Sometimes they show up late, sometimes they arrive when you’ve already closed the chapter, and sometimes they remind you just how much women are carrying, month after month.