I’ll be clear on something - once you start on the fertility rollercoaster (and it sounds like she is merely looking at the line) nothing becomes clear about whether or not you want children. You start making HARD choices. And sometimes what you determine is that you didn’t really want children as much as you thought you did. I know a lot of people who chose to be childless because they didn’t want the expense, or they didn’t want to adopt “someone else’s children.” These are people who really really wanted children - just turns out not badly enough to drive cars for ten years or live in a smaller house or work two jobs to be able to afford adoption/infertility treatments.
In fact, without insurance, I’m guessing she ALREADY is starting to make some of those choices. She and her boyfriend could get married and start trying. They could move somewhere with more job opportunities. She could pull enough hours at Starbucks to get insurance.
Not until you are invited to worry. At 26, she still does have time, and as others have pointed out, then she needs to grow up some more before she starts bringing others into the world.
Infertility, like a lot of things, can be an indication of other problems, both in the male and female. I don’t think it’s out of line to worry about your daughter’s well being. My husband and I were “not NOT trying” for 11 years before we had our baby, and the last five years of that were fertility treatments. I think it’s disingenuous to present ‘fertility treatment’ as a fix “They can just get fertility treatments”. For a lot of people, fertility treatments involve the terrible choice of “when do we decide to quit trying”. For a lot of people adoption is far too expensive to be an option. We were on our last gasp of fertility tries when we were blessed with our baby.
There’s a difference between worrying and meddling. If all you’re doing is worrying, I think it’s perfectly normal.
Adoption can be anything from free to hundreds of thousands of dollars. As can fertility treatments (which are only free if you are lucky enough to have them sufficiently covered by insurance - most insurance isn’t sufficient if you need anything more than a few cycles of Clomid). My adoption was less than half the cost of my sisters fertility cycle.
Perhaps we need to separate feelings from actions here. Whether or not the OP’s daughter is EVER ready or able to have kids, the OP can still grieve the lack of grandkids. That’s a feeling. What she can’t do (and has not, from all evidence here) is share that grief with her daughter. Really, it’s ok to have these (or any other) feelings. I doubt she is looking at her daughter as a baby factory.
Infertility problems are not always just about being able to or not being able to reproduce. She could have PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) or thyroid problems or early menopause or an STD or endometriosis.
All of those conditions should be treated. I am sorry to hear she does not have medical insurance.
I have been through years of fertility treatments including several IVFs in our effort to conceive our second child after our daughter was naturally conceived. So I know what I write about rather intimately. Our only stroke of luck is that treatments are covered through my husband’s insurance. But so far it has gotten no more than a chemical pregnancy and far more heartache than I care to share. I am thirty-seven and probably in early menopause. That breaks my heart every single morning.