Freezing My Eggs Meant Choosing Me

When I first looked into freezing my eggs six years ago, I was 32 and single, and we were months into a global pandemic. I was confronted with existential questions about my own stance on motherhood: Did I even want kids? Or had I just been conditioned to want them? I had never allowed myself to imagine what life would look like if children were not in the picture. I concluded that kids did not determine my happiness or fulfillment in life, but if I did have them, I only wanted to do it with the right partner.

I told myself I’d revisit it at 35. That age came and went, and I still didn’t feel a strong pull. Then I started dating someone seriously. He definitely wanted kids, but wasn’t ready just yet. As the relationship progressed, from long distance to moving in together, I really felt that I could build a life, marriage, and family with this person, who said he wanted those things with me, too. But still not yet. I hung on to the word “yet”—which is free for the person saying it and enormously expensive for the person receiving it. I cycled through months of allowing space and revisiting the conversation, hoping that clarity would emerge. It finally did, in the form of a breakup. I realized I had been choosing someone who was not choosing me.

As devastating as that was, I felt a strong conviction to freeze my eggs. I wanted a family, and I wanted to build it with someone who was actively choosing it, too. Finding that person takes however long it takes. I wanted better odds of still being able to start when I got there. When I got the results of my ovarian reserve levels—this time at age 38—my numbers had dropped significantly. I did the math on how many cycles I would need for a decent shot at one live birth. 

I felt defeated. Do I need to leave my freelance consulting career and get a full-time job with fertility benefits? Should I become an egg-freezing influencer? Sell feet pics to afford the chance to have a baby? I felt like a statistic and a transaction, especially as a woman of “advanced maternal age,” as if that were a condition I caught. It’s also easy to forget that none of these tests predict whether you can get pregnant naturally. If pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood radicalize you, I am confident fertility is the onboarding. More than one person has asked if I regretted not doing this sooner. I don’t. I’m a hell of a lot mentally, emotionally, and physically healthier than I was at 32.

I decided to find a new doctor, started talking to some of the many women who have gone through this process, and realized two things: I was not alone, and I was not too late. I now had information and I was acting on it. So when I opened my Instagram just over a month ago to find that AOC was freezing her eggs at the same time I was, using her platform to educate people on what it’s actually like, and the lack of policy and resources for families, I felt emotional. My decision to do this was so much bigger than me, and it felt like a sign from the universe that this was exactly what I was supposed to be doing, at the exact right time.

I had my retrieval a few weeks ago, and I’m planning one more cycle later this month. The hardest part was the beginning—feeling like a science experiment, getting used to poking my belly with needles, the anxiety of not knowing how my body would respond. This time I know what to expect. I was grateful that my mother, who also happens to be a family physician, helped me with the shots. Some of them require you to mix and dose them exactly right, and I was afraid of getting it wrong. But by the end, I was a pro, injecting myself in parking lots between work calls.

I’d heard stories all over the map and braced for the worst symptoms, but mine were relatively mild. The bloating was uncomfortable but manageable, and I had a few days of headaches, but no mood swings. Not being allowed to exercise outside of walking was challenging, because that’s how I shake off difficult emotions. My daily long walks became moving meditations, where I’d talk into my phone the whole way to process what I was feeling. There was a lot I couldn’t control, and I had to accept that. I essentially became a monk for two weeks. Walk, meditate, eat simply, repeat.

Freezing my eggs doesn’t guarantee that I’ll have a baby. This is only the first part of IVF, and most of what comes next is out of my control. I did the part that was mine. I made a decision instead of waiting for one.

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