Between the ages of 36 and 38, I spent nearly $50,000 to freeze 70 eggs in the hope that they would help me have a family in my mid-40s, when my natural fertility is gone. For this baby insurance, I obliterated my savings and used up the money my parents had set aside for a wedding. It was the best investment I ever made.
Egg freezing stopped the sadness that I was feeling at losing my chance to have the child I had dreamed about my entire life. It soothed my pangs of regret for frittering away my 20s with a man I didn’t want to have children with, and for wasting more years in my 30s with a man who wasn’t sure he even wanted children. It took away the punishing pressure to seek a new mate and helped me find love again at age 42.
I decided to freeze on the afternoon of my 36th birthday, when I did a fresh round of baby math on the back of a business card at Starbucks. Even if the man I was dating at the time agreed to start a family in the near future, I was cutting it close to have one baby, let alone a second. Several months later, after injecting myself for nearly two weeks with hormone shots, I was in surgery at a Manhattan fertility clinic as my doctor pierced my ovaries, suctioned out nine eggs and handed them to the embryologist to freeze until I was ready to use them. As soon as I woke up in the recovery room, I no longer felt as though I were watching my window to have a baby close by the month. My future seemed full of possibility again.
Your mission should you choose to accept it: find a way in which this author can be more self absorbed.
A local radio host this morning questioned why people are so eager to possess children and not families.
Pathetic and sorrowful.
All 3 of the above have hit the nail on the head.
I can not be the only woman who decided when in my early 20’s (oh heck when in my teens truth to tell) that one of the reasons to be with that special someone is because would be a good husband and father.
Consideration of romantic love was way up there but it was never the only reason. It never occurred to me that frittering was an option.
From the article, “In my case, egg freezing gave me the confidence to go back on Match.com at nearly 40 and proudly tell men ‘I can have kids whenever I want. It feels so nice not to have to rush relationships.’ ”
Yes, nothing makes a guy perk up and start planning that second date like laying your cards on the table just so. But it is nice to find out that you aren’t being sized up just for your ability to contribute your bodily fluids to the cause.
Frozen eggs? How about dismembered bodies of children aborted since 1973, some 55,000,000 potentially taxpaying citizans of this Republic? What is that compared to Sandy Hook?