It’s Friday afternoon and I finished work early, and here I am, on my way to the egg clinic. The weather is quite nice and I’m actually not feeling too bad as I go there, although I’ve had a weird mood and been on the verge of tears all day. I sit in the waiting room and wait for my turn by myself, watching the couples who are there probably trying to make babies together. And I feel OK. I can do this.
How did I end up here, making the decision and actually going forward and freezing my eggs? Good question. I guess at the age of 38, being a single woman, one has to think about these things, even if one is not completely sure if they want to have children. Because, you know, the biological clock? It actually is ticking. And what happens if you wake up one day and realise that you’ve missed your chance? No one wants that kind of regret. I’d started to notice that although I’m not completely sure about having kids, the thought that I might have to decide pretty soon about having them had been influencing and interfering with my search for a relationship (which could be the topic of a whole other blog). On top of the stress of finding a partner had stood this bigger ticking time-bomb worry. So, for my 38th birthday, I decided to give myself a huge expensive present and freeze some eggs, in the hope that this will relieve some of that stress. At this point I still don’t know about children; I understand why people want to have them and I even work a lot with kids, but don’t know if I want to have them myself, alone or with a (at the moment imaginary) partner. The thought of being pregnant doesn’t really appeal to me; I probably know too much about it after watching a lot of my friends go through it. And still, not being able to decide about this, not having the chance to do it if I do decide to do it, well… that also scares me.
So back at the end of October, for my birthday, I decided that I was going to do it. It took me another 2 months to start finding out about clinics and then in January I went in for some checks to find out about the state of my ticking clock. Turns out that it isn’t so bad. The doctor was even surprised that it wasn’t worse after years of smoking. However, she gave me some worrying statistics about this clock and how fast fertility gets reduced between my age and the dreaded 40 and beyond (sorry, anyone who is 40, but it’s fucking scary). So it looked like I had to have it done pretty soon if I wanted a decent chance. I remember being on the train on my way home that day, thinking ‘how the fuck did I get here? Why do I have to make these ridiculously difficult decisions about how many cycles to do, whether to freeze eggs or embryos or a mixture?? Donor sperm??? WTF?’ Trust me, this is not how I pictured my life to turn out. I remember crying on the train all the way home, and I felt so sorry for myself that for another few months I didn’t go near the clinic.
Now, just to give some information in case you’re wondering about the cycles etc. So this specific clinic (but I imagine other places too) have a special discounted rate should you decide to pay in advance for 3 cycles. If you want to be super sure that you’re freezing enough eggs (how many is enough – your decision), it might be better to go for that. The price also includes storing the eggs for 2 years, and after that you pay for each additional year. Also, it’s up to you whether you freeze eggs or embryos. Apparently embryos have a better chance later on, as many eggs ‘die’ in the thawing process. Freezing is a new technology and of course there are no guarantees. If you’re single and decide to freeze embryos then you need to get donor sperm. This is a different process from what I chose, and the price is higher (because of the donor sperm). I also asked about getting sperm from someone you know. If it’s your boyfriend/husband/partner – no problem, they just need to come with you and they go through some checks too. If it’s a friend, however, it’s more complicated – they are treated as a sperm donor and need to go to a counselling session and also go through some checks. So I decided not to ask any of my male friends for a sperm favour (you can all breathe a sigh of relief now, friends).
The important thing to remember is that there are no guarantees… They don’t know how many eggs they’ll get until they get them and they don’t know how many will survive. And if it’s just eggs you’re freezing, they have no way of knowing if the egg is good until they try to fertilise it. So it’s hard to decide what to do.
This was actually quite a lot of information to take in, and I also attended a seminar on the subject of single women and their options, run by the same clinic (and I got a discount on the initial consultation thanks to this – so it’s worth checking if there are any such seminars running before paying for a consultation!). I’m writing this to hopefully help anyone who is considering doing this, but I’m not an expert on this at all… In a separate post I’ll write about some research and put some links to helpful websites, but for now I’m just focusing on myself and my process.
After going to the seminar and hearing about all the options, and after feeling rather sorry for myself for ‘having’ to do this, I decided that I was going to do one cycle of egg freezing only. This is because I’m not 100% sure about being pregnant and having kids, but I just want to do this as some kind of insurance policy. If I was more convinced about kids I’d probably do more than one cycle and maybe freeze some embryos too. I guess I’m also hoping that I have a few more years before my eggs ‘die’, so I hope that if I change my mind I can do one more cycle later on. Is this stupid? Maybe. Anyway, it took me another few months to call the clinic and ask what I should do next. And the timing was perfect – it turns out that those initial scans are only valid for 6 months, and so I had to go ahead and do the thing asap if I didn’t want to pay for the screens again.
So that’s how I got here, sitting by myself in the waiting room waiting to be seen by the nurse in order to get the ball rolling. Scary, eh? You have no idea. Wait till I tell you about when the nurse showed me how to inject myself… But for now I think that’s enough for a first blog entry – me and my eggs will have a rest now. Hope to see you soon! xx
Me and my eggs 