This is a three part story about my journey to freeze my eggs. In part 1 I discuss the science and process of egg freezing. In part 2 I discuss the motivation behind why I chose to freeze my eggs. In part 3 I discuss the detailed logistics of the procedure as they pertained to my particular case.
Deciding to freeze my eggs
Life without children, for now
I’m not sure at which point I decided not to have children before I was 33, the age at which my dad died and had three children, the age a younger me considered ancient, and an older me might consider young. 33 always appeared as a cliff of reality by which time I should accomplish what minimum I needed to have made my mark. It wasn’t so much a decision as an observation.
At a certain point, a few years shy of 33, I observed I have 3 successful businesses under my belt, 2 degrees from MIT; both a Master’s and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, a prestigious national postdoctoral fellowship, which funds my position as a researcher in theoretical physics at Caltech, and absolutely no desire to have children in the next few years, the cliff of 33 aside.
In flying there’s a concept of the plane’s nose being pointed in one direction, but due to winds and other forces of nature the plane itself is travelling in another. My nose was pointing firmly towards having children by 33, but I was steadily travelling away from it. Whenever I looked down over the years I thought, surely, I must be mistaken and continued the course. Now I find myself where I am.
When asked how I do so many things at once, I used to say I was a huge productivity nerd (which is true) and have a poor ability to fritter away time (also true), but as I grew older I began to realize that not having a family to care for was giving me a boost that I should be honest about and credit as well. Instead of having children in the immediate future, I’ve long been planning to deploy to Antarctica for an entire year; to publish many more scientific papers; to start yet more projects; to focus on loving a partner; to perhaps even start another business when my postdoctoral fellowship is over or start down the tenure track in earnest. In addition to all this, I’m training to be a private pilot and I have the goal of being an astronaut.
Peer pressure
I don’t currently have particularly strong peer pressure to have children. None of my close friends have, and my family hasn’t yet put on the screws. I come from a large extended family. My grandmothers had 12 and 6 children respectively, and have a plethora of grandchildren and even great grandchildren. My ancestors’ genes are spread wide. The primary pressure I felt was from my internal sense of time-the 33 cliff, and later the biological cliff-and from several female academics who mentor me.
Three of my female colleagues in academia (in three different fields) whom I’ve been mentored by, went the farthest in applying pressure. One had a cancer bout which made the decision to have biological children impossible, and began to talk to me early on about the importance of not postponing the decision until it is made for you by externalities. Another chose to start having children in grad school, a decision she never regretted. “There’s never a particularly good time, might as well start early” and “It doesn’t matter who you decide to have children with, you’ll be doing the same amount of work anyway,” she’d say. She took the opportunity to ask me every few months when I would make the same decision.
The third was entering the true biological cliff of egg viability. Egg freezing wasn’t an option when she was younger, and now she was deciding together with her partner whether to have biological children immediately, if possible, or potentially never. When she spoke with fertility specialists about egg freezing, they said she would likely need many expensive cycles (4–6) to get the requisite number for a future pregnancy, in addition to facing additional potential difficulties. She encouraged me to think through these issues early.
I deeply appreciate their advice and range of experiences and hope to pass on some of the mentoring by providing a full account of the choices I made and some of the options available in 2015.
Taking the first baby steps
While very likely the case, I’m not 100% sure I want to have children one day, or that if even I do I particularly want biological children vs. adopting. What I am sure of is that I want the decision to be an active one, not a passive one. Something that happens with full cognizance and joy. Science, and my personal privilege (biological, financial, and location, etc.), has advanced to the point where I could take some steps to make that all the more likely, and I chose to pursue freezing my eggs.
After realizing, truly, in no scenario were children on the immediate horizon and the potential biological implications of that reality. I scheduled an initial consultation with a fertility specialist, and together with her started the process to freeze my eggs. It was a full two months after my consultation before I could even schedule a good time to have my period, and another spell before I could schedule a good time to have the procedure (among other things, I had a zero gravity flight planned, as part of my astronaut training). Imagine scheduling a good time to get pregnant! Hah! It was at this point that my decision to postpone a family was further reinforced. Every time I mentally complained about the difficulty or cost of scheduling the egg freezing procedure, I reminded myself how much time, money and mental energy would be required to have children now, or to try to rectify possible fertility issues brought on by delaying.
The philosophy
Intellectually, I morally object to having to consider my age–more so than men are required to–as I do family planning, biology be damned. Scientifically, the egg freezing process offered the chance to be on the cutting edge and to see the fertility process as something more fully under my control. This science is detailed in part 1 of this blog series, where I detailed relevant variables of the procedure. The egg freezing procedure offered me the chance to make my decisions about the number of children and pregnancies I wanted to have, the partner I wanted to have them with (if any), and the age I wanted to have them more independent of external factors.
Women can choose when and how to get pregnant, when not to reproduce, and we come pre-built with a baby 3D printer that men can only beg to have access to should they want to reproduce. One day a startup, a billionaire’s consortium, or a research team will develop an artificial womb and parity will more truly be reached. Men don’t have control over their collective fertility. Particularly men who are aging, who want to have children with partners of their own age, run into a hard biological clock problem outside of their control. The idea that a biological clock is a woman’s problem alone is a fallacy.
If I have daughters I’ll put aside money for them to do this themselves as soon as they chose, if they so desire. If I have a company, I’ll give this as a benefit to female employees while supporting men and women who decide to have children when it makes sense to them. Given enough money (a big given), science and society is behind *women* having equal or even more reproductive freedom than men.
The egg freezing procedure comes with risks, but so does pregnancy and birth. I’m happy to have undergone the procedure and to share my experience for others who might find it useful.