Eggos in Going public

Hmm.. what’s going on in my life? I’ve always wanted kids, and I’m 34 now with no baby daddy in sight, so I decided to freeze my eggs. I don’t want to have a child on my own, but if I do find a guy I want to reproduce with, this gives us more of a chance as I age.

I started the process of egg freezing in early December, and I injected myself with a couple meds once and then two times per day for 8 days. Honestly, sticking myself wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It’s still mentally disturbing to me, but the needles are sharp and they go in easily. Some of the meds stung, but it was bearable. Once I started the meds, I had to go in for blood draws and ultrasounds every few days, and then finally they decided I was ready to go, and scheduled my retrieval, which I had yesterday.

I was fully unconscious for the procedure, and I afterwards I had pretty minimal pain yesterday and almost none today. They were able to retrieve 25 eggs, 18 of which are mature enough to be frozen. Based on the statistics, this gives me around an 80% chance at successfully having one child, should I need to use them. If I ever want to get pregnant one day, they ask that I try naturally first, and then move on to using the frozen eggs.

Overall I’m really happy with how this went. I had heard some horror stories about women having a horrible time with the process (hormones affecting mental health was my biggest worry), but I had really minimal side effects. At times my abdomen just felt crampy and bloated like if I was on my period.

Also! I have fertility insurance through work, so this whole process was free for me. I don’t think I would have done it otherwise. I don’t get an unlimited amount of free fertility care, but there is some combination of egg freezing and IVF that they’ll cover. I’m meeting with the nurse in a couple weeks to talk about whether I want more eggs or not.

And on the note of ‘no baby daddy in sight’, dating has been pretty fruitless. This past year I’ve had some short flings that were promising at first but weren’t it for various reasons, and I’ve also had some really bad experiences, which I’ll maybe write about separately. One thing I’m glad to have gained clarity about is that I really truly would rather be single than to have a husband or baby daddy who drags me down. Maybe it means I won’t ever have biological children or have a life partner, but with the family I grew up in, I really feel like I’ve had my fill of unhealthy relationships, and I demand better for myself.