My fight with myself to freeze my eggs

Today I froze my eggs.

Why am I telling you this? I think because I read a lot of articles about it beforehand — that explained the science of it, that told me the odds were low, that warned me that I was likely too old — but nothing that made me realise how I might actually feel about the whole thing once it was underway. Egg freezing should have just been a fairly straightforward thing to do right? Loads of people do it. But it wasn’t. Not for me.

I know friends who have done it and it seemed fairly effortless. But I struggled every day of those two weeks of fertility drugs, and today what I am most proud of is that I didn’t give up before the end. Because I really really wanted to. Every night I had to pep talk myself into sticking that needle in my stomach.

What no-one told me was that physically and emotionally I would struggle. Maybe because they didn’t. But I felt horrible most of the time. For days I had what could only be described as the worst PMS, with headaches and nausea, weeping over stupid things like the pharmacy being closed, and one night where everything looking very dark and bleak indeed. All this coupled with the daily injections that made me feel like a pin cushion. And in the back of my mind knowing that my younger self would never have willingly flooded my body full of hormones. That in the past even the contraceptive pill was in my mind messing with my body too much. Although in fairness, my younger self thought I would have nailed this having kids thing by now.

And that brings us to the other struggle. This was not the plan. And when I went to the hospital-mandated psych session that was what was at the fore. That I was wrestling with the very idea of doing this, and that is why it took so long between my initial consultation and doing something concrete. Hidden at the back of my mind was the the house, the partner and the 2.4 kids. Not singledom, an apartment with paper-thin walls and freezer eggs.

But this is the reality, not a drawing on the fridge. Today my body aches and I have a bruise on my arm from the IV. Some of my eggs are now safely tucked up in a freezer, waiting. But all I know for sure is that I can’t do it again, even though they say two rounds is best. My body and my mind can’t take it.

I have so much respect for the women out there who do rounds and rounds of IVF in their bid to have a child. I admire your fortitude and your courage more than I can say.

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