freezing eggs Archives

Frozen

March 4, 2018

By Stella O’Leary

In your forties, it’s either freeze your face or freeze your eggs. If you’re financially astute, both. But what is in our best interest? Is tricking your face into the visage of a younger you while scooping your reproductive material into a little egg hotel the greatest thing? Or are they in fact, working in conjunction against each other? If we had accepted our age, would we be making more ‘appropriate’ choices? Or is this a culture that suggests we should all be tens with careers, and babies. (No worries!) An impossible line of bullshit.

I have put off fillers. I have put off egg freezing. Last week my commercial agent asked if I would go in for ‘a union job that shoots in Uruguay. Must be willing to have botox injections. In Uruguay.’ I passed. The next day they emailed again- was I passing because schedule conflict or botox? Now trust, I’m a writer who dabbles, not an in demand actress. The commercials I have booked have always surprised me. Girl on a date, girl fighting with boyfriend at diner, girl making vows on a water fountain. Mostly in life, I am girl in overalls writing in coffeeshops. Then my mother called, and offered some egg freezing. Because despite my protestations, I am not girl, I am woman. On good days, with rose oil and sunglasses, I may trick you into see a maiden, but I’m full mother stage (despite not having established who father is gonna be.) So at the offer of eggs money, I perked up like a thirsty iris. Continue Reading…

Anonymous, Guest Posts, Pregnancy

I Could’ve Bought A Baby This Morning.

January 19, 2015

By Anonymous.

Pregnancy. Even my therapist is pregnant. She tells me this the day after I go to a fertility doctor, whose office is decorated like a unicorn’s sugar fart. It’s lavender, silver, acrylic, has tufted sofas, Barbie’s dream fertility doctor. If Barbie focused on her career for fifteen years and woke up mid thirties needing a haircut and a baby. The décor is the same as Kate Sommerville, where I get facials and once, botox! After the doctor who feels like she could be related to Melissa Gilbert/Laura Ingalls, explains how my tubes work and how at 38 even if I have buckets of eggs, I still “can’t rest easy because it’s all about age.” They’re old, these eggs. She explains all of it to me. She asks if I want a sperm donor. It occurs to me, while sitting across from her desk, with a savings account, and functioning eggs, I could say yes and be pregnant in a week. It blows my mind. I say no to the sperm, like I’m saying no to an after dinner cordial. “Oooohhkay,” she says. Like, you’re missing out. These cordials are the bomb. There you are sitting there acting like cordial is just gonna spring up outta the ground like a geyser, well sister, you gotta another thing coming.

“I’m conservative,” I say. Which is code for, I wanna do this with a partner who loves me enough to watch me get fat and stretchy and then hold our little love larvae in the middle of the night when I am so full of colostrum my teets are a proverbial cheese store. I want that. She nods, “So do you want to freeze your eggs?” I’d rather dye my eggs than freeze my eggs. “I just want to know how they are,” I said, hoping they aren’t little puffs of ovum dust. She nods, bored by me. I’m her regular customer. I just want a report. I’m not one of the outliers buying sperm or a little Japanese hotel for my eggs to rest in until I’m 47 and defrosting them. She cautions me, “the very best thing to do is freeze an embryo.” I nod, my seventh grade health textbook smashing through my head. “So that means?” “Yes, we would fertilize your egg with sperm from a donor and then freeze it.” I nod. The next scenario rolling out through my head. I meet my husband after doing this, when I really am only ovum dust, and I say to him, “Babe! Good news! I have a future baby waiting for us at a cryobank in Westwood! I’m as old as Methuselah, but you can raise your dream genetically mysterious modified baby and I wont even charge you the sperm donor fee, cause really, you donate your sperm to me, only in a different way, but it still totally counts! Whadday say baby? Babay!”

Jen Pastiloff is the founder of The Manifest-Station. Join her in Tuscany for her annual Manifestation Retreat. Click the Tuscan hills above. No yoga experience required. Only requirement: Just be a human being.