Everyone talks about her biological clock ticking but how do you really know when it rings, or more specifically, how many times you can hit the snooze button?
Last call came for me in a tearful visit to an OB’s office. Fresh from a break-up with an on-again, off-again boyfriend of three years, I booked the appointment to discuss freezing my eggs. Supportive girlfriends always offer that “you can always freeze your eggs” advice when a relationship fails to someone who has hopes of becoming a mother.
Dr. Pequeno asked why I was there. “I want to add to that.” I said, pointing to the bulletin board of babies and birth announcements of her patients. “Mr. Right hasn’t shown up yet, so I want to talk about putting my eggs on ice.”
“You’re how old?” She asked skeptically.
“Forty-two,” I said.
First, she informed me I couldn’t freeze an unfertilized egg. I mean, you can, but the odds of the egg surviving the thaw and implanting are less than 1 percent and those are with young twenty-something-year-old’s eggs, not my decrepit forty-something ones. “The odds are a bit higher with freezing embryos, but if you don’t have a partner you might as well just go for it now,” my doctor advised. “If I were you, I’d sperm-bank it,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You don’t have any more time to waste.” As if I was just loafing around, letting my eggs rot.
She handed me a flier for the California Cryobank, and she added, “Here are a few referrals to some REs. You’ll want to start with day three blood work for an FSH count. You can try IUI before moving to IVF but I wouldn’t spend too much time with that route.” Acronyms and fertility lingo clouded my head.
I got to my car numb, mouth agape and called my mom sobbing. “How did this happen?” I’d had my share of boyfriends over the years. It just so happened in the musical chairs game of romance, the fertility music was about to stop and I was going to be left standing without children.
During my writing group later that week, I mentioned this OB’s seemingly outrageous advice and one of my writing pals, Wendy responded, “Well, that’s what two friends from my church (Catholic, no less) did. They belong to a group called Single Mothers by Choice. You should check it out. Heck, I’ll be forty next year and if I’m still single I’m doing the same thing.” (Wendy now has a four-month old baby girl).
Single Mothers by Choice sounded to me like a bunch of man haters, or women you’d take one look at and think well no wonder they couldn’t find anyone.
I agreed to go to a meeting and to my surprise, they were mostly attractive professional women who you’d actually think, man, if she couldn’t find someone—really nice women that just weren’t paired up when their biological clocks rang. There was also one woman divorcing her husband because he’d decided he didn’t want children.
The group was divided by Thinkers (like me), TTCers (Trying to Conceive), Pregnant, and those with children already. It was less of a formal meeting and more of a get-together. Women ranged in age from early thirties to mid-forties: the Thinkers tentatively asking questions, a TTCer might be crying on someone’s shoulder because a recent effort failed, pregnant women aglow, mothers with new babies beaming, and other moms with toddlers milling about. The atmosphere was celebratory and supportive.
Some moms brought bags of hand-me-downs. Others drank coffee, nibbled on the healthy snacks, and compared notes on pre-schools, nannies, or potty training. It seemed like a lovely choice for these women.
I, on the other hand, set out for one last-ditch effort to pull out all the stops at finding Mr. Right. If my “Hey, if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen” approach was too carefree, this effort would bare no such criticism.
