Eggs Still on Ice

Am I really just delaying grief?

I knew what it was before I even opened the envelope. There’s only one thing that comes my way from the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine these days, and that’s the yearly storage bill for my frozen eggs.

$850 for another year. $850 for one more year of an option. $850 for an option I logically know that I’m not going to take anymore.

Yet 10 minutes later I find myself in front my laptop, entering my credit card number, and paying the bill. A slight wave of relief envelops me, and I have officially kicked the decision down the road, again.

I publicly grappled with my indecision around having children a few years ago, and in that year, I also did a lot of research. I learned about “childless” vs “child-free”, I read books, I listened to podcasts, I started my own “Women without Kids” group. I learned that I didn’t fall neatly into the dichotomy between childless and child-free, but more in a group of women that I think is larger than we give it credit for, and that’s “childless by circumstance.”

Circumstance. I never faced down the opportunity to have kids with a partner and said no. I never tried to have children and was unable to conceive or give birth. I never suffered miscarriages. I never said no to a partner who asked me if I’d like to have children with them. I, frankly, never had the opportunity.

I recognize some will say that’s not true: I’ve had the option over the past two decades, if I really wanted children, to use a sperm donor and be a single mom by choice. I have the utmost respect for women who choose to do this, but this path never called to me. A lot of complex feelings come with that as well, such as “do I have a right to be sad about not having children if I didn’t pursue the single-mom-by-choice route?”. Am I selfish for feeling that if I was going to have children, I would want to share that experience and joy and responsibility with a partner?

Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that.

What I do know is that these past few years have been a confusing and complicated mix of emotions around children and the growing realization that I will never be a biological mom. And while there is a wonderful movement to expand the definition of “mothering” beyond what we traditionally think of, I still believe women are allowed to grieve not having an experience that is so fundamental to being a woman in our species. With each passing year, I’ve come to acknowledge that yes, I’m sad, and more importantly, that it’s ok to be sad about that. Having children looks extremely hard and exhausting, and also so incredibly fulfilling. And I mourn that I’ll never experience that.¹

But these past few years have also been a lesson in learning to hold multiple truths at one time: I can have grief about never being a mother, and I can also be thankful and grateful for the freedom and flexibility that life without children offers me. I can get a pang of jealousy when I see my friends interact with their kiddos, and also be super grateful to give those same kiddos back to their moms after an evening of baby-sitting. I can be angry that I wrote myself off from being a mother because of my eating disorder history,² and also have compassion for just how many mental health demons I’ve tackled in these years.

For whatever reason, I currently have a lot of friends in their early to mid 30s who are either embarking on their egg freezing journey or wrestling with whether to pursue that option. A lot of times, I send them my old blog post on it, and I think it scares the bejeezus out of them (sorry, all!). I do think it’s a wonderful option and I’m so grateful I had the opportunity, but I also think everyone should go in eyes wide open, knowing that it’s not the iron-clad insurance policy the clinics make it out to be. I also feel some guilt that (1) my employer paid the vast majority of this bill, and there are so many women who would love the option and can’t afford it; and (2) now the eggs are there and I’m not using them. “I am I being selfish?” I find myself asking.

When I started my egg freezing journey, everyone talked about how relieving it was to have that option preserved. But no one warned me about the flip side of that - the definitive choice you will have to make later on at some point. And something that no one talks about, and what I’m facing now, is how egg freezing is just kicking the “do I have children” decision down the road, past the natural biological clock. Every year I pay that storage bill, I delay that decision further. I also delay the grief that comes with it. Instead the grief just sits there undisturbed, lurking in the background. Every so often it breaks through to the forefront, and I break down.

Some year in the next few years, I will have to choose to dispose of my eggs, with my only option being donating to research or straight disposal. I’ll donate to research, but oh how I wish I could donate to someone in need of eggs who may not be able to pay the $20k+ for an egg donor. But because I was over 35 at the time I froze my eggs so could not be FDA screened as a donor, the clinics will not let me donate, even if I make a directed donation to a specific person who would like to use them. I fought this battle once this year and tearfully lost. Clearly as an attorney I’d like to think there is a way around this, but clinics won’t take the liability even with a full release.³ Sigh.

When I get there, I hope that I’ll feel at peace with the decision to stop paying storage fees and to donate/dispose of my eggs. I’m frustrated that I’m not there yet, and that I’m a walking contradiction saying “my time for biological children has passed” while still paying for a very terrible insurance policy. But most likely I’m going to have to accept the fact I will never be fully at peace, and that the day I send in my notice to dispose/donate, will be a day of grief and finality. But perhaps it will also be freeing.

Maybe.
I’m not sure.
I’ll find out when that day comes.

As Cheryl Strayed once wrote (in a piece that I come back to time and time again when I need some comfort): “I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

This is me saluting.

Wonderful art a dear friend had made for me. It hangs as a daily reminder.

1. To preempt many well-intentioned responses I’ll get: yes, I know adoption is always an option. It’s also a very difficult and trying path, and not as simple as the “just adopt!” advice that so many people will offer. I’ve done a lot of research, and while I’m not foreclosing the opportunity, to me it’s similar to when people say “well just freeze your eggs!” or “just have kids on your own!” There’s a lot that goes into these alternative paths, and that deserves respect.

2. This might be a separate post entirely, but I always held the belief that I wanted/needed to be “recoverED” from an eating disorder to have children because the last thing I ever wanted was my impressionable kiddos picking up on remnants of disorder eating habits and mimic those. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt strong enough in my recovery where I could say with certainty I wouldn’t fear this. But I know many others who have started families while in recovery and don’t share the same concerns. So, once again, I don’t know.

3. This isn’t my area of law, so if someone knows a way around this, please reach out and let me know. While it would be a decision fraught with its own complexities, I’m fairly certain I would love for someone else to be able to use them.