One Good Egg

I knew as early as about thirty-two that I was not going to have an easy path to parenthood. I had polycystic ovaries and an underactive thyroid - which took about 5 years and 10 different doctors to diagnose and then another few years to regulate. I always figured that if I wanted a child - it would either be a battle to get pregnant or I would go the adoption route. One way or another I knew I had options and certainly time, right? I mean - look at all the Hollywood actresses who were having babies after forty!

When I met my husband, I was up front about my fertility situation and since he was as ambivalent about having kids as I was at that time, it didn't put a damper on our relationship. Instead we put a huge map of the world on our wall and stuck pins in the places we hoped to see together one day. Ah...to dream.

That's when reality struck. When my menstrual cycle went out of whack...yet again...just before I turned forty - despite all my medications - my new (and wonderful) doctor brought up the baby issue...yet again. How she treated my problem would partially depend on whether or not I planned to have kids. I told her I wanted to keep my options open. She told me about donor eggs and my heart sank.

Was it that dire? Would I really not be able to have my own biological child? For some silly reason I thought I still had time to sit on the fence. I'd read that women have a limited supply of eggs but I didn't know they had an expiration date. I'd heard about plenty of women over forty who suddenly became pregnant - the natural way. Maybe I'd be one of those lucky ones.

My doctor did assure me that the door was not closed for me but my chances of getting pregnant were diminishing rapidly with each passing year. In fact...after forty, studies say that my chances were dropping rapidly with each passing month and with my medical history - anything I tried could be a shot in the dark: "You just have to find that one good egg," she said. Boom! I was off the fence. Kicked off, in fact - landing flat on my rear-end and into the world of IVF.

I sent curses to those Hollywood actresses as I journeyed through the world of needle pokes and weekly pelvic ultrasounds. Very few of them talked about this part of the over-forty journey to motherhood. These women are rich; beautiful; thin; have doctors armed with Botox...and babies? Come on - why is it so easy for them?

The truth is - it isn't. Money might buy you a few more rounds of IVF or the ability to pay for a lawyer so you can adopt a child from Outer Mongolia, and pay for a top-notch nanny, but no amount of money is going to reverse the aging process that takes place within our ovaries. I guess I kind of wish that there was more transparency in Hollywood about how celebrities are getting pregnant, so dreamers like me wouldn't wind up traumatized by statistics. But I get it now and I did wind up among the lucky ones. Hollywood here I come?