Blue Notes #12: How to freeze your eggs
Or, how I feel about my own frozen eggs
Adoption has always been my first choice.
Maybe it was all the books I read as a child, so many of them centering around orphans (why are are so many children’s books about orphans?). Maybe it’s because my body has been hijacked once already, and I have negative zero desire to ever be pregnant.
Maybe because I’m a straight woman and the experience of adoption can be shared 50/50 with a male partner, unlike childbirth which seems like another one of Nature’s cruel woman-loathing tricks. I don’t think my genes (or anyone’s :) are particularly spectacular and I’m 100% okay with not passing them along to some unsuspecting fetus. Does anybody really need my nose?
And, for reasons I can’t begin to articulate, I intuitively believe it would be easier for me to bond with an adopted child than a biological one. (Less projection, maybe?)
In my twenties, it wasn’t a question for me. In the future, I would adopt.
Then, after a breakup when I was 32, I began to feel so…ALONE.
It was the first time that singleness felt more like a burden than a freedom. Carrying groceries back to my apartment felt hard. Spending Christmas alone felt hard. Living in New York felt hard. My independence felt hard.
I was doing well career-wise, but I’d come home from sold-out events and cry myself to sleep. When lovely people told me that my work made them feel less alone, I came up with my go-to joke: “I wish it had the same effect on me!”
I was profoundly lonely, and couldn’t even get one date. The dating apps just hurt my feelings, and every set-up ended before it had a chance to get started.
I accepted there must be something wrong with me, and put my energy toward planning life on my own, all my own. By age 35, I would have a child, I vowed. My relationship status didn’t matter at all. I’ve never failed a goal, and I was determined.
Around this time, I started learning that the ethics of adoption were far murkier than I thought. It was always important to me not to request any specific age/race/sex, and while I took the enormous responsibility of transracial adoption very seriously, I hadn’t carefully considered other factors.
Could I adequately meet the needs of a 10-year-old boy? Had I done enough of my own healing in order to mother a traumatized teenager? Would a toddler with special needs feel safe at home with me? And could I bear the heartbreak if adoption doesn’t work out? The birth parents would have many good reasons to question my ability to raise their precious child. What once seemed like a no-brainer suddenly felt so daunting.
This was the first time I considered having biological children in earnest. Maybe in some ways it would be easier, or at least a tad more within my control.
Both paths overwhelmed me, but in the myopic fog of early-thirty-something urban millennial loneliness, I wanted options.