It started nearly two years ago when my (now ex) boyfriend behaved in that
way that men having a midlife crisis tend to. I thought he was the man with
whom I was going to have children. I am sure I am not the only career woman
in her mid-thirties (I’m 35) who, finding herself unexpectedly single, goes
around swearing under her breath that she really could do without that
effing clock ticking in the background when she’s trying to get through her
e-mails.
“I think we should freeze our eggs,” said my best friend Sarah, cupping a
lighter to the cigarette in her mouth. “Because after the age of 35 our eggs
are not just on the decline, they are on a vertical descent akin to dropping
down the north face of the Eiger.”
Sarah and I are the generation of choice. Easy come, easy go. Our twenties
had come easily and slipped away even more easily. It took the two of us a
few good years into our thirties to look up from our computer screens and
notice that most of our pals were getting hitched or pregnant. But Sarah and
I had taken our “choice” to the limit, ie, we hadn’t made any.
She lit the fag, slapped the lighter on the counter and threw a magazine at
me. I took in the highlighted article on oocyte freezing. It is true that
after the age of 35, the quality of women’s eggs — oocytes — decreases by
half every year. Before this age, although egg quality and stock decreases,
it does so slowly and steadily until the steep drop-off after the
mid-thirties.
I took this all on board. It seemed like a no-brainer. The article said it
was a relatively simple process and offered unlimited peace of mind. My
reasoning is not that I want a baby right now, or indeed that I am prepared
to have one at all costs (ie, alone). I am not. Not at all. Not nearly. My
expectation is that I will have a baby with a partner.
But I am terrified that finding “The (next) One” might take a good few years
. . . and, well, do the maths.
Sarah started to research the best clinics worldwide that offered the
service. I, being lazy, just rang the clinic advertised at the bottom of the
magazine article. I made an appointment and asked how much the whole thing
cost. Three grand, I was told. Not the kind of cash a struggling writer has
to hand.
So I went to my family. More importantly, my retired gynaecologist
grandfather. I yakked on about the family heritage, how difficult it was to
be a modern woman and in fact all I wanted in the end was a lickle baby. It
worked.
I informed my mother that I was freezing my eggs. “Oh, how wonderful,” she
busied at the end of the line. “What are you talking about?”
I explained that they give you hormones to make your eggs grow, then take
them out and then put them in the freezer until you want to use them.
“That’s marvellous, darling. Just for God’s sake, don’t put them next to the
ice cubes, will you? The last thing I want is to be popping my future
grandchildren into my gin and tonic.”
On the day of my “preliminary chat” at the Midland Fertility Services clinic,
I wandered in to the reception area, where I was confronted by thousands of
photographs of babies conceived there. I was a little shocked: I had
forgotten that this was predominantly a place that helped couples to get
pregnant and have babies.
I felt a little uncomfortable. All the other women were waiting
apprehensively to be told if they were going to be able to bear children. I
was fiddling with my BlackBerry and wondering how I was going to write two
scenes of my new play in my now severely curtailed day.
The doctor, Sameena, and the midwife, Sue, soon put me at my ease. Sameena
was a Muslim woman in a burka and Sue was a genial, squash-playing
Midlander. “So why do you want to freeze your eggs, petal?” they chorused.
“Well, er, because . . .” I suddenly froze. When faced with the easiest
question, it suddenly became unclear. Well, because: (insert at will) I’m a
failure/ I’m a selfish career-seeking bitch/ I’m depressed/ I’m lost, etc.
“Because I suppose I want insurance. I don’t want to get to 41 and not be
able to have a baby.”
Only as it came out of my mouth did I realise I was serious. A baby. I was
admitting that, at 41, I would try to have a baby.
They explained that the treatment took between two and four weeks, depending
on the results of some blood tests, which would de termine the kind of drugs
I was given. I asked about side-effects.
“Well, since what you are doing is receiving high doses of the hormones that
stimulate egg growth and ovulation you may find yourself a bit up and down,
as you are before a period, but since you know what this is caused by you
should be able to reason with yourself.”
I thought as a little aside that reasoning with a premenstrual woman is akin
to driving a round peg in to that proverbial square hole. Whatever, if this
was the worst of it, I could cope. “Is that all?” I asked, encouraged.
Most women tend to see a thickening round the middle.
“Come again?” “A bit of weight on, bloating, water retention . . .”
Stop. Right there. A woman can accept the risk of major organ failure and
death, but not — I repeat not — putting on weight.
I looked the midwife and doctor in the eyes. “How much weight?” This was a
make or break question.
“It varies, petal,” said Sue brightly. “But you’re a lovely slim lady and it
does tend to disappear after the treatment.”
Sue had said that I was lovely and slim. I would now, as a point of
principle, believe everything that she said to me.
I arranged to start treatment in the new year. Treatment starts on the third
day of your period because they need to inject the hormones at a specific
stage of egg growth. As I drove back to London, the words of Sameena whirled
in my mind. “You know the process is exactly the same as IVF,” she’d said.
“Except when we harvest the eggs we don’t put them back in.” I was going to
have flipping IVF.
Back in London I settled back into my chaotic life, but it was reassuring to
have my little plan in the background. A few times, at dinner, when the
conversation turned (as it inevitably did) to the struggle of being a modern
career woman and the impossibility of “having it all”, I would casually
mention en passant that I had the last one taped.
“Oh, I’m freezing my eggs,” I would say offhandedly, while making eyes at the
latest chap in my life. Women would immediately prick up their ears, as they
do when you confide that you’ve had Botox or share a new antiageing product
with them.
“Oh fab,” they’d say, “Could you e-mail me the phone number?” It was as easy
as pie, I said. As if I’d done the thing already.
Christmas passed. And then it was Sarah’s wedding, and there was no way I
was going to look fat in my Valentino gown (yes, her egg-freezing plans has
changed along with her circumstances, so I was going it alone). And then . .
.
It wasn’t until May that I realised what I was doing: in my head I had
already done the egg freezing; the reality was that I was too busy or too
scared. My period started. I gritted my teeth and made the call.
“It’s started,” I said nervously. “Oh good, please come to see us
immediately.”
The treatment entailed a daily injection of luteinising hormone (LH) to trick
the ovaries into creating loads of eggs that could then be “harvested” and
frozen. But as I suffer from polycystic ovaries, I already have an increased
level of LH in my blood. So they decided that I needed only the short
course; if I suffered problems they were likely to be from the growth of too
many — rather than too few — eggs. Some women have to receive the injections
for four weeks to get a decent crop. I would be on the two-week treatment,
which I was very pleased about (back in that bikini in no time).
The next morning the needle hovered over my flesh for a good five minutes (I
have an unhelpful phobia of needles). Then I thought of the cutest baby I
knew and stabbed away at my left leg. I felt proud. “Get me,” I thought.
Day 3 brought the first side-effect. “A bit premenstrual,” the nurse at the
clinic had said. This was more akin to Mel Gibson running down the hill into
battle in Braveheart . The sales assistant at Harvey Nichols was the first
to fall. “What do you f****** mean you won’t give me a refund, you moronic
idiot?”
The rage returned the next day. Stuck in traffic on the M5 I had what can
only be described as a tantrum. Mum called me and said: “Darling, if there
is anyone you want to murder you should probably do it now. We could
probably get you off on the grounds of hormonal imbalance.”
Day 4 of the injections meant my first ultrasound scan to see how my garden
was growing. The injections were having the effect of overstimulating my
ovaries, which were making follicles like Mrs Miggins from Blackadder making
cup cakes on speed. I was told that I had to be present every day for scans
to check my progress. They halved the dose of drugs.
At the end of the course, I had been told, the surgical procedure would be
carried out under local anaesthetic and sedatives. The day arrived.
I was relaxed as I undressed; this had been OK really and, most pleasingly,
apart from my breasts swelling to twice their normal size (never a bad
thing) I had not much bulging at all.
I felt the sedative go in and had five minutes of pain-free surgery on my
left ovary — until I heard someone screaming: me. The local had worn off.
The pain of the jabbing to recover the eggs was excruciating.
The doctor looked up at me. “There’s one more I can see, shall I go for it?”
“No way!”
I was doubled up for about an hour afterwards, wailing, while nurses patted me
and gave me paracetamol (which I thought was an insult). The “egg remover”
had made multiple incisions and after the anasthetic wore off they were on
fire. Finally it subsided; I was deathly white.
“Well they didn’t mention that in the flipping brochure,” I said, dressing
gingerly. Sameena came in beaming. “Well done, Zoe. We’ve recovered 30
eggs!” Thirty! I was so proud of my little kiddies! Sameena told me that
they now had to go to the lab to be analysed and the good ones would be
frozen. “Often, if we get even six good ones to freeze, that is a very good
harvest.”
I went home knackered and over-emotional. Unsure of what it was I was
supposed to be feeling. I had, with chemical help, grown some eggs. Was that
a big deal? I couldn’t work it out. A week later I was in the high street
when the call from the lab came through.
“Zoe,” said the voice. “I have your results. Well done: we’ve managed to
freeze 19 eggs of very good quality.” I was elated. Nineteen mini mes. I
might not even bother to turn them into screaming brats. I might just bring
them out at dinner parties with the after-dinner mints. So people can admire
my beautiful, well-behaved eggs.
I was a real woman with real eggs and if things didn’t work out the
conventional way, whatever the future held, I now had a very real chance of
a baby.
Who knows, I might even give a few away to people who need them . . .
although the thought of meeting my child on the high street is still a
little too weird even for me to contemplate.
Doing My Bit, by Zoe Lewis, is being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe
until August 27 (not Sundays). Tickets: 0131 2260000 — www.edfringe.com
