Deciding to have kids is one of the biggest decisions someone can make outside of like, getting bangs. And while sex ed made it seem like you’ll get pregnant the first time you have sex, that’s not exactly how it goes for most couples.
“For some, conception can be a short road and for others, it can be a longer journey,” says Banafsheh Kashani, M.D., a double board-certified OB/GYN and reproductive endocrinology/infertility specialist. And if you’re not a part of the “we got magically pregnant the first time we didn’t use birth control” club, trying to conceive (or “TTC” as the fertility community calls it) can be extremely time-consuming and stressful. That, my friends, is where fertility trackers come in.
Why do you need trackers? Glad you asked. You see, there’s a decent chance it’ll be a little before you conjure up a positive pregnancy test. According to board-certified OB/GYN, Shieva Ghofrany, M.D., taking up to 12 months for healthy couples under the age of 35 to get pregnant is completely normal. “Couples should not get worried or feel that they *have* to see a fertility doctor unless it brings them peace of mind,” she says. “If you’re 35+, try for up to six months before seeking help.”
Fertility trackers come into the picture because they help pinpoint when you’re ovulating so you have the best shot of getting pregnant each month. This can shorten the length of time you’re trying because you’re literally making sure all the odds are in your favor.
But before throwing the best suggestions your way, we’ve enlisted the experts to answer a couple of the most pressing TTC questions so you don’t have to spend endless hours in pregnancy forums, attempting to decipher answers from people who can’t spell!
When, Exactly, Can Someone Get Pregnant?
Okay, so first things first, Dr. Kashani says you can, in theory, get pregnant at any time during your menstrual cycle, even during or just after your period. This is because sperm can live up to five days (maybe even more) after having sex, and depending on when you ovulate that month, well, you do the math.
That said, most people ovulate (the process where a mature egg travels down the fallopian tube to, potentially, be fertilized) sometime between 12 and 16 days after their period starts. While you might think you should just have sex on the day of ovulation, that’s actually not your best bet for putting a bun in the oven. Instead, Dr. Shieva says you want to time sex to happen during your fertile window to give your egg the best shot of meeting a little spermy. This window—which spans the five days leading up to ovulation, ovulation day, and the day after—is when you can actually conceive.
So How Can I Tell When I’m Ovulating?
With all of the importance being placed on the mythical ovulation date, figuring out when that happens is sort of key here. Physically, Dr. Kashani says you might feel period-like symptoms along the lines of cramps, breast tenderness, bloating, and headaches when you ovulate. Dr. Shieva also adds that your discharge might get a little tackier in the days leading up to ovulation and on the day of.
Truthfully, though, it’s sometimes hard to figure out WTF your body is saying. Is the headache because you’re ovulating or because you haven’t had any water for the last three hours? Are your boobs sore or is that just what it feels like to have boobs? To take some of the guesswork out of things, people use—you guessed it—fertility trackers and ovulation tools to better determine when their egg is making its monthly escape.
The 9 Best “Trying to Conceive” Products On the Market
If you’re trying to get pregnant, ovulation trackers and fertility products are, hands down, the best beginning tools out there. While these aren’t a fix-all, they will give you the best shot each month to either a) get you knocked up or b) give your doctor more information as to the next best steps to take.
And as someone who personally struggled to conceive after a miscarriage, I tried just about every device, supplement, and test imaginable before getting pregnant again. Ranging from wearable trackers to daily cookies that boost your system, here are the best TTC products that’ll give you a little bit of control during an extremely vulnerable time.
Best Fertility Thermometer: Daysy
Easy to use and totally non-invasive, special oral thermometers designed to track your basal body temperature are one of the simplest ways to accurately detect your fertile window. “Your temperature rises by approximately 1/2 a degree to 1 degree just after ovulation,” explains Dr. Kashani. “This occurs after the oocyte (egg) is released from the ovary, and as the ovary starts producing a hormone called progesterone.”
Technically, the Daysy thermometer can be used as contraception or for TTC, which means you can get multiple uses out of the device depending on where you’re at in life. Basically, you take your temperature the second you wake up—like before getting out of bed—and it tells you whether you’re fertile, possibly fertile, or not fertile that day. Daysy pairs with a (free!) app that charts your data, making it easy to see patterns in your cycle. It was this chart, in fact, that made me (rightfully) suspect I was pregnant again because instead of dropping on the day I should have gotten my period, my temperate remained elevated. Cool, right?
Best Wearable Fertility Tracker: Ava
If you don’t think you’ll remember to take your temperature at the same time every day, or you want even more science involved to doubly make sure you’re ovulating, Ava is for you. This celebrity-beloved, FDA-cleared tracker analyzes five different data points to decipher your fertile window, ovulation day, and when your period will start. It can also confirm whether or not you’re actually ovulating (some people have anovulatory cycles where no egg is released), which is important info you can take with you to the doctor.
It’s also the easiest to use since Ava looks like any other fitness tracker. You literally just put it on your wrist at night, go to sleep, and take it off in the morning. It monitors things like your temperature, your heart rate (which elevates during ovulation), and your breathing rate, and puts all the info on an easy-to-understand—and well-explained—graph in the app. This device also had me rightfully suspecting I was pregnant since it kept pushing out my “expected” period date.
Best Fertility Testing Kit: Modern Fertility
As previously mentioned, it can take up to a year for healthy couples under the age of 35 to conceive. That said, after a few months, you might be getting restless and start googling fertility clinics near you. Instead of spending all that time and money before you even know if it’s necessary, try a home fertility testing kit—like this one from Modern Fertility—first.
These work similarly to tests you’d get done in a lab, but they’re way cheaper and more convenient. This one involves collecting a blood sample at home (like, a few drops) and sending it off to check for the most important hormones involved in fertility. After a few days (which is way faster than tests from a standard clinic), you get your results and the option to talk to a specialist to go over them. Depending on what your report shows, Dr. Kashani says this can give your doctor insight on whether to move forward with other tests, take some proactive measures, and/or prescribe medications like progesterone supplements to help you sustain a pregnancy.
Best Ovulation Testing Kit: [email protected] Ovulation Test Strips
LH stips—which measure the levels of luteinizing hormone (LH) in your pee—are one of the best, most cost-effective tracking tools out there. Essentially, 24 hours before you ovulate, there’s a sudden surge of LH in your system, Dr. Shieva explains. “When you see the LH strips detect the elevation of LH, you want to have sex so the sperm is waiting for the egg.”
This pack was suggested to me when I was TTC, and it’s great because it comes with a whopping 50 test trips and 20 pregnancy tests. Since you want to start testing a few days after your period (because you might ovulate on a different day each month), you don’t feel like you’re wasting every last cent if you blow through a dozen or so sticks per cycle. You just want to make sure to track at the same time daily (or twice daily) to ensure you don’t miss your window!
Best Fertility Lube: Preseed
One little fact that you likely didn’t know is that using lube and TTC doesn’t exactly mix. “Lubricants that have ingredients like petroleum, propylene glycol, glycerin, parabens, silicone, and Nonoxynol-9 that can affect sperm motility,” explains Dr. Kashani. That doesn’t mean you can’t use *any* lube (which is good, because lube makes sex so much better). You just have to be particular about what you reach for.
The good news is that there are lubes specifically designed to help couples conceive by supporting sperm quality and mobility. Both Dr. Shieva and Dr. Kashani recommend Pre-Seed, and it gets my stamp of approval as well. I got pregnant the first month I used this stuff. Whether that was a coincidence or not, we’ll never know. But since sex without lube isn’t for me, Pre-Seed was a game changer in more ways than one.
Best Fertility Tracking App: Ovia
If you want a place to keep track of all your testing information—like LH results and basal body temps—you’ll likely want to use a fertility tracking app. Ovia uses an algorithm to predict your period and fertile window, plus it tells you when to take a pregnancy test (so you don’t waste a million when you’re actually too early to test but can’t help yourself). It promotes helpful articles and tips depending on where you’re at in your cycle, and it helps you track symptoms to decipher between PMS and a potential pregnancy.
What I really loved about the app, though, is that it’s completely free to use so you won’t hit any annoying paywalls. And if you have insurance with a major provider, it can unlock additional features like coaches and specialists who can answer all your questions and send you personalized resources.
Best Prenatal Vitamin: Nature Made Prenatal Multi + DHA
The best time to start taking a prenatal vitamin is in the months prior to trying to get pregnant. This is because your body needs time to soak up those nutrients and get ready for all that growing it’ll do with a baby.
While there are a zillion options out there, Nature Made Prenatal Multi + DHA is a standard favorite. You can find it in almost any store, it’s easy to take, and it’s got pretty much everything you need from folate to omega-3 to B12. The best part is you only have to take one soft pill a day (others require up to 8!) so even if you hate taking medicine, choking it down before bed is simple enough.
Best Fertility Support Snacks: Agni
For me, trying to get pregnant was an endless cycle of hope, sadness, frustration, and exhaustion. So when I came across a snack pack that was made to “support the building blocks of fertility,” I got two on the spot. The Agni Fertility Box contains treats made from ingredients that promote hormone balance, restful sleep, and digestion, all essential to fertility and ovulation.
Also, hi, the snacks are good. The box came with chocolate cookies I had to fight my husband over and a refreshing tea that actually calmed me TF down whenever I’d see another pregnancy post on Instagram. Unless you eat everything at once (which *is* possible), the box lasts a cycle which makes it easy to time for reorder…which I guarantee you’ll want to do.
Best Pregnancy Tests: First Response Comfort Check Pregnancy Test
The only thing that seems to happen most when TCC—more than sex and more than hate stalking everyone with a bump—is pregnancy tests. Even when you know it’s too early, even when you feel your period coming, it’s impossible to ignore the little voice in your head that says “maybe this month.” That’s how we all end up taking a zillion tests before getting a single positive.
For this reason, Dr. Kashani suggests First Response’s Comfort Check Test Kit because it comes with eight tests per pack which should last you at least two if not three cycles, depending on how much self-control you have. First Response is also more sensitive than some of the cheaper HG strips, so you’ll find out earlier when you do conceive. Praise be.
Ultimately, trying to get pregnant is a rollercoaster for many couples. If you experience infertility, know you’re not alone. By using the tools at your disposal and being an advocate for your own reproductive health, you’ll be closer than ever to posting the sonogram picture of your dreams.
Featured image courtesy of Ava Women.
This November, my wife and I checked off a depressing anniversary: one year of trying for a baby. As two halves of a same-sex marriage, both of us women, we’ve been in doctor’s offices for the past year undergoing IUI, or intrauterine insemination. A year might not sound like a long time in that sense, but in terms of money and effort and knowing we’ve had perfectly timed attempts again and again, it feels like an eternity. When we first started this process, technically there was no “infertility” diagnosis; we were just a same-sex couple who always knew we’d at least need assistance in acquiring sperm, if nothing else, or so we thought. But it’s become more complicated than that.
The procedure of IUI is performed in a doctor’s office. The short story of what happens is that when your body is ready for ovulation, which can mean medications for days before that to stimulate the ovaries, an injection is performed that prompts ovulation and you release one or more eggs depending on how many have grown to maturity (typically one, but sometimes more on medication). About a day after that injection is given, a doctor uses a speculum to open the cervix and a catheter (flexible, tubey thing) to insert the sperm directly into the uterus, not just into the vagina. So fun! The goal is for those sperm to swim up into the Fallopian tube, meet the egg, and then for the fertilized egg to descend, implant in the uterus and grow. We are using donor sperm purchased through a sperm bank, which is pricey and can be hard to acquire (our donor has a waitlist that took us months to get on), so we decided to basically get straight into a fertility center to make sure we had professional, medical support as we tried to conceive.
It’s hard to talk about this process for a variety of reasons; mostly, because it hasn’t worked yet, but also because trying to have a baby is incredibly personal no matter how you go about it. It’s intimate and important whether you’re at home or in a doctor’s office. Also, most stories of infertility are told at the end, after success has been achieved. I want to share from the middle, the dead center of the mess, still trying to navigate through the storm. We’re not at the finish line yet and I don’t know how long it’ll take or what method will finally get us to the other side, where we get to become parents. I’ve stopped trying to guess. But this isn’t a situation that is valid only once you’ve achieved the goal. We’re in the hard part, and that’s an important perspective to be standing in. We are in crying-on-the-couch, going-through-it mode. We always knew we would need some help getting pregnant since we’re both women and lack “access to sperm,” as our doctor hilariously put it, but we were not prepared for the length of time it’s taken, the ups and downs of the process along the way, and how much of the unknown we would face that I had absolutely no concept of before we started.
The Doctors Know A Lot, But Not Everything
Even with two uteruses, great doctors, and good odds, every case is different and the treatments aren’t foolproof. There is a lot of guesswork involved about how your body will respond to certain treatments and hormones and it doesn’t always happen the way you, or your doctor, expect. Even with drugs, and ultrasounds, and doctors we trust, we’ve had round after round of failed intrauterine inseminations. And the worst part is that, most of the time, the exact reason why is unknown. It could be the egg, or an insufficient uterine lining, or something else entirely. The egg could have been fertilized but failed to implant, or the egg and sperm could have failed to fertilize at all. Even when you know the exact day of ovulation, the size of the follicle down to the millimeter, or the precise thickness of the uterine lining, the reason it still doesn’t work isn’t always clear. It can take time and a lot of effort to create the perfectly balanced cocktail of medications, timing, and internal environment to make things work, and there are more factors than I ever realized.
The Roller Coaster Your Month Will Become
It’s not just the infamous TWW that’s difficult, which is the two-week waiting period after insemination is performed when you’re waiting to get, or miss, your period. There are doctor’s visits to check your follicles to make sure they’re maturing at the right rate, evaluate uterine lining levels, and did I mention every single one of those visits involves a vaginal ultrasound? None of this is happening in those cute abdominal ultrasounds like in the movies where they squeal and giggle because the gel is too cold. It’s way too early on for abdominal ultrasounds, which means every single appointment, there’s a probe inserted vaginally. The doctors are good at it, but even so, it’s like having a Pap smear three times a week. Most people don’t even mention that part in the struggle to get pregnant, which is a testament to the fucking strength of people with uteruses. It’s such a hard process already that being subjected to invasive vaginal examinations day in and day out just becomes part of the gig. But I’ll tell you about it, because I’m not tough, and I love to complain. And it’s not just uncomfortable and inconvenient: it’s an upheaval of your whole day-to-day life. I kind of just thought we’d live normally, come in on the day of insemination, and then get pregnant and move on. And for some people I’m sure that’s true, but not for us. There are consults and tests, and meds that work and meds that don’t, and then appointments and procedures, and more tests. Each little piece of news, good or bad, can derail your day, or week, or month.
Expect The Unexpected
If someone had told me that after a year of attempts, we’d be moving on to other even more expensive, invasive methods because no one was pregnant yet, I would have cackled. Two healthy women, both under the age of 30 when we started, using high-quality donor sperm. It seemed like we’d get pregnant in the first few rounds. Then, we didn’t, and half a year had somehow passed by. We had another unwelcome surprise when blood tests and ultrasounds diagnosed me with PCOS, which stands for polycystic ovary syndrome, and can manifest in different ways but for me tends to result in my body ovulating on a very irregular schedule, or not at all, which means I need more help getting pregnant and probably would even if I were in a straight relationship. We always knew we’d need sperm, but to need this much medical help in trying to conceive is unexpected. And those are big picture surprises. Smaller picture, there have also been roadblocks. One medication resulted in me developing between four and six mature follicles, which is so many my cycle was nearly canceled. Another medication resulted in me having an ideal uterine lining measurement for pregnancy, but no follicles ready to release a mature egg, so back to square one we went, reversing all the gains made in my uterus in the process. Every person with a uterus is different, and while I may be especially tricky, I have been consistently and genuinely surprised by how difficult it’s been to wrangle my cycle and my body. Coming into this with an admittedly casual mindset, adjusting to the big picture reality as well as riding the smaller waves, has been intense.
The Most Difficult Part Isn’t The Money, Although That Part Does Suck
You know the quote, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? That sums up going through infertility treatments. It’s the biggest leap of faith out there. You are trying to make something out of basically nothing, or at the very least, out of microscopic body parts you can’t even see, and then hoping it sticks. You are trying to create actual life over and over again. And when it doesn’t work, that loss is felt like just that: a loss. You technically can’t lose something you never had, but that carved-out feeling of pain is still there as the future you’re trying so hard to move toward just takes another step away from you. The more times you try, the harder it is, because you start having to deal with problems you could easily avoid if you were already pregnant. Just shipping donor sperm to our clinic alone costs hundreds of dollars. Ordering new medications for another attempt. Trying to calculate how much sperm is left, how many more vials we’ll need, trying not to panic at how many we’ve gone through already just in the process of trying, with nothing to show for it until someone is pregnant. There’s no moving on to the next step of our lives until we can surmount this one. If we were already pregnant, we could start thinking about buying baby stuff and telling our families and moving on to the fun parts. Instead, every negative test is like a step backward. It means another try, another month—at least—of money and time and procedures. Yet, we do it. We try again and again. And I’m proud every time. It’s brave to try again where you’ve just failed. If I’d known how long this would take and how complicated it’s been, I might have been afraid to try at all. A lot of the adjustment has just been accepting that I don’t know when it’s going to happen or when it’s going to work. There is some comfort in knowing we’re doing the best we can.
My wife said the other day that you cling on to the good stories, the ones you hear about where couples get pregnant the first try or early on, and you push the bad ones away and just hope your story will be one of the easy ones. I’ve lost faith many times this year and there have been times it felt like I was free-falling into an abyss. What I’ve tried to remember is that we are not on the edge of a cliff. We’re on a bridge. We’re taking steps to get to the other side. That’s sometimes all you can do.
Image: Sergey Filimonov /Stocksy.com
Infertility is a problem many people struggle with, and although it is often considered only a woman’s condition, both men and women can contribute to it. While the topic has long been considered hush-hush, in recent years, conversations about fertility struggles are becoming more normalized, with even celebrities opening up about their difficulties. Typically, you’d expect that when a celebrity publicly discusses issues related to infertility, they would be met with an outpouring of support. Not so for Paris Hilton, whose recent comments about her decision to undergo IVF are causing outrage.
On a recent episode of a podcast called The Trend Reporter With Mara, Hilton opened up about her decision to start a family, remarking that she and her boyfriend Carter Reum had decided to try IVF. She explained that her friend Kim Kardashian was the one who recommended IVF in the first place, saying that before Kardashian’s recommendation, “I didn’t even know anything about it.”
The CDC reports that 1 to 2 percent of all U.S. births annually happen via IVF, and according to WebMD, only about 5% of couples with infertility seek out IVF, so Hilton’s decision to speak publicly about her decision to undergo the process is significant. Although infertility is a fairly common struggle that couples go through, with about 1 in 8 couples having trouble getting pregnant or sustaining a pregnancy, the stigma of it persists, and women may be on the receiving end of the worst of that stigma. According to a 2019 survey conducted by Modern Fertility, about 1 in 5 women reported that they experienced discrimination or prejudice because of their infertility, which led to them feeling guilt and shame. In addition, 59% of the women who participated in the survey felt that women who are infertile are unfairly treated.
So while Hilton being open about her decision to undergo IVF is commendable and can help lessen the stigma for other women and couples going through the same process, her reasons for going that route are coming under fire. Hilton explains on the podcast, “We wanna have twins first, and then I don’t know, like either 3 or 4 children.” When host Mara Schiavocampo asks if she’s considered surrogacy, because it’s kind of hard to plan twins, Hilton reveals, “we have been doing the IVF so I can pick twins if I like.” Later on, when Schiavocampo asks Hilton what made her decide to undergo IVF, Hilton explains, “I think it’s just something that most women should do just to have, and then you can pick if you want boys or girls … I want to have twins that are a boy and a girl, so the only way to 100% get that is by making it happen that way.”
Hilton’s comments quickly earned backlash and were called “insensitive”. First, there’s the casual remark that every woman should just undergo IVF just to be able to have the option of it, which completely leaves out the fact that for many people, IVF is prohibitively expensive. The average IVF cycle can cost anywhere from $12,000 to $17,000 before medication and not including genetic testing, and it may or may not be covered by insurance. Furthermore, it usually requires more than one round. Most people are not Paris Hilton with net worths of $300 million, and doing IVF is a huge financial undertaking.
And that’s saying nothing of the intense emotional and physical side-effects. Felice Gersh, M.D., an award-winning OB/GYN and founder/director of the Integrative Medical Group of Irvine, in Irvine, CA and the author of PCOS SOS Fertility Fast Track, tells Betches that with IVF, there is a risk of “tubal pregnancy and hyperstimulation of ovaries leading to very enlarged ovaries and illness from too much estrogen produced.” This is on top of “all the issues of any pregnancy”, plus the risks of any procedures, such as infections and bleeding. Most common? The “risk of failure and disappointment and emotional toll is great,” she says.
There’s also the fact that having twins, even through IVF, is risky for both the mother and babies. According to the Fertility Institute, IVF multiple birth risks include the babies being born preterm (almost 60% of twins and 90% of triplets are delivered preterm), which can in turn result in low birth weight and increased risk of long-term issues such as cerebral palsy, vision loss, and hearing loss. There are also serious risks to the mother; complications such as gestational diabetes and preeclampsia are more common in twin pregnancies. (Kim Kardashian suffered from preeclampsia during her pregnancies, which is why she ultimately decided to use a surrogate after the birth of her second child). Twin pregnancy is also associated with greater life-threatening maternal complications. Also, age is one of the most common risk factors for high-risk pregnancies, with women over 35 being at greater risk. Hilton is 39. The point is, having twins through IVF at any age should not be taken lightly. Dr. Gersh emphasizes that undergoing IVF with the express purpose of having twins “should never be the goal, as multiple gestational increase risks to the mom and babies.”
And while Dr. Gersh says that “male and female factors for infertility are the usual reasons” for choosing IVF, couples sometimes go this route “to choose gender due to sex linked disease.” Gender selection can happen during IVF if parents choose to have their embryos screened for genetic abnormalities. During that process, the doctors can also look at the sex of the embryo, at which point, parents can choose the embryo. Chrissy Teigen did this when she was pregnant with her daughter Luna. She subsequently was criticized for choosing her child’s sex, forcing her to explain that it was only one part of the process, writing on Twitter, “I think I made a mistake in thinking people understood the process better than they do.” Dr. Gersh says that choosing the sex “would be a personal decision between all concerned” and “is not an issue in the vast majority of cases.”
That said, there are couples who specifically undergo IVF so they can choose the sex of their baby, a practice which is controversial, and Hilton’s comments seem to imply that she may fall into the latter camp.
Shannon M. Clark, MD, MMS, FACOG and creator of the Instagram accounts @babiesafter35, responded to Hilton’s comments in a number of IGTV videos. She asserts, “The idea of being able to ‘pick twins if I like’ is not only incorrect, it’s dangerous and it’s irresponsible to put out there as a choice that anyone could have—because it’s not a choice that anyone could have.” She adds, “IVF is not available to everyone, and twins are a high-risk pregnancy.”
That said, we do not know precisely Hilton’s reasons for undergoing IVF, and given that she is 39 years old, she may very well have been struggling with infertility. Gender selection may have been a plus side of, but not the entire reason for, undergoing IVF. Still, the way she expressed it was flippant, and that could potentially have adverse consequences (though I kind of doubt anyone is seriously looking to Paris Hilton for family planning advice). We may never know exactly why Hilton is undergoing IVF unless she tells us, and the backlash to these comments might make her less inclined to open up any further. Her comments were out-of-touch and IVF is not feasible for everyone (for a multitude of reasons), and just because Hilton did not seem to experience serious side-effects does not mean it is an easy process. That said, there is a way to correct and provide context for her statements without coming for her personally, and unless we are told otherwise, we should give her the benefit of the doubt in assuming that she made the best decision for herself and her family under the guidance of medical professionals.
Images: Andrea Raffin / Shutterstock.com;
Amy Schumer recently posted about her experience with IVF and freezing her eggs. Spoilers: it f*cking blows. I did the same process in November when I froze my eggs—when you freeze your eggs, you’re undergoing the same hormone injection process as IVF—and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through (and that’s coming from a stage IV cancer patient). And it was only two weeks! There is such a stigma around women and anything to do with children already. If you have trouble conceiving, there’s something wrong with you. If you don’t want kids, you suck. If you can’t breastfeed, the way you raise your child, etc, etc, etc. Women are constantly getting sh*t on in the fertility department for absolutely everything. Maybe it’s because of this that women, especially famous women, just don’t talk about IVF very often. In fact, a bunch of celebrities now hide their pregnancies and children just to get some privacy away from all of society’s opinions, and I don’t even blame them.
But look. IVF or egg freezing is really, really hard. And it’s hard when you’re a nobody and it’s hard when you’re Amy Schumer. Which is why I was honestly really glad when Amy posted this super real photo:
That bruising on either side of her stomach are from the daily injections to get your ovaries bigger than grapefruits (SERIOUSLY) to release a ton of eggs at once. Amy wrote that she’s “feeling really run down and emotional” and is only a week into her injections. Girl, been there.
For the record, the injections are insanely brutal. I ended up with three daily injections that I couldn’t do myself, so I went to the clinic every single day. At first, it’s like, “Yeah it sucks getting shots every day”, but then you go about your business and it’s NBD. But then things change—and quickly. By day three, you’re starting to bloat, you’re super emotional, and your sensitivity increases. And then it just landslides. What’s worse than getting three injections a day, you ask? Doing it when your skin feels raw and every needle feels like a white-hot electric nerve. You’re also getting an invasive ultrasound with what feels like a f*cking dildo and blood work almost every day. And even better? One of the injections burns like the fire of a thousand suns straight into your soul. F*CK Menopur, guys.
I looked four months pregnant, I was so sick I couldn’t get off the couch, I could barely eat, and everything in my whole body hurt. The hormones also make you feel insane. It feels like torture, and then you just go back every day for more. By Day 10, I was too fainty and lightheaded and sick to drive, so I had a friend take me every day. My veins receded from all the blood draws. On day 11, they did the ultrasound and barely touched my giant grapefruit ovary, and I still started sobbing hysterically because it hurt so bad (I was that sensitive). On day 12, I told the doctor that I was going to kill myself or her or both of us if she didn’t trigger me (an injection that releases your eggs so that they can harvest them) that day. Day 13, a celebrity I love (that I’m not going to out for being at the fertility office) saw me essentially throwing a tantrum like a toddler before my injections, but thank GOD that was my last day.
And the worst part? No one warns you about this part of it. Probably because they don’t want to scare you. It’s similar with my cancer treatment. The oncologist told me that the meds work and I won’t be that sick from chemo. Has she ever done it? No? Then you don’t get to say that. (And btw, I’m totally sick from chemo and they can’t give me any more meds, hi.)
Bottom line, it’s important that we talk about this and that women who go through this process understand that it sucks for all of us and you’re not alone. That’s why it’s really cool and important to see someone like Amy Schumer be so vulnerable and admit how hard it is. It really did break me, even though the process takes a relatively short amount of time. I also learned that it’s a really good thing I’m just a writer and not like, someone with government secrets, because I assure you, I would crack immediately at the slightest discomfort.
More celebrities being honest and upfront about the difficulties women go through when trying to conceive helps all of us feel less alone. Being a woman is really hard and can suck in a lot of ways, but it’s comforting in a weird way to know that even the rich and famous have these same issues.
Good luck with your egg harvest, Amy! And once again, F*CK Menopur.
Images: DFree / Shutterstock.com; amyschumer / Instagram
When we were in college (or high school, I don’t know your life), getting your period after a month of fooling around was the equivalent of Christmas morning. There was no better feeling than knowing you wouldn’t have to be a teen mom (without the reality show to boost you into Instagram stardom) and wouldn’t have to take care of a tiny creature that needs you all the time. Funny enough, now that some of us may be actually TRYING to get pregnant, it seems like the whole thing is, well, kind of not that easy. I wish we’d all known that back when we were ripping our hair out praying for our periods to come so that Frank the Tank from TKE wasn’t about to be the father of our unborn child.
Why is it that despite years of being careful with pills, Plan B, condoms, and the whole pharmacy aisle of family planning products for years, some people find themselves having a really tough time actually getting pregnant now that they WANT to have a kid? Here are some facts you might not know about getting pregnant.
1. It Can Take Up To A Year
Shockingly, a lot of couples trying to get pregnant won’t succeed on try number one. Although I myself am a freak of nature and this rule doesn’t apply to me (Betch Baby—out December 2019), according to WebMD and Dr. Robert Stillman, medical director of Shady Grove Fertility Centers in the Washington, D.C., area, about 85% of couples take one year to put a bun in the oven. “The average time it takes to conceive, for instance, is about six months, and women under 35 should wait until they’ve tried for a year before they consider calling their doctor or a fertility specialist with concerns.” So if you’re good with the idea of getting pregnant, don’t bank on getting it done in the first try. Give yourself six months to a year of tracking and trying before you start freaking out, k? There’s nothing wrong with you.
2. There Are No Tricks
Even though your mom may have sworn by being strapped upside down in moon boots (did we all throw up together), there are no “tricks” to getting pregnant. You know what will get you pregnant? Sperm fertilizing your egg. Boom. Magic. WebMD says, “There’s still only one way to get pregnant—by a sperm fertilizing the woman’s egg, which can happen for only about 12 to 24 hours after ovulation—approximately 14 days before the end of a woman’s monthly cycle. Ovulation sometimes can be harder to predict if a woman’s cycles are irregular. And for women who are getting older, monthly cycles first get shorter, then longer the closer they get to menopause.”
So, the big takeaway here is that even if your neighbor swore by mud masks and hypnosis, your bestie claims she was able to get pregnant because she only has sex in the morning on Wednesdays, and your mom tells you to invest in a water bed, the only thing that’ll get you pregnant is the right sperm at the right time.
3. Being Healthy Counts
Being overweight, underweight, or having little to no exercise routine (or healthy eating habits) can all affect how easy or hard it is for you to get pregnant. Today’s Parent says that being over or under weight (and anywhere above a 25% BMI) can greatly affect your chances of getting pregnant. For example, if you’re way under where you should be, weight-wise, your body may not be ovulating properly (which may explain why your periods are so irregular). On the flip side, if you’re overweight, that can affect your hormones balance, which can reduce fertility. And, while you may think that fertility treatments can help, they can actually be less effective for obese individuals. So, before you even jump into getting pregnant, make sure you’re healthy, kids.
4. We’re All Waiting Longer To Have Kids
…And that isn’t a bad thing! Having kids after age 30 means you’re out of your wild 20s stage and are (probably) somewhat more responsible. However, waiting longer means that you won’t have as easy of a time actually getting pregnant compared to your 19-year-old Mormon neighbor who seems to pop out a kid every other month.
According to The Bump, “a woman’s fertility starts to decline gradually at age 27 and then it drops dramatically after age 35. And while there are fertility treatments that can help couples conceive, they’re less likely to work if the patient is older.” So, yeah, you may see that a celebrity got pregnant at 48 or whatever, but don’t think that the rules didn’t apply to them or that they didn’t seek outside treatment or help in conceiving. We’re at our top fertility between 25-30, so once you pass that, your chances of getting pregnant start dropping each year. That isn’t to freak you out, it’s just to keep in mind if you’ve been dating the same guy for seven years and you’re about to hit 31 and he STILL won’t even talk about whether or not he wants kids.
5. Stress Is Sabotaging You
Not shockingly, the more you try and the more you don’t get pregnant, the more you’re likely to be stressed out and start feeling majorly negative vibes. You may ask yourself, “what’s wrong with me?” and feel like literally everyone around is getting pregnant in a snap while you’re a year in with no baby. A lot of fertility doctors are now recommending acupuncture, yoga, and meditation for women trying to get pregnant, since a crazy-high stress level is totally linked to an inability to conceive. “‘Some people truly have medical issues keeping them from getting pregnant,'” says Shahin Ghadir, MD, a reproductive endocrinologist and founding partner of Southern California Reproductive Center for The Bump. “‘But for others, when they relax and feel confident that they’re in good hands , things change. You can’t prove it, but I’ve seen miracles happen when people’s stress levels change.'” So do that meditation class. Go out for a walk. Book a 90-minute massage. Relaxing and trusting that you’re doing everything you need to do and taking care of yourself can work wonders.
6. Your Cycle Is Complicated
You may have thought you had a really good handle on how long your cycle is, when you ovulate, and what days you’re most fertile but, you could be wrong. Everyone seems to think that their specific cycle is 28 to 32 days long, right? Sorta. That can vary big time according to your personal genetic makeup. On top of that, most women think their ovulation date—the time they’re most fertile and likely to conceive—is exactly two weeks before the start of their period. Again, that can vary according to your cycle, which a new study helped shed some major light on.
According to Today’s Parent, the best way to tell when you’re ACTUALLY ovulating is to buy an ovulation monitoring device and check exactly when you’re at peak performance. On top of that, don’t freak out if you can’t or didn’t bone on your ovulation day. Sperm can live in your cervix for three days (I am SO DISGUSTED BY THIS), so even if you do the dirty on or around your ovulation day (especially before) you have a good chance of getting pregnant. Lastly, although your actual cycle can make you more lubed up down there or run dry depending on the month, try not to use lubricants. They can actually work against you and prevent you getting pregnant.
Images: Luma Pimentel, Unsplash; Giphy (6)
There I was, legs elevated in metal stirrups, counting backward from ten, losing consciousness by the second. Why? For $7K… duh.
There’s not much I won’t consider doing for money. As a kid, I worked a lemonade stand, sold snacks at yard sales, and scammed grown-ups with bets like $20 for throwing an inflated football through a tire. I’ve had an array of jobs since I was 16 and almost never just one at a time. I was even offered $200 in high school to take a guy’s virginity. I didn’t, but does that matter?
Donating your eggs is not easy money, but that is the illusion.
Just the lengthy application alone can weed out the weary. Then you have to get over the fear of stabbing yourself with needles, followed by the realization that you might release children into the world. It’s enough to make anyone think twice.
Obviously, money is a primary motivator when it comes to a procedure like this. A study published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine notes that 81% of egg donors “indicated that the offer of payment was significant to their decision.” Yet, I found that the end result was way more rewarding than the cash, and that’s why I donated my eggs not once, but twice. The money is long gone. After Uncle Sam reached between my legs for a quarter of it, I used the rest to leave a job I hated, pay off debt, and buy myself some boobs. But when I look back on my donation process, it’s not the money I remember.
First, it’s important to clear up a common misconception: Donating doesn’t affect your egg count. According to the Cleveland Clinic, women are born with approximately one million eggs. Even prior to puberty, these eggs die each month. So the eggs you donate would naturally die in your next menstrual cycle.
Thrust into living alone after my boyfriend broke up with me unexpectedly, my credit card became a crutch. I couldn’t get through the week without dipping into unpromised money. A friend of mine introduced me to Shady Grove Fertility, an organization dedicated to infertility treatments. She had considered donating her eggs but was daunted by the application process due to her family medical history. Less than 40% of applicants pass the initial screening, a statistic specific to SGF provided to me upon completion. I answered the preliminary application, which consisted of a few essential questions used to easily disqualify any red flags—one of which I held. I had traveled to the Caribbean with my ex (eye roll) just five months prior and ZIKA was a major concern. I was asked to apply again in another month, since six months was the threshold for exposure.
After re-applying, I was accepted and provided a link for the comprehensive application. Holy Moly. Now, I’m a writer and fully enjoy talking about myself, but this was on another level. I provided personal statements and short essays about everything down to my musical ability and every detail about my family including the color of my dead paternal grandfather’s eyes. The application actually serves as a profile for a donor when they are being selected by hopeful recipients. I uploaded pictures of myself as a child and an adult—the latter is not required but increases the probability and rate of being chosen.
I was then invited to begin the medical screening portion. Based on when I had started my most recent pack of birth control, an ultrasound and bloodwork appointment were scheduled. They also performed genetic screening which tested for 105 conditions. At this point, it had been about three months since I first reached out. I received $150 through an application promotion and $50 for approved lab work.
*calls produce manager of whole foods* hi yes i’m interested in donating my eggs
— you thoughtttttttttttttttttttttttt (@youonebigyike) September 1, 2019
I took a brief online course that provided an overview of the procedure and then was scheduled for “Donor Day,” which requires a day off from work when current donors meet at the office with a nurse for in-person training and screening. After screening, we took a 150 question multiple choice personality test, learned about the procedure, ate pizza, and practiced our first injection. We practiced mixing solution, dialing the pen to the correct dosage, and finally pinching some stomach fat and stabbing ourselves. I bled, which never happened again, but I had my first “what have I done?” moment. The day earned me $450.
Then, I signed consent forms and met with a social worker. Basically, it was a therapy session to ensure my sanity and comfort with the process, especially the fact that this would likely result in real live children running around with my DNA. I was and am completely comfortable with this fact. Once cleared, my profile went live for recipients to view. I was selected within a week. They switched my birth control in order to sync with my recipient’s and I received fertility medication to my home.
No more drinking, sex, drugs, tattoos, piercings, smoking, etc. Over the next two weeks, I injected hormones into my stomach at the same time each night and went into the office for bloodwork and an ultrasound about three times a week. The one shot, which I administered through an insulin pen, didn’t bother me. But the second shot, which required mixing a powder and liquid, burned as I pressed the plunger releasing the solution under my skin. You get used to it, but I always dreaded the second shot. The medication grows the egg follicles, and the ultrasound measures that growth process. With a lubed-up wand between my legs, I watched my uterus morph into a crop field on a blurry screen, and it was fascinating. My monitoring visits increased with my follicle size. Eventually, I added a third shot to my daily routine. The nurses followed my progress and emailed me with specific dosing instructions as they changed.
One of the childhood photos I used in my egg donor profile
All of the coordinators, nurses, and doctors I worked with throughout the process were incredibly helpful. They answered my questions, wrote me a note to freeze my gym membership, and even worked around the travel required for my job, scheduling me at locations that were convenient to my home, office, and wherever I was traveling. And yes, I did this while working for an event production company (one of my bosses had actually used a donor herself). I brought my medication in a cooler and took strategic breaks so that I could shuttle to an offsite condo where I’d disappear into the bathroom with my needles.
I actually relished the time that preceded the retrieval procedure. My body felt productive, like a factory. I was preparing for this really important gift while still working full time and living my life. Around three days out, I could actually feel my ovaries sloshing beneath my pelvis. The hormones swell each ovary from the size of a ping-pong ball to that of an orange.
After about two weeks, monitoring took place every day and they watched my progress closely to determine the exact date and time of retrieval. My mom was on standby to come stay and drive me to and from surgery. Once a date was defined (about two days out) I was instructed to take my trigger shot at a very specific time two nights before retrieval. I also took an antibiotic the night before with no food or water following.
My mom and I woke at 4am and drove to the surgery center 45 minutes away. I started to cramp. The building was immaculate. I felt very safe and comfortable. The staff was warm and attentive and kept thanking me for my “gift”. They also handed me a check for $6,500.
I dressed in some fabulous surgery attire (booties, gown, hair net) and received an IV. The cramping started to increase minutes away from surgery. I received anesthesia through my IV. Aside from having my wisdom teeth extracted, this was my first surgery. I walked with my IV tree and a nurse to the procedure room. I laid on a table and lifted my legs into metal stirrups. For the first time, I suddenly felt incredibly exposed. The anesthesiologist placed a gas mask over my nose and mouth and before I knew it, I was asleep. While I was out, a long needle-like vacuum was inserted into my vagina and pierced the vaginal wall on each side to essentially suck out the eggs from each of my ovaries. They retrieved 13 mature eggs. The actual retrieval only took about 20 minutes.
The drive back to Baltimore was rough. I wanted to sleep, but the bumpy roads aggravated the cramping. Plus, my ovaries were still enlarged. I slept when I got home and watched Fixer Upper for the rest of the day. The doctor gave me a prescription for pain that I ended up not needing. By that night, I felt back to normal. I stayed home from work the next day because why not, ya know? I returned for a follow-up visit about a week later and I was on my way! I had sex the following weekend even though I shouldn’t have. But I missed alcohol and d*ck. TG for Plan B.
I included a number of childhood and adult photos for my donor profile.
SGF reached out to me about three months later encouraging me to donate again. Although hesitant at first, I excitedly agreed. Since I was already vetted, the process proceeded much quicker—only about two months. They completed an initial screening before reactivating my donor profile. Unlike the first time, my profile was selected by three families instead of just one and my retrieval was split amongst them.
Things went even smoother the second time around. And not just because I knew the ropes, but because my body did too. I hardly experienced any cramping before and after surgery. They retrieved 22 mature eggs the second time and I received a total of $7,500.
I haven’t donated a third time (worth $8k) for a few reasons. Honestly, I’m nervous to jinx myself. The last thing I want is for something to hinder my ability to have my own children in the future. Another reason, which I only thought of more recently, is that I plan to stay in the Baltimore area as I have my own kids. This sounds like the plot to a titillating beach read, but my future kids could very well meet and date my donor children. One reason women aren’t allowed to donate more than six times with one organization is for this very reason.
Moral of the story: egg donation is incredibly involved, but it’s an extraordinary way to help a fellow human. If you made it to the end of this whirlwind article and are still interested in donating, do as much research as you can, especially as it pertains to the options in your area. Really consider the possibility of a child seeking you out in the future. Although the information is private, we all see the leaps and bounds DNA technology have already made. If you have more questions about my experience, feel free to DM me. Although I don’t plan to continue donating, I’d love to facilitate that opportunity for others.
Images: Kara Kinnamon (2); Nikola Radojcic / Unsplash; SGFertility, youonebigyike / Twitter
There are a few facts in this life that we can count on. Men lie. People who say “I’ll pay you back” will never pay you back. Your period will arrive like clockwork every 28 or so days. And before you come at me for that first assertion being untrue, I have enough text message receipts to fill the Old Testament to prove it. The bigger issue is that a new study led by UCL and Natural Cycles, a contraceptive app, found that a basic assumption we take for granted about menstrual cycles is not actually a given. And by that I mean, this “rule” that your period comes every 28 days? You know, the premise that a lot of hormonal birth control packs are based off of? Yeah, it doesn’t even apply to a vast majority of women. Cool cool cool cool cool. Good thing we don’t base a whole slew of other science on this premis—oh wait.
The study, published in Nature Digital Medicine earlier this week, examined over 600,000 menstrual cycles of 124,648 women who used the Natural Cycles app. These women were from the United States, Sweden, and the UK. Researchers set out to look at how menstrual cycles were influenced by factors like age, BMI, and body temperature, in order to try to understand when women are more or less likely to get pregnant. Now, to be clear, the sample size of this study is not a complete accurate representation of the general population. For one, the sample only consists of app users. For another, only 8% of the app users in the study are obese while 15% of women in the general population are obese. Finally, the study excluded those with a pre-existing condition that would impact fertility, like PCOS, hypothyroidism, or endometriosis, as well as women who were experiencing menopausal symptoms. This makes sense considering the study was specifically concerned with pregnancy, but it does mean its findings are not applicable to everyone.
i can always tell when i’m going to start my period by how close i get to cutting my own bangs at 3am
— gabbie hanna (@GabbieHanna) November 6, 2017
Now that we’ve gotten all the disclaimers out of the way (shouts-out to the AP Psych class I took senior year of high school), let’s get into what the study found, because it’s actually very interesting. Researchers collected data from women ages 18 to 45, with BMIs between 15 and 50, who were using Natural Cycles from September 2016 to February 19. The women had not been using hormonal birth control within 12 months from registering for the app. So, remember how I said that it’s basically taken as gospel that menstrual cycles last 28 days? Yeah. Guess how many of the cycles actually lasted that long.
Just 13%. Thirteen percent of women in the study had 28-day menstrual cycles, and yet that timeframe is the basis for a lot of birth control methods and, equally importantly, fertility windows. If you literally Google “when does ovulation occur”, the top answer will tell you that ovulation typically occurs about 14 days before your period starts, if your average menstrual cycle is 28 days. The problem with this model is that, according to this study, very few women do have a 28-day cycle, and in fact, researchers actually found the average cycle lasts 29.3 days. And, furthermore, 65% of women had cycles that lasted between 25-30 days—but that means 35% of people (or over a third) do not. That is a good chunk of people who do not even fall into this window that we take for granted as “standard”.
I love period dramas, I have one every month
— Karen Chee (@karencheee) August 11, 2019
So why does this matter? Researchers’ big takeaway was that this has significant implications for people trying to get pregnant. As Professor Joyce Harper, one of the researchers of the study, put it: “ovulation does not occur consistently on day 14 and therefore it is important that women who wish to plan a pregnancy are having intercourse on their fertile days.” More specifically, these results are important for people who are trying to conceive and are using apps or cycle dates to predict fertility days. “An individualized approach to identify the fertile window should be adopted,” said Dr. Simon Rowland, Head of Medical Affairs at Natural Cycles. “Apps giving predictions of fertile days based solely on cycle dates could completely miss the fertile window and it is therefore unsurprising that several studies have shown that calendar apps are not accurate in identifying the fertile window.” Harper added, “In order to identify the fertile period it is important to track other measures such as basal body temperature as cycle dates alone are not informative.”
On the surface, it’s not a particularly shocking conclusion that all reproductive systems are not identical, or that in general, biological functions and processes are complex and unique to the individual and cannot be generalized to a neat window or category that fits every single person. But then again, this is done all the time—whether we are talking about menstrual cycle lengths, body mass index, diets, or anything else. Am I surprised we are only now just being confronted with data that confronts the standard 28-day menstrual cycle, given that understanding of the female anatomy seems to be so low on the priority list that the clitoris was not even fully discovered until 1998? No, I am not surprised. But this study is giving me, and the researchers, hope that more studies will be done on the menstrual cycle, particularly, clinical trials done in controlled settings. “These initial results only scratch the surface of what can be achieved,” said Professor Harper. “We hope to stimulate greater interest in this field of research for the benefit of public health.” She added that with increased interest in and dedication to doing empirical studies, “there is enormous potential to uncover new scientific discoveries.”
Images: karencheee, GabbieHanna / Twitter
At 26, I’m the youngest of seven grandchildren on my dad’s side and the oldest of five on my mom’s. I’m also an only child. Besides a 22-year-old cousin, I am the only grandchild on either side to not be married or have kids. Even my cousin’s kid is engaged. Every trip home, my grandma asks when I’m going to bring home a nice man, when am I going to make my parents grandparents. And I finally have an answer.
I’ve decided that if I’m still single in roughly five years, I will proceed with steps to create a family on my own. I’ll be 31 and most likely on the cusp of decreased fertility. It’ll be like Jennifer Aniston in The Switch, minus all the theatrics. The concept of purposely having a child on my own is not a revolutionary one—according to Dr. David Harari, an OB-GYN and president and chief medical officer at the Reproductive Science Medical Center in California, parents on the Donor Sibling Registry are 50% single women—but it’s still one that catches raised eyebrows and dismissive comments. Or, I should say, cliches.
“Please, you’re so young.”
“You’ll meet someone when you least expect it.”
What if I don’t? Or, what if I don’t care to?
Ultimately, I’d rather have a child than a partner. The pros outweigh the cons.
If someone comes along, great! If not, it won’t deter me from having the life I want. I’ve created opportunity in every other area of my life, so why stop here? I can date until I die. But by design, having a child, especially without complications, comes with a time frame. Women are born with 1-2 million eggs, and by the time they hit 37, that number has plummeted to 25,000 eggs. That’s not to say it’s impossible, but it is way less opportunities to get pregnant. And, according to Dr. Harari, the loss of fecundity, or the ability to get pregnant, begins as early as 32 and decreases more quickly after age 37. When many guys, especially in big cities, don’t even think about becoming exclusive with one person until their mid-30s, that doesn’t leave me with a lot of time.
My mom: I want grandchildren
Me: well do you want to give me $20,000 to freeze my eggs?
My mom: well-
Me: and then would it be OK if I spent it on something other than egg freezing?— Ginny Hogan (@ginnyhogan_) June 1, 2019
When my boyfriend of over six years ended our relationship out of nowhere, I woke up. I was 23. I had invested the majority of my energy into “us”, and in one night, all that vanished. I couldn’t help but think he had wasted my “best” years. Just that thought alone proves the pressure society places on young women. I realized that, if I waited until I found a husband or partner, my romantic life and the hopes of having a family would always be completely out of my control, dependent on someone else deciding I was worthy and not changing their mind.
F*ck that.
And it’s not just me who feels that way. Dr. Harari remarks, “More women in their 30’s are recognizing that they want to control and drive their family creation goals proactively.” I wonder why.
Soon after my revelation, I told a pair of girlfriends over four-dollar sangria one night. Though my future is of course my prerogative, it was important to gauge their reaction. I was prepared for backlash or an eye roll, but they loved it. Ironically, my friend had a similar yet reverse dilemma. Should she break up with her boyfriend who she loved very much because he didn’t want kids? She’s 27. We ordered another round.
A few years ago, I went through the process of donating my eggs (if only they let me freeze some while I was already under, but that’s another article). I was pressed for cash after my living situation suddenly changed because of my breakup, and I loved the idea of helping someone in such an intimate, personal way. The process was an education in fertility and family planning. I was exposed to the lengths people were going in order to become a parent or parents. And it brought my own fate even further into focus. I’m far from alone in this: In one study looking at Assessing Reproductive Choices of Women, the authors found that those women who knew optimal age for successful egg freezing was 20-29 were more likely to freeze their eggs.
At this point, I’m still a few years away from 30. This is a protection plan. A mindset, really. By establishing a timeline and telling friends, I am not only setting up expectations (and getting people off my back), but also affirming the plan to myself. An ironic Plan B. And the longer I sit with it, the more comfortable I am. Empowered. When the time comes, I can either freeze my eggs, or move forward with a sperm donor. And if unexpected difficulties arise, I’ll adopt. I don’t want to make this decision as the last beads of sand fall from the hourglass. For now, I can focus on my career and the present without frantically searching for a baby daddy. I don’t feel the pressure to date like it’s an Olympic sport. With this plan tucked in my purse, alongside my birth control, I’m one step closer to the future I want.
Images: ginnyhogan / Twitter; uuppod / Instagram
