#75. Baby showers & egg freezing

I'm biased you're biased we're all biased

Aug 02, 2024

A few weeks ago, I went to a baby shower for a friend who is pregnant with her first. It was my fifth baby shower of the year. I only had one other friend there besides her, and he and I sat at the end of a table of my friend’s co-workers who were all in their 30s. We quickly realized they all had children, except for us.

As the conversation drifted to daycare and sleep schedules, I reminded myself I wasn’t going to use my nephews as a crutch. For the last eight years or so, I’ve gotten by in conversations like these clutching to my sister’s experience instead of my own, entering a parent’s conversational world with some anecdote about something I’ve only experienced secondhand.

Recently, though, I’ve wanted to try entering these conversations just as… myself. Asking questions when appropriate, being open and curious and patient. Every time I was tempted to say something about my nephews, I shut my mouth. And mostly I just listened, since without them, I didn’t have much to say.

One of the moms mentioned how her child wasn’t sleeping through the night yet, so she was feeling insanely sleep deprived. My friend, who is hilarious, lobbed in a joke about his own sleep behaviors: “Oh I still don’t sleep through the night,” he said, laughing. I thought it was funny. One of the moms missed the joke; she has four kids.

“I think probably for different reasons,” she said, her tone mostly serious. It’s possible her remark was sleep-deprived sarcasm, but the air had that awkward quality where you know a joke hasn’t landed.

Normally this is where I would excuse myself to go get more snacks. But my pregnant friend chose that exact moment to out me to the moms as both a writer and a child-free person (in the most loving and supportive way!!) “Are you going to use this for your newsletter?” She joked, grinning at me. My face turned completely red as six pairs of eyes turned in my direction.

I briefly stumbled through the elevator pitch for my newsletter, my face absolutely burning as I imagined they probably were in the process of deciding I was a biased, child-hating monster. But one of the moms—the one who loves Taylor Swift, I might add—immediately softened towards me. “I just had my first, and wasn’t totally sure if I would,” she said. “And I have no idea what I’m doing!” My pregnant friend jumped in and reminded everyone that her parents were horrified a few months ago when she referred to her growing baby as a parasite, but she still meant it! The vibe softened as everyone laughed.

About a month ago, I went to LA for another baby shower. This time, the group was more diverse in every sense of the word. Half parents, half not. Women who were child-free by choice, and still deciding. One mom had conceived through IVF, another used a sperm donor. Women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.

I started talking to a friend in her mid 30s who is currently undecided about whether she wants kids. The mom of an eight year-old joined the conversation and said she felt the best thing every woman in their 30s can do for themselves is to freeze their eggs. She said it so matter-of-factly, like it was so obviously the right answer. Like freezing your eggs is as simple as a little trip down to the egg freezing store, like you’ll be in and out, just like that. I squirmed a little across the table.

Freezing eggs buys you time to make the choice, but it doesn’t make it for you. At $8,500-$14,000 on average per freezing cycle, plus annual storage costs, I guess I’d have to disagree that it’s the right thing to do for every woman in her 30s. Only 12% of people who freeze their eggs actually try to use them.

I mean, yes. Freezing eggs is a medical miracle and absolutely the right call for some, but I don’t think it’s a one-size-fits-all prescription. It’s an expensive, invasive medical procedure. For the truly undecided, freezing eggs feels like an insurance policy—not an actual answer to the question: Do I want children?

I took a different route. I spent roughly $3,500 in therapy working through that question for six months in 2021, and it’s some of the best money I’ve ever spent. There were also no needles involved! Or medical procedures! Just mentally scraping the insides of my heart and brain to figure out what I actually wanted.

I went through that journey mostly alone. Most of the women closest to me in my life want children, as did most of the men I dated before I met my husband. I didn’t want to feel biased by their experiences and desires. I wanted to find out on my own. Absent any outside pressures, what would I choose?

Everyone you know is biased, because everyone eventually either becomes a parent, or they don’t. Our parents, siblings, and friends add to our bias. Bias is fine, bias is everywhere. I am biased when I say I’m glad I spent my money on therapy instead of freezing my eggs, just like the mother at the baby shower was biased when she said everyone should freeze their eggs.

So I’m biased when I say I feel just a liiiiittle weird at baby showers where the focus is, obviously, on having kids. (Even though I’m a die-hard supporter of my friends, no matter what they choose!) And I’m absolutely biased when I say I really think I would have regretted going through the egg freezing process in my early 30s, knowing where I ended up. I’m biased! You’re biased! The only “right” thing is the right thing for you. And only you know what that is. You know?

If you can relate to any of this rambling mess at all, The Baby Decision might just be the best $25 you’ll ever spend. I read it after making my decision and still found it to be incredibly insightful. It’s remarkably unbiased, even though it was written by a mother. I still think about it when I’m talking to friends who are undecided about kids. Even though I am biased in the way that I have already made the choice, I think it’s helped me ask better questions.

Maybe I’ll bring it to the next baby shower?

“Sorry I’m Late – I was ruining a man’s day” by Jess Pan for

It'll Be Fun, They Said

A subscriber sent this essay to me and I immediately devoured it (thank you, Alaina!) It’s long but so so so good, if you have spare time today, make sure you give it a read:

“See, there are two camps you come across if you are someone who expresses that you do someday – way in the future – want kids. You will meet women with young children who say, “My god, WAIT WAIT for goodness’ sake wait, EVERYTHING changes and you can’t go back once you’ve done it, there is NO. GOING. BACK,” and these are the women we want to run into at the grocery store. They make us want to fly to a remote island in Greece, lie back on a sun lounger and chain smoke while drinking Diet Coke while we still can, because we are still young, basically still babies ourselves.
Then there is the other camp of women we meet who say, “DO NOT WAIT! Do not wait ANOTHER SECOND. Go home and get pregnant right now. RIGHT. NOW. JUST TRUST ME.” They are less fun, but they are trying to save us from something traumatic they have been through or seen good friends go through.
It was hard to watch myself shape shift into a nosy aunt at Christmas saying, “The clock’s ticking.” I was now part of the problem. It was like a cycle of abuse: it had been done to me and then I did it to Walter. Deep down I merely wanted men (or at least one man) to carry that anxiety with us for once.”

“Stop Sitting In The Waiting Room Of Your Own Life” by Victoria Spratt for Refinery29

Essays like this are my catnip:

“After I turned 30, I tried to forge a similar path. Most people I knew did the same. I threw myself into a relationship that had always been as unsure as it was unstable and bought a small flat with my now ex-partner. But the deeper I went into that life, the more I realized it didn’t fit me — like a cheap pair of pants, it hung off in all the wrong places and clung to me in ways that made me feel claustrophobic.”

“Fed Up, Singles Are DIYing Their Own Dating Platforms” by Kate Lindsay for Bustle

I met my husband on Hinge, but if I hadn’t, I absolutely would have eventually tried making a “date-me doc” LOL:

“Dating morale is at an all-time low. The apps have long since fallen out of favor, but the real-world dating scene is also a minefield. We’re at the end of what some believe is a failed experiment. It seems like more people than ever are looking for love, but finding no one to share it with. With 47% of Americans saying dating is harder now than it was 10 years ago, a small new wave of despondent daters has decided to forge their own path, embracing an age-old adage: If you want something done right, you might just have to do it yourself.”

I finished reading The Husbands by Holly Gramazio and immediately decided everyone in the known universe would also love it. Then I checked the reviews on Goodreads. My book club collectively adored it, but I’ve talked to a few people since who have said they hated it, or thought it was mid. I’m fascinated. I guess that’s why there are so many books in the world, lol.

nyt_well

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Three friends sending me the same Instagram post on the same day is my love language. A new study was just published by the Pew Research Center, and one of the biggest takeaways is that 47% of U.S. adults younger than 50 without children who were surveyed said they were unlikely ever to have children. 13% said it was because of infertility, and 11% said it was their partner who didn’t want kids, leaving roughly 23% of survey respondents as “child-free by choice.” Read the full article in The New York Times.