Should you freeze your eggs is a very pertinent question for childless women over the age of 30.
More and more women are waiting to have children. The average age of first time motherhood has moved closer and closer to 30 and perhaps as a result of this new trend to wait to have a family, fertility rates in the west are also dropping. So what is going on?
Women are encouraged to have it all. We study hard, work and travel in our twenties and before you know it, that decade of youth can be gone in a blink of an eye. When I was 31, I went to a doctor for a cold and she asked me if I wanted to have children one day.
I answered “yes”.
She said
“Well you better hurry up, your eggs will be dwindling”
That was a problem. I was in a relationship with someone who did not want children and looking back it would have been a terrible mistake to have any with him. The doctor’s advice put me into a bit of a panic. Had I left it too late? It certainly left me pondering the question of should you freeze your eggs?
Well we only lasted for a couple of years and I was lucky enough to couple up with someone I had known for many years and we now have two children.
I know I was lucky.
Personally I know of many people who have struggled, women who have been through big losses and heartbreaking disappointment. I know women who are still trying. I even know a woman who at 44, had her very first child, naturally.
I feel for women who get to their mid thirties or even forty and only then have they found someone who they want to have children with. At that stage it is not always easy.
Time is bossy. Nature is too.
While I was annoyed with my doctor at the time, she was right. You only get one window of opportunity. So if you are heading for thirty and have not met the right person, then look into options, like freezing eggs or consciously move into a relationship where children are a possibility.
Some things are out of your hands, but just know you do have a time window and don’t let it shut before you really think about what you want.
