The usual suspects of the freezer were not one happy family but rather two. Category number 1 needs to be in the freezer in order to survive. Ice cream wouldn't be ice cream if stored in the fridge, neither would ice cubes. Category number 2 on the contrary is forced to be there out of human convenience. Spinach or coffee that we can't or don't want to consume straight away, is kept deep frozen and prevented from aging. Rule of thumb says we should freeze at peak quality. The same rule of thumb says that not everything freezes well, like lettuce or eggs in shells. Yet....
"You should freeze your eggs." is what I was told to do by a woman on a Saturday night to whom I had been introduced only moments before. And she didn't mean the eggs who come in shells.
A meeting between two strangers had turned uncomfortably intimate within a few minutes and while she kept trying to persuade me that it would be the best thing to do, I couldn't help but wonder how we even got that far...
If time is a bitch, the biological clock of a woman is the pimp. And even though times have changed in quality, time in numbers didn't change a second.
One generation ago, motherhood at the age of 20 was given. Today it is incomprehensible. Woman nowadays have the choice to work and the opportunity to build a career. In many cases it is even a necessity. As a result, families are started later than sooner - if at all.
According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine the peak quality for a woman's egg is before she turns 20. From that moment on the eggs begin to diminish in quantity and quality. At the age of 40 a woman has a 5% chance or less of becoming pregnant naturally in any one month. The chance of chromosomal abnormalities like Down Syndrome increases to 1 in 100 at the age of 40, compared to 1 in 1000 at the age of 20.
To make a long story short: getting pregnant at the age of 40 or more is risky in many ways.
Freezing eggs falls in the "Freezer Philosophy" under category number 2 - the same as spinach. Also known as the "Convenience Category". I looked at the spinach in the freezer who, stiff and lifeless, stared right back at me. Astonishing how it had stopped aging and slipped through time's claws. Who would have thought that some day frozen eggs and frozen spinach would have something in common? I imagined their common slogan: "Preserve today while young and use later."
The difference is that while spinach is not part of our bodies, our eggs are. And while they might stay young and fresh in the timeless freezer, we still keep aging. Our hair will eventually turn grey, even if we dye it. Our skin will get wrinkles, Botox or not. At the end of the day, no matter how much we master the art of looking young, we will keep aging internally and mentally. No plastic surgery can change your date of birth.
The time difference between the frozen egg and the body that will carry it is as relevant as in any other good relationship. A year or two don't even count, 5 years are sexy, 10 great, 15 perfect and 30 is like the distance from earth to moon - nice from afar but impossible to explore.
Being the best parent possible to a kid, who needs constant action, attentiveness and patience, should be the highest priority for a parent. An attribute and necessity like patience, for example, is at the age of 20 endless and seems permanent - at age 40 it is a nice visitor. Raising kids requires a fair amount of energy. The very same energy that diminishes with age.
As a young woman who is about to turn 30 and is self - aware, I would consider myself as a liar or in severe denial if I would dare to say that nothing has changed in the past 10 years. It is not easy to see simply because one's natural surroundings age as much as oneself. Our lives are the reflection of subjectivity. My friends and family are the same to me as 10 years ago but certainly not to a stranger who sees us objectively.
When it comes to having children from deep frozen eggs, we should step back from the idea of what we want and respond to what a child would want. After all, motherhood is the opposite of selfishness...
What happens when the age difference between parent and child becomes questionable? How much could we understand each others worlds? Wouldn't grandparents vanish at some point? And while we would deprive them from us being able to give a 100% as a great parent, wouldn't we above all deprive them from enjoying their parents for as long as possible? Because by gaining more time for ourselves wouldn't we have less time to give to our kids?
Our priorities change all through our lives. The importance lies within making the right choices for ourselves and taking full responsibility for those. Keeping constantly options open prevents us from settling for anything at all. As my mum always used to say: there is a time for everything. Maybe we should keep this in mind, remove the deep frozen eggs and replace them by good old spinach.
