"The uncertainty of life became unavoidable." Why I decided to freeze my eggs.

Breakfast has always been the only meal where I look for consistency. I’ve had month-long runs of cereal and milk; green smoothies; poached eggs with salsa on corn tortillas; or toast with butter, jam, and salt. But now I am back to the basics of a fried egg on sourdough, a ritual that began during the first coronavirus spike.

Back then everything felt so barren. Plans were on hold and planes were grounded as a global pandemic spread. The uncertainty of life, what I have spent my life running from, became unavoidable.

As I clung to any sense of normalcy, I move up the coast to Oakland, closer to where I grew up. I also make a career change to the grocery industry, just as food was flying off the shelves. Me, the adventurous eater, who craves variety and hates sameness. 

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I grounded myself each day with an egg prepared the same way as the days merge together. Having control over something, anything, feels assuring. In the humorous riddle that is life, the only time I ever got a double yolk was the one day I ventured to make an egg white omelette instead of my regular fried egg on toast. 

I place a slice of Alfaro’s Santa Cruz Sourdough (the bread of my childhood and hometown) in the toaster while I heat my small frying pan on my favorite front right burner. I spray a bit of oil and crack an egg, never quite sure what to expect each day. Even though cracking an egg is always the same event, it has the chance to surprise. The puzzle is always slightly different. There might be a couple of big pieces of shell or tiny shards, barely hanging on. There’s always that last drip of white that stays attached to the shell, not ready to release. I know that feeling and I let it linger despite how hot and ready the pan is beneath it. It will fall in its own time and the timing is always just right.

The egg sizzles its doneness at the exact moment the toast pops up. I grab a plate, a butter knife, and prepare my lightly toasted bread with butter. I never worry if I haven’t spread the butter evenly, because when I slide my egg on top, it just melts. There’s the grinding sound of salt and pepper with a dash or two of hot sauce. The yolk seeps into the toast, and that mushy part in the middle is the bit I save for last, once I’ve eaten all the crusty edges and plain egg white part. The most comforting bite is where the yolk has room to run but the soft landing of pillowy bread underneath contains it. It feels like a Sunday morning every day of the week.

A carton of eggs becomes the first thing I looked for on those shopping trips when I put a mask on my face for the first time. In those early days in 2020, I was lucky to find any styrofoam pack. But now I am back to my cage-free, pasture-raised, organic egg with the latest expiration date I can find. 

A makeshift piece of plexiglass separates me from the cashiers. They perform their doctor-like duty, armed with a mask and gloves, of inspecting my dozen for any cracks. They tie a rubber band around the carton for a safe journey and place the carton in the paper bag with care. I immediately wash my hands when I get home and perform my own quality assurance check before placing them in the fridge, on the shelf designed just for them. Eggs are a food staple so ingrained in our culture that their home is molded into our kitchen appliances.

As my first birthday in lockdown neared, I became curious about the quality of my own eggs that I have carried since birth. I want to be a mother but I think about it in some hazy future state: when I meet my soulmate, when I make enough money, when I see enough of the world, when I am ready to settle down. Both my mum and my grandma had second children later in life. I should have healthy enough eggs, but how can I know for sure? My older and wiser female friends share their own expensive and heartbreaking fertility stories with me and what they wish they did when they were younger. 

Before my 34th birthday, I find myself on a medical table with my legs spread, a mask on my face, and a speculum on its very own egg hunt to check my count and quality. I’m in disbelief. This feels drastic. Everything appeared to look good in terms of the amount of follicles, especially for my age. I learned fertility wasn’t this dire fall-off-a-cliff egg drop off that I feared. I have different options on the menu: I can check the quality of my eggs again in a year; I can use donor sperm and inseminate now; or I can freeze and save my eggs for another day or decade. 

I feel free and fortunate to live during a time when women have these possibilities. There isn’t just one route and one train that I can miss while working on other parts of me. My decision was made at the end of the year when a fertility clinic, a utopia for millennial ovaries, sent an email with a CYA2020 promo code. The year that shook and changed everything made me realise I wanted to put my own eggs on ice. 

At a time of growing wealth gaps and finally acknowledged privilege, I felt uneasy that freezing eggs is something reserved for the wealthy few. Even with the discount code, the cost is between $10,000-$12,000 and $600 a year for storage. It was something I could actually afford from my year of no vacations and a new salary.

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I struggle with what it means to pause my biological clock and extend the expiration date stamped into my DNA. I deeply believe in the rhythm and timing of the universe and co-creating, but I worry about my hand weighing too heavily on the scale for one of the greatest mysteries.

Being back in the Bay Area meant I was at the intersection of money, science and technology. I decide to take on this uninsured procedure of egg freezing with the financial burden that it carries. With the stakes high and the future unknown, it felt like my own insurance policy against biological childlessness. It was my first parenting decision, and I made it alone. 

Zooming with my nurse, where we are both unmasked, I ask her to assure me I can handle this on my own: the shots, the emotions, the journey. She smiles and nods. A year with no social life and prolonged anxiety has taught me that I am simultaneously both stronger and more fragile than I thought.

On night two of my regular cycle, I start my shots. I bring my laptop into the bathroom, reread the instructions and rewatch the videos. Then I mix vials, measure doses, and prepare my body. My eyes roll at the girl on the video struggling to pinch her flat stomach. My softer belly is remarkably easy to grab, the only part I am certain I am doing correctly. I prepare the area with an alcohol swab, then brace myself with an inhale, and watch the needle disappear in my flesh. Aside from knowing that my blood stream will carry the medicine, I don’t really know where it is going or what it’s doing, but I trust the process. I exhale.

The next two weeks are a blur with more shots, doctor visits, and watching these follicles, small sacs in the ovaries with potential to release an egg, grow on the monitor. I ask my nurse for a strange request. I want a printout of this ever-changing monitor so I can take something home: an ultrasound image I can tape to the fridge. While others may have a growing fetus on display, I have possibilities that are measured and noted. Like buds on a stem, once they bloom to the right size, they are ripe for harvesting.

The night of the dreaded and highly anticipated trigger shot lands on a significant day. It is the death anniversary of a plane crash that took five members of my family 21 years ago. In one unexpected swoop, it killed my maternal grandma and her partner, my uncle and his wife, and their four-month-old baby girl. I spend the day with my small family pod on a Zoom memorial. Even though I’m an adult, my mother makes a parenting decision to put me first. On this day of grieving, she comes home with me, knowing I’ve been doing this all on my own and needed someone to drive me home post surgery (without me asking). I feel touched but also bloated, uncomfortable and nervous. She’s overly kind and accommodating, ruled by her heart and forever working on boundaries. I am fiercely independent, ruled by my mind, and slowly introducing myself to vulnerability. 

With my mum as the only overnight guest who has ever been in my new apartment, I stand in a sports bra and sweats in my bathroom mirror, just as I have done for the last two weeks but now there is someone else in the frame, looking back at me. She has encouraged me, born ready to be a grandma, but I can see her eyes get bigger in awe. The timing of the injection needs to be precise for retrieval of the eggs in 36 hours. I am on deadline. I go from vial to vial, mixing needle to injection needle, and show her that red biohazard bin on my counter, full of my paraphernalia I have administered on my own. I pull the trigger.

The morning of egg retrieval day, I can’t eat my regular egg breakfast because I need to fast. But also eating that unfertilised egg laid by a hen on her own feels a bit too poetic, anyway. I drive over the Bay Bridge, as I have done so many days previously, but this time I have a passenger. 

My mum can’t come in the room with me due to COVID restrictions. I undress and use the hospital’s gown, mask, hairnet and booties. I meet with my anesthesiologist who ensures I'll have a great nap. When it’s time, I head across the hall with my doctor, anesthesiologist and an embryologist surrounding me. I go under while a special needle enters my body to drain all the follicles in about 30 minutes to retrieve eggs. I dream of walking around in a grocery store until I return to reality and am pushed across the hall in a recliner, where I return to the pre-op room. A heating pad is placed on my tummy and I anxiously await my number. Two dozen eggs were mature enough to freeze. I slowly let that triumphant number sink in.  

This curious basket of eggs that sits inside of me, ready to dwindle in quality and quantity at any moment, no longer pressures me. There is no longer an expiration date, just a suggested "use by date" that can last until I’m 50. The runway now extends and the flame simmers. 

Recently, I learned that when a woman is around five months pregnant with a daughter, that fetus has fully formed eggs. Like a Russian nesting doll, the grandmother holds all of her potential future granddaughters for several months.. I can’t help but wonder if we just go from generation to generation, down the maternal bloodline, taking all the lessons, love and trauma of what it means to be a woman, as we go in and out of bodies and into our potential. 

Timelines feel warped now and everything feels like it’s all going exponentially fast. I don't know what came first, the chicken or the egg, but I will let myself come first for a bit longer. While I’m still evolving, I can freeze a biological moment in time. The yin and the yolk energy is encapsulated and ready to nourish when the time is right. Perhaps it’s true there’s no such thing as a perfect time, but I want my half of the recipe for new life to be as good as it can be. I am still learning how to partner, removing the hard shells, cracking the code within myself before I pass it on, embracing my own femininity and the incredible internal power and possibilities that it holds. I will coddle myself until I am ready and find that delicate balance of a yolk that still has room to run and the white part that feels settled enough.

Carina Ost is a food and memoir writer based in California. 

Feature Image: Getty.

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