(suspenseful music)
- I grew up in Newport Beach, California,
where for those of you who've seen the housewives
or watched The O.C. it is a place with
a lot of beautiful people, a lot of affluence.
Growing up, I felt the expectation of me was
to be a success by getting married
and having really cute babies.
And that was my number one job.
At 24, I did exactly that, got engaged.
It took me a while to really understand
and navigate that I could go against the grain
on that expectation.
Ended up calling my wedding two weeks before,
realized it wasn't the right path for me.
Fast forward ten years, I still
haven't met the right person.
I've been excited about my career,
excited about traveling, dating,
doing all sorts of things that somebody in their 30s
is not expected to want to still do all these things.
I never thought I would be somebody
who would be interested in freezing my eggs,
and then my dad passed away unexpectedly,
and that changed everything.
It made me realize how important family is,
and although today I may not see myself having kids
in this moment, maybe I'll want that later.
I would love to keep my options open.
When I went to the doctor's office
for just an informational visit,
just to learn, you know, little bit more about the process,
they ran some preliminary tests
and I had just started my period,
which is the ideal time to start the hormone theory
and start this process, so with the test results,
provided those were okay, which they were,
they wanted to go ahead and start my hormone therapy
if I was on board.
I was actually a little bit more excited about it
than I thought that I would be,
and through the tests, we did my first ultrasound.
He showed me, these are your ovaries,
this is where the baby would grow,
and it was the first time in my entire life
that I felt any kind of ping of maternal stuff.
It just so happened to be that now is the time
and my body was ready, why not?
So when I started this process,
I had an entire table full of hormones.
The purpose of the hormone injections
is to basically, it's like steroids for your eggs.
As a natural woman, you drop one egg a month,
but because of these hormones, you have tons of them.
And then you want them to get big and fat and juicy
so that they can see them when they're going in
to harvest the egg.
Then it's the last 30 hours when they say,
"Okay, now you're ready to go."
That's when you get the trigger shot,
and that was pretty intense.
So pull down the pants, look in the mirror,
and they teach you, you have to inject yourself so hard
that it goes behind the muscle and they tell you
as you check it, if there's blood,
that it's not far enough so you have to
push it out and do it again, so thank God
I got it on the first try.
So the trigger shot then will start the process
of getting the follicles ready
and the eggs ready for retrieval.
30 hours later, show up at the doctor's office.
They put me to sleep, they go up inside me,
and they, you know, broke the follicles
to suction out the eggs and the eggs are immediately frozen.
The process itself is very quick.
The procedure took maybe 20 minutes.
The doctor predicted that I would have 12 to 14 eggs
at the end of this process that they could harvest.
Out of those eggs, they say one out of every four,
count on those being viable.
I ended up having 20 eggs, which was
a lot more than they expected.
And about 48 hours after the surgery,
I immediately just puffed out.
With the 20 follicles that my body had created,
as the doctor goes in there to retrieve the eggs,
they basically puncture each follicle
and then suck out this little microscopic egg.
Well, all that fluid around that egg
now has to go somewhere.
It was the most frustrating time ever,
being a woman that has curves and has always
been conscious of what am I eating and am I exercising
and am I losing weight, am I gaining weight,
I was put in a position where my body was constantly
gaining weight even though I wasn't eating,
I wasn't drinking, I couldn't even have water,
and yet I'm gaining weight.
It sucked, it was absolutely terrible.
For some people, freezing your eggs might be easy,
lickity-split, no problem, I'm back to work the next day.
For me personally, it was not that.
Everybody is unique, their situations are unique,
but I think it's important to know all sides
so you can make an educated decision
based on all perspectives.
When I grew up, I never felt I could be respected
for wanting to be the person that I truly am.
So whatever you choose, let it be your choice.
What's right for you, not what the expectations were
of you growing up, or what your parents want you to do,
what your boyfriend wants you to do, your husband.
It's you, you have to have
the best relationship with yourself.