I explicitly remember not knowing what to wear to my fertility check. My instinct was to overcompensate and look super fertile. Like, maybe wear pink or something, since that’s always the color of ovaries in textbooks and educational posters. While searching for something perfectly pink, I realized I’d have to get naked for the exam, so I decided to just go with plaid pajama pants. And that decision basically sums up the theme of turning thirty: My laziness finally eclipsed my desperation.
I was shocked when I walked into the fertility clinic waiting room. I expected it to look like the set of Designing Women: overweight ladies who couldn’t find a husband having a midlife crisis, sitting in wicker rocking chairs with giant palm trees on the cushions, leafing through self-help books. Imagine my surprise when I walked into a room that looked like a sexy spaceship decorated by Christian Grey’s interior designer filled with gorgeous women on the latest iPhones. Modern walls, modern art, modern tables, modern women. It made me realize this problem is, well, modern. Women postponing motherhood is a new thing, so there’s no blueprint on how to deal with it, which made me feel slightly better about my immature behavior and the passive-aggressive pajama pants I was wearing.
So, as you’ve already concluded, I had been a sexist punk. These were not lonely, pathetic, unlovable women. One of the women was on her knees behind the mid-century modern sofa looking for an outlet to plug her phone into, so she was already very loved by me. Her phone was out of juice at ten A.M. That’s a busy-ass, in-demand bitch. My battery was at 90 percent, so I was clearly the loneliest, least e-mailed person there.
I was pleasantly surprised by the doctor I met with. Let’s call him Dr. Dong because if I was reading a chapter about this depressing topic, I’d want some levity and the word dong to appear every couple sentences. Dr. Dong was lovely. I don’t know why that surprised me so much. In my experience doctors can be patronizing and annoyed by vulnerability, but he seemed genuinely happy to meet me and patient with my being a female. Although when I explained my situation, he turned sympathetic, which pissed me off. I was thirty. I wasn’t dying. “I would like to get my fertility checked and possibly freeze my eggs,” I said. “Good for you,” he responded, nodding his head slowly. I didn’t realize then this would be the first of 327 times I would hear that phrase over the next five years.
I’m obviously being unfair. Anything short of him saying “You’re way too young for egg freezing, ya knucklehead; get out of my office and go live your life, ya tiny fertile fetus!” would have annoyed me. It also didn’t help that his office was decorated with endless photos of babies and on his desk he had an array of glass jars full of colorful Starburst. If you’re in a room full of photos of children and tubs of candy, you’re either in a pedophile den or at a fertility doctor.
Dr. Dong scooped out a handful of colored Starburst and spread them across the table with the smoothness of a card dealer that made it clear he did this countless times a day. He demonstrated with my least favorite candy how the quality of a lady’s eggs declines with age. He used yellow to represent “good” eggs, which was offensive given yellow is the shittiest Starburst flavor. It’s the buttered popcorn Jelly Belly of Starburst. I facetiously said, “Can you at least use the cherry ones to represent my good eggs?” He didn’t laugh. However, he did offer me a Starburst seconds after he told me eating sugar isn’t good for you during the egg-freezing process. This oddly made me like him more, but I sort of lost my appetite for candy after imagining it as my future zygote.
I wish I could describe to you how egg freezing works, but I didn’t hear anything Dr. Dong said in his monologue. I have a mental wiring issue where I short-circuit and black out when someone smart starts explaining something complicated that I really need to know. As soon as they start saying important things, I totally power down. I’ve worked so hard to achieve mental serenity and bliss through meditation, therapy, marijuana—you name it—but I can only really transcend into complete Zen when people tell me incredibly important information. When I ask for driving directions, I instantly zone out and stare at the person’s pores and fantasize about squeezing the gook out of each one of them.
After I pretended to listen for twenty minutes, Dr. Dong snapped me out of my haze by asking, “Have you ever terminated a pregnancy?”
“No,” I said.
This would be the first of many lies I told Dr. Dong and myself during the egg-freezing process.
Dr. Dong could tell I wasn’t sold on his whole operation, so he figured out how to appeal to my ornery nature. “Look, this may not be for your first or even second kid. It might be for your third kid after having two naturally. Or when you’re forty-five, maybe you want a surrogate . . .” The word surrogate pulled me out of my entitled zombie state. You mean freezing my eggs could mean another woman could have my kid for me? Now we’re getting somewhere.
I asked if I should come back in five years when I’d be closer to knowing if I had the patience for a kid or a possible baby daddy on the horizon. Dr. Dong explained that the technology is finally available to freeze and de-thaw (what?) eggs ten years later without defrosting, since the eggs are now freeze-dried (seriously, what?). I can’t pretend to understand how it’s done, but clearly the universe was urging me to increase my chances of creating another generation of neurotic children chock-full of my alcoholic, giant-feet-making DNA. To refuse modern technology felt oddly ungrateful and even—might I say—unpatriotic, given how much a future crazy Cummings child would stimulate the economy with her purchases of antidepressants, self-help books, and dog costumes.
After I grabbed a couple of cherry Starbursts for the road, I was led into another room down the hall and left to disrobe. This was the one moment I didn’t regret wearing my pajamas. It did feel weird, though. Usually when you take your pants off during the day, your life is going either really well or really not well, and I couldn’t tell which category I fell into.