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" The woman\u2014we&amp;#039;ll call her Reese\u2014was never one of those girls who knew she wanted to be a mom. But at 26, she fell in love with a father of two girls. She loved watching her boyfriend with his daughters, calling them beautiful and making them pancakes. On a trip to Disneyland, she marveled at how good it felt to be part of a family, tucked in the spinning-teacup ride, all turning the wheel in the same direction. But two years later, Reese and her boyfriend broke up. She began to contemplate the future. Now 28, she&amp;#039;s busy running an ad company in Las Vegas. &amp;quot;It takes time to get to know someone before marriage, and I want to enjoy being married for a while,&amp;quot; she says. A former nurse, she knew birth defects rise with age. &amp;quot;I thought, I&amp;#039;m at peak fertility. If I can save these eggs at their prime, I have to.&amp;quot; Reese flew to Los Angeles and asked fertility doctor John Jain, MD, to freeze her eggs. She put $12,500 on her debit card. Dr. Jain ordered the hormones that she would inject to make her eggs develop so they could be surgically removed and frozen until she was ready to use them, potentially well into her 50s. In the beginning, the drugs made her euphoric. Ten days later, her stomach throbbed from being punctured so many times. But after Dr. Jain retrieved 15 eggs, she felt a new peace of mind. &amp;quot;This was something that helped me take control of my life,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I can continue to focus on my company now and let love happen in its own time.&amp;quot; Only a few years ago, Reese had joked with colleagues about freezing their eggs. It seemed so futuristic and extreme, not something women actually did. Well, now they do. Last fall, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine removed the procedure&amp;#039;s experimental label. Interest has surged, and women are thinking of freezing younger when eggs are higher quality, says Christy Jones, founder of Extend Fertility, an egg-freezing referral service. Freeze before age 35 and you could have about a 59 percent chance of getting pregnant each try; by 41, it can be as low as 21 percent. In a Cosmopolitan.com survey of 740 women, nearly half of you said you&amp;#039;d consider freezing eggs because &amp;quot;it gives women valuable time and flexibility.&amp;quot; Ninety percent said you should freeze before 36, and one-third called 25 the right age. &amp;quot;The mentality of freezers is changing,&amp;quot; says Jones. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a different story when your back is up against the wall. But the younger women say, &amp;#039;It&amp;#039;s so empowering. It&amp;#039;s liberating. It&amp;#039;s a great backup.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; But if egg freezing is so empowering, why won&amp;#039;t Reese give her real name? She worries that not everyone will see it the way she does. They&amp;#039;ll think she&amp;#039;s baby crazy\u2026or desperate. &amp;quot;I feel private about it because there&amp;#039;s still a stigma,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s easy to take cheap shots about a woman&amp;#039;s ticking clock.&amp;quot; THE TRUTH IS THAT EVEN women who have taken the plunge are still working out what egg freezing means for their future. Princeton University politics and international affairs professor Anne-Marie Slaughter has argued that if more women froze eggs, we&amp;#039;d see more of them stay in the workforce and move up to leadership positions. Already, 62 percent of Cosmo survey takers said one motivation to freeze eggs would be &amp;quot;so a baby doesn&amp;#039;t derail my career in my 20s and 30s.&amp;quot; Imagine a future when women get the procedure as part of a corporate benefits package, rather than burning up their credit cards or turning to their parents. &amp;quot;I wish prices were more reasonable or it was covered by insurance,&amp;quot; says Krista Gugliotti, 28, a publicist in Los Angeles, who has put away $11,000 toward egg freezing. &amp;quot;I shouldn&amp;#039;t have to empty 10 years of savings to do this.&amp;quot; Even though Megan Zeller, 27, has a boyfriend of seven years, she didn&amp;#039;t feel close to being ready to start her family when her doctor told her two years ago that she had &amp;quot;low ovarian reserve,&amp;quot; likely linked to her endometriosis. So Zeller, who lives in Daytona Beach, Florida, and is getting an MBA in sports business, froze eggs with Kevin Winslow, MD, in Jacksonville, Florida. &amp;quot;There are a lot of things I want to do before being tied down,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I want to be married and in a financial position to give my kids a wonderful life.&amp;quot; Zeller accepted her parents&amp;#039; help to cover the costs. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;#039;You want me to have kids that badly?&amp;#039; That&amp;#039;s pretty heavy. I hadn&amp;#039;t felt pressure until this point,&amp;quot; she says. Still, Zeller says she doesn&amp;#039;t feel like she owes them. &amp;quot;They invested in my undergrad meteorology degree, and I&amp;#039;m not doing anything with that,&amp;quot; she laughs. If her parents had hopes that the process might bring them all closer\u2014in the same way a pregnancy might\u2014that didn&amp;#039;t exactly happen. &amp;quot;My mom was nervous for me and wanted to be involved. But at a certain point in your life, it&amp;#039;s weird to bring your mommy to your doctors&amp;#039; appointments,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;The whole thing was emotionally exhausting.&amp;quot; That reaction isn&amp;#039;t unusual, and not only because the hormones can make you moody. &amp;quot;I am so nervous about the testing,&amp;quot; says Gugliotti. &amp;quot;I fear I&amp;#039;ll hear devastating news, that I&amp;#039;m infertile.&amp;quot; Because not all eggs survive thawing or grow into thriving embryos, the number you produce becomes a fraught benchmark\u2014your only hint of whether you might someday end up with a baby.   AND WHAT ABOUT A HUSBAND? In the Cosmopolitan.com survey, 75 percent of you said one motivation to freeze eggs is to take the pressure off finding a partner before a certain age. &amp;quot;Thirty is the freak-out time in my mind,&amp;quot; Gugliotti says. &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t even go on Facebook because everyone is posting pictures of engagement rings or ultrasounds. I feel so far away from that.&amp;quot; And once you put eggs on ice, it can impact your dating life in dramatic ways. Rena, 37, a media consultant in Washington, D.C., put away 31 eggs from multiple rounds of freezing three years ago. She says she now feels more calm and confident. &amp;quot;My vibe is totally different. Instead of, I gotta meet someone now, it&amp;#039;s, Maybe I&amp;#039;ll meet him tonight; maybe I&amp;#039;ll meet him in a year. I&amp;#039;ve lost that pressure.&amp;quot; And she&amp;#039;s thinking of freezing more eggs. You&amp;#039;d think men would be thrilled to hear a woman froze her eggs, since it takes baby pressure off them too. But some guys feel threatened, says Georgia Witkin, PhD, a psychologist at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York. &amp;quot;They think, You can leave me at any age?&amp;quot; she says. Or they think (as Reese feared) that you&amp;#039;re obsessed with babies. Witkin suggests saying, &amp;quot;I froze because I wanted time to find someone special.&amp;quot; Most women who freeze eggs say they feel more relaxed. But how relaxed is too relaxed? Until recently, egg-freezers were in their late 30s; Witkin says these women are less likely to squander time and more motivated to take advantage of their last fertile years because they know their frozen eggs might not work. &amp;quot;When you spend all that money, your thoughts and behavior line up with your goals,&amp;quot; she adds. But what will happen to the new, younger generation of women who want to extend their fertility? The choices will get only more complicated as medical technology advances. Young women could use their options to plan more deliberately. Or they could become so blas\u00E9 about finding a partner that they, too, end up bumping up against the baby deadline in their 40s and cashing in an insurance policy that doesn&amp;#039;t always pay out. Reese, for one, feels better about her life with less pressure in it, and she&amp;#039;s focused on growing her business. &amp;quot;I feel like great people come into my life,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;when I&amp;#039;m doing what I love to do.&amp;quot; Sarah Elizabeth Richards is the author of Motherhood, Rescheduled: The New Frontier of Egg Freezing &amp;amp;amp; the Women Who Tried It available here. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/advice/a4477/fertility-fears/?click=main_sr>