ON ICE PUTTING MOTHERHOOD. I m 32 and i just froze my eggs. When I first seriously. body

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1 PUTTING MOTHERHOOD ON ICE Two truths grown women know: Life doesn t always follow your plans, and you can t turn back the biological clock. Egg freezing seems to offer an insurance policy on both, preserving a woman s fertility until she s ready. Nicole Lapin did it, and discovered that it s not just expensive financially: It has a high emotional cost. This is her honest and inspiring journey. I m 32 and i just froze my eggs. When I first seriously thought about doing it, I could barely say the words because I was in denial that it was actually happening. Freezing my eggs meant two scary things: 1) My eggs haven t been used to have a baby yet, and 2) that wasn t happening anytime soon. I didn t want to freeze my eggs. I wanted to have kids naturally by now. Badly. The intense desire to start a family of my own stems from my broken childhood. My parents divorced when I was 3. Then, my alcoholic father died of a drug overdose when I was 11. By the time I was about 15, the chaos of my home life pushed me out I went away to school and started to work earlier than most, partly to escape and partly to try and create a calmer, more stable life for myself. Ever since then, I have wanted to do better for my future kids than was done for me. By the time I was 30, my annoyingly loud biological clock reminded me every day that I wasn t even close to the timeline I had imagined for myself. My boyfriend of four years wouldn t commit to having kids. I became the girl I never wanted to be, asking him about it way too often, almost nagging for a ring and a baby. His reluctance amplified my biggest fear: that I might never have the family I dreamed about. In my professional life, I feel empowered and confident. As a financial TV personality and journalist, I ve ball-busted my way through a male-dominated industry by never taking no for an answer. I ve reached my work goals earlier than I ever thought I would. But in my personal life, I have felt helpless and depressed for way too long. So I realized that I needed to put my timeline for having kids into my own hands, whether GETTY IMAGES. Photographed by ANDREW BROOKES MAY 2016 / REDBOOKMAG.COM 115

2 it was with this man or another. I had heard about egg freezing a while ago from women nearing their late 30s. In the back of my head, I thought of it as an option for later on. I hadn t known that the gnawing, aching desire to have a family would already get to a breaking point at this age. I was an emotional wreck, tearing up every time I saw a baby or child, or just crying for no reason at all. Clearly I had to do something now. So I decided to go for it. While my life hasn t worked out like I envisioned, I was tired of feeling sorry for myself and ready to feel in control. Yes, I might never get the moment I always dreamed of, showing my guy the pregnancy test and both of us doing a happy, teary-eyed dance at home. But I might, instead, do the same I m pregnant! happy dance in a fertility office. I was fine with that. In the waiting room at my first appointment last fall, I was surrounded by couples. I was painfully jealous and ridiculously lonely. Later, I cried to myself over what they had that I didn t but in that office I didn t shed a tear. I needed to be strong. I intellectually knew that this was the insurance policy and the answer for the freedom I craved. Even so, I underestimated the emotional and physical toll that would come with it. I met with my doctor first; she was warm, kind, and compassionate. I felt comfortable right away. I said, I heard there were shots and stuff; I m not sure how it all works. But, first, am I too young to even do it? She spoke in general terms about the shots you self-administer in your abdomen, which can be the biggest source of fear and a deal-breaker for a lot of women, but she didn t get too graphic (I m glad, because it didn t give me the chance to chicken out). She assured me this was a great time for me to start the process. And with that, I felt like I had put my imaginary Wonder Woman cape on and was ready to get the peace of mind I had been longing for. After the discussion in my doctor s office, it was time to get real. In the exam room, she did a transvaginal ultrasound (the first of so many I would get during this process) and turned the screen to me like the doctor would during an ultrasound when you re pregnant. I saw my resting eggs, the ones you are born with; these are the ones the doctors are trying to grow, using the hormone shots, so they can harvest multiple eggs at once. She said most women need to start the whole process on the third day of their period and I can t make this up, but that s exactly where I was. It felt like the best kind of sign. I received a strict calendar that would soon take over my life. It was customized just for me and told me exactly what shots to take and what dosage and when. It told me when I should come in to get ultrasounds and blood work (basically every other day). It estimated the date for the egg retrieval, too. Then came the most dreaded part: the shots. For this, you go to shot school. A nurse explains the basics, like how to take the cap off the needle (harder than it sounds!). She went into how to put the needle into the vial of medication, take out the amount I was prescribed, inject it into another vial with powder, and change the needle to a smaller one. When she showed me how to grab a hunk of fat on my belly and stick in the syringe, I thought I was going to pass out. I ve done a lot of things in my life that seem scary but this was on a whole other level. I was freaked out that I wouldn t have the guts to do it, and do it properly. I m not the type of person who quits, but if I were, this would have been the moment. The cost is another big challenge I was paying an insane amount. I knew generally how much egg freezing cost from research I did online: anywhere from $8,000 to more than $14,000 plus the storage fee, not to mention the IVF costs if you use the eggs later. I m a money lady, remember, so I budgeted for it. The first big expense was the shots. The drugs alone TRUNK ARCHIVE. 116 REDBOOKMAG.COM / MAY 2016 Photographed by TRAVIS RATHBONE

3 cost $5,000! The pharmacy overnighted a box of shots in a big cooler. I stayed home to be there for it, the most expensive delivery I will ever receive, for sure. Once they arrived and I saw the receipt with the charges, I knew that there was absolutely no turning back. Game on. The first night of what would be 15 days of shots, I called two girlfriends over. It took me no less than an hour and a half to do my shots that night. I followed every single instruction word for word. My girlfriends literally held my hand; they are my support system who would never let me fail. I prepared to cry. I prepared for a dramatic breakdown where I curled up in the fetal position. Yet that didn t happen. Sure, I cried, but it was one or two lonely tears more out of relief than my previous fear and sadness. As the weeks went on, I became more and more comfortable in my role as Dr. Lapin, injecting myself more swiftly every night. But I started to feel the side effects of the intense medication. I gained weight (I ripped a few pairs of jeans down the back). I was tired and moody: hormones, yes, but I also couldn t drink alcohol or have sex, and my doctor didn t want me drinking coffee either. I wasn t sleeping well. My stomach was full of needle marks and bruises from the injections. I was so bloated with my growing ovaries that I almost looked pregnant, which didn t help my state of mind. It felt like if I didn t follow all of my doctor s orders exactly, somehow I would mess up my future kids. The longer it went on, the more my emotions swung dramatically. Some days I felt like the worries and what-ifs that had plagued me were silenced. Other days I felt guilty for working so much. Was it my fault that I didn t focus on this earlier? Was it my fault I didn t stand up to my long-term partner for what I wanted? Why didn t he want the things that would make me feel fulfilled? I was angry at him, and angry at myself. After two and a half weeks, I was nearing the egg retrieval procedure. I was past my due date because my eggs weren t quite ready. I had to buy even more medicine, which I m grateful I could afford, but that doesn t mean it was a joy to fork over the cash. I mean, I could have bought a car for the nearly $15,000 I spent by the end. DOES IT WORK? TECHNICALLY, YES: Eggs can be flash-frozen and later warmed for use in IVF. But there are still many variables and unknowns. One of the largest and most recent reports, published this year, found that women who freeze eggs between ages 30 and 34 have an 8.2 percent per egg chance of having a baby, but that number drops off in eggs harvested from older women. And since egg freezing has mostly been used in this country for cancer patients (many of whom haven t used their frozen eggs yet) or women undergoing IVF, there are still fewer than 2,000 live births from egg freezing. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology maintain that there is not sufficient data to recommend oocyte cryopreservation (as it s known) to preserve age-related fertility. There are not yet any long-term studies on things like safety, emotional risks, or whether frozen eggs remain viable beyond four years of freezing. The shorter-term studies, however, do suggest that frozen eggs may work as well in IVF as fresh. Dana Hudepohl The final round of shots is incredibly important, because they trigger ovulation. One of them needs to be done exactly 36 hours before the procedure. I set two alarms on my phone and headed to a game-night party a friend throws every couple of months. When my phone went off, I left Pictionary to do my shots in the bathroom. It was so different from my first few days of injections. Back then, I was so freaked out, I didn t even want to leave my house. But by this point, I had realized my life needed to go on. We are all fighting our own battles. This just happens to be mine. I refused to throw a pity party and went to a real party instead. The retrieval day was amazingly lighthearted, given all I d been through. I was done with tears I don t even think I had any left! My friends were there for me, and the anesthesiologist gave me an IV of what he called a margarita without calories. My doctor told me to enjoy the nap and considering I hadn t slept much in the last month, I did. Now that my eggs are on ice, I ve realized that having them actually isn t the magic cure for anxiety about my future. It alleviated some of the pressure I put on myself, but not all of it. There are still days when I get weepy at the sight of a happy child with his mother, and days when I m excited for the possibility of that time coming for me, and others when I m terrified it won t. And there are days not many, but some when I stop to think how I m proud of giving myself the best chance I could. I saved all the 50-some vials I used during the process. I kept them on my kitchen counter after they were empty, and toward the last few days of my shots the vials started to look like a heart, so I arranged them in that shape. I m getting that heart mounted in a frame and hung up on my wall. I hope it reminds me of all the fear and optimism I felt during this time. I hope I get a chance to show it to my kids one day, because I want them to know that their mommy always wanted them and did whatever it took to have them long before they were born. R There s more to Nicole s emotional and physical journey. For a detailed account of the entire egg freezing process, visit redbookmag.com/eggfreezing. RONDA GREGORIO. 118 REDBOOKMAG.COM / MAY 2016

4 THE PARENTING CHOICE MY DOCTORS WON T LET ME MAKE What happens when a healthy young woman wants to prevent herself from becoming pregnant permanently? For Lauren Oster, the only thing that stood in her way of getting sterilized was a string of unwilling ob/gyns. This is what it felt like to not get the medical care she wanted. PHOTOGRAPHED BY MAURICIO ALEJO At the ripe old age of 36, I have the right to vote, order a martini, and just barely run for president. As far as my ob/gyn is concerned, though, I m still not old enough to decide that I don t want to have a baby. You know the most serious side effect of sterilization? she asked when I inquired about getting my tubes tied. I prepared myself for gruesome medical news. Her eyes were bottomless with pity as she dropped her voice to a stage whisper: It s regret. When my sisters and I weren t climbing trees or trying to sweet-talk our way into someone s backyard pool, we spent our childhoods playing house or, to be more specific, playing orphans. With nary a make-believe infant in sight, we pretended to be scrappy, street-smart girls who banded together and built grown-up lives for ourselves: a mid- 80s, jelly- braceleted hybrid of The Boxcar Children and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. We were living by our wits, hanging with our pals; who d want to drag a baby doll around? My sisters maternal instincts kicked in as they got older I now have an exquisite toddler niece but I never developed an interest in producing a little person of my own. I had SEPTEMBER 2016 / REDBOOKMAG.COM 89

5 pregnancy dreams, sure, but of the Sigourney Weaver in Alien variety, not the sort where I added to mankind s diary in DNA. When I got my first job with benefits after college, I promptly settled in with my health insurer s phone book and tried to find a doctor who was willing to sterilize me. I didn t get to tell the ob/gyns who took my calls that my fiancé knew of and supported my wishes, as did my parents and my future in-laws. Once they heard I was 22, I heard a dial tone. A few stayed on the line just long enough to tell me to call again in 15 years; I wiped away angry tears when they said that at that point, perhaps, I could be sure of the shape I wanted my life to take. How does one describe what the complete lack of maternal urges feels like? I can affirm things that do exist my dizzying love for my family and my now-husband, my lifelong passion for animal welfare but proving the utter absence of something is tricky. Think about it this way: How would you demonstrate that you don t want to be an astronaut, now or ever? What s your problem with astronauts? Don t you agree that they re heroes? Do you hate weightlessness or Tang? If there were a slight chance of your becoming an astronaut whether you felt like it or not, would you do something to prevent it? But what if you change your mind someday and want to go to space after all? You will, you know nothing in the world compares to it. F or men, vasectomy (where the vas deferens is clamped or severed to prevent sperm from leaving their testicles) seems straightforward, both physically and philosophically. In the May 2012 edition of its guidelines for clinicians, the American Urological Association s advisory panel notes that while doctors should counsel their male patients about risks, benefits, and alternatives to sterilization, preferably in person, most men know what they want, when they want it: The experience of the Panel members is that almost all men who request vasectomy have given the procedure serious thought for months or years, making a cooldown period superfluous in most cases. In 2014, ESPN magazine reported on Vas Madness, an uptick in the number of vasectomies scheduled at urologists offices in the days before the NCAA s March Madness basketball tournament. (As one Texas practice put it, Get your vasectomy, then sit on the couch for three days watching sports! ) An estimated 500,000 American men receive vasectomies each year, and clinicians report that, at most, up to 10 percent of those men end up inquiring about reversals, which cost between $4,000 and $8,000 and are rarely covered by insurance. Permanent contraception for women is a bit more complicated. Hysterectomy (that is, removal of the uterus) results in sterilization, but it s major surgery performed to address other conditions. In tubal ligation, the fallopian tubes are tied, clipped, or cauterized. The only method that doesn t require surgical incision is hysteroscopic sterilization, in which a small device is inserted into each of the tubes, where it causes scarring that eventually blocks them. Most women can be sterilized safely, but, as with all medical procedures, there are risks: On rare occasions, for example, the fallopian tubes reconnect themselves, and hysteroscopic sterilization can be performed incorrectly (which can require a second procedure or another form of birth control). Researchers have found the chance of a woman regretting her sterilization to fall between 6 and 26 percent, depending on factors such as her age, her marital status, and how many children she has; reversal is possible after some forms of tubal ligation, though costs can be higher than vasectomy reversals. The population least likely to regret their decision regardless of the age at which they make it is women who have no children. According to the United States Collaborative Review of Sterilization (CREST), a study involving more than 11,000 women, a scant 6 percent of non-mothers wish they hadn t had the procedure. Why do women go to the trouble of pursuing permanent birth control in the face of so many other options? Well, for those who aren t in stable relationships, sterilization means certainty that doesn t depend on the wishes of future partners. There are also potential health benefits: In several studies, researchers have found that tubal sterilization can significantly reduce a woman s risk of developing ovarian cancer. (Cancer runs in my family, as it happens.) In my case, there s no love lost between me and the copper IUD I settled for several years ago when my sixth ob/gyn balked at my sterilization request. It has significantly increased the duration and intensity of my periods, side effects that are up there with mood swings and weight gain in terms of Things I Hope to Avoid by Switching to Permanent Birth Control. Doctors, in turn, go to the trouble of forcing us to think long and hard about our reproductive choices for what they believe is our own good. To get a sense of their position from COURTESY OF AUTHOR. a more neutral perspective my view is rather limited when I m indignant and in stirrups at a yearly checkup I spoke to a few who aren t treating me. Hilda Hutcherson, M.D., a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center, told me that when counseling a young patient about sterilization, she would think of her own daughter: I know all the things I ve gone through with her, from I absolutely never want to have children! at ages 21 to 24, to then at 26, Oh, I want to have three or four kids. I think most of us as physicians have had the experience of a patient who, years later, comes back and asks for a [sterilization] reversal, and that s the root cause of reluctance and in some cases refusal to perform sterilizations on women under 40. It s worth noting, by the way, that each of the ob/gyns I spoke with said that the number of patients who had asked them about sterilization reversal was very low. None of them had encountered a childless patient who had changed her mind, which correlates with national data. We can all agree that physicians are qualified to tell us what permanent birth control means in their experience, but what qualifies them to tell us who we are? Intimate knowledge of a patient s and her mind are two very different things; what can even the best-intentioned expert know about my life goals when we spend 15 minutes together once a year? Although it is clearly within doctors competence to advise on the most appropriate treatment for the amelioration of disease, it is less clear why they are competent to determine the reasonableness of personal, lifeenhancing choices made by their patients, write the philosopher Piers Benn and the gynecologist Martin Lupton, co authors of a 2005 exploration of the ethics of sterilizing young, childless adults. They argue that there s no inherent justification for ignoring a young woman s current wish (that is, to be sterilized) to leave the door open for the fulfillment of a possible future wish (that is, to have children). A doctor s role, they concluded, is to present the medical options, not to purposefully shut one down. In parts of the country with limited access to health care, of course, a doctor s personal feelings about sterilization are the only ones that matter: Both federal policy and laws in 18 states allow some practitioners to refuse to provide sterilization services because of moral or other personal beliefs. The conscience clause is important, says Cristina Richie, Ph.D., a clinical ethics fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles Health Ethics Center who published a 2013 report on the voluntary sterilization of childless women. It protects doctors from going against their moral compass. However, I want my to say, once and for all, that I will not have children. That kind of autonomy might sound arbitrary, but it means a hell of a lot to me. doctors who have blanket objections to either the technical aspects of sterilization or the idea of being closed to procreation might be better suited to working in a Catholic context where there is an explicit understanding that certain procedures will not be offered to any woman. Objection to the idea that a woman would choose not to procreate is, when you get right down to it, a form of discrimination. Women in my position are not children whom someone else needs to protect, yet we often simply don t have the kind of say in the health-care decisions that are ours by right. Why, you might ask, do i need to push so hard to be sterilized? Why can t my husband have a vasectomy? He s a bit squeamish in general, to be fair, but that s not the real reason I step forward when it comes to acting on our joint reproductive choice. A vasectomy for Joe would close the door on parenthood for us, but the truth is that tubal ligation has another appeal: I want my to say, once and for all, that I will not have children. That kind of autonomy might sound arbitrary, but it means a hell of a lot to me. It s been 15 years since I sat in my first apartment and tried to find a doctor who d sterilize me. I asked Hutcherson if she would feel comfortable saying yes to someone like me. I would say that a woman who is 36 has only a few years of good fertility left, as your chances of achieving pregnancy without medical assistance have been decreasing significantly since age 30 or so, she replied. Therefore, the chance that you will come back with remorse in a few years is very, very small. I d still talk to you about long-acting contraceptive methods, just because they have fewer risks than surgical sterilization, but I d be much more willing to move ahead with sterilization now than if you were 20. Truth be told, I have a strong urge to recontact the doctors who brushed me off years ago, both to assure them that my wishes haven t changed and to see if they, in turn, have grown out of their paternalism. My annual ob/gyn visit is around the corner, and if my doctor won t agree to perform a tubal ligation, I ll part ways with her; at last I have the momentum that I m nearly too old to need. I regret that I didn t push harder for what I knew what I know I want. Fifteen years from now, in turn, my little niece will be approaching her own version of womanhood. As for what that will look like, I will tell her what I wish someone had told me: It should always be up to her. R 90 REDBOOKMAG.COM / SEPTEMBER 2016

6 WHAT IT REALLY TAKES TO GET PREGNANT AT 46 When Tamara Thrasher-Cateni chose to use an egg donor to get pregnant after years of heartbreak and loss her doctor said, If it works, no one will ever have to know. But she wants people, especially other women and mothers, to hear what it s like. Her story will change the way you think about motherhood. PHOTOGRAPHED BY MAURICIO ALEJO Imet my husband when I was 26 on a train traveling through the South of France. I was returning from the Cannes Film Festival, which I d gone to with an actress friend; he was a pilot in the French Navy. As cliché as it sounds, it was absolutely love at first sight. We ve been together for 23 years, married for 12. I had never longed for children, but being with Bruno slowly changed that: I realized that there is nothing more incredible, practically supernatural, than the idea that two people can make another person out of their love. By the time I was in my 30s, I wanted to see our DNA blended into a new being. But that s not, as it turns out, how my babies were created. Their DNA comes from Bruno and an egg donor I ve never met and never will. She did a tremendous thing to help our family, but for me, the path was not at all straight or simple. My twins were born when I was 46, but they were not my first pregnancy, or my first children. Our first son s name was Enzo. We knew when I was 16 weeks pregnant, at age 36, that he was going to be born with spina bifida. The doctors gave him an excellent prognosis, though he d have to have surgery immediately and stay in the NICU at first. We lived in Oklahoma, but we made arrangements for him to be born at Texas Children s Hospital in Houston, where I grew up and where most of my family still lives, DEC 2016 JAN 2017 / REDBOOKMAG.COM 93

7 because of the excellent pediatric neurosurgeons there and the Newborn Center s family-centered philosophy of care. I was worried about him, of course, but I loved being pregnant, that connection I had with him. When he was born, I barely saw him before he was taken to the NICU. He had an open lesion on his spine that meant I couldn t hold him; it was excruciating to watch him cry and not be able to take him in my arms. But Bruno started singing a French maritime tune he used to sing when I was pregnant, and Enzo stopped crying he knew that voice. And I knew his face: He looked just like Bruno! It was exactly like I d imagined. We d created this baby, and he was ours. We spent every day with him, giving him baths, reading, changing his tracheostomy tube. Then one morning I came in and just knew something was not right. The nurses said, Well, you re a first-time mom, you don t recognize his cues, and You re stressed out by him being in the NICU. Which was all true. But the next morning he was whisked away for a CT scan, and then into surgery, and we never saw him awake again. He died from an infection. While I don t think Enzo could have been saved if my concerns had been heard sooner he was very, very sick I do wonder if he could have been spared some suffering. The experience was heartbreaking. It ended up being years before we were ready to try for another baby. We d moved from Oklahoma to Texas permanently (me first, then Bruno a year later after he finished his Ph.D. in bio systems engineering) so I could take a job at Texas Children s Hospital as their first Family-Centered Care Specialist. I wanted to use my experience to help empower families and build partnerships between them and health-care providers. My doctors told me I was going to have a hard time getting pregnant, since I was 42 by then, so I started taking fertility drugs. I knew that if I wasn t pregnant in three months, I didn t have a good chance. So when it hadn t worked by then, I stopped the drugs and that s when I got pregnant with Ezra. He was growing right on target, and then, when I was 16 weeks pregnant, I woke up in the middle of the night. In my dream, someone had said, The baby died. I woke up Bruno. I was having a bad dream too, he said to me. Is the baby okay? No, I said to him. He wasn t. I wasn t bleeding, no contractions. But I knew that he was gone. The next morning, the doctor confirmed that there was no heartbeat. It turns out Ezra had Trisomy 9, a rare and very serious chromosomal disorder. I could not believe that lightning had struck us twice, but I was at peace knowing that he died inside me, listening to my heartbeat. I was comforted by that, after Enzo s traumatic death in the hospital. I opted to deliver Ezra: I wanted to say good-bye to him, for my husband to hold him. In the week it took for the induction process to take effect, I was at work, planning a memorial ceremony Texas Children s hosts for NICU families. It may sound like I m a strong person, but I m not. I have a strong conviction: I knew what I had to do for my family and for the other families who had lost children. Their devastation was my devastation. When Ezra was born, we baptized him and spent the night I am so grateful, especially to our egg donor, this stranger who unknowingly holds a piece of my heart. with him. He was cremated, like Enzo was. For both of my boys, I asked to put them in the crematorium at the funeral home myself. I wanted their mom to be the last person who touched them and gave them back to God. When I pushed the ignite button, I wanted to die but I also felt privileged to have experienced an extraordinary little person s life, however brief. I don t believe that one heals from losing a child, but I think there s a type of recovery that s possible. I never stopped wanting a family, but my doctors and I agreed I would probably continue to miscarry. I might have a stillborn child again. Even so, I knew in my heart that I wanted to be pregnant, because carrying my sons had been my greatest joy. The optimal chances for a pregnancy meant younger eggs: donor eggs. When you decide to use donated eggs, you can look through databases of potential donors, see what they look like, try to discover what they are like. I spent months poring over these, COURTESY OF AUTHOR. not with eagerness, but crying as I struggled with the fact that this was where I had ended up, this was how I was going to have my family. I wanted to be the 40-something woman who proved everyone wrong. I believe that miracles can happen, but I had to come to terms with the fact that my miracle would not be a natural pregnancy. Bruno didn t fully understand what a leap it was for me to accept using another woman s eggs. In his mind, we were going to have a family, and that s what we wanted. For me, it was giving up that first, very meaningful reason I d wanted children: to create one with him. I didn t particularly seek out donors who looked like me, and as I looked through the profiles, I was shocked to see that the eggs from blonde, blue-eyed women were more expensive than the ones from dark-haired women. It was in this extensive search that I started to discover what was important. Many of the women were very candid that they were becoming donors for monetary reasons which I understand. But it felt like a business transaction, and that made it hard for me, as if it were taking away all that is beautiful in making a baby with someone you love. Then I stumbled across this donor, a student who wrote in her bio that as a young and fertile woman, she felt it was her obligation to help people who wanted to create a family. Yes, she would be getting paid, but I believed and still do that there was a genuine altruism in her. I realized that this was what I wanted to pass on to my children: kindness. More than raising a child who looks like me, I want to raise a good person. She had already done a donation, so we had to see if she d agree to do another, then wait for her to finish the semester. After a lot of panicked waiting, we received 30 eggs from her. The lab fertilized half via intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), where a single sperm is injected directly into the egg. (The other half were fertilized naturally : The eggs were placed in a petri dish and the sperm did their thing.) My doctor transferred a fresh embryo to me, and put the rest on ice in case it didn t work. I never got a positive pregnancy test with that one. The next time, I got a positive just four days after the transfer of multiple embryos. I was thrilled until the six-week mark, when I hemorrhaged so frighteningly that I was sure I had lost the baby. I cried for a long while alone in the bathroom before calling my husband and doctor. I thought I had jinxed myself by being so excited by the early test. And I had lost a baby: It turns out I d been pregnant with triplets, and now there were two. Afterward, though, I felt a strange sense of peace. That night, I slept well and dreamed of a blond baby in a crib, reaching up to me. I think the mother s intuition that told me something was wrong with Enzo and Ezra was letting me know that these babies were okay. After other bleeding episodes, my doctor put me on bed rest for more than seven months. The bright spot in that long and worrisome time was that, because I was high-risk, I got to see my babies via ultrasound every week. Their little profiles, their strong heartbeats, the hiccups on two sides of my belly those carried me through. I got them to 37 weeks and they were delivered via C-section at nearly 7 pounds each. They screamed and they cried and they opened their eyes, and I got to take them back to my room. I was drunk with emotion: It was one of the most glorious moments of my life. I was so proud of the beautiful little beings I had made, and grateful to God and my husband and family and doctors. And especially to our egg donor, this stranger who unknowingly holds a piece of my heart. Six days later, we put Remi and Emma in their car seats and took them home. I d never been able to do that, and I wake up every single day with an overwhelming sense of relief. Infertility had been on my mind every minute, and now the burden is lifted. In its place are my children. They are 2 now, and brilliant every parent says that, I know, but I think they are. And also: They are loving. They are kind. But here s another, brutally honest part of my story: While there are women who conceive babies with donated eggs and then deliver and immediately feel like the baby is theirs, utterly theirs, for me it was different. Remi looked just like Bruno, like Enzo had. But Emma she looked like her donor. It hurt. People have said to me, Do you think the twins get this or that from their real mom? and it s easy for me to correct them. I am their real mom. But it s also true that when they do something new, I wonder whether that s just them, or if they take after the donor. I think about her a lot. Experts are starting to discover that the mother carrying the pregnancy with donated eggs may influence her baby s genetics. It gives me some comfort that the twins may have a piece of me in them. Their stubbornness, for instance: That just might be from me. The ongoing shroud of secrecy over women s infertility issues makes using an egg donor seem shameful. It isn t. I m not embarrassed. I was apprehensive, because of my own preconceived notions about motherhood. I wish we had tried to have kids earlier, but I want people to know that there is no failure in having children this way. I have a friend who is thinking about egg donation, and I told her: If your heart says you want children, as mine did, this is an option. There will be things that are painful, but the joy, the relief, and the happiness you can have completely outweigh any compromises you might make. I am a mother. Not exactly the one I thought I would be what parent is? or in the way I wanted to be, but I am. It is an overwhelming gift, to have children, and I m grateful to the process that got me here. I wanted our children to be a mix of our family history and the tangible fruit of our love. Today, as I watch them grow, I can see, so completely, that they are. R 94 REDBOOKMAG.COM / DEC 2016 JAN 2017