It’s official – I’m harvesting my eggs.  I’ve been through consultations with three different doctors, had blood drawn three times (traumatic), and had a mammogram.  It’s on like Donkey Kong, as the Manning brothers might say.

I’m 40.  I’ve been told I don’t look 40, but my uterus and ovaries definitely are, and time is running out for me to have a biological child.  I know that there are other options for having children, and I’m not ruling them out.  My family is Korean, though, and widespread adoption acceptance is unique to western cultures.  If I can avoid the battle, I’d like to.

I never thought I’d be 40 and single, but I also never prioritized my personal life.  One of my mentors is taking a break from the rat race, and when we talked about it, she said, “I feel like I’ve been running since 8^th grade, and I’d like to rest for a little while.”  It’s been reverberating with me ever since.

Do I wish I’d done things differently?  I’m not sure.  I look back on the men that have been in my life, and with the gimlet eye of hindsight in moments of clarity, I know that we wouldn’t have been able to be parents together.  I know some of them are fathers now, and I don’t doubt for a minute that they are good fathers (my taste in men is not as horrible as I make it out to be).  But they’re good fathers in the context of their current relationships, and I’m not certain that our relationships would have cultivated the right characteristics.

At the same time, I have friends who have gone through bitter, terrible divorces and may never be whole again, but they have children whom they love and nurture despite the heartbreak.  Moments of clarity don’t come as frequently as I would like, so I wonder – would it have been better to forge ahead with the wrong man to have the right children when my body was more amenable?  My friends are vehement in their assertions that it would be awful to be in that situation now, but I don’t know.

Preserving my fertility is my first step in prioritizing my personal life.  I don’t consider it a baby step, but when you are as unfamiliar with a concept as I am with this, it’s like getting into a cold swimming pool – better to dive in and submerge yourself to get over the shock and make turning back the worse option.  Onward.