I recently read an article from the Harvard Health Publishing website about infertility and regret. It wasn’t until I read it that the emotion referred to as Regret came boiling over like a pot of mac & cheese that you didn’t get to in time because you couldn’t miss watching Sookie Stackhouse make-out with yet another vampire (pre-DVR).

Glazer writes, “I can often hear it coming. One need spend only a few minutes with someone coping with infertility before encountering a cascade of regret. “If only we hadn’t waited so long.” “If only I had frozen my eggs.” “If only we had changed doctors sooner.” “If only I hadn’t believed my OB/GYN when she told me not to worry.” “If only I’d realized earlier that I could do it on my own.” “If only I’d met my husband when I was younger.””

Lady. Get Out of My Freaking Head.

I always say my only two regrets in life were not moisturizing and not freezing my eggs. But hey, let’s just say I hop into a DeLorean today, flick the switch on the flux capacitor and set that bad boy to a hungover Sunday in 2007. I feel quite confident super cool/tan/skinny Rose still would not have cared about her skin wrinkling or eggs turning into tiny crappy raisins. I’m sure my response would have been, “I’ll use Botox on my wrinkles and adopt, who really cares when there are people dying without water in Africa”.

So I hop back in my time machine, go back to the current year (2019). What do ya know, I Botox my face and want to adopt. Boy, 2007 Rose really wasn’t a mess (totally debatable).

Now let’s be clear, I want to adopt a child but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to also have a child that was created from within my womb. Don’t you just love the term “womb”. This is mostly because my husband feels this natural desire to spawn children, it’s a dude thing, but I also wouldn’t mind seeing what kind of tricks these hillbilly genes will do with my kid… I’m sure it will come out with a trucker mouth and dirty feet.

With that we continue down our journey of emotions.

• Anger: why is this so hard for us, yet so easy for so many people who don’t even want kids

• Fear: that it will drive a wedge between my husband and I

• Disgust: two words… Estrogen Suppositories

• Empathy: now knowing that people dealing with infertility needed so much more love and support than I ever imagined

• Happiness: every time we get an embryo that we can transfer (all 9 of them)

• Sadness: when the positive pregnancy test lines get lighter and lighter each day until they are gone

• Surprise: how many amazing humans that I have met and bonded with through this

• Contempt: when people say things like “when are you going to realize you weren’t meant to have a baby”… that one stuck with me

• Regret: Not. Effing. Freezing. My. Eggs. (I don’t mind paying for Botox)

So ladies who are out there struggling, own your emotions. Or do what the writer says, put those little shits in a wood boat and send them out to an imaginary island to die…. wait for it…. wait for it….

Go Back to Your Home on Whore Island!!!!