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I watched the ultrasound screen as my OB-GYN counted my follicles, the egg-producing sacs in my ovaries. They looked like the black holes in NASA images. I had more than 30 inside me. The sight unnerved me. My doctor seemed excited. “Those are some juicy-looking ovaries!” she said.
Her comment brought me back to earth. I was no longer the site of mysterious galactic phenomena.
I was about to become one of the rare American Latinas to freeze my eggs, a fertility-preserving procedure called oocyte cryopreservation. Latinas have one of the lowest rates of egg freezing. In part, that’s because of the cost, which varies but can reach $15,000 per cycle. Latinas are one of the most underinsured groups in the United States and are paid the lowest of all wages.
Then there’s the myth that Latinas are hyperfertile. That racist idea, which preys on white fears about our larger families and demographic change, contributed to forced sterilizations that disproportionately targeted Latinas in the 20th century.
Even among ourselves, many Latinas think it will be easy for us to get pregnant, as do our doctors. One consequence of this is that Hispanic women are both less likely to get infertility testing than white women and have lower rates of infertility treatment. But Latinas don’t find it any easier to become pregnant than other women. In fact, some research has shown that women of color are both more likely to struggle with infertility than white women and have worse outcomes from fertility treatments. Latinas do have higher birthrates than other women, but this arises from factors like unequal access to contraception and cultural differences, such as the belief that people can’t be as happy without children, particularly among foreign-born Latinos.
At 35, I faced mounting pressure from the matriarchs in my Mexican and Puerto Rican family to have a baby. “You’re going to end up alone,” an aunt loudly declared at a holiday dinner party. My mother, who raised me and my sister by herself after my father started smoking crack cocaine, repeatedly lamented my decision to leave a boyfriend over his drinking problem. “Nobody’s perfect,” she said. “You could’ve had a baby and then left.”
My family members feared I was becoming the specter that haunted them years ago, inspiring some of them to rush to reproduce with unreliable men: the childless señora. The solterona. At the height of my career as a national columnist, I was on the brink of becoming the family failure.
By freezing my eggs, I hoped to find relief from my relatives’ pressure and give myself more time to meet a partner who met my standards. But at the fertility clinic, I encountered a new source of anxiety. My doctor told me that my follicle count of 30-something was higher than she expected for a woman my age. I was a “great candidate” for egg freezing. But I would need to take hormones to stimulate my follicles to overproduce.
Since I was a child, I’d been asking my body to overproduce: straight A’s on report cards, polite smiles and salutations, classroom ribbons for excellent conduct, spelling bee trophies, university degrees, award-winning journalism, critically acclaimed books, calm and compassion in the face of hate and harassment. My value lay in my output. I had to wring my body of every ounce of sustenance, as industry does to the soil.
In recent years, fertility rates across racial and ethnic groups have been declining as we postpone having children to pursue higher education or other ambitions, but Latinas have experienced some of the largest declines. Many Latinas are reluctant to start families amid the high costs of living and the lack of paid parental leave. Some simply don’t want children.
But in the mythology of this country, Latinas exist to produce. We’re about a third of the service industry, which powers the U.S. economy. As countless fellow Americans denigrate our labor, claiming we’re taking their jobs or replacing them, we must keep cleaning their hotels, building their homes and serving them. For this, we’re compensated less than 60 cents for every dollar a white man receives. The first- and second-generation daughters who rise to positions of cultural or economic power thanks to our mothers’ sacrifices can’t shake the feeling of precarity and often struggle with anxiety, physical pain and other symptoms.
In my early 30s, my immune system became hyperactive, attacking my thyroid and other organs. I developed recurring, debilitating fatigue and muscle pain. My mother has lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that disproportionately affects Latinas, and its symptoms can be triggered by stress. Many women in my family have autoimmune problems. As I juggled doctor’s visits, work deadlines and bad dates, I feared I was on a path to permanent health issues as well. I wanted to become a mother. But I needed a break.
A few years before, a white friend of mine had told me that freezing her eggs had relieved her of considerable amounts of stress. Because she no longer felt she had to devote so much of her free time to dating, she could go on vacations and even take naps.
I started fantasizing about freezing my eggs. It was expensive, but my friend’s employer had paid for most of hers. Unfortunately, while my own plan covered some expenses, I’d have to pay for most of the procedure. It would be a big chunk of my savings. Still, I was lucky to have any coverage.
While there’s been a trend of large companies covering egg freezing, particularly in Silicon Valley, Latinas are severely underrepresented in those jobs.
Some find creative ways to overcome financial barriers, such as getting the procedure done in countries where it’s less expensive. Jennifer Inacio, a 38-year-old museum curator in Miami, told me she froze her eggs in Brazil. It cost her about $6,000, and she believes the care she received was better than what she would have received here. Whenever she had a question, she would simply text her doctor, and he would reply. “It felt really comforting,” she told me.
Brenda Equihua, a 38-year-old fashion designer in Los Angeles, considered freezing her eggs in Tijuana, Mexico, but she wanted the peace of mind of having her eggs closer to home. She was able to afford care in Los Angeles with the help of a personal loan. And she kept costs down by buying some medications in Tijuana. “I feel empowered by it,” she said of the experience.
My friend who froze her eggs also described the procedure as empowering. But I was scared of needles and even more so of the prospect of pushing my body to even higher heights of productivity at a time when I needed a respite.
But what were my alternatives? I could lose my chance of becoming a mother or repeat the family cycle of reproducing with a troubled partner, only to take on the dual roles of mother and father and other jobs for the rest of my life.
I decided to move forward with the procedure. It would be painful, maybe even punishing, but I would claim my right to rest.
***
I plunged the needle into my stomach, trying to steady my hand as I pressed the Gonal-F, which contained a follicle-stimulating hormone, into my body. I could feel the needle ripping my flesh as my hand continued to shake. I withdrew the needle and let go of the plunger too quickly, drawing blood and a yellowish substance — fat? — into the syringe. Blood dripped down my stomach.
It was my third mishap since I started injections. First, I stabbed the wrong part of my belly. Then a friend who was trying to assist me squirted some of the expensive medicine onto the floor. Now this.
A few days before I was supposed to start my egg-freezing journey, I was laid off from my job. And my follicle count had plummeted. I considered putting off the procedure to give my ovaries a chance to overperform again. But ultimately, I decided to go for it before I lost both health coverage and my courage to spend so much money.
In the beginning, I had to inject myself every evening with two medications and swallow a third. These were meant to trigger unnaturally high levels of hormones in my body to make my follicles grow. After a few days, I had to introduce a third injection to override my body’s impulse to ovulate.
Every other day, I went to the clinic to have my follicles measured. They became rounder and fuller. I tried to think of them not as black holes but rather as magical portals to new humans. One was swelling faster than the others. I told myself she was a future baby girl, way too ambitious like me. I made sure to eat healthy foods to nurture my army of eggs. As I hunted for a new job and wrote up a third book proposal, I told myself not to stress out because it could hurt my eggs.
But the injections made me emotionally raw, dizzy and exhausted. I wasn’t allowed to exercise because it could lead to a twisted fallopian tube; as the days wore on, I felt increasingly anxious. My ovaries were so heavy and huge that it was difficult to move. By the time my eggs were ready for harvesting, I couldn’t walk without fighting back tears.
My doctor retrieved 17 eggs. Only 13 of them were mature enough to freeze. Conventional wisdom would have me do another cycle, but it sounded miserable and financially risky. I decided to be satisfied with what my body had yielded. It wasn’t above average. It was average. For once, that was enough.
Suddenly, I found myself having more fun than I’d ever imagined possible for myself. Over the next six months, I developed new hobbies: rock climbing, backpacking, new styles of dancing. Instead of anxiously swiping on the dating apps, I read fiction. I went on long, meandering road trips. I let myself have passionate flings with men whom I didn’t see as serious prospects but who were respectful and fun. I spent more time with my niece and other family members. On occasion, I did nothing. It felt subversive to relax, to play, to be self-indulgent.
It was a drastic departure from the experiences of my female predecessors. My grandmother, who saw glimpses of my heretical life on Instagram, called to share her secret delight. “Prolong your youth as long as possible,” she said in Spanish. “I’m living vicariously through you.”
I’d gone from living my relatives’ worst nightmare to living the dream they’d never known they could have. I had defied the destiny of my lineage. But it had come at a high price, which meant it would remain inaccessible to the women who need it most.
Rest shouldn’t be exclusive to the privileged. Latinas and all women deserve body sovereignty, which includes the right not only to decline but also to defer reproduction.
Jean Guerrero is a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times. She is the author of “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda” and “Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir.” She is a senior journalism fellow at the U.C.L.A. Latina Futures 2050 Lab.
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