The Chicken or the Egg?

by | 20 Apr 2014

It’s time to talk about eggs. Well it is Easter and as any serial IVF-er knows eggs are where it’s at.

So here’s the thing. Women are born with millions of them. But don’t get excited. By the time you reach puberty the figure has dropped to a couple of hundred thousand and by the time you’ve reached my age (and for that read ‘ancient’ in egg terms) you’re only left with a few. Quite why you needed so many in the first place when women normally only release one egg per month during their fertile years is beyond my medical understanding. Most of them do a vanishing act never to be seen again.

IVF is rather like The Great Soprendo. It tries to trick nature by cultivating and collecting more than one egg in a single month. Anyone reading this who has been through it will know that eggs soon become an obsession. The first question you ask when you wake up from the anaesthetic after egg collection is: ‘how many?’ It’s a numbers game, the more the better.

My cumulative IVF egg total stands at 80 (yes, I counted). But in the words of The Great Soprendo himself: ‘Piff Paff Poof!’ they all disappeared and never made a baby. Perhaps I didn’t have a very good magician. (Come to think of it I don’t think The Great Soprendo was a very good magician.) Or, of course, I’ve just got rotten eggs. Either way it’s reason not to get too preoccupied with egg numbers. At the end of the day all you need is one Fabergé.

It’s sad that none of mine have been worth that much because I’ve always liked eggs. Right now I’m rather partial to those small candy covered Easter ones in M & S. I’ve been eating them since February. Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I’m just better at eating eggs than I am at rearing chickens.

So here’s a question. Got any good egg stories this Easter?

www.thepursuitofmotherhood.com

2 Comments

  1. Joanna Norland

    Found a nest of four perfect jackdaw eggs in our garden this weekend – was filled with wonder at life forming inside such a tiny, perfect enclosure — and the thrill of new possibility (though like all fledgling life, those eggs are also extraordinarily vulnerable). Yep, there’s something magical about eggs . . .

    • thepursuitofmotherhood

      That’s such a lovely egg story! Thank you! And, just think, now you know where they are, you’ll be able to see the chicks when they hatch. Jessica x