I Spent My Fertile Years Training to Be a Surgeon. Now, It Might Be Too Late For Me to Have a Baby

“How do you envision your family looking?” My face crumpled and tears fell from my eyes as soon as the young doctor asked me this question. I reflexively reached for a tissue to cover my face and erase the signs of weakness. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just want to be able to have a family someday.” I was in a fertility clinic for an initial consultation about egg freezing. Of the people in the waiting room, I was the odd one out: a single woman among couples struggling to have children. As a surgeon, I can’t honestly say I have spent a lot of time looking for a partner. I’ve been too busy spending my time with people—patients, colleagues, nurses, staff—in hospitals. I have prioritized my career over my personal life, and when I was younger, this tradeoff felt worth it. But now that I’m 38, it feels time to consider my own life. For women studying to be doctors, there are very few convenient times to build a relationship, let alone have a child. Once I got my first real job as a surgeon, after spending my 20s and early 30s in training, I sought several opinions and was told different versions of a similar message: I had waited too long, and my chances of one day having a child with my DNA were pretty low. At first, this came as a shock. Later, though, I felt certain that too much time had passed and I had subjected my body to too many nights on call, irregular exercise habits and too much stress. As I pus...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Sex/Relationships Source Type: news