Several months ago, I was in the midst of an egg donor consult with a couple in their 40s, and we started talking about celebrities having babies in their mid-to-late late-forties.
I asked the female partner if she believed the fabulously beautiful 47-year-old movie star, who was recently in the news, used her own eggs for her second pregnancy.
The woman stared at me, her eyes filling with tears as she said, “Please don’t tell me she didn’t use her own eggs. She was my last hope that perhaps it could work for me, too!”
I told her that I didn’t know for sure, of course. Given her few financial restraints, it was possible that she froze her eggs at a much younger age, but more likely than not, it was either a known or anonymous egg donor.
People in the public eye are entitled to their privacy. However, they are constantly being hounded by the press where nothing is off limits, including their children and how they came to be. I completely understand their need to protect their children. None of this is public information.
Why should the world know if they used an egg donor before the child knows? Being publicly open would put the child at risk of hearing about his/her beginnings from the paparazzi or reporters trying to snag a headline. With that said, I do have a yearning for a day when third-party reproduction will be discussed more openly so individuals and couples will feel less stigmatized by the way they choose to create their families.
I applaud Marcia Cross, who gave an interview years ago and sang the praises of donor eggs, stopping shy of saying she and her husband used them to get pregnant. We tend to see the glamour of the celebrity lifestyle but forget that they are human, and even money can not make 47-year-old eggs golden.
Blog post by Bette Galen, LCSW
Licensed Clinical Social Worker with the Collaborative Wellness Team,
interested in infertility, mind & body relaxation techniques, and family building.
