A close friend confided that she was considering freezing her eggs. All the positive press about egg freezing had started to rub off on her. She is 37, smart, single, a career woman who has travelled, lived and craves a family but had been unlucky in love. She feared her time would run out. I thought it was a fantastic option that enabled her to feel more in control and not as though she was racing against her biological clock. The next time we met for a walk, I keenly asked her if she had progressed any further.
“Yeah, not exactly. I’ve decided not to do it.” She said.
“Oh, what changed your mind?” I responded, puffing as we walked up the hill near my house. My tone was a slightly high pitch, as she had caught me by surprise. She sounded so certain and informed from our last conversation. She’d looked into the costs and booked a consultation.
“You’re going to think I’m silly, but I was watching the Kardashians…”
I cut her off. “Here we go...”
“Kourtney froze hers, and as it turns out, none of them were useable once thawed. For all of that money and time, plus all the hormone injections - that alone, I don’t think I could without going completely insane - what if I still end up with nothing?”
Truth is, celebrity or not, she did have a valid point, and one I don’t think I had considered, and I knew exactly what she was thinking; ‘If it didn’t work for Kourtney Kardashian, someone who has infinite money, access and resources, then what are the chances of it working for me?’
“I wouldn’t let one experience, especially a celebrity’s, determine whether or not something is right for you. But it is your decision, and I do hear what you’re saying. It is a lot on your body, mind and bank account.” I replied before she changed the subject.
Now, if you are not a Kardashian fan, allow me to catch you up to speed. A few years ago, Kourtney had decided to freeze her eggs to, what she assumed at the time, futureproof her fertility – and in true Kardashian style, she even filmed it. Sadly, in a more recent episode, she revealed that her eggs weren’t viable; "When I was 38 or 39, everyone was like pushing me to do that. Most of mine didn't survive the thaw because eggs are one cell, and none of them made it into an embryo. The freezing of eggs isn't guaranteed. It's a misunderstanding, people do it thinking it's a safety net, and it's not.”
Flash forward to 2021 when it was reported and recorded that Kourtney and her husband, Travis Barker (Blink 182 drummer, father, and all-round PDA enthusiast) were undergoing fertility and IVF treatments which they then paused at the end of last year after 10 months of trying. Kourt along with Khloe, and Kim have been open about their journeys with IVF and surrogacy, and their tales of hormones and hardship have comforted women around the world. “As someone who has watched the Kardashians my whole life I found it really interesting when Kourtney, Kim and Khloe started sharing their different fertility journeys on the show - and I actually appreciated Khloe sharing the journey because we see so much of the outcome but not so much the journey. IVF is not a turnkey solution, and it’s so complicated,” - Jordan Eagle, mother of one from IVF.
It is the celebrities who share their stories that we feel closest to and who we relate to even if their lives look nothing like ours, motherhood, or the yearning for motherhood, is universally binding. It is a common thread that tugs at our heart strings, that makes us feel as though we’re not so different after all. So when Kourtney announced her pregnancy in a very cute, albeit, Kardashian way, we all cheered along with her and I shared the post with my friend who was ecstatic for her too. Overjoyed and relieved that a woman, 44 years old, whose frozen eggs were not viable and IVF had failed, was now pregnant, naturally (as far as we know). It is nothing short of a modern miracle, “…God’s blessing and plan.” as she captioned her follow-up post, post-announcement, and that is exactly the nonsense narrative Kourtney and her clan were going with.
“I got to a place where I just felt like exactly how timing was everything with me and Travis, I feel truly like if it’s meant to be it will be.” Before the host interjects, “You’re going to have a love child… your love will create a life.” Kourtney told Amanda Hirsch, host of the popular celebrity and entertainment podcast, Not Skinny But Not Fat, in an episode that aired in October of last year.
The fertility fairytale of the perfect timing, what will be will be, manifesting a baby, or ‘God’s plan’ is as fictional as the story of the immaculate conception itself. When a whimsical rhetoric comes directly from a person with over 220 million followers and a family with an enormous amount of social influence (enough to reduce Snapchat’s market value by $1.3B with a single tweet), this has a similar feel to the toxic wellness culture that’s bouncing around our algorithms. A narrative of ease; ‘if you just chill out, your baby will come.’ And one that is far from the reality of millions of families who battle with fertility issues, who do not have the time, money or the luxury of leaving this in the hands of the almighty creator who - it seems - is yet to show up for anyone other than Kravis.
“It’s so damaging. I can’t begin to imagine how the people who are rounds and rounds deep into IVF, or have perhaps called a break/quits on IVF, are feeling seeing her one minute say she is leaving it to god’s plan and [is] now pregnant. She had a really amazing opportunity to connect with the everyday person and be relatable, which has been totally thrown away.” - Lucy Amon, mother of a 10 month old from IVF.
Not only does this type of misinformation have the potential to make anyone second guess their fertility decisions, but it may change the perception of the spectators and support network around them - which can be equally as detrimental. “The idea that love will pull through to conceive a child or that manifesting, relaxing or calling time on fertility treatment will result in having a baby. It puts misinformation at the forefront. If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me 'it will happen when you least expect it' or 'I bet when you stop IVF, it'll happen' - people have no idea of people’s diagnosis, challenges and realities; those were some of the hardest comments I had to face. Media like this does nothing to help those dealing with the daily sucker punches. Always thrilled when someone who's battled infertility falls pregnant, but god it is disappointing to see *falls pregnant after finishing IVF' littered across headlines - it does nothing to help inform.” wrote Maddison Sullivan Thorpe on her Instagram story.
In a world where misinformation, especially a celebrity-endorsed one, thrives, I have to ask; are our fertility decisions safe from influence? I hope so, but I fear not.