Fertility and glass ceilings

About six years ago, one of the Mister's women friends (of which there are many) was trying to fix him up with one of her friends. The sparks didn't fly for them.  Last week we learned through the grapevine that she is doing a donor egg cycle.  Of course we are both very interested in her now -- we'd love to hear how her cycle is going, how she came to that decision, what does her family think about it, has she told her family, etc.  But my next thought was "gosh, if the fix-up had worked and he'd never met me, the Mister would be in the same spot he is now." 

The donor agency called yesterday with a password to their online database.  Last night I spent a good hour clicking obsessively through the family health profiles of prospective donors, checking out their childhood photos and lists of favorite books and movies, trying to crawl into their psyches and see if I would want to be friends with them or their egg-offspring.  Some of the donors are very up-front in saying that they're donating eggs because of the money.  Others really want to help (and, by the way, get paid).  One woman who has children of her own expressed real sorrow for women who have struggled to have children.  Another wrote a bit of poetry to the child who would be the result of the donor eggs, telling him how his parents wept and fought to have him and how much of a miracle his birth would be.  Those women made me feel a lot better about contemplating this process.

But I'm still not sure what to do.  Part of my dilemma has to do with the plain old logistics of becoming pregnant and managing my workload at the same time.  Being away for barely two weeks while I studied caused all kinds of chaos in my work life -- a maternity leave would be impossible the way my office runs now.  There would have to be all kinds of planning and workflow changes and probably a temp lawyer brought in (although I actually could use another full-time staff lawyer).  And I will need to deal with all of those issues whether we adopt or go the DE route.  I need to have serious conversations with my company about my department staffing, and that is going to be a pain in the ass conversation to have, because I just might have to say the words "maternity leave" to get them to pay attention.  And then once they know you're thinking about having kids, they start wondering whether you're going to leave and they treat you differently.  I saw it happen in law firms -- women got shoved over to the mommy track and had to claw their way back. 

[Just a side note here -- for those of you wondering why all this career angst is happening on an IF blog, my career is a big fat part of the reason why I'm in the land of IF.  If I'd just been able to accept that low-level secretarial position 12 years ago, I might have married earlier and have a bunch of kids by now.  But I didn't, and I don't, so here I am.  I love my job -- I'm good at it and it's one of those jobs that other lawyers wish they had -- but it gets all mixed up with my fertility.  I wish it weren't so.]

This is not to say that some kind of mommy track is not absolutely appropriate and necessary.  Professional women with small children who want to spend time with their children should be able to work less hours (for less pay) until they are comfortable resuming their regular schedule, and I would want something like that.  But the mommy track I saw women shoved into at those law firms was a track that meant not only less work, but work that was less desirable, much more routine, and more likely to brand them for years as "not smart/capable/diligent enough" as opposed to "temporarily busy with small children."  That might be fine for a lot of women, and if it is, good for them!  But for those of us who are driven and ambitious and get a lot of pleasure from high-level work, getting squeezed out of the challenging work takes all the fun out of working in the first place. And since we were raised to believe that we can have it all, we want the challenging work AND the limited schedule AND the kids all at once.  and because we're used to making things happen, when people tell us this type of arrangement isn't possible, well, we get a wee bit cranky.

My company is not a cutthroat place, and they value my abilities.  They definitely will not try to shove me out.  But I've been trying to convince them that I should be a member of upper management, and they've been wanting to keep me at a lower level (primarily for financial reasons).  Something like maternity leave would just add fuel to their argument.

And it pisses me off that I have to think about things like this.  I told the Mister last night that if we had been able to get pregnant on our own or through IVF, I would have been much less concerned about managing work.  My attitude would have been "I'm sorry you're upset, bosses, but this is my one and only chance to have my own bio kids, and that chance is infinitely more important than you are.  You'll manage somehow and the world won't end."  Yet somehow, if we were to adopt or use donor eggs, my gut tells me that things would be different.  My kids would be my kids, either way, and I would love and fight for them and put them first, of course, and make sacrifices left and right.  But to the outside world, those who don't GET where we are coming from, adopting or taking the "selfish" route of DE is more of a choice, less of a biological imperative, and it's a choice I would have to account for, just as if I were choosing to go on vacation at the busiest time of the year.  And because I know that I would be called upon to justify my actions to ignorant folks (who might or might not be the decision makers with regard to my career), it makes the struggle of balancing work and life just that much more difficult. 

Do we adopt?  Do we do a donor cycle?  The Mister suggested flipping a coin.  It might just come down to that.

Comments

[luna]

ugh, it just sucks that we even have to think about these things, you're right. I hope your company takes a more well-reasoned approach that's not just governed by the bottom line but a desire to keep you happy.

I know it's hard not to think about it this way, but you don't need to separate the bio-pregnancy thing. if you have a child, it's your child and they will have to deal. I've known several lawyers who took leave to care for newly adopted babies. even a dad, but he was a professor, which is different than what you're talking about. again, it just sucks to be faced with these issues.

as far as donor cycle or adoption, only you two can answer that question... sorry, no help there. good luck. ~luna

[melanie]

I very much relate to what you're saying. I have thought often if I hadn't chosen to be a lawyer at 26, my life and fertility would be very different. The mommy track you discuss is very real. I feel valued at my company, but I also work with many male lawyers who have multiple children and stay at home spouses. It's a different mindset. A woman (lawyer) I work with is pregnant and told her bosses she was taking 4 months maternity leave and wanted to come back part time for several months. The male contingent has been mumbling about it nonstop. Nevermind that their wives don't work.

Enough about those men, more interesting is what path you will eventually choose. Are you leaning one way or another?

[Egged]

My mom always said that if we waited until everything seemed perfect for a child (right house, money in the bank, great affordable childcare, etc) no one would ever have children.

It's a tough decision. What is driving us to try a donor egg cycle is that IF it all works out, we will have a baby 9 months later. Now, that's a big IF, I know. The adoption process seems so complicated to me with so many things out of our control. We're going on the assumption that the donor egg will work for us and we're even holding out a little hope that there will be a few extra embryos for a sibling. See, we're too hopefull at this point. We're not rational at all.

Good luck on your decision.