Baby Steps (31 page)

It was the last day my mother was ever present with me, the last time I touched her skin while she was conscious, the last day we spoke to each other. It was a good day, full of love and hope for the future of our family. She told me one last time that day that I deserved to be happy. And I was.

Children are the living message we send
to a time we will not see.

—John W. Whitehead

 

I
f I could build a new world, I would make it a world where everyone
who wanted a child could have a child, and everyone around that child would join together to raise it into a strong, courageous, loving human being. Gender wouldn't matter. Sexual orientation wouldn't matter. Money wouldn't matter. Age wouldn't matter. Anyone with love to spare could raise a child, and we would all be there to help that child take her first steps across a room filled with family and friends.

If I could build a new world, I would make sure every woman in her early twenties starts thinking about when she wants to have a baby and gets ready, just in case. In my new world, the older women who are so beautiful in their experience and maturity would be just as ready to conceive as the young woman just growing into herself. In my world, everyone who wanted to give birth to her own baby could do so easily and naturally.

In this new world, all parents would devote their lives to their children, and whole communities would rise up to help, and all children would grow up to be good parents themselves, and everyone would feel a deep and abiding sense of belonging. When things went wrong, as they inevitably do, people would speak up and reach out to each other and say what really matters: “I hurt. I need you. I can't do it alone. I'm overflowing with love.”

Family comes in many forms, but it is always a mirror. Family shows us who we are, what we're made of. It proves our ability to love, even under the most trying circumstances. Ideally, family lifts us up. It is the source of our lowest and highest moments. It is the scaffolding on which we hang our hearts. It is love incarnate, and when a baby comes, the love expands and expands until it encompasses everything. The ones we love are our greatest teachers.

So I propose we expand our definition of family, and our requirements for the dispensing of our affection. I propose that we move toward this new world, because this world could be
our world,
if only we would all decide such a world of acceptance, tolerance, honesty, and community was worth having. There is space for everyone. Let's open our arms.

I have many more adventures ahead of me. My daughter is only four years old. I may or may not try to have another child. I may or may not walk down the aisle. I may or may not walk
her
down the aisle someday. I won't live forever, and neither will she.

But as long as I still walk on this earth, I will fight for a world that champions all versions of family. Let's say what we feel. Let's do what we need to do. Let's listen, and reach out, and help, and hold each other up, and stop letting each other down. Let's speak up and support anyone who wants to love a child, without making them feel ashamed or wrong or broken. I believe we can make that happen. I believe it's already beginning. I see it every day. One by one, women are standing up, raising their hands, and saying, “I can't have a baby the ‘regular' way, but I still want to have a baby!”

Yes, the world is big, and full, and it doesn't always seem like the best place for a child. Life is hard and the world spins through the light and through the dark, and we don't always know what's going to happen to us next. Sometimes, things don't work out the way we thought they would. But they do work out, one way or another.

If you have love to give to a child, then I say give it. Any way you can. Give it all away.

I first saw Elisabeth Röhm in July of 2007, when she was thirty-four. At the time, she had been trying to conceive for about a year and a half, and had been unsuccessful. She struck me as a beautiful and strong woman who was determined not to waste any more time, and I found this incredibly refreshing. She was not afraid to make tough decisions and follow through with them.

Elisabeth's determination to act quickly was unusual. Most women at her age procrastinate when it comes to fertility problems, often until it's too late. They don't realize how much age affects fertility. Most women think that if they are healthy, they exercise, and they look great, then having a baby will be easy. This is far from the truth! Unfortunately, even some ob-gyns take age lightly and don't stress the urgency to their patients.

Infertility can become a problem decades before menopause occurs, and women don't always understand this. In many cases, the cause is something called accelerated ovarian aging. For unknown reasons, in cases of accelerated ovarian aging, eggs are prematurely lost and quality deteriorates faster than expected. For example, the ovaries of a thirty-four-year-old woman might behave as if they are forty years old. This translates to lower pregnancy rates and therefore the urgency. You won't know if you have this problem unless you test your ovarian reserve. If you do have it and you want to have a baby, you will likely need to seek aggressive treatment, the way Elisabeth
did. You never know whether this could happen to you. Elisabeth didn't know. There were no other symptoms.

As far as treatment is concerned, IVF (in vitro fertilization) is the best treatment for age-related decline in fecundity. The concept is simple. If the problem is that you have lower-quality eggs due to aging, then the only way to compensate for that decline in quality is by increasing quantity. IVF offers you the ability to do exactly that. Doing an IVF cycle is the equivalent of trying on your own for several months, so you are basically condensing time into a single month of treatment. It speeds up time, just when you have no time to lose.

What I hope this book accomplishes is to send out a message to all women that when it comes to fertility, age matters and time is a woman's worst enemy. I can do a lot of magic, but I cannot turn back the clock. Women are born with a set number of eggs that they use during their reproductive years. By the time a woman is fifty or fifty-one, her eggs have run out and menopause ensues. Unfortunately, before that last egg disappears, the eggs a woman has left tend to deteriorate genetically.

Many people consider infertility a taboo. Women are ashamed to admit that they are infertile, as if infertility somehow makes them less womanly. Of course this isn't true, and it's a shame that people feel this way, because the secrecy surrounding infertility and IVF plays a big role in keeping this topic away from general knowledge. It propagates the ignorance that's out there regarding age and infertility. Many well-known public figures who have used IVF to conceive not only keep it a secret, but actually pretend that they conceived naturally. Unfortunately, this causes more harm than good, as it gives false hope to women who think that if a celebrity got pregnant at forty-five, then so can they.

What Elisabeth is doing by writing her memoirs and revealing her experience with infertility and the fact that she had to do IVF to conceive
is an immense favor to all reproductive-age women, and to the field of reproductive medicine. We live in a society where public figures, especially actresses, can reach many more people than doctors can. I wish more women like her would take such an initiative.

When Elisabeth asked me what I would like the readers of this book to take away from it, I knew exactly what I would say. I would love for the message to be loud and clear: If you are in your thirties, do not wait! Either start trying to have a baby now, or at least check the status of your fertility and take measures to preserve it. You may not know whether you have a problem until a fertility doctor tests your ovarian reserve. Your clock really is ticking, so the earlier you act, the better your chances. And if it looks like it might be too late? IVF just might be the answer to the family you always dreamed would be yours.

Vicken Sahakian, MD

Director, Pacific Fertility Center

Los Angeles

How could I possibly mention everyone who has, in some way large or small, contributed to the journey I've recounted in this book? I would have to mention everyone I've ever met! I hope anyone who has shaped my path from childhood to motherhood knows how grateful I am, but I must also mention a few people by name.

First of all, this book could never have come into being without the enthusiastic support of the good people at Da Capo. Thank you for giving this project your tireless passion, support, and wisdom. Thanks especially to our thoughtful and extraordinarily gifted editor, Renee Sedlier, for guiding this book to its highest place; to Christine Dore, her incredibly helpful and efficient assistant; to Kate Burke, for her early advocacy of this book; and to publisher John Radziewicz, who gave this book the all-important thumbs-up.

I must also give thanks to Zach Schisgal, for his astute partnership, sanity, and loyalty. To Alex Camlin, for creating the beautiful cover. To Kate, my publicist, for recognizing the universal story we had to tell. And to Lori Levine, for giving me the idea to write this book in the first place. Lori, thank you for coming up with the concept, giving it wings, and seeing it through to its first flight and beyond.

Eve Adamson, you are my better half and helped me to find my truth.

Dad and Jessica, thank you for celebrating my honesty and encouraging me all the way. Aunt Nancy, you have been my rock and support
for as long as I can remember. Thank you for always being there for me, when others were not, and for loving me unconditionally. And Aunt Laurie, to whom I had already written thanks thinking you would never leave, and who left this world so suddenly as I was writing these acknowledgements—oh, how I will miss you. You were my surrogate mother. You were the last bit of her I had left on this earth. I will miss you in far-reaching and soul-wrenching ways I can't even begin to express.

I could never forget all the people who have guided and shepherded me through my career from the beginning, especially Sam Waterston, who encouraged me and allowed me to be his biggest fan; Dan Abrams, for eternal friendship and intellectual guidance; and Dick Wolf, for believing in me and paving the way for my dreams.

To everyone else mentioned in this book directly or indirectly, thank you for being part of my life.

Dr. Sahakian, my gratitude is immeasurable. Thank you for facilitating my family and for being my personal cheerleader. Thank you especially for voting yes to speaking the truth.