Orientation day — six pages of notes.
That morning, my doctor called with my blood test results.
The phone call lasted less than ten minutes. My AMH was 0.84. Below average. Not devastating. But lower than I had hoped.
It was the first number that made this process feel personal. Because suddenly this wasn't just something I was considering anymore. It was my body. My timeline. My fertility.
Then, just a few hours later — from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. — I logged into the virtual orientation.
Two hours. A slide deck. A coordinator. A screen full of strangers, all beginning different fertility journeys.
I showed up with a notebook mostly out of habit. I remember thinking I probably wouldn't need it — surely everything important would be in the slide deck. I filled six pages.
What they covered
Not the science behind egg freezing. The logistics of everything that came after. Who to call depending on the issue. How to reserve your retrieval. When to order medications. How to compare pharmacy prices. What to expect during stimulation. How incredibly time-sensitive every injection would become — especially the trigger shot. What retrieval day would look like. What recovery would look like.
Then came the Q&A.
What they said
Should we continue prenatal vitamins? Can we drink alcohol? Can we smoke weed? Can we have sex? Can we exercise? Can we travel after retrieval? What pain medicine can we take? I wrote down everything: stay hydrated, drink electrolytes, eat leafy greens, keep caffeine under 300 milligrams, no weed, no penetration during the cycle, stop exercising around day five and don't resume until about two weeks after retrieval. Tylenol is okay. Avoid medications that thin your blood.
But it hadn't landed yet
Looking back, it's funny. I took six pages of notes. I was listening. I was highlighting. I was writing everything down.
I just hadn't lived any of it yet.
On the screen were dozens of other people. All of us muted. Most of us with our cameras off. None of us knew each other's stories. I wondered what had brought everyone there — who was freezing eggs because they wanted to, who was freezing embryos with a partner, who had been trying for years, who had just gotten difficult news that morning, like I had. For the coordinator, this was probably one of many orientations she'd given. For us, it was the beginning of something that would quietly take over our lives for the next few weeks.
Audio note coming — what it actually felt like sitting in that room for the first time.