Photo: Studio Romantic / Shutterstock
It's called INVOcell.
By Rebecca Jane Stokes — Written on Aug 27, 2022
I'm 34 and I want to have a baby. Like, right now.
I know, it's a problem. I literally walk down the street and see women with their fat, sweet-looking babies and must resist bizarre urges like demanding passing male strangers inseminate me or suck on the toes of the next infant I see. Neither are, you know, acceptable in polite society.
My boyfriend knows I want kids and he's down, that said: he's literally got a 2-week-old newborn, so my already over-boiled eggs are gonna have to go on the back-burner for a little bit.
But because I am so dramatic, I've been looking up stuff like freezing my eggs and in vitro fertilization and all that jazz.
It's bad.
You know like, when you're on Pinterest looking at engagement rings and then your boyfriend asks to use your computer and he sees the rings and you both awkwardly try to pretend it didn't happen? Yeah, it's like that, only about CREATING AN ACTUAL PERSON.
While it's good to know that I have options, let's face it, I'm a poor starving artist.
Between the cat food, the various pills I have to take to prevent me from pulling a Virgina Woolf, and paying the rent in a city like New York (note: I originally wrote "resent" instead of rent, I share with you to prove that my rent is so high I'm perpetually one Freudian slip away from revealing my true feelings about it), I shudder to think of how I will ever to afford to actually make a baby when the time comes.
That's why I got so damn excited about this article from The Atlantic. They reported on a new, much cheaper form of IVF that could make the dream of spawning adorable little monsters who will one day put you in a home and steal all your money a reality. There is one strange hiccup: you have to brew up these eggs ... inside of your vagina. Lol, oh vagina, what can't you do?
The process is called INVOcell, and they refer to the procedure (where selected eggs and some sperm are tucked away into your vaginal walls like a lost jade egg) as "vaginal incubation." The little suckers gestate inside of you and then are removed after five days and then implanted as usual. Wham, bam, thank you medical magical.
There is a world of positives outside of the whole "It's so much cheaper" factor. Fewer eggs are being harvested, which means less stressful hormone treatments for mom, and if you're Catholic and have stayed away from IVF, this might compel you to take a second chance.
Let's talk turkey: INVOcell costs around $6,800 TOTAL. Regular IVF? That can cost up to $30,000, and that's just the first round.
I cannot overstate how excited I am that as I'm growing older and more likely to need these sorts of treatment in order to conceive that we are living in a world where science is doing what it can to make sure that reproduction (a biological imperative) isn't just something rich people can afford.
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Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer and editor who covers relationships, pop culture, psychology, and news for Newsweek, Psych Central, Bustle, and more.