Sometimes you can’t wait for things to be in place before you go for what you want — and in Lolo Jones’ case, she is doing just that. The two-sport Olympian shared an empowering and emotional video on her Instagram yesterday announcing her decision to begin the IVF process on her own.
The video also had a detailed and heartfelt caption about her journey to start a family as she approaches 40, revealing the utmost transparency in how she feels and the process itself.
The 39-year-old bobsledder and hurdler began the video in tears, lamenting that she has long awaited a partner that she could start a family, but as she reaches the age of 40, she fears she is “running out of time,” and the weight of the decision on whether to freeze her eggs or not create “a lot of stress” for her at this time in her life.
“Terrified. [This is me]15 days before I turned 40. Nothing has scared me more than feeling like I’m running out of time to have a family. I originally wanted to freeze my eggs when I was in my early 30’s. I just kept thinking I will meet my husband, and things will all work out. Well, here I am almost 10 years later, and it hasn’t,” she began.
As pregnancies starting at the age of 35 and older are considered geriatric, meaning high risk, Jones shares that her anxiety was “increasing daily” at the question of whether or not she was even fertile enough to have kids.
However, she was happy to share that “They first checked my AMH levels which showed I had a great egg reserve for my age! 3.2!! Praise God SHE’s FERTILE 🙌🏽🙌🏽 so now that I looked eligible to start the egg freezing process, my journey began.”
Her video gave small snippets of her process, visiting the doctor to get blood samples and ultrasounds, revealing she has a large ovarian cyst the size of a “tennis ball,” and footage of her administering her first round of IVF shots.
At the end of her post, she shared the following parting words, “I want to encourage women to check into this earlier. Not every woman is the same. You can be 35 years old and have the egg count of someone who is 25, or you can be 25 years old and already losing your eggs at a high rate. More updates to come on the outcome… @ovationfertility If you know you want to start a family but just can’t do it now, maybe for career reasons, or you don’t have a husband, look into freezing your eggs.”
In May, she opened up about her difficulties with dating and her struggles with staying true to her moral values, such as abstaining from premarital sex, while also receiving criticism from potential suitors.
“Tonight I blocked the guy I was talking to for 8 months,” she wrote. “My heart just couldn’t take it anymore,” Jones wrote in her post. “He gave me so many mixed signals. He would talk about marriage and kids but then keep me in the friend zone. He would never make time to see me. My heart is so heavy.”
Shout out to Lola for being incredibly vulnerable while in the spotlight and for her resilience in moving forward with her dreams despite the circumstances.
