“So I saw our favorite person today,” says Kristen shortly after you all arrive at your Friday night girls dinner, “Dr. Fitzgerald!”. Dr. Fitzgerald is basically the whole friend group’s default answer to “Hey random q but do you know a good gyno in the area?“. “Ooh I have an appointment with her next week! Gotta switch out my IUD,” says Lizzie. “Did you know I can probably leave it in if/when I freeze my eggs? So nice.” Keisha jumps in, “Wait, no way, are you freezing your eggs? My company covers it so I’m thinking about it, too.” Lizzie replies excitedly, “Same! I think I might try to do it this year.” Egg freezing talk seems to hit you around every corner lately but you haven’t realllllly thought about it yet…it’s just kind of been sitting in the back of your head for months. You think to yourself, “Should I be figuring out how to do this… like, yesterday??”

Can I ask you a personal question?

🥚 Why is everyone talking about eggs?

Thanks to considerable medical innovation, we can now give birth much later than we used to be able to. And, well, we are. Today, the median age for women giving birth in the U.S. is 30. What started in the early 2000s as a solution for women undergoing chemotherapy or experiencing other medical conditions that could cause infertility, oocyte vitrification, colloquially known as egg freezing, has now become mainstream. From egg freezing parties to employee benefits, it’s infiltrated our personal and professional lives and transformed from a hush-hush topic to something that’s widely discussed.

The basics: what it is, when to do it, how much it costs

Before we get into the social commentary on egg freezing, let’s cover the basics. First and foremost, we are not doctors, so this is not medical advice and you should 100% talk to a medical professional before making any decisions about your reproductive health. We’re not going to get into all the specifics of the process/procedure (you can read about that here), but the egg freezing journey essentially involves a combination of at-home self-administered hormone shots, in-clinic sonograms, and a minor surgical procedure to retrieve your eggs. The whole process for one cycle takes two weeks, give or take. As for when to do it, according to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, our peak reproductive years are from our late teens to our late twenties. However, we’re not fully finished developing until our mid-to-late twenties, so that’s likely when our eggs are the best quality and thus the best time to start the freezing process. But don’t feel like it’s too late if you haven’t thought about it yet - most doctors will recommend you get on it before 35. 

Of course, money is also a factor. Egg freezing costs, on average, $10,000 to $15,000 per cycle. As for how many cycles you’ll have to go through, it depends. But a 2019 study published in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics found that women under 35 yielded an average of 15 eggs in their first cycle and women 36-37 came close with 12. Some might feel like that’s enough, while others may elect to go through another cycle to improve their odds. 

On top of that, you have to pay annual storage fees that amount to an average of $300-$500 per year. Where you live and which clinic you choose tends to impact the cost. With these prices, egg freezing is often a major financial decision, but there’s reason to hope for options with less sticker shock. With nearly 1 in 5 large U.S. companies now offering egg freezing benefits and companies like Cofertility providing options to freeze your eggs for free if you donate half to a family in need, egg freezing is primed to become more accessible in the upcoming years.

So why are we doing it?

While in 2012 only 2,500 U.S. women froze their eggs, that number rose over 400% in 2020 to nearly 13,000 women freezing their eggs. Popular discourse explains the egg freezing phenomenon as a way for women to focus on their careers and delay motherhood. But Marcia C. Inhorn, a Yale anthropologist, tells a different story. According to 150 interviews she conducted with American women in 2014, the main reason for freezing their eggs wasn’t their careers - it was the lack of a suitable male partner. An NYU study of 183 women revealed the same. In other words, we’re not necessarily freezing our eggs because we’re trying to climb the corporate ladder, but rather we’re postponing motherhood because we’re not willing to settle for any Tom, Dick, or Harry. So not only is egg freezing allowing us to rise in our careers and earn more (the motherhood pay gap is even worse than the gender pay gap), but it’s also giving us the freedom to make better choices for our lives. 

What are the risks?

The flexibility that egg freezing brings to women’s lives is undeniable, but it’s not entirely that simple. A major misconception when it comes to egg freezing is that it guarantees you’ll get to give birth in the future. Unfortunately, that’s far from the case. NYU recently published results from tracking 543 women who went through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) using their own thawed eggs. Of the women who went through the process, only 39% resulted in a live birth. Definitely not a perfect success rate. However, for women under 38, it jumped to 50%. And for women under 38 who thawed more than 20 eggs, the live birth rate jumped to 70% (note that the average cycle yields 12–15 eggs for women under 38). The thing is, most women who freeze their eggs never actually thaw them because they either get pregnant naturally or choose not to have kids. So the data is limited to those who do thaw them and go through IVF (note: you have to do IVF to get pregnant with frozen eggs), who tend to be older women who aren’t able to get pregnant naturally. The two biggest factors of success seem to be age and quantity of eggs, but there’s never a guarantee. Overall, egg freezing is a key option to consider as we plan for our reproductive future, but it’s also important not to paint an unrealistic picture: egg freezing is not a perfect insurance policy. 

Because of its costs, egg freezing is often incredibly expensive and inaccessible to most people. It’s a luxury to have tens of thousands lying around for an elective medical procedure. So if your company is not covering it, it can be hard to convince yourself that it’s really necessary. Not to mention, you’re pumping your body with hormones and undergoing a medical procedure (albeit a minor one), so it can be hard on your body. And even if you do convince yourself it’s worth it, you might not actually be eligible. Women with a BMI of 40+ have been turned away due to clinics’ BMI cutoffs, citing increased risks for the procedure as the rationale. Research around BMI and egg freezing is still relatively nascent, leaving us with a lot of unknowns, which can make being declined the opportunity all the more frustrating. 

Let us know what you think by voting in our poll and leaving an anonymous comment.

  💭 Our two cents

When it comes to giving women more choice, egg freezing is one of the most empowering medical innovations of our time. And we love that people are talking about it, throwing parties to celebrate it, and getting it covered by their employers. While we recognize that it’s not feasible for most Americans from an economic perspective, it is a solid start. And as innovation continues to improve and more women elect to freeze their eggs, there’s a strong argument to be made that the process will only get more affordable and effective over time.

While we haven’t personally frozen our eggs yet, we would very, very strongly consider it if it was covered by our employers (and if you’ve already done it, we’re kinda jealous). Even if we can’t get it covered, we may elect to self-finance the process should we find ourselves single or unsure of our reproductive timeline in our early thirties. Now that we know how much it costs and what it entails, we can plan for it and save for it. We’re not going to tell you what you should do, but if having kids is a non-negotiable for you, you might want to at least consider what your plan is.

A bonus note: sperm freezing is cheaper, less invasive, and mitigates age-based male fertility issues. Legacy’s most premium offering, which includes collecting 12 vials, advanced DNA testing, and lifetime storage, is $3,995 and fully done from the comfort of your own home. Think you’ll have kids sooner? 8 vials and 5 years of storage is $1195. So while it’s not an either/or with egg freezing, if we were men, we’d take a serious look at that, too..

 ✅ You should also know…

 📔 Diary of an Egg Freezer: Consider egg freezing? Check out this 10-part audio diary chronicling the egg freezing journey of 35-year-old writer Sophia Money-Coutts. 

🧊 Freeze for free: Interested in freezing your eggs for free in exchange for donating half to a family in need? Check out Cofertility’s Split program. 

🤓 Learn more: Curious about the other facets of your reproductive health? Check out Dr. Natalie Crawford on TikTok and Instagram - she’s a board-certified OBGYN, reproductive endocrinologist, and fertility doctor. AKA a reproductive health genius!

💃 The girls have spoken

Last week’s newsletter, So... how much do your looks actually cost?, highlighted that we – women as a whole – spend quite a bit of time, money, and energy on the way we look. So we were most curious about asking you (and ourselves) about how that spending impacted your self-esteem, or maybe more indirectly, whether you felt that spending was worth it when it comes to how confident you feel. The responses to our poll question, “How is your confidence correlated to spending on beauty products?”, fell into two main buckets:

1. Positive for a time / Up and down (56%): For a large chunk of us, contributing more to our looks isn’t a foolproof way to make a lasting positive impact on the way we feel about ourselves. While it gives us a dopamine hit at times, other times we might feel like we’re chasing a constantly moving target when it comes to looking good enough. And personally, we totally relate to this. 

2. No major relation (40%):  A slightly less large chunk of us reported having a level of confidence in ourselves that wasn’t as easily swayed by trying out the latest beauty trend. While we still may enjoy indulging in these sorts of things from time to time, it doesn’t inherently have to affect our self-worth. Goals.

One thought that kept coming back to us as we read your responses to these questions is that two things can be true at the same time: (1) we can both genuinely feel more confident, more beautiful, and more ourselves by putting effort into how we look, and (2) we can also feel that society has very high expectations about how we should be presenting ourselves and those expectations do not come without their costs. Groundbreaking news: being a woman can be confusing and complicated. Even so, we hope you still enjoyed thinking about this contradiction as much as we did.

💌 Up Next

That’s all for today! If you liked this edition of Not That Personal, we think one of your friends probably will too – refer one (or two or three) below. ;)

Have something to say? We’d love to hear it – reply to this email or leave an anonymous comment here :) 

Up next? So…why can’t I stop over-apologizing? 

💖 S & J