THINKING ABOUT FREEZING YOUR EGGS? READ THIS FIRST.
If you’re in your 30s and don’t have kids yet, you might be starting to wonder if getting pregnant will even be a possibility for you when you’re eventually ready. There are so many valid reasons women wait to have babies, and no matter what yours is—just know that you won’t be hearing the term “geriatric” pregnancy around here anytime soon.
Maybe you’ve been focused on your career, haven’t met the right partner yet, don’t feel financially secure enough, aren't emotionally or mentally ready, or perhaps you’ve had medical concerns causing you to delay. And maybe it’s none of those things. Either way, it’s totally normal to feel like losing your cool if you see one more tabloid headline making a big deal about women of “advanced maternal age” getting pregnant.
As someone who helps women get pregnant for a living, I want you to know that you can absolutely have a perfectly healthy pregnancy and give birth to a beautiful baby in your late 30s and even in your 40s. Can it be more difficult? Sometimes, but that has more to do with the nitty gritty details of your overall health than what year you were born.
Fortunately there are a variety of options for women in your position, and once you understand how they work, a lot of your fear and anxiety will go away.
CAN WOMEN IN THEIR LATE THIRTIES AND EARLY FORTIES GET PREGNANT NATURALLY?
If you’ve seen the episode of New Girl where Jess’s gynecologist friend tells her that 90% of a woman’s eggs will be gone by the time she turns 30, you may have been left feeling quite concerned (and borderline terrified) at the state of your ovaries. If you weren’t worried about your biological clock before hearing a statement like this, chances are you definitely were after.
First of all, no one knows for sure that this 90% statistic is true. Getting medical advice from a sitcom usually isn’t recommended, but it certainly does serve as a fantastic conversation starter!
Here’s what we do know . . .
It’s estimated that women are born with somewhere between 1 million and 2 million eggs. And by the time you reach puberty, only about 300,000 to 500,000 remain. During your reproductive years, just a small fraction of these eggs will mature and be released via ovulation, while the majority of them will naturally break down and be absorbed by your body.
Scientists have hypothesized that most women have around 25,000 eggs by the time they reach 37 years of age and about 1,000 eggs when they turn 50. And this right here should give you hope that you’ll be able to have a baby . . . even in your forties!
IS THERE A WAY TO KNOW HOW MANY EGGS I HAVE LEFT?
You may have heard of the tests you can get done to see how many eggs you have left. That’s exactly what happened next on that episode of New Girl. Spoiler alert: Jess’s test results came back great, but her friend, Cece, had a bleak prognosis.
So how do you test how many eggs you have left? There are 2 commonly used methods used for measuring your ovarian reserve. One method is an Antral Follicle Count and the other is an Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH) Test.
Antral Follicle Count: This test involves a vaginal ultrasound where the doctor measures the number of antral follicles in each ovary. The follicles are small sacs that contain your immature eggs. The count of these follicles provides an estimate of the remaining eggs, but does not give an exact number or predict fertility outcomes.
Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH) Test: This blood test measures the level of AMH produced by cells within the ovarian follicles, and has been used to estimate the quantity of eggs remaining in the ovaries. But a recent 2023 study found that there’s actually no link between a woman’s AMH levels and the chances of having a baby.
Determining the correlation between AMH values and IVF success is the only thing this test is actually good for. It has no connection to your odds of conceiving naturally. If your doctor is saying that it does, get a second opinion.
It turns out that this test that’s been used for decades is only useful in determining if IVF is likely to be successful. If AMH is high, a woman is likely to stimulate well or overstimulate—resulting in a higher number of eggs retrieved. If AMH is low, she’s likely to not produce a lot of eggs during ovarian stimulation—resulting in fewer eggs retrieved.
WHAT EXACTLY IS EGG FREEZING? AND SHOULD I FREEZE MY EGGS TO PRESERVE MY FERTILITY?
The choice to freeze your eggs is completely personal, but there are some things you’ll want to consider before making your decision. For starters, oocyte cryopreservation (a.k.a egg freezing) is generally not covered by most insurance and typically costs between $10,000 to $20,000 depending on your location, the clinic, and your individual treatment plan. This cost should cover your medication, doctor visits, and the surgical procedure itself; but there are storage fees that typically range from $500 to $1,000 per year to keep your eggs on ice.
In addition to the costs, you’ll be prescribed several medications prior to your procedure to freeze your eggs. These medications are meant to stimulate the ovaries to promote the development of multiple eggs so that several mature eggs can be retrieved all at once. And while these man-made hormones are needed to make this process possible, they come with their own risks and side effects including the possibility of developing ovarian cysts, hormonal imbalances, enlarged ovaries, and Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS).
But what exactly is egg freezing? And why do women do it?
Egg freezing is a process that involves extracting a woman's eggs, freezing them, and storing them for future use. This method allows women to preserve their fertility and have the option of attempting pregnancy at a later stage in life. When and if you decide to use your frozen eggs, they are thawed and fertilized with sperm through either IVF or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), and then transferred to the uterus for implantation.
This option gives women an opportunity to have options regarding their fertility timeline, but it’s important to note that egg freezing does not guarantee future pregnancy, as the success rates may vary depending on factors such as age and overall reproductive health.
WHEN SHOULD I FREEZE MY EGGS?
If you do decide to freeze your eggs, it’s important to think in terms of quality over quantity. What most women forget is that just because you have eggs ready and waiting for you to use, doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily be able to get pregnant and stay pregnant.
About 6 months before freezing your eggs, you’ll want to begin preconception planning the same way you would if you were going to begin trying to get pregnant. This means optimizing the inflammation levels in your body, your micronutrient absorption and gut microbiome, and the quality of your eggs before your procedure.
Then once you go through the egg freezing process, you’ll want to make sure you get your body back on track after being overstimulated with all those hormones and after undergoing anesthesia during retrieval. This is what affects your future fertility, not just how many eggs you have or how many are able to be frozen.
I’m currently working with someone right now in my Overcoming Infertility program who is still planning on trying to have a baby naturally, but is also going to have her eggs frozen so she’s got a backup plan waiting on ice.
We’re getting her body baby-ready with proper preconception planning and improving the quality of her eggs using things like The Ovary Elixir by Magnolia Wellness. And in a few months, after she has her egg retrieval, we’ll do the necessary detoxing to get her body regulated again so that she’s got everything in place to get pregnant (either naturally or by tapping into her frozen eggs).
WHEN IT COMES TO HOW YOUR EGGS AFFECT YOUR FERTILITY, QUALITY ALWAYS TRUMPS QUANTITY.
In the fertility world, so many women are still obsessed with AMH levels. But those numbers don’t matter to me. You don’t need to have a ton of eggs like they need for IVF. You just need 1 good juicy high quality egg to make a baby. And that’s exactly what I help women do every single day.
If you’re ready to start boosting the quality of your eggs and get your body ready to be able to support a healthy pregnancy from start to finish, book a Fertility Consult with me. Whether you want to have a baby 100% naturally or you’re considering freezing your eggs, I can help you navigate this journey. You don’t have to do it alone. I’m on your side, and ready when you are.