Since elective egg freezing has mainstreamed relatively recently (in the past ten years or so), it’s understandable that many people feel unclear about and uncomfortable with this concept. Recently, I’ve heard people share things they believe or have heard about egg freezing that were simply inaccurate, and I wanted to clear up some misconceptions.
Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, so talk to one before making decisions about your health.
To review briefly, egg freezing provides an opportunity for women to preserve oocytes (eggs from their ovaries) to potentially use via IVF in the future. Over time, ovarian supply declines in number and quality, so egg freezing makes it possible to “donate” your own eggs to yourself for IVF should it be the best way for you to grow your family. (IVF, or in-vitro fertilization, is a process that facilitates a pregnancy by joining egg and sperm in a lab so embryos can develop and be transferred to a woman’s uterus).
The egg freezing process is essentially the first phase of IVF – ovarian stimulation (using medication, mostly by injection) to stimulate multiple eggs to develop during a menstrual cycle, followed by a trigger shot which induces ovulation, and a retrieval procedure to obtain the eggs and preserve them via vitrification (a type of freezing).
Question: Doesn’t maturing multiple eggs in the same cycle make you run out of eggs faster? No! Every cycle, your ovaries begin maturing multiple eggs. Then one dominates, matures, and ovulates, while the rest disintegrate. Ovarian stimulation medications help a larger number of these eggs mature so they can be retrieved and preserved.
Myth: Freezing my eggs is an insurance policy. The insurance policy analogy is a false promise, because unfortunately there is nothing that can guarantee anyone a baby. However, it sure is a great maybe. Younger eggs and a greater number of eggs increase the odds of a successful IVF outcome – but Hashem decides!
Myth: You shouldn’t think about freezing your eggs until your late 30’s. This is so very WRONG! It makes me crazy that some doctors (not fertility doctors, of course!) still tell this to their patients! This is leading patients astray, to possibly end up spending faaarr more (at best) on a process that could have been a lot more cost-effective and successful a few years earlier.
Please don’t take advice from a general practitioner or gynecologist about egg freezing. These professionals simply aren’t informed. Speak to a reproductive endocrinologist.
The recommended age range for egg freezing is about 28-34. At a younger age, you’d generally get both a greater number of eggs and healthier eggs in a cycle. Of course, it isn’t all-or-nothing, and all is not lost if you didn’t do it during this age range. Also, it’s very important to remember that every woman is different and gets different results in each cycle, regardless of her age. However, the recommendation to wait until the late 30’s is emotion-based (i.e. “let’s kick this can down the road”) and NOT based on the actual science of fertility.
Frum women typically plan to have larger families than the standard American family of 1.94 children. (Nothing wrong with 1.94 children). Therefore, guidance about fertility preservation needs to be culturally appropriate. We might choose to freeze our eggs sooner than same-aged secular women might, to have the opportunity to potentially add more children to a family later.
If you aren’t ready to freeze your eggs, but want to learn more about your fertility, you can set up an appointment for an assessment at a fertility clinic. This will typically involve bloodwork and possibly an ultrasound. Please ignore anyone who poo-poos you, and go ahead if you want to do it. It’s your body!
Myth: Freezing eggs is something secular professional women do so they can build careers — what does this have to do with good, frum Bais Yaakov girls? So many stereotypes and misconceptions to unpack here. First, the data show that most women who freeze their eggs do so because they are looking for a partner to have children with. Honestly, it’s such a nasty, misogynistic trope, that selfish women have to rely on fertility treatments because they couldn’t be bothered to settle down when they had the opportunity.
Today, rabbonim (yeshivish, chassidish…) who are informed in the fertility world are very supportive of frum single women freezing their eggs. It is considered a normal and appropriate form of hishtadlus that a vast number of frum women are utilizing. And discussing and researching egg freezing is not a lack of tznius nor a lack of emunah.
Freezing my eggs feels like giving up. Definitely acknowledge and explore the thoughts and feelings that get triggered by this topic. There can be a lot of pain and grief and I don’t want to minimize or sugarcoat. It’s a big, expensive, emotional deal that many of your married friends will never know from (some do). But freezing your eggs does not mean you are giving up on having a baby the “old-fashioned” way, and it doesn’t mean you failed. It doesn’t make you a less adequate or natural woman. It means you are giving your future self the gift of options. Freezing your eggs can make you feel sad and bring up deep grief and fear, but it is not sad. It is a courageous act of creating life.
I hope this was helpful, and answered some questions or allayed doubts you have about this topic. Please do reach out to me, you can be anonymous if you choose, and I can do a follow-up post if people would like to learn more.
