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BABY STEPS Confronting the shame of not having children with the rest of your friends, and when to think about egg freezing. BY DR. LEA LIS It’s hard to pick the “right” time to start a family. As women age, they’re less fertile, so freezing eggs as early as possible gives them the best chance to conceive when they are ready. Women are beginning to have children at much later ages, according to a recent study published on the news and research website The Conversation: “By age 25, two-thirds of high school-educated women had a first birth, but it takes until age 35 before two-thirds of collegeeducated women have had a birth.” Not all women delay having children. The national average age at which women give birth to their first child is 26 years old. As the baby shower invites start pouring in during a woman’s late 20s, many women who have not yet started families of their own begin to feel shame and worry about keeping up with their peers. So does egg freezing work, and is it safe? Dr. Fahimeh Sasan, OB/GYN, states that egg freezing has been well studied, as it is similar to IVF. There is no-to-minimal risk to a woman’s body, in terms of increased risk of breast cancer or other medical issues. Prior to 2012, the process of egg freezing was considered experimental. Eggs are much more fragile than embryos. However, the process of vitrification, a flash-freeze process, allows doctors to freeze and thaw eggs as safely and effectively as they are able to freeze and thaw embryos. Today, egg freezing and embryo freezing are equally effective. The major factors that contribute to the success of both egg and embryo freezing are the age of the woman, the number of eggs available and the time frame in which the eggs are used. Rebecca Silver, vice president of brand marketing at Kindbody, a fertility, gynecology, and wellness company with boutique clinics across the country, told me the average cost of egg freezing is $6,500. This price does not include the hormone medications that are necessary for stimulating ovaries to produce enough eggs for the retrieval. The hormone medications can cost an additional $3,000 to $6,000, depending on how much is needed. The medication often ends up costing more for older women, as a greater supply of hormones may be required to achieve desired retrieval results. On average, egg storage is $600 per year (low end). You may be able to use money in Health Savings Accounts or Flexible Spending Accounts
to pay for egg storage, which makes it tax free. Doctors typically point to 35 as the age at which fertility seriously declines, but Silver told me that 10 percent of people under the age of 35 have primary ovarian insufficiency. She encourages everyone to proactively get a fertility assessment to understand their own fertility health, and to learn how their egg reserve compares to what is standard for their age. A fertility assessment includes an ultrasound of ovaries and a simple blood test for the anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), which is one of most reliable measures of ovarian reserve. The results of 34
Zoltan Tasi
The safety of a woman’s eggs is preserved through a flash-freeze process called vitrification.
