Earlier this week I told Today Show host Karl Stefanovic on air I had frozen my eggs because there were no more single Stefanovics left.
Whilst that was clearly a joke, my decision to go on national television and talk about egg freezing is far more serious.
Life doesn’t quite work out how you had always planned. I never expected to be staring down the barrel of 35 – the age many doctors claim your egg quality and quantity rapidly declines – single, and with no immediate chance of starting a family.
There’s not a lot of choice for women like me. You either get on with life and hope for the best, bravely decide to use a sperm donor and become a single mum – or look into an insurance policy.
Like most insurance policies, putting your fertility on ice is not a cheap option.
Medicare currently doesn’t offer rebates for women choosing to freeze their eggs for social reasons, meaning those who choose to undergo the procedure can be out of pocket upwards of $10,000 depending on their specific treatment.
This week Apple and Facebook made the extraordinary announcement they would pay for female employees to freeze their eggs.
I see this as a tremendous and innovative employee benefit. It’s not as if you are going to receive a bag full of needles on your first day in the job. It’s a perk being offered by companies that realistically understand the biological clock is not keeping up with the pace of our lives.
Many women simply don’t find the right partner to have a child with before they hit the alleged downhill fertility milestone.
I turn 35 later this month and in September underwent an egg freezing cycle with leading fertility clinic Genea.
It’s not a decision I came to lightly. I didn’t just throw a vast amount of money at a supposed problem as if $10,000 means nothing to me. I investigated my options and spoke to three separate fertility specialists before deciding to go ahead.
One of the earliest things I did was to have a simple blood test, the AMH test, often referred to as the egg-timer test. It costs $70 with no current Medicare rebate, and can tell a woman how she’s tracking with regards to her fertility.
For example another 34 year-old woman could have a far greater, or far smaller egg supply than me, even though we are the same age.
If you are not where you think you should be, seeing a fertility doctor is a good way to discuss your specific circumstances and options.
I hope that by speaking up about it, I have informed many other women in the same stage of life to me, but I don’t think people throwing around statistics that egg freezing “is not viable” is a helpful part of the conversation.
The Scientific Director at Genea, Steve McArthur, told me success rates are increasing every year. Currently success rates of thawing frozen eggs at Genea are around 90%. That egg then needs to be fertilised to create an embryo. Whether or not that embryo carries to term is dependent on a variety of factors, as a natural pregnancy would be.
There is no doubt that frozen embryos work better than frozen eggs, but telling this to single women who wish to have a baby with a partner of their choice not a donor is about as helpful as saying “You’ll meet Mr Right when you least expect it.”
However Genea Medical Director Associate Professor Mark Bowman does want single women to know egg freezing is not necessarily a fool-proof insurance plan.
“The issue is the technology is not yet perfect… there’s probably a less than 50% chance of a woman having a baby (using a frozen egg).”
Call me crazy, but less than 50% is better than less than zero.
Or call me an optimist. With scientific advances being made almost daily who’s to say that when or if I choose to use my frozen eggs the success rates won’t be much higher.
One thing which is not speculative is that age is one of the most critical factors in achieving a viable pregnancy.
“A woman is born with all the eggs she is ever going to have,” Dr Bowman says. “And when that women is in her late 30s or 40s, those eggs have been sitting there a long time and they don’t work as well.”
I personally hope I never have to get my insurance policy out of the freezer. Keeping it in there will cost around $700 a year.
However it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind, and to have no regrets. In my opinion, to be told later in life that you have no eggs left would be a far greater price to pay.
Please note Juliette paid for her own treatment.