One in five couples struggle with infertility, and the stat keeps rising each year. A couple things factor into this, like everyday issues currently created by the environment, this mixed with many young women prefering emotional stability and successful career before a family, and resisting the urge to start one often pressured from family. To complicate this, there's a recent ruling in Alabama establishing embryos as "extrauterine children.”
There's a rise in single women in their 20s pivoting from traditional methods of pregnancy and freezing eggs during fertile reproductive years. We'll discuss four pros and cons of freezing your eggs for future IVF treatment aka artificial insemination.
PROS
#1: By Freezing Eggs Early you Invest in your Power to Make Reproductive Decisions
Freezing your eggs in your 20s is an investment in reproductive autonomy. This gives you flexibility to pursue and achieve personal and career goals without having to worry about early family planning. Early egg freezing is an elective decision in no way dictated by anything other than the freedom and option to do so. Most reproductive health issues in women usually happen later approaching middle age, making the 20s the most suitable time to store the most healthy viable eggs for later retrieval and fertilization.
#2: It Empower Young Woman Economically Giving Them Time to Prosper in Careers
Egg freezing give young women an extension on healthy childbearing. The option to delay pregnancy and a family in your 20s create peek earning potential in those younger years versus forgoing economic freedom and career advancement to start a family sooner. The time accrued building careers in their 20s help elevate women into higher positions in corporate settings where they get the chance to exercise decision making powers that help more women in the workplace.
#3: Women in Their 20s Have Better Reproductive Vitality
Woman’s fertility decrease with time and age. Older women trying to conceive have a much higher chance of miscarriage and infertility, especially after 35. Your 20s are healthiest and most viable time to retrieve and store your eggs. The National Institutes of Health show that, “the rate of miscarriage in 20-year-olds was 10% and rose dramatically after age 30, reaching 53% in women over age 45.” Time and environmental factors also contribute to women's reproductive strength and ability. Women in their 20's, definitely naturally possess a greater reproductive advantage than older women.
#4: Better Chance to Date Without Worries About your Biological Clock
Traditionally young women are told to find someone right and start a family since the biological clock is ticking. This forced sense of rush and urgency sometimes create regrets and mistakes regarding dating and finding the right person for a healthy relationship. By freezing and storing your eggs for later, you won't have to worry about finding the right person right now. Instead you can focus on having fun dating, building meaningful relationships and intimacy, and ignoring the stress of racing to have children.
CONS
#1: Odds of Fertile Egg Storage Improve Little from 20s to Early 30s
Most experts agree that anyone who pursue egg freezing should ideally do so before age 35. There's no common agreement about when is too early to freeze, therefore the benefits of freezing in your 20s as a sure thing following a successful career, probably don’t outweigh the added costs and uncertainty.
Freezing before 30 years old might improve the odds that your frozen eggs could successfully become embryos and then a child, but only by a tiny amount. Also the decision to freeze in the 20's don't justify the enormous storage fees for the eggs, and then the chance the eggs won't be used at all in the future increase dramatically
#2: Freezing and Maintaining Eggs is Very Expensive.
There's no handout or discounts here. You're gonna pay out of pocket dearly for the convenience of freezing your eggs early. It's not to be taken lightly if your career or source of income doesn't afford you financial freedom and flexibility. On average, it's recommended a woman looking to freeze her eggs should have on reserve, on ice at least 20 eggs frozen for a probability of one live birth. Then at least 2 egg retrievals are required to get 20 eggs in women 35 years and up.
The average cost of this egg retrieval is about $15,000 per retrieval cycle, and the bad news is most insurance DO NOT cover this. If you luck out and your insurance does cover it, they most likely require you be married, otherwise they consider it elective versus an infertility issue facing a couple struggling to conceive. So the costs greatly outweigh the benefits when it come to doing the procedure early. So the egg freezing/IVF option favor women with high income. Most 20 something women haven't yet achieved a level of financial freedom to do this.
#3: Your Options for Desireable and Available Dating Partners Decrease Later On
Studies show use of dating apps is driven by a majority of women in their 20s, then 30s, and so on going down the older age brackets. These same studies also show women swipe right only about 5% of the time to the available slot of men presented on these apps, while men swipe right around 60% of the time to women on the apps. This mean the apps' algorhythm presents the same small group of attractive men to a larger group of women in their 20s, 30s, and older. The studies show app dating women all unknowingly compete against each other for the same men they find desireable for dating or intimacy.
This tiny group of men have more options, and most often choose women in their twenties versus thirties or forty-somethings for casual dating or potential relationships. Women in their 30's or 40's who opt to start a family later than sooner eventually discover they're outcompeted against women in their 20's vying for that small pool of desireable men.
#4: It’s Very Time-Consuming
It’s a time-consuming process and not exactly predictable, this complicates your daily routine especially with your daily To-Do or work schedule. It's not a simple process. It requires sticking to a strict treatment schedule to time it correctly everytime to your menstrual cycle. You'll have to go through stimulation, which involves about 8–12 days injecting hormones, you have to get scheduled blood tests and ultrasounds every few days initially, then daily leading up to the end of the 12 days.
This allows your doctor to monitor follicle growth and adjust your medications as they see fit. Once they give the green light and administer the trigger shot, your retrieval procedure must be exactly 36 hours later.
Note: You don't know aforehand exactly when you will be instructed to do the trigger shot, so just be ready to get it done when they give the go ahead.
Egg freezing is obviously not for every woman, but it's a growing trend among young women who have the economic means and desire to do so.
