To wonder why more parents don't encourage daughters to freeze eggs?

How the other half live! As soon as I went to university my parents chucked out my bed and made my old room into a study because they assumed that was the end of their responsibility towards me.

Um, don’t loving parents want their children to have the best opportunities and all the outcomes they want in life? My parents also encouraged me to get child-bearing out of the way before 35, if I wanted them at all (didn’t work out that way, but they did!!). Like we all know now (but wasn’t so well known back then), they knew that chances of successful conception and healthy pregnancies decrease with maternal ageing. They also knew that child-rearing is exhausting and better do it when you have max energy. Really not a big deal!

I think it's a strange idea!

Maybe in a world where it's 'normal' for your parents to buy you a central London flat, and pay for your wedding, it'll be 'normal' one day for them to encourage and fund fertility treatment at a young age. For most people none of those things are a given nowadays.

Your PARENTS encouraged you to have children in your 20s?? What's it got to do with them?

And this!

This. And yabvu because you are missing several 'somethings'! No doubt outlined by subsequent posters in their multitude

This is the most ridiculous thing I have read. So I should’ve asked my parents about egg freezing when I was 18-25….thats incredibly young. I also had a child by 24 and now have three. Why on earth would I go through that expensive unnecessary process when I had 3 successful pregnancies. Perhaps if I got to my 30s and circumstances were different but 18-25? You have to be joking.

I think you sound quite entitled

There's a lot of incorrect information about modern IVF, so you won't get much understanding. Eggs are retrieved through a needle, they're not chicken eggs removed through open pelvic surgery 😆 With current vitrification success rates are not dissimilar to fresh IVF. 3 euploid embryos have a success rate of 95% and eggs from a healthy 26-32 year old would make this easier if you knew you wouldn't be able to TTC naturally under 35. Success rates are high with donor eggs for a reason and that's why egg freezing is so useful. It doesn't have to be so costly, transfers can be natural and attrition is absolutely normal and should always be factored into treatment and how many eggs you'd collect. Just like natural conception only has a 20% success rate in your twenties, you're using the same eggs so why wouldn't there be attrition.

The age you suggest is silly, but a fertility check up in the late 20s and if results suggest it, collecting enough eggs around age 30 would make sense. Having been in the 'infertility world', the one thing that I hear the most is "I wish I'd frozen eggs when I was younger" followed by "I wish I'd been told about this sooner". From that aspect you're not unreasonable OP.

And yes, I've had IVF and been hospitalised with OHSS. I'm a rape survivor and didn't find the 4-5 three minute internal scans to be distressing nor the needle that's used to extract the eggs when I was unconscious. It's not as bad as a smear and we do that. I had nearly 60 follicles with PCOS but it's a lot easier for most people who have 10-20 who would be trying to freeze eggs for the future, rather than as a fertility treatment. OHSS is a small risk to a small number of people and managed through correct protocol and aftercare. Anyone should be seeking out a decent doctor just like with any other medical procedure, and be fully informed.

Because I wouldn’t have wanted my eggs sat in a freezer.

Also, plenty of women (myself included) conceive first time TTC well into mid-late 30’s.

I was 36, 38 and 42. I would add though that I was never broody nor particularly bothered about having children (all DH’s idea 😂), so wouldn’t have made any special efforts to get pregnant.

I would have been horrified if my parents had suggested egg freezing!!

@2024onwardsandup but all of those things can happen in egg freezing cycles too. Sounds like it worked well for you but there's no reason why you can't have cancelled cycles in egg freezing. You can respond poorly to stims and need to try a different protocol. You can get OHSS (in fact it's more likely the younger you are and the higher your AFC). So doing that whole process, knowing that there is a very real chance of complications or unforseen circumstances, on the off chance you want children in future? Or the off chance you might be part of the small percentage that undertakes IVF? That's a massive undertaking.

I'm glad you had an easy experience.

It's a relatively modern thing to wait until you're mid-thirties before seriously thinking about having your first child.

Every single one of my friends are 36 and still have the "in a couple of years" frame of mind. I'm guessing none of them have kids in the end.

Egg harvesting isn’t a bit of fun. It effing hurts

There's a while lot of difference in terms of success in freezing eggs, and freezing embryos.

It's a lot of money for that might not be needed, might not be successful, and it's putting a huge amount of pressure on the 18 year old. Even offering that to your Daughter gives her the idea of expectations.

But we ARE society. If we want to change this, its up to us. My parents were delighted when one of my sibs had kids but were never pushy eith the rest of us.

@Millsmills thst sounds really tough.

i imagine its a different experience when you’re egg freezing with no fertility issues at the time - eg I didn’t have any cancelled cycles etc.

Certainly I think emotionally it’s a lot less traumatic - because it’s about a future that you may or may not want in the future rather than something you want now that you’re struggling to achieve. Which I imagine makes the full IVF cycle far more emotionally difficult.

and as said of course there are risks regardless. I was fortunate not to have bad experiences.

so all i can say is that for me multiple rounds of egg freezing was not difficult as a process 🤷‍♀️

i wouldn’t be gifting it to my nieces at 18 however no matter how much money I had unless they were gong to undergo an operation etc that impacted on their fertility

and I wouldn’t say it was for everyone - for me it was something I’m glad I did. But if I hadn’t don’t it - I think probably I would have ended up in the same place of being at peace with not having children. But it wiuld
have been a harder journey for me to get there.

Yes this. But we are conditioned by society to believe we will regret it if we don’t have kids and that that regret will last the rest of our lives.

This!

I found it invasive. Not just the injections but the repeated internal scans to check how the follicles are growing. Also I had my first few retrievals under GA not sedation.

And all for nothing.

People struggle with the idea of destroying embryos, not eggs. Women who menstruate “destroy” one or more eggs every month!

For the vast majority it would be a completely unnecessary waste of time.

A friend of mine nearly died from this procedure. Incredibly risky!

You are JOKING!!!!

I found it incredibly invasive. Months of medications and trans vaginal scans and cancelled cycles, injections 4 times a day, 6 rectal pessaries a day, failed sedation for retrieval so being awake but paralysed throughout, abandoned fresh transfer, OHSS and ascites needing hospitalisation, over a month of recovery....

Worth it now I'm carrying my husband's baby, not worth it in my early twenties on an off chance I might one day need eggs.

@Blisterly @IdgieThreadgoodeIsMyHeroine because that causes it’s own problems. Reversal, depending on how long after the initial procedure, can have as little as 60% success rate for there being sperm in ejaculate.

Almost all vasectomies can be reversed. However, this doesn't guarantee success in conceiving a child. Vasectomy reversal can be attempted even if several years have passed since the original vasectomy — but the longer it has been, the less likely it is that the reversal will work.