To think young women just don’t realise... (TW: fertility/ TTC)

[DespairingALittle]

Nc as this combined with various other posts would be outing, this is a bugbear I’ve thought about a lot when ttc myself and something today brought it up again...

Anyhow, AIBU to think ladies In their late twenties who freeze their eggs (or plan to as a ‘failsafe’) don’t realise it’s not a guarantee or the same as ‘pressing pause’ on biology?

This comes about as i was chatting to childhood friend (29, same as me) about kids (I have recently had DS so this is why we were chatting about kids) and she said ‘oh x (school pal) froze her eggs recently, if I haven’t had kids by 33 I’ll do the same, x is so relieved to press pause and take the pressure off’ another friend has also mentioned egg freezing recently for the same reason, both have just said they don’t want the responsibility of kids yet but are in a ‘good’ position to do so ... each to their own but all I could think was that it’s all well and good but it doesn’t guarantee anything! Sadly the demon biology also makes it harder to carry as you age too, it’s not all about eggs!

I just think so many in my generation have the attitude that it will just happen later regardless thanks to science but everyone I know who has had kids or tried to have kids later has struggled (not a guarantee ofc but a statistical probability nonetheless)... interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this. Perhaps this is more of a ‘my circle of friends’ issue than a wider one.

YANBU - it’s a concern, many may end up disappointed in the future, not to mention already falling birth rates etc
YABU - mind your own!

Yes I agree, and I think also women don’t realise how early infertility can hit you. I was only 33 when I realised I couldn’t have another child, having had one easily at 28. We needed IVF in the end. I always assumed I had till my late 30s/early 40s to conceive easily but clearly not

I’ve been following this thread since it began and I find it really interesting how on the whole there isn’t any negative judgement (that I’ve read) for women having babies in their 20s.

On other threads, posters are often told, the brain doesn’t fully develop until 25, you should be off galavanting the streets of some town in Europe then heading back to a hostel after drinking all day… don’t have kids too young otherwise, you’re sacrificing your body, chances of success, financial and career growth, you haven’t lived a full life and you’re ageing before your time. Some people have gone as far as to say on other threads that they’d be disappointed if their DC had children of their own before the age of 30. I really wonder why this attitude seems to be developing elsewhere. Obviously not on this thread, that’s kind of the OPs whole point

None of us know what life will hold, whether egg freezing or IVF will be necessary to have a baby in our 40s or not. You can be infertile and young and not know until you try!

My mother started having kids at 32 and had her last at 40, all of us naturally conceived. She was shocked when I decided to start and finish having mine in my 20s.

I was the same age as my mum when she started having kids - 32 - when I was diagnosed with cancer. The treatment I am taking has currently stopped my periods, and there is a decent chance it will fuck them permanently and send me into early menopause.

Sorry, when I say "fuck them permanently", I am referring to my ovaries, which my chemo can damage irreparably.

This is so true. My DH and I met when I was 32 and we married a year later then immediately started to TTC.

However, I had fertility issues, we went through IVF, which was unsuccessful. Eventually we went down the adoption route, and now have 2 DDs. I’m now 53 with my DDs aged 14 and 11. I developed Long Covid 3 years ago and I’m constantly shattered and therefore my quality of life is not what it used to be.

Do I wish I’d met my DH earlier? Sometimes, sure. But OTOH, I had great experiences of travel during my 20s and 30s (both when single and with my DH), which means that I don’t feel that those years were wasted.

You can’t take it for granted that you’ll be in good health in your 50s. There’s a lot to be said for enjoying your life in your 20s and having DC later in life. (Granted, in my case I didn’t choose this, but it worked out well.)

Maybe your friends have read some of the threads on here about us in our late 30's, early 40's desperately TTC. There's every instance you can imagine on them, some being that in their 20's they were in a stable relationship as you put it that then suddenly went tits up, years then until they found another DP and a year or two + of trying to conceive and suddenly in their mid 30's + with no children. I find your post a little bizarre if I'm honest. If there's one thing I could scream to myself in my 20's it would be ... freeze some fucking eggs! Years of trying and miscarriages, maybe no guarantees, true, but I'm sure I'd have a a slightly better chance with fresher eggs. They are just giving themselves half a chance if all else fails. In the nicest way - just leave them be and concentrate on your own family.

Tbf to the authors they may be trying to include women who use a sperm donor but the sperm donor doesn't want to be the legal father and/or the woman doesn't want him to be the legal father

Me too

I have never known a medical concern involved in this technology that did not make ALL of the pros and the cons quite clear to their clients. If said clients choose to ignore that information, or consider the pros to outweigh the cons, that's their decision. So long as no one is hiding information from them, whatever they choose to do with their bodies, medically, is fine. I wish them all luck. Some of them won't have it, but a good many will.

LOL, and some will be facing menopause for themselves and puberty for their delayed children at the same time. There is NO WAY I'd want to do that!

100%. All my friends are past 30 and still haven't had kids but plan to and I'm left thinking the same (no egg freezing). It took me several years in-between my last 2 children with fertility tests and fortunately we eventually got pregnant naturally. But I don't think they've considered that it's not so easy to get pregnant and have it all go well on top of that. Beyond eggs, there's risks and factors that even younger mums encounter. But with young mums you at least don't have a big clock looming where it will literally be too late to conceive. I'm not bashing anyone for waiting until they're ready but you need to be aware of any fertility issues and time scales if you're going to put it off until quarter to midnight.

I used to think that, until it happened to me. My five year old donor egg conceived daughter is wonderful and I wouldn’t change a thing!

That sounds wonderful @anwensmummy

I'm glad you had a happy ending and have your daufher now

I know. It's awful isn't it?

There are also similar posters who would berate someone for not having a decent career and leaving herself vulnerable if she had her children early and was in a less well remunerated job than her husband.

It's very depressIng and an eye opener on here how much women judge other women for their 'choices' which aren't always choices because there are also men involved who don't always want to have children early.

I'm surprised by people saying "women know, we don't need any more education". Look around MN. There are women who think they have "secondary infertility" because they can't conceive another child in their forties, can't understand why the doctor isn't sending them for tests, etc. They genuinely don't understand that nothing's wrong with them - their eggs and reproductive systems have just aged, like the eggs and reproductive system of every woman who's ever lived. I even once read a thread here where a woman told a group of infertile women that being unable to conceive her fourth child at forty was "as bad as, or maybe even worse than" being unable to conceive a child at all, because she "couldn't understand" why her body could no longer do something it used to be able to do.

I would be very interested to know what kind of 20 year olds have the spare money and desire to freeze eggs?! They must either come from wealthy families and their parents fully support them in the decision (contentious assumption as most grandparents would probably prefer their kids settle down and make real babies instead of freezing eggs) or they earn enough money just 5 years out of uni so they can actually spend thousands of pounds on an invasive medical procedure rather than using that money for a house deposit or travel.

Surely that must be less than 0.5% of the demographic, which makes raising awareness a bit pointless.

But that doesn't apply to individual, specific women who have undergone egg harvesting. The procedure and success rates will have been explained as part of the rather gruelling process of egg harvesting.

Incidentally I have friends who chose not to, because they research he'd the success rates.

Women aren't responsible for the general sexual education of other women.

For women who have experienced infertility, do you think you’d advise your daughter to freeze her eggs at a certain time? (We experienced secondary infertility from when I got to 33yo)

I would, yes. It's not a certainty that it works but IMO its better than doing nothing and expecting it to 'all work out'. Even if she didn't need them at the end of the day its a another chance that might work.

The told me I had less than an 8% chance of IVF working for me, but I have 2 children, conceived at 43 and 45. Miracles do happen.

On balance yes. It's conflicting though, I have a one year old DE who is from a donor egg. She is my joy, and I wouldn't have her if my own eggs had worked better. I didn't wait it's just it took me a long time to conceive and then I did and then I miscarried, and then some more, and then years have gone by. Admittedly I didn't start at 23, but we thought 33 would be ok. It turns out I have endometriosis in my ovaries and so the working theory is my eggs are generally no good. I might have been ok if I'd started younger but who knows. I know I wouldn't change anything.

These people are deluded. Driven by celebs crying in insta over freezing their eggs like they have been on IVF for 20 years. The sheer cost alone in future will hit these people hard. They also seem to be under the impression you just plop one in one day and hey presto baby. Did no one tell them the sucesss rate?

Forget the "will it work down the line" scenario and give their head a wobble to shake some sense into them that middle age isn't 60 or 70, that is old age and parenting should ideally be over before you get anywhere near 50.

I'm a parent of a teenage in my mid 50s and I'd tell my younger self that 50+ is time you want back to yourself, way more than the time you thought you wanted by yourself in your 20s and 30s.

Intersting likerhislikethat, of course it's only recently we have had the choice. Before about 1930 women would have had children in their 20's ,30's and most likely 40's whether they liked it or not.

Yeah, I've researched my family tree and most of my female ancestors had at least one baby in their 40s, it just probably wasn't their first.

One of my ancestors had 13 children between the ages of 20 and 35 and probably only stopped because her husband died while she was pregnant with the youngest.

@Neurodiversitydoctor , that was probably true until the 1960s.

I was at primary school in the 1970s and there were some kids the same age as me with adult siblings who also had children at the school.