Egg freezing: celebrities vs normal people

[ThatNimblePeer]

Just reading an interview with the actress Hilary Swank where she mentions that she froze her eggs at 37 and that was how she was able to have twins with her husband at 48. I feel like I’ve read so many female celebrities say they’ve frozen their eggs recently, and evidently at least some of the time it does work. Yet some of the research on it is discouraging, and on the mumsnet threads discussing it that I’ve seen, the consensus usually seems to be that it’s not worth the bother. AIBU to wonder why so many celebrities are doing it if the chances of having a baby that way are really so low? Do they know something that we don’t? Or is it just that they can afford to have endless rounds of egg retrieval, and later on endless rounds of IVF, and therefore the chances are higher for them than they are for people on normal incomes? I’m just curious why there seems to be such a disconnect between celebrities treating it as almost standard (it’s started to feel like), and non-celebrity women feeling it’s unlikely to be worthwhile.

I wonder (based on literally no evidence) whether they are not in fact their eggs and they’re actually donor eggs. Would that make a difference to outcomes? I don’t think you can really trust anything celebs say publicly.

Most clebs have the funds to buy more "donor' eggs and pay for as many cycles as nesscary or even buy a baby through surrogacy.
So if their eggs are no good its not an issue for the supper rich

I agree with @T00ManyBooks. You can't trust what celebs say. I thought there were poor outcomes anyway, but worse if you did it after 35.

Agree - I don’t think they’re using their eggs. Celebrities used to claim they had extra-special fertility powers to have babies later than most, but now they can say “egg freezing”. A lot of the time they haven’t had a baby at all, the clue being in “Celia Celebrity has welcomed baby Pomegranate.”

Interesting. I also slightly wondered this, but as you say I have no evidence. It seems strange though to go out of the way to mention you froze your eggs, if it isn’t actually your own eggs you used. Why say anything in that case? Just leave it unstated, if you don’t want to disclose you used donor eggs. No-one can know anyway for sure.

Yes, that was my first thought too. Obviously the public has no right to know how anyone conceived their child but if a 'celebrity' chooses to share this information, they should at least be honest.

And if Hilary Swank had her eggs frozen at 37 that's already quite old. 35 is usually considered the upper limit.

HFEA says it's a 20% chance.

They may be freezing lots of eggs.

And you don't hear about the ones where it doesn't work.

There is the possibility they lie about it being their eggs, but in cases where it IS their eggs the short answer is it boils down to money really.

For the average person on an average income, it’s probably not worth it. You’re looking at anywhere between £4k & £6k for a cycle, on average a 35 year old woman would get 10ish eggs per cycle and there’s a 50-60% chance of a live pregnancy per 10-15 eggs (again, on average). So lots of women will do multiple cycles to boost their chances, a multi-cycle package in the UK can be anywhere from £10-17k. Then you’ve got your annual fees for them to be frozen & stored. When you do decide you want to use them you’ve then got the cost to thaw/transfer- £6k a pop. The costs really do add up and for an average person it’s just too expensive to be worthwhile doing. Celebrities & the rich have the money to throw at it, they could have cycle after cycle if they wanted to.

HFEA says it's a 20% chance.

I'd imagine there are a lot of variables involved.

If Hilary Swank froze her eggs at 37, that would surely reduce her chances of conceiving and carrying to term.

Sienna Miller mentioned she froze some eggs at 40, then at 41 she went on to get naturally pregnant with her younger boyfriend anyway (I’m inclined to believe her that this is what happened, since 41 isn’t impossibly old and their combined fertility as a couple will have been improved by the fact that he’s in his 20s). She mentioned the egg freezing before she got pregnant. So evidently she felt it was worth doing even though she was 40, and she wasn’t just mentioning egg freezing as an ‘excuse’ for why she was able to have kids at an impossibly advanced age. I am curious why celebrities seem to see egg freezing so differently.

Just in the sense that, even if you’re very rich you presumably don’t want to just throw away money, and egg freezing can also be painful and invasive and comes with risks attached. There was that claim by Robert Winston that the rate of live births was only 1%, though personally I always thought that sounded ridiculous. Evidently celebrities don’t believe him either.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51463488.amp

Freezing techniques have improved a lot over recent years. I’m surprised the article above doesn’t mention this, especially as it says that Robert Winston was first interviewed back in 2016. The technique predominantly used now is called vitrification or flash-freezing and has thaw rates of 90+% for under-35s. With earlier techniques it was much lower.

Those in the US (or able to travel there) with large budgets will likely have had access to this improved technique first. Now though its use is much more widespread so I wouldn’t expect to see such differences in success rates.

Also keep in mind though that, for all those celebrities having success, there’ll be lots more you don’t hear about who aren’t so lucky.

Jennifer Aniston said she always regretted not freezing hers when all her friends told her to in her thirties. I feel Cameron Diaz did and then used them in a surrogate in her 40’s. I imagine lots of them do. How old was Janet Jackson? 48 or something.

@EachandEveryone It’s far more
likely that Cameron Diaz and Janet Jackson used donor eggs.

You’re sort of demonstrating what I’m describing, which is that non-celebrity women (at least on mumsnet) seem very sceptical that egg freezing can work. Yet celebrity women I consider intelligent seem to think it’s worth spending money on and putting themselves through risk and pain for. I’m curious about the disparity, I think income explains some of it but not all.

'Even if you're very rich you presumably don't want to just throw money away.'

Yes but they CAN throw money at it and a bum round matters far less than when you've not got a budget. They can take months and months off work, throw hundreds of thousands of pounds at it, have the best care (chef , cleaner, acupuncture, a driver) while not worrying about getting to work after an appointment and doing injections while cleaning the bathroom... It's quite different. You could do several back to back to back rounds and then when you're ready to create embryos test them for the best chance.

It's absolutely about money and freedom.

Lots of ivf type things work on a chance basis

Say you've a 10% chance, if you can afford to repeatedly do rounds, with endless transfers then the odds are far more in your favour than the average person

I also agree that there will be use of donor eggs etc that is not discussed

I had good egg reserves at 41 and was told its not impossible but realistically you do have to think that chances are less high.

Under 35 chances are higher.

After that things that improve it are good ovarian reserve, doing 3 rounds so you harvest maximum eggs, and being as young as possible.

There'd extensive research out there about success rates, I just cba to link to any of it.

just to give another perspective on this, I have had two rounds of egg retrieval resulting in two rounds of embryo freezing and the process wasn’t painful or upsetting for me at all - it am sure it can be very upsetting and stressful if you’re dealing with infertility and I also know some people find the hormones difficult and the injections very unpleasant but that’s not a universal experience. I was bloated / uncomfortable one round (only by the day of retrieval) but no issues at all. I’d highly recommend it and am glad I did it

It’s more the ages of Cameron Diaz (52) and Janet Jackson (59) - egg freezing just wasn’t that great 20-30 years ago.

Somebody saying in 20 years’ time that they froze eggs in 2025, I might believe. Janet Jackson successfully getting pregnant from eggs she froze in the 90s? Nope.

And for most of us mortals, you might as well just have a baby as freeze eggs.

@BumblingBanana. There is a huge difference in egg quality for anyone between 37 and 41.

For context, I’ve worked with an egg bank in the US. All the eggs that they sell are frozen (all from healthy donors of 35 and under) which is becoming the norm now. They guarantee a 90+% thaw rate (if it is less than this, they’ll send replacement eggs for free). Eggs are bought in cohorts of 6-8 and they guarantee at least one embryo from this (although there are certain criteria which have to be met like sperm motility level). They say 67% get at least 2 embryos and their pregnancy rate is good at 69%.

So nowadays with vitrification and high-quality labs, if you start young and do several cycles, the odds really aren’t bad. This was not the case previously when Robert Winston was warning people away.

It used to be that there wasn’t much data available as there’s such a time lag between freezing eggs and wanting to use them. Clinics would say they offered this service but had no success rates to advertise yet. This is now changing as the trend moves towards donor eggs being routinely frozen.

I’m sceptical for a few reasons. I went through IVF myself and I know the stats around freezing eggs vs freezing embryos. Frozen eggs are much less likely to be successful, especially around the time they would have been freezing eggs. Also they had both been married for several years before they had children so if they had frozen eggs wouldn’t they have used them sooner? Also there seems to be a huge stigma in Hollywood about using donor eggs. I’m not sure anyone has admitted it.

Yeah it’s interesting, there seems to be less of a taboo now about acknowledging that they used a surrogate (not looking to derail this into a thread about the ethical implications of surrogacy of which there are plenty on mumsnet, I’m just noting this point) but I can’t immediately think of a celebrity who has acknowledged using donor eggs. I guess unlike surrogacy, it’s just easier to hide?

But as others have said above, celebrities also likely will have a greater success rate with egg freezing than the average person, due to access to the most up-to-date technologies and income to do as many rounds of egg retrieval and IVF as they want.

It’s true they have a better chance of success and they also don’t have fertility issues to start with which increases their chances. I have no problem believing someone like Paris Hilton used her own eggs, or other celebrities in their thirties or early forties who used surrogates. But all these celebrities in their late forties like Rachel Weisz or Kelly Preston who were married for ages? Very likely donor eggs. I wish someone would come out and be honest about it.