Freezing My Eggs

Hi Guys, lets get a little personal in this episode and talk about egg freezing  - "oocyte cryopreservation" if you want to get technical ;). 
I share a little about my though process on why I did it with some educational tid bits along the way if you are interested in it too!

Do you have questions about....
- Best time to freeze your eggs?
- Insurance coverage?
- What's the process like of injectables and the retrieval?

I answer them all here!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey guys, Dr. Celestine here, and welcome to another episode of the For Vaginas Only podcast. In this episode, it's going to be a little bit educational, a little bit personal, because I wanted to talk to you about my egg freezing journey. So we'll talk about my personal experience, as well as some things you can expect in general from freezing your eggs, why you should do it, when you should do it, et cetera, et cetera. So if you want to find out more, take a listen to this podcast episode. But first, let's cue the music. Hello and welcome to For Vaginas Only, the podcast about everything female. I'm your host, Dr. Celestine, bringing you important information about understanding your health and body in the way you wish your doctor would actually explain it. Okay, welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you guys so much for listening to the For Vaginas Only podcast. I am Dr. Celestine, and like I mentioned in the intro, we're going to be talking about my egg freezing journey. So not a lot of people know that I did this, so if any of my friends are listening, yes, yes, I did it. And I'm going to tell you why. But first, let's talk about what egg freezing is. So Every female is born with a certain amount of eggs in their ovaries that are scientifically called oocytes, two O's, oocytes. And this process is kind of stimulating a bunch of those eggs to be produced at once in a mature phase that can actually be frozen for a long period of time, technically indefinitely, the way that they freeze it these days. And that process is called cryopreservation. So scientifically, that's what we refer to as egg freezing. Now, I will say I am a general obstetrician and gynecologist, and the type of provider that does this is actually specialized in reproductive infertility. So they're usually REI doctors, reproductive endocrinologists, and infertility specialists. So I am not the primary go-to source for every single question that you have about this, but I know a little bit because I was very interested in REI as a specialty when I was training, and I went through it myself. So we're going to talk a So why I did it, I, yes, I do have a child. If you guys follow me on Instagram, you'll see that I have a son. He will be three soon. And I didn't really have much difficulty getting pregnant, but I'm no longer in that relationship and I'm getting a little bit older. So I just figured, I know I want him to have a sibling at some point. And I don't know when my next relationship would come about to do something like that. So I figured, let me just have this little bit of a security, so to speak, and freeze my eggs. So I've only gone through one cycle. They actually say you need to have approximately 20 eggs to make one child frozen. So I only have about half of that. So I'm probably going to do it again sometime soon before I get too much older. So yeah, so that's why I did it. So the process is really interesting. The first of all, you have to be comfortable with your doctor. Luckily, I know a lot of REIs in my specialty. I know them personally. So that was easy for me. But you out there, if you don't fall upon the same kind of circumstances as myself, you need to be comfortable with your doctor, which I say in any field, really, with your OBGYN, with your primary care doctor, you need to have that comfortability. Next is insurance and coverage, and that's a big thing. So some states actually have mandates, which are laws, for coverage for reproductive services. Sometimes they cover just the doctor's visit. Sometimes they cover the medications. Sometimes they cover both. I will say that from what I know and from what people have told me that the medications are the most expensive part. So it's great if they cover at least that. Luckily, my job and insurance company partners with this reproductive insurance called Progeny, and I had a lot of coverage for it. So I was really, really, really, really grateful for that. So that's something to definitely check first to see what kind of coverage is in your state and then what kind of coverage is with your own insurance. The next part is you kind of have to do some baseline stuff. So there's some blood work involved and an exam. So the reproductive specialist examines you, makes sure everything looks okay. They also start with an initial ultrasound to look at your uterus, look at your ovaries, and a lot of blood work. looking at a lot of different hormone levels to determine where you fall. And I also did genetic blood work to see if there's any particular genes within me that I need to know about that could potentially then be in those eggs that I'm freezing. So I actually found out that I carry something that's not... horrible. It's not a horrible genetic condition, but I didn't know before. So I carry a G6PD deficiency, which is a specific gene. But the rest of my genes were normal. So that was good. And then you go from there. So according to the group that did my cryopreservation or egg freezing, the best time to do that is between the ages of 30 and 39. And it's to preserve some And like I said, I did it. I did it last year, actually. And it kind of makes your fertility finite. These eggs are frozen at a temperature that can stay frozen indefinitely. You do have to pay for the storage. Sometimes the storage is included like a year or so in whatever cost you're paying up front. But then you get like an annual bill to keep it frozen. So that's important to know what those costs will be ahead of time as well. So anyway, on to the process. So next, I... started the medication. So I had to let them know when my period was. And I started the medications kind of like around a little bit before the time that I would be ovulating. So they kind of mimic your natural cycle, but enhance it, kind of push it a little bit to create more eggs in the ovary instead of just the one egg you would create every cycle naturally. for someone that has a regular period. So there's different medications that they give you to stimulate certain hormones like FSH, for example, follicular stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, things like that. So you go through that for a while and they monitor you. So I had to go into the office every couple of days to get an ultrasound to see what my ovaries looked like, how the oocytes or eggs were developing on each ovary, how many I had, how big they were. And that was every few days while I was doing the injection. So it takes a lot of time. I would go sometimes before work. Luckily, they open early. So I would go there like 6 a.m., 7 a.m., get my ultrasound done, get my blood work done because they check your hormone levels too at every visit, you know, and then go to work. So I did the same medications for a while, adjust the dosages here and there. And then once you have an ultrasound where your oocytes or the eggs in your ovaries are a certain size, big enough to... at least the follicle looks big enough that there will be a mature egg inside of it when they retrieve it, then that is what determines when you take the trigger shot, which is the final injection of a different medication. Sometimes it's HCG, for example, that is supposed to mature that egg inside of the follicle just before you go and do the procedure to retrieve your eggs. So before I go through the retrieval process, let's talk a little bit more about some of the risks. So They watch you very, very closely because there's a risk of something called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, where your ovaries can be too stimulated. There are certain people that at baseline are at more of a risk than others for this, and that's a lot of times why they do those baseline ultrasounds, baseline blood work to see how healthy you are or how good of a candidate you are. And then they watch you closely to make sure that these follicles on your ovaries are not getting too big and making sure that you're not in too much pain. To be honest, I've heard really horror stories, honestly, of people being super swollen in their abdomen and things being super painful and uncomfortable. But that wasn't the case for me, luckily. I don't know if they did like a lower, probably a lower amount of stimulation medication because that can play a factor. And like I said, it plays a factor on who you are and what your baseline health is and baseline status is. So this thing is not without risks. So that's why it's important that you see the doctor every few days and keep up with their recommendations. And even when you now go to the retrieval process, there is that risk of hyperstimulation syndrome around that time as well or a little bit after. So the retrieval process was interesting. It is a same-day surgery. I did have anesthesia. I don't remember it. I showed up in the morning. They took me into a back room, put an IV in me, and I walked into the operating room. You go up in stirrups just like you do in a gynecologist's office. I remember they put me in that before I was even asleep. And then they go through the vagina. First, they put in an ultrasound probe. So if you've ever had an ultrasound where the probe goes in the vagina, it's a similar thing. But that probe has a little space for a long needle. And they actually go through the vagina. look at the ovary with that ultrasound probe, they push the needle through the wall of the vagina into your ovary. And it's like a little needle that also has a suction attached to it. And they suck out each follicle that should contain an egg and hopefully a mature egg. So the procedure itself actually wasn't, like the recovery wasn't that bad for me. I had some crampiness. I think I took some Tylenol or ibuprofen. And Then I was fine after a few days. So it really wasn't horrible. Then the physician calls you the same day and they tell you how many mature eggs they harvested. So I knew when I woke up that they had initially harvested 11 eggs and then they send it to a lab to get analyzed on which ones are mature. So for me, I had 11 eggs harvested, but only seven were mature. So I have seven frozen currently. Now, I froze eggs by themselves. Some people will then inject the egg with a sperm, whether it's donor sperm or sperm of your partner, and freeze an actual embryo. I hear those thaw better. So once it's frozen, great. Then they have to thaw them when you're ready to use them. And once they thaw to be used, not all of them survive. And the survival rate I've heard for embryos is a little bit higher than the survival rate for just an egg alone when it becomes thawed. But I know it depends on the practice of each office, of each specialist, and as well as each facility that they use for freezing and thawing. So wherever you go to have this done, make sure you ask them about their specific rates of how many eggs get retrieved, how many are usually frozen, how many are usually thawed and survive. So if you consider that I have seven mature, you know, maybe three fourths will survive the thawing process, you know, so I don't really I'm not really left with that many. So I think that's why they say you need about like 16 to 20 frozen eggs to then have one baby using that process. those eggs so that was my process I know it's not the same for every single person it's more difficult for some people than others and I totally get that but I wanted to share my experience and talk a little bit about why I did it and you know I feel like a lot of people have babies naturally which I also did it's not always that easy for everybody life situations change your health status changes. And I'm glad that there are other options like this out there that we can explore, whether it's egg freezing, whether it's just going through the full IVF process and all of that. So I'm grateful for these services now for women and for reproductive health. And that's it. That was my egg freezing journey. I'm going to do it again. When is the question? Sometime this year, I think, before I turn 39 would be ideal. And yeah, so thank you guys so much for listening. Please let me know if you have any more questions about egg freezing in any of the comments below the podcast post on the For Vaginas Only Instagram page. And I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye.