Lay buy your future fertility

Let me start off with a (true) story about my first taste of ‘fertility shock’. It wasn’t pretty….

My definition of fertility shock is – the official moment it dawns on you that you may have left it too late to have a baby!

My fertility shock came about when I was working in radio and a colleague invited me to a free seminar hosted by her client, an IVF clinic – a talk aimed at single, career focused women, about fertility - I was asked to come along to make up the numbers. I took a seat in one of the front rows, in a room solely filled with women in their 30’s and up.   

Two key things struck me that morning. An (IVF) doctor advised the audience that being ‘stressed’, was not a valid reason as to why a woman cannot fall pregnant. His reasoning? Women in worn torn Syria were still have babies mid bombing attacks...so what was our excuse?

In just one moment he diminished every woman in the room, we each looked around ashamed for experiencing first world problems.  If women can fall pregnant during a war, then what was stopping us? It struck me as a tenuous link at the time and now all these years later with experience under my belt, I know it is also bullshit.

Stress may not be the only reason you are not falling pregnant, but it certainly CAN affect your chances at falling pregnant. Bodily stress is very different to outside stresses, so to compare yourself to someone in Syria was close to ludicrous, you shouldn’t have to compare the stress of staring down a barrel of a childless future, to an awful war.

The second thing that struck me (and a lot of the women in the room that day) is that the IVF cut off age for freezing your eggs is 36, as after this time the quality of your eggs goes a bit south. The problem is that eggs after this time fail to ‘bounce back’ when they are defrosted, their quality diminishes ** (note this was a couple of years ago now and the technology with freezing is constantly improving)**.

In that small white seminar room, there was literally gasps, little shock noises escaping from the mouths of women who thought they had more time. For one poor woman in the very back row, tears. Loud sobs that I couldn’t help but feel myself, tears welled in my eyes.  Why were these women all so upset? Because we were 37 years and older and we had just been told we had missed the boat. We were experiencing fertility shock.

It hurt on so many levels, but one reason was a couple of years earlier, I told my GP that I was thinking of freezing my eggs. She pulled a sideways mouth face to me and said, I don’t think it’s a great idea. It’s expensive & the chances of it working are very very low…and back then only a few companies were doing it. They likened it to freezing an old squishy strawberry, then when you unfreeze it – it is still a poor quality old squishy strawberry but with even lessor quality thanks to the freezing/unfreezing process. Note this is for eggs only. Freezing embryo’s is a different story (which is for another blog post).

Instead, my GP’s advice at the time was to see if I could make a go of it with the guy I was seeing for the last month. I couldn’t and didn’t. I also never called any companies about freezing my eggs as a medical professional told me it was a total waste of time and money. I would have been 35 at the time.

So here I was a few years later only to find out I was past the cut off age and my time here was done. I was also very single at the time. I kicked my 35 year old self for not acting on safe guarding my future fertility. The breakfast seminar fell a bit flat after that, no such thing as a free breakfast!

That was 10 years ago, and a lot of things have changed since then. The technology has improved vastly for freezing and thawing eggs, age limits with companies have risen and costs have come down and now there are companies and health funds etc that can help with costs.

As with always, timing has never been my friend, I always feel like I was born 10 years ahead of where I should’ve been…..Had this moment happened now, they would have taken my money, sold me the hope and who knows, maybe some of that sickening pressure I had from the age of 35 to 42 wouldn’t have been felt.

In 2020 one Melbourne IVF clinic noticed a 119% increase in egg freezing (the first year of Covid) with numbers increasing even more so in 2021. There is also a trend for women in their lower 30’s to start freezing their eggs. Source: The Age 6/7/21. During Covid we were meeting less people out, dating was as uncertain as the situation around us, so it makes complete sense to put that baby stuff on hold whilst you are stuck at home alone in your tracksuit pants.

Added to this, if you are like me, you might only really be hitting your career straps in your mid 30’s and that is taking up most of your life right now. The advantage you have over me, if you are in this age demo now – is the quality of technology…and if you have spent most of the last year at home watching Netflix, you might have some savings to afford it.

I should stress here that by no means does having frozen eggs in the IVF freezer guarantee a baby down the track. Frozen eggs are not as viable as a frozen embryo but it’s a start. And my advice is, if you can afford it and you’re prepared to go through the IVF process (which can be gruelling) then it’s better for your mental health to know you have done all you can to ‘future proof’ yourself.

So now we have agreed on that, my next point is this: if you are going to freeze your eggs, one thing they may not tell you is, you can improve your egg quality before you freeze them. Consider it maximising your investment. If you are going to spend $5- $10k to freeze your eggs, you would want to make sure you have put your best eggs forward, wouldn’t you?

Research shows it takes 120 days for an egg to reach maturity and in that time, did you know you can increase your egg health? Refer here: https://www.cathminter.com/egg_quality.html

This means that if you are considering an egg collection round for freezing, you could work on your egg quality in the 3 months leading up to the process, to ensure you are giving it your best shot (pardon the IVF pun) on what you put in the freezer.

Let’s talk diet:

If you are anything like me in my 30’s, your week may look like this, caffeine for breakfast downed with a muffin or Vegemite on toast as you run through the office door. Lunch could be a salad, sushi or a stir fry. Swallow that down with a Diet Coke or a juice and you think you’ve had a healthy day. Some chocolate or someone’s left over birthday cake and that is your sugar rush to get you home. Maybe hit the gym and then a late dinner and a gulp or two of wine before you pass out on the couch. You wake up early in the morning to go for a run or F45 – you say to yourself, I am healthy, I am fit, and I am balanced and you probably look and feel great!

But then on the weekend you have a smallish night, just a couple of wines and pizza with some girlfriends and then Saturday night, is the night to party – a boozy night. All good because Sunday will be the day you lay on the couch watching trashy TV. Can I just say – NO JUDGEMENT HERE. This was me – and to be honest, it sounds like a bloody good life too!!. It was, and I have great memories (well truthfully my memory from this time can get hazy) but it was great.

But here comes the BUT. One reason why it’s easier to fall pregnant when you are in your 20’s is because you haven’t done as much damage to your eggs yet. You have only been drinking (legally) for a couple of years and that hasn’t taken such toll on you yet. But once you add a stressful job, 10 more years of drinking, late nights studying or working late, some stressful situations or trauma (breakups, loss of friends, jobs, people) all the sudden at 35 you may be feeling like you did at 20 but how are your insides looking compared to the 20-year version of yourself? Older, more tired, and maybe a shitload of toxins & stress has been sucked in over that time.

Toxins:

Now that you are in your 30’s you can afford the nice stuff: perfume, makeup and hair products – and you wear these every day as you want to look your best.  Have you ever looked at the back ingredients on these products? Can you pronounce any of them? Do any look like actual words? There’s a high chance that besides the ingredient aqua, a big percentage of the rest will be man-made chemicals that you are putting on your face to make those wrinkles seem a bit smaller. Same goes for Botox – you are putting a foreign body into yours and assuming it won’t affect you in some way?

I am not a medical person by any means but there is plenty of literature out there to support me on this. It’s not to say you can’t fall pregnant this way, there’s examples of this everywhere - we all hear stories where someone feel pregnant after a big night out. Oh, how we cringey laugh but it sure is NOT funny when this doesn’t happen to you.

So if you are investing up to $10k cash to freeze your eggs, wouldn’t you go the extra mile and make sure your investment was worth the cost. You need to ensure the quality of those eggs are the best quality you can provide, as this is your baby insurance you are putting into the future bank. Consider it short term pain (if you call being healthy painful) for long term gain (believe me you don’t get many things more long-term than a child).

So here’s my top 7 tips to increase egg quality in the lead up to an IVF egg collection

1.     Drink lots of filtered water: your body loves hydration!

2.     Take supplements: (amino acids, pre-natal are a good start but check out the book ‘It starts with the Egg’ by Rebecca Fett, for lots of details on supplements for building egg quality).

3.     No alcohol: hmmm yes, I know this bit sounds shit but it’s just for 3 months…. plan a time that avoids party season?

4.     Organic fruit, Vegetables & meat if you can stretch it: (I know it costs more but think of all the money you will save from not drinking for 3 months)

5.     No Sugar – same as the alcohol, run out the door every time someone calls out ‘cake’ in the office

6    No preservatives (as little pre-packed food as possible)

7.   Avoid takeaway unless it is wholefoods style food, such as Barewholefoods.com.au or organic cafes etc

Now is not the time for fad diets, juice fasts, crash dieting, over exercise or big nights out.

Obviously, this is just an overview and by no means meant to substitute for medical advice but get reading and Googling, the decision is then yours to make.

Let your ‘Fertility Shock moment’ be turned into an opportunity to turn a future that currently looks scary and upsetting into a positive, by doing the best you can to future proof your fertility.

The good news is that this is 2021 and you have more options available to you than I did almost a decade ago. You have choices and with choices there is hope and with hope there is happiness and with happiness there is self fulfilment. It’s a decision only you can make but make the decision knowing, you gave it your all!

Best of luck x