Neha Pathak, MD, FACP, DipABLM: Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered podcast. I'm Dr Neha Pathak, WebMD's chief physician editor for health and lifestyle medicine.

If you're in your 20s or 30s, you may be deep in the process of building a career, creating and sustaining relationships, finishing a degree, or, most importantly, finding out who you are and what you want out of life.

And in the middle of that, the question of starting a family may have crossed your mind, even if it's just a fleeting thought or something you're considering maybe someday. Usually, the conversation about family planning and egg freezing doesn't happen until someone's already feeling the pressure of something like a ticking clock.

And by then, the options and the emotional weight can feel overwhelming. That's why we want everyone to know that it's important to have the conversation earlier. And we're doing it in a way that's honest, practical, and completely judgment-free.

Whether you're curious about egg freezing for the first time, have been putting off the appointment because you don't know where to start, or are feeling anxious after falling down a rabbit hole of Reddit threads and social media posts comparing everyone else's results to yours, we're gonna walk through all of it: what the process actually looks like, how long it really takes, what the testing does and doesn't mean with regard to fertility, how much egg freezing costs, and, most importantly, how to make the decision from a grounded, informed place rather than from fear or social pressure.

Because this is your body, your timeline, and your choice, and you deserve real information to make informed decisions.

But first, let me introduce my guest, Dr Temeka Zore. Dr Temeka Zore is double board-certified in reproductive endocrinology and OB-GYN and is a fertility specialist. Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered podcast, Dr Zore.

Temeka Zore, MD: Thank you for having me today.

Pathak: So before we jump into our conversation for today, I'd love to ask about your own personal health discovery, and whether that's with your work with patients, when you're communicating with patients. What are you finding that is most exciting to you about the work that you're doing?

Zore: Yeah, I think it's a really interesting field that we have and also just an interesting time to be here and talking about this just because of the plethora of information that we have at our fingertips right now.

But a very common theme I tend to see amongst patients is, "Why didn't we learn about this sooner?"

When we're talking about fertility and egg freezing and just how our fertility declines over time, a lot of us just don't get that education at all. You kind of have some health information in your high school career, and then we kind of don't get anything else from there until you're then thinking about all the next steps.

And so it's always a question of, like, "How did I not hear about this sooner?"

Pathak: I love that. So then that leads me to our first question. So let's start there and really help people understand what is actually happening to our egg quality, quantity, over the course of our lives, from the beginning when we're born to when we get to our 20s and 30s.

Zore: For women, we are born with all of the eggs we'll ever have. It's usually one to two million eggs at birth, and over time we are just going through all those eggs, thousands at a time, until we eventually have no more eggs and we go through menopause.

So our fertility is much different than male fertility, where they are reproducing sperm all the time.

And so women have this finite period of time where you're thinking about having kids and also where your fertility is kind of at your peak fertility. And so it's always a combination of, if you're not quite ready to have kids, what are options we can do to take so that you have those options in the future?

Pathak: And what would you describe as the age timeframe of peak fertility?

Zore: That peak fertility is usually in our late 20s to very early 30s, and for a lot of women, they're just not ready to have kids yet. So then it's a question of talking to yourself of how many kids do you think you may want? Do you even want kids? And when do you think you want to have them?

And that lets you and your provider kind of build a plan for what your options could look like.

Pathak: Great. So that's really helpful. So then for that person in their 20s and 30s, how do you talk to them? How do you counsel them about the right time to freeze their eggs?

And I'll say this: As a primary care doctor, I know that when someone's in their 20s and 30s, they're not necessarily thinking about future issues, where it's not really conversations around chronic disease or chronic conditions.

So this also seems like something that people may not necessarily even be thinking about until they're ready to jump in. So help us understand how you counsel people.

Zore: It's always a tricky one because, in reality, the earlier you do it, the better. The more eggs we're gonna get to freeze and the better the quality of them is gonna be.

But that said, when I'm having a conversation with, like, a 23-year-old, do they need to come in and freeze eggs today? Well, no, probably not.

They have a very long reproductive window ahead of them. So then when you're kind of stepping back, it's like really looking at those women between their late 20s to their early to mid-30s, where maybe you have a work benefit. I know there are a lot of people who are lucky and their job may cover this process. Others, they may not.

But maybe you have a work benefit you can take advantage of. Maybe you know you want to go to grad school, med school, law school, you want to open a business, and you know that your fertility timeline's going to be delayed. That's kind of that great time to come in, just start talking about what options look like.

And certainly because this conversation, I think we are having it more, I think a lot of patients are coming in saying, "Well, my friend did it," like, "Someone at work did it." So you're hearing about it more, and then it's a question of learning, like, is it right for me? And also dispelling just some common myths that people have around fertility preservation to make them just feel more comfortable.

Pathak: So what are some of those myths?

Zore: The two most common, I'd say, are gonna be that most people think that when you come in and start this process that it takes over a month to do, when in reality this process actually takes about two weeks from the start of your injections until an egg retrieval. So it's much shorter than most women think.

Another big one is that for women who have IUDs in place, a lot of them think they have to take it out, and you actually don't. That IUD can stay in place, and it does not affect outcomes of this process.

Pathak: Okay. That's great information because I know whenever you're trying to do something for your health, we have a tendency to put up a lot of barriers and kind of think about how complex that's gonna look. So those are really great myths to dispel.

I wanna dive deeper into what you said earlier.

So we're talking about more quantity of eggs. Tell us how quality deteriorates as well.

Zore: Yeah. So quality also tends to be very related to age. The older women get, the worse our quality becomes. And that's just because, again, those eggs have been with us since birth. They are going through all the ionizing radiation and oxidative stresses and everything that all of our cells go through, except most of our cells in our body turn over many, many times throughout our lifetime, whereas our eggs are with us from birth.

And so as we start to get older, as those eggs are trying to kind of pull apart and have their final maturation process to have the opportunity to be fertilized with sperm, that process of separating their chromosomes becomes less efficient.

And so the eggs that we are left with then have more errors, basically. They might have too many chromosomes. They may have too few chromosomes, and that's why you start to see fertility rates go down as we get older and miscarriage rates start to go up as we get older.

Pathak: So you started telling us how you enter this conversation, the sort of long window that you have to have this conversation with someone in their early 20s. Are there certain medical or family history factors that might make you have this conversation earlier or encourage someone to act sooner?

Zore: Yeah. I think there definitely are a few health instances or chronic health conditions to think about.

From a family history perspective, if you have a strong family history maybe of early menopause where maybe, like, a mother, sister, or aunts have all gone through menopause in their 30s or very early 40s, you may want to come in sooner because there are some genetic links to early menopause.

And so maybe it's worth it to come in, have the evaluation, look at your egg reserve, and kind of come up with a plan.

And the other one—we've certainly seen instances of this—are women with known endometriosis, where, again, just because you have endo does not mean that you can't get pregnant or that you will have fertility issues, but certainly it can increase your risk of having them.

And so those women may also come in a little bit sooner to then deal with that and choose to freeze their eggs or freeze embryos at a younger age.

Pathak: I see this a lot more in my practice as well—people with irregular menstrual periods. So is that someone you're also going to be having this conversation with?

Zore: So there's so many different reasons for irregular periods that it depends on who you are because if you're the person with irregular cycles due to, like, polycystic disease, your follicle count's actually probably quite high. And so it's not, quote, "like an emergency or rush," but still worth it because, you know, your period's still a vital sign.

We wanna know, like, why are your cycles irregular? What can we do to help you out with that? How will that, or how could that, affect your fertility in the future? But I think it's always worth it to know, like, what your normal is. For some women, having cycles every 24 days is very normal for them.

Others may have cycles every 35 days, and that's very regular for them. So it's understanding what your regularity is, knowing that having a month or two here and there, and having an off cycle, is very common, but just knowing what your normal is and then what isn't.

Pathak: That's great. That's really helpful. So then I'd love to shift into how to get started. So you've had this conversation, you've counseled women, you've encouraged them to think about it and the reasons why they may wanna think about it. Where should they start? Do they need to make an appointment with their OB-GYN, go straight to a fertility specialist?

Zore: Yeah. So you actually have the opportunity to just go straight to a fertility specialist. But for some women, you may choose to go to your primary care or your gynecologist first. You can usually start early conversations, you can start to get some blood work drawn, or just get even recommendations.

Um, I find that most patients end up getting their recommendations from their primary providers or from friends who enjoyed their experience and are wanting to share the names of their fertility specialist. But unlike many other fields where you have to get almost like a referral to come see us, you don't have to for fertility.

You can call a fertility clinic directly and immediately come in and talk to us.

Pathak: Then talk to us a little bit about what fertility testing looks like. So you mentioned blood work. What does it entail?

Zore: When you're coming in, what we're really looking at is your ovarian reserve. We wanna know, like, if you ended up cycling, how many eggs can we get out in a round, in a cycle?

So by that, we are usually doing a vaginal ultrasound where we're counting all the small antral follicles, and we're giving you a number. And from there, we can gauge how many eggs we expect from one retrieval cycle. The other information we can use or get is an AMH, or anti-Müllerian hormone, which is also a hormone produced by all those small follicles we can see.

And in reality, the more follicles you have, the higher your AMH, kind of, and vice versa. That said, AMH is not a perfect test. We can have instances where your AMH is falsely lower or higher than we'd expect based on what your count is. And so I always say, like, you know, the AMH, it's an assay, it's a test, it's not perfect.

It gives us some information, especially if you don't have access to an ultrasound. But also, I guess, when you're thinking about coming in for treatment, I can't tell you your fertility. I can't tell anyone, like, "You are fertile, but this person is not." And so it's really important to understand, like, the distinction between the two.

Pathak: That's really helpful, 'cause I think sometimes people will come back and say, "Well, I think I'm normal, so I can maybe wait." So what does that, quote-unquote, "normal," even mean? So I think it's really helpful that you said you're not telling someone they have normal fertility or not.

Zore: Yep. I'm not telling someone they have normal fertility. I'm telling someone, like, "Yeah, your follicle count may be normal for your age or higher or lower than expected, but just because your AMH and your follicle count are normal today, that does not predict that it will be normal in six months, a year, or three years."

And so everyone's decline, like how quickly we lose eggs, is gonna be different. And in reality, for a young person, I do not expect, like, a 30-year-old to have, like, a massive drop in their follicle count in a year's timeframe. And if that's what they're gauging off of—"I can wait now or do this now"—but I think it's important to know, like, your count can drop.

And, like, when I say that your counts look normal today, that's today's marker. And in six months or a year, that could definitely be different.

Pathak: Are there things that might hasten that process, or is that just sort of very individual to that person? Are there lifestyle factors, for example?

Zore: In general, age is certainly number one. The older we get, like, the more rapidly we are going to start losing eggs. But then from a lifestyle standpoint, smoking cigarettes—we know, like, good studies that show advanced ovarian aging, earlier age to menopause. It truly can affect fertility. And probably just extremes of lifestyle.

So, like, very heavy drug use, very heavy alcohol use—not great for the ovaries. Appropriate diet, regular exercise, alcohol, caffeine in moderation—you know, those should not have massive impacts on ovarian reserve. So then a lot of times it's just genetics.

Pathak: So then walk us through the process itself, the egg retrieval, egg freezing process. What does that look like from the moment they've had their consultation with you to the actual retrieval?

Zore: For that part, it surprises a lot of people how quick it can be. Um, you know, our goal as fertility specialists, I'm not trying to make this, like, difficult for you. Like, I want to work around your life and do this when it works for you, when you have the time, and you can do this for the two-week timeframe.

And so usually we'll have patients come in. It's usually about a 30- to 45-minute consult where we're talking about the process. Um, we'll do the ultrasound and blood work, and then there are different times of the menstrual cycle that we can start. Starts can happen with a period. They can happen after you ovulate a few days later.

We can do birth control pills. We can do progesterone pills called, uh, norethindrone or Aygestin. So there's different ways to get someone into their starting cycle. Um, and that may be based on their timeline, their availability, work schedule, travel, et cetera. We're just trying to make this flexible. And from there, it's usually two to three shots a day for anywhere from 10 to 12 days on average, and then the egg retrieval is two days later.

And so it usually ends up being about a two-week time period where I tell patients the thing you have to change the most in your life really is gonna be, like, lifestyle, is activity. About a week into shots, we'd have someone just go down on their exercise intensity.

Walking, hiking is great. Intense, like, marathon training, things like that, we're gonna pause for probably about a week and a half. But in general, you can usually live your life. You can go to work. We have you take off the day of your egg retrieval. We try to really fit this into their window.

We also tell them, like, minimizing travel in that timeframe, since we are seeing patients so much in that two-week window, that we're kind of doing this in a window where they're here and they have some flexibility in their schedule.

Pathak: And what are some of the other side effects that you counsel people around in terms of how they're going to feel, how intensely they may feel some of the side effects? How do you counsel folks so that they can also be prepared for those impacts?

Zore: Commonly, I'm gonna say, like, most people are gonna feel the physical side effects. So we're thinking bloating, some constipation, fullness—that is all very common. Maybe some fatigue. I expect those things. I would say for many women, true mood symptoms are pretty rare. Now that said, like, there are some women who, if they have, like, very severe PMS or PMDD, like within normal periods, they may feel that drop in hormones more than the average patient.

But we're usually aware of that, so we're trying to kind of preempt that and understand, like, hey, you may expect this. It may be a little worse than normal. Here are some things we can do to try and minimize that. Um, but for the most part, you are usually able to go about your life. But I expect the cramping, the bloating, the fullness.

Usually that may have more to do with, like, how many follicles are growing, but it truly runs the spectrum. I see patients who get five eggs who have tons of symptoms. I have patients who have 30 eggs who feel symptoms for a couple days and then are fine. And so I think everyone is truly individual in how they may feel both during and right after that retrieval.

Pathak: So you kind of started to answer my next question, but I'm really curious. So you said earlier there's no normal in terms of, yes, you're normal fertile, fertility, you're not. Is there success? So what would you count as successful retrieval?

Zore: So because everyone—any individual—I can have three 30-year-olds come in, and their follicle counts can be vastly different. And so success for one may be not for the other. The average follicle count for a 30-year-old is probably around 20 follicles. Like, if I scanned you, that's what I would expect to see.

So if that woman comes in with 20 follicles and I get 10 eggs, well, that's probably not great. Ideally, we're probably getting 60% to 100% of the starting number of someone's baseline count. If that same 30-year-old has a count of 10 and we get 10 mature eggs frozen, that's pretty successful. And they may have to cycle more than one time, um, but overall, they had a great round.

They responded exactly how we expect them to. So I think the biggest one is managing expectations for patients when they're coming in. It's really hard not to compare yourself to your friends or what you think is good, bad, or average. And so it's like meeting people where they are. I, again, I have friends who'll come in—one person gets 30 eggs, and the other person gets, like, 12 eggs, but that was her original count.

And so it's hard not to, like, look at that and say, like, "What happened? Why?" when really that was your count to begin with. So it's always about coming in, knowing expectations, knowing that it may not take one cycle, it may take a couple, it could take one, but being aware of that and just what to expect.

Pathak: So when would you recommend an additional cycle? Is there a certain number of eggs you'd like to see in the bank so that someone can then sort of rest assured that in the future you're gonna be coming back to something that's gonna give you a reasonable chance of pregnancy in the future?

Zore: There's several options, like calculators online. I always have patients, like, take a look at them and just kind of play with the numbers based on their age and see, like, what number feels kind of good for them in terms of probabilities. I tell everyone, egg freezing is never a guarantee.

Like, no one can promise you that the eggs you freeze will result in a pregnancy or a live birth. But certainly, the younger you do this, the more eggs you have, the better your chances. So usually in your 30s, like early 30s, probably around 20 eggs gives you pretty high chances of one to two kids.

And how I like to approach that conversation is, okay, think about when you think you want to have kids and how many you want to have. Because the 30-year-old who's sitting in front of me who knows they don't want kids until they're close to 40, but they want three kids, that's, like, a different patient than the 30-year-old who is getting married and wants to start a family in one year and just wants two kids.

And so that counseling may look a little different. And so I think it helps to kind of know who you are in that situation so that we can, like, counsel you about, like, what's gonna feel best.

Pathak: And then can you just talk a little bit beyond that? So now you've frozen the eggs. What does that look like in terms of the banking for the next, whether it's a year or 10 years out? What is someone looking at for that part of the process?

Zore: And so once eggs are frozen, you're pretty much done. You typically will pay, like, a yearly storage fee to the clinics, and that cost may vary depending on where you are in the country. And then you do nothing. Those eggs, they are kind of—they are deep-frozen in liquid nitrogen, so whether you choose to thaw them in one year or 10 years should not make a difference in outcomes.

But they're there until you need them, and that's, like, the whole—that's the point, is, like, having them as a backup option. You may still choose to get pregnant on your own. You may have all the kids you want on your own, but at least you know you have these eggs as another option for you.

Pathak: Once you decide, "Okay, I'm going to move forward with thawing the eggs," what does that look like? Whether that's a sperm donor or someone that you're in a relationship with.

Zore: Yep. So once someone's coming back to maybe use those eggs, we're talking about, like, do we have a partner? Are we using a sperm donor? If you have a partner, that person will usually come in. You guys will get genetic carrier screening done, and that partner will get a semen analysis. And then we talk about, again, goals.

And those, depending on how many eggs you froze, are we thawing all the eggs? Are we gonna choose to thaw half of them? Pros and cons to both of those thought processes. And then really your part's done. Your partner may come in to freeze a sperm sample, or if it's donor sperm, we're getting that donor sperm sent to us.

We thaw sperm, um, we thaw those eggs, and then we are making those embryos. That process of making embryos usually takes about six to seven days, and then if someone's doing genetic testing on the embryos, that may take an additional 10 to 14 days to get those results back.

Pathak: Okay. Really helpful. And then you're taking the em—so the embryo stage is when you're doing the implantation, and then...

Zore: And it doesn't even have to be. And so that's al—also a good point, is that, like, let's say you come back with a partner and you just wanna know what you have. You can choose to thaw these eggs, make embryos, and usually everything gets refrozen again. So you may have the partner and want to make embryos, but still not be ready to get pregnant, and that's totally fine because everything is just refrozen, and then in the future, you can then choose to thaw one embryo at a time to then get pregnant.

Pathak: That was really, really helpful. Thank you for taking us on that journey.

So I wanna go down then some practical considerations when it comes to things like costs. So you mentioned that you're paying for banking frozen eggs.

So help us understand, from the beginning of that journey, what costs can look like.

Zore: So usually you're paying generally a cost for the consult that you're gonna have. The egg-freezing process itself is going to be a cost, which can vary depending, again, on where you are in the country. It probably ranges anywhere from $6,000 or $7,000 up to, like, $10,000 or $11,000 per cycle. And then you're throwing in some medication costs, which can vary also, but usually maybe a couple thousand dollars or a little bit more.

Some insurance carriers will cover this process, especially if you're in, like, the tech finance industry. Like, they tend to have a lot of benefits for this, which is fortunate for those patients. And then from there, you're typically paying yearly storage fees until at some point you either say, like, "Hey, I don't want these eggs anymore because I either had the kids I want, I don't want kids anymore, or I just don't need to use these eggs."

And then at that point you let the clinic know, and they would discard the eggs. So you would be paying yearly storage fees until you decide what you would like to do with those eggs.

Pathak: Okay. And then this could also continue if you decide to freeze embryos in the future.

Zore: Exactly.

Pathak: And then talk to us a little bit about, and you mentioned this earlier as well already, with regard to expectations. Because there's so many pieces of the process, from egg retrieval to freezing to then potentially creating embryos to potentially freezing those embryos.

So talk to us a little bit about what people should be expecting with regard to having a future pregnancy using these eggs.

Zore: With the future pregnancy, like I, again, usually like to direct you to those calculators to get ideas of probabilities. For some patients, they really want to optimize, maximize numbers. And so even if we get 15, 20 eggs in one cycle, they may choose to cycle again just to really give us higher options.

Again, 50 eggs does not guarantee me—it's not a 100% chance—but a higher chance, certainly. And so really it's about managing, like, what this process looks like in the future. I think the hardest part is usually if someone is coming in for the very first time and their follicle count actually looks lower than they expect for their age. That's usually always probably the more difficult conversation because a lot of times patients take that on as, like, some sort of personal failure when it's not.

It truly is usually just genetics. It is nothing that you did to cause a lower follicle count. And I think the biggest trade-off, or knowing, is that having a low follicle count does not mean that you cannot get pregnant on your own. Follicle count and quality of egg and fertility are not really related, and so you can have a low follicle count and be, like, perfectly fertile whenever you try to get pregnant.

And so it's really that messaging and making sure that we are not scaring women into thinking they're, like, now infertile. It's more about keeping options open and knowing, like, "Hey, when do you want kids? How many do you think you want? What do good options look like?"

Pathak: That's really helpful. And you mentioned at the very beginning of our conversation certain myths that you wanted to dispel, so I'd love to kind of circle back to that and help us understand risks, myths that people don't talk about enough, whether those are physical or emotional. Can you share some of that with us?

Zore: I think definitely having an awareness, again, of the length of time of the process. Two weeks. It doesn't take a month. Usually you're, like, you know, back to regular life within a couple weeks. IUDs get to stay in place. We do usually have women stop birth control pills for at least a month, that mostly being just so the ovaries can kind of perk up.

OCPs tend to be suppressive on the ovaries. So we want to optimize when we have the most follicles present when we're doing these cycles. So we will, a lot of times, have women stop birth control pills for about a month or so.

In regards to just how this process looks for everyone, it is truly different. Some women come in, and they are just thrilled that they did this. They had a good result, they have a good outcome, and they can happily move on. I think for others, sometimes, again, it can be a shock if you come in and your follicle count is lower than expected.

It's because you didn't know about it. It was kind of hiding in this little black box that no one's thinking about. And then when we put that into your face of, like, "Oh, hey, we did this ultrasound, and your count's lower than we think," now what did not stress you out one day ago is cert— is suddenly now starting to stress you out.

And so I think just having, like, very real and appropriate conversations with those patients, because a lot of times you can see it on their face that they get, like, anxious about the fact that their count's lower. But I think it's very much about reassuring them that this is not a fertility issue.

This is more about if you're going to do egg freezing, that if your count's lower, like, you might have to do this more than one time. It probably is going to cost more, but this isn't, like, a "you can't get pregnant" conversation. And so I think that is probably one of the hardest things to, like, navigate around, is, like, when you weren't expecting that information.

Pathak: That's really helpful. And I think one of the things that I'd like to pull in as well is that it's really, really interesting the way that you framed that because sometimes people are coming to you because they're just sort of maybe thinking about it because their friends have done it, and then now this is new information that is potentially stressful.

What about people that come to you already feeling this pressure from family, society, social media? I have so many people that go on Reddit and different social media, and they're kind of comparing notes on their different labs and their different—um, the reserve that they have. How do you want people to think about this decision, this process, in a really grounded and healthy way?

Zore: I always tell people, like, even if you think egg freezing isn't for you, whether it's financial or just something that just isn't for you, for whatever your reasons are, I always think it's good to come in and have the conversation and hear the information because then it allows you to just make informed decisions about your health with information.

But I always say, like, it is very hard not to compare yourself to, like, friends, strangers, like, people your own age, but having very different results than you. And as much as I can say, like, try not to do that, I know people do. So then it still goes back to that same conversation of, like, there's really no piece of information I can give you today that's gonna say, like, you can't have kids, short of if someone is truly menopausal, in which case that's a different conversation we're having.

And that's usually exceedingly rare. So then it's just a matter of, like, what do these numbers mean? And it's, again, not that you can't have kids. It's just that maybe when I thought I was gonna be, like, a one-and-done cycle, like, maybe I'm gonna have to do this two or three times to get into that number that makes me feel good.

And I know this process is not inexpensive, and so I know that's also a very real conversation when it comes to finances if you don't have coverage for it. But I think just coming in here knowing that, like, I'm not telling you that you can't get pregnant. We're just talking about your follicle count, maybe the fact that you wanna delay having kids for five to 10 years, and, like, what options can we give you to really give you the best chances of having the family size you want in the future.

Pathak: That's great. This has been such an informative conversation, and I'd love to close our time together asking you to speak directly to our audience. For someone who is really inspired after this conversation to go and have this conversation with a healthcare provider, what are some of the questions that they should be thinking about? What information should they be bringing to that appointment?

Zore: I always say, like, I think it's good to know, in an ideal world, what does that family-building process look like for you? Like, you may not even know if you want kids, but that's still a good place to start. Or if you do probably want them, how many, and, like, when do you think you want to have them?

I think having that information, it just allows the conversation to be more tailored towards you as to, like, quote, "Is it worth it?" Also, like, how many eggs should we consider freezing? Because, again, I said, like, depending on what your life circumstance looks like, it may be a very different conversation, even if it's two 30-year-olds, based on, like, when they want to have kids and how many they want to have.

And I think also just being comfortable with whatever provider you're choosing. I know, like, this, again, is—it's a very emotional field, and it matters. It's a very important field because it's a conversation that, like, a lot of people don't even want to have until they're ready for kids, and we're having it just a little bit sooner than that.

So it ends up bringing up a lot of emotions that you didn't maybe think you were going to have. But feeling comfortable with your clinic, your physician, being comfortable asking questions. I always tell patients, like, it is truly your job to ask your questions. You should never feel stressed or bad for asking questions.

It's our job as physicians to answer them for you. And if you're not happy with, like, the care you're receiving, like, you are always welcome to get a second opinion. Just know that, like, so that you're feeling comfortable with, like, where you are in this process.

Pathak: I'd like to share my three key takeaways from this conversation.

First, egg freezing is not a decision you have to make today, but it's a conversation worth having sooner than you think. Peak fertility for women occurs in their 20s to early 30s. The earlier you freeze your eggs, the more eggs you are likely to get and the better the egg quality.

That's why it can be helpful to get the information and make decisions from a place of knowledge rather than fear or uncertainty.

Second, there's a lot of misinformation out there. One of the biggest myths holding people back from exploring this option is the belief that egg freezing is a months-long ordeal that will take over your life.

In reality, from the first injection to egg retrieval, it's about two weeks. You can keep your IUD in if you have one. You can go to work, and you can largely live your normal life because the process is designed to fit around you, your schedule, your cycle, your timeline. So this is really just about making an appointment to have the conversation.

Finally, our discussion today was about keeping your options open and being well-informed. Freezing your eggs does not mean you're committing to using them. It doesn't mean you have to decide when, with whom, or whether you even want to have children.

It simply means that if you do want children in the future, even if it's just a fleeting thought, you're giving your future self more options. If you've taken anything from this episode, I hope it's to give yourself the gift of options and to give yourself permission to ask the questions you didn't know you needed to ask.

To find out more information about Dr Zore and egg freezing, make sure to check out our show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Please take a moment to follow, rate, and review this podcast on your favorite listening platform. If you'd like to send me an email about topics you're interested in or questions for future guests, please send me a note at [email protected].

This is Dr Neha Pathak for the WebMD Health Discovered podcast.