Millennial Musings: Should I Freeze My Eggs?
By Kevinisha Walker
CHICAGO (CBS) — This past October, Facebook and Apple announced that they will cover egg freezing for their employees, a process that could cost between $10,000 and $20,000 per cycle.
While I don't have the option to freeze my eggs free of charge, Facebook and Apple's decision made me wonder if I would ever consider freezing my eggs.
I'm a single, 24-year-old graduate student. During my four years in undergrad, I took proper precautions to ensure that I wouldn't get pregnant. Even now, I still take those same precautions because I don't feel it's the right time to have a child.
I want to be in a stable relationship when I decide to start a family. Also, I want to wait until I have a more stable work life.
Egg freezing is probably the last thing women in their twenties are thinking about. In fact, it's more common among women in their thirties.
Perhaps women my age are still in college or just starting their careers. Maybe they don't want children. Whatever the reason, many aren't considering freezing their eggs.
In an interview with CBS 2, Dr. Christopher Sipe with Fertility Centers of Illinois said not very many 25-year-olds come to freeze their eggs; the average age is around 37 years old.
However, Sipe said that the younger the woman is, the better quality eggs she has. Women my age might not be concerned with freezing their eggs right now, but now is the best time to do so.
Nonetheless, we 20-somethings don't all work for Facebook or Apple. For us, it's not just a matter of deciding to freeze our eggs, it's also a matter of being able to afford to freeze them.
We also have to consider the doctor visits, hormone injections and storage fees for the eggs. They have to be kept somewhere. It's not as simple as storing them in our refrigerators.
Not only is egg freezing expensive, it's time consuming, too. Even before a patient's eggs are actually frozen, it takes four to six weeks just to get through the entire egg freezing process.
But the nice thing about egg freezing is that it could be a back-up plan, just in case we don't meet the right partner or start a family in the traditional way.
That's of course if said back-up plan is on Facebook or Apple's tab.
The reality is that one day we will be 37 and might find ourselves in the same predicament as some of today's 37-year-olds: deciding to freeze eggs because we haven't found the right person to settle down with or we're still focused on career goals. Years later, if we decide to fertilize our eggs, chances of actually getting pregnant are slimmer because we're older.
Among women 40 to 42, only 15 percent of embryos implant, according to research conducted by the Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago.
Sure, egg freezing is a great back-up plan. But ultimately, at least for now, I don't think it's the right plan for me.