EP 119: Did you know there is a storage limit on freezing your eggs?

Dr Zeynep Gurtin

I was fascinated to speak to Zeynep as I wanted to know more about women who are freezing their eggs, how they feel about it and how they feel about there being a ten year cut off point, which is something I didn’t know about. She explained how women come to the clinic for a Fertility MOT, some may be in their late 30’s and have a good reserve and some may younger women who come for the check up, pre-emptively but find their egg reserve is low… so the women who choose to freeze their eggs varies.

Zeynep explained how they are seeing an unprecedented number of women who are in their late 30’s who are involuntarily childless and feel reproductive medicine gives them some options. I feel this is the much overlooked side of the brilliance of fertility treatment, in how it empowers women. I mentioned a video Zeynep had shared with me about a newly single woman talking about how empowering it felt to freeze her eggs. You can view it here .

Zeynep has written numerous articles about her views on egg freezing

I was interested in her views on the news in 2017 that Rita Ora froze her eggs as the British media gave it a lot of attention. Zeynep explained that the clinic received a significant increase in enquiries from women in their 20’s about egg freezing after this story broke and how she had to explain to them that freezing eggs at 26 ( Rita’s age) would mean using them at 36 and that they might still not be ready. Here’s an article Zeynep wrote about the story

Dr Zeynep Gurtin is the Senior Research Associate at the London Womens Clinic, and Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge.

My second guest is actor and playwrite Joanne Ryan who blurted out to a room full of strangers that she didn’t know if she wanted to have a baby. The outcome of that revelation was for her to spend the next two years speaking to a whole host of fertility experts and medical professionals about it and wrote a play.

In our chat she describes her motiviation to go on this journey of self disccovery and what she found. The play starts it’s London run on Tuesday 30th January 2018 before going on tour and you can find more info out here

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Source: The Fertility Podcast

Published in Embryology and Reproductive Medicine