The fertility rate in the U.S has been falling consistently for years now. Less couples are having children because of a higher cost of living, career goals or barriers to conceiving, and experts are alarmed at the rate with which the decrease in childbirth has come.
A lower fertility rate means an aging workforce and an unpredictable future for the economy - but it also means that women are deciding for themselves when or if to reproduce, and taking the process entirely into their own hands.
The decrease in fertility rates has come largely because of the the falling rates of teen (and mostly unplanned) births. This sees the median age for women having children going up to between 25-34. And then of course there are the rising number of numbers of women deciding to have children in their forties. These are the women that experience the most difficulty conceiving and in whom need the most assistance with fertility treatments.
Whether it's In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), or Kim Kardashian's surrogate alternative - the likelihood of women resorting to frozen eggs is becoming higher by the day. Millennials are choosing not to have children until late into their careers and so naturally these alternatives are being increasingly more commonplace.
Below we talked to Ilaina Edison and Dr. Joshua Klein about their practice at Extend Fertility, which hopes to make the procedure more cost effective and less of an ordeal for would-be future mothers.
1. Tell us a little about Extend Fertility - what is the process?
Extend Fertility is a fertility practice that has revolutionized the approach to egg freezing; offering services at significantly lower prices in a specialized atmosphere designed around the lifestyle and goals of women who want to freeze their eggs for use later in life. Until now, most practices that offer egg freezing have been focused on treating infertility. We are the first practice dedicated entirely to women who want to preserve their fertility for the future—and we've created a revolutionary goal-focused pricing model that makes egg freezing more affordable and accessible to women at this stage of life. Above all, we educate women on their fertility and their egg freezing options so they can make informed decisions that are in-line with their own personal vision and life goals. The first step is a fertility assessment to gather information about a woman's fertility and her overall health, followed by a consultation with an experienced reproductive endocrinologist to discuss her fertility options and create a plan. The actual egg freezing process typically entails 8–10 days of hormone injections to stimulate a woman's ovaries to produce multiple eggs, and 5–7 short office visits, which will include blood tests and transvaginal ultrasound exams. Finally, there's a 15-minute surgical procedure performed under mild anesthesia to retrieve the eggs from her ovaries.
Each patient at the clinic is assigned a personal fertility advisor who will greet her at each appointment, accompany and guide her through each step of the egg retrieval process and serve as a sounding board for questions and concerns.
2. Describe the average woman who comes to see you.
The average age range of the women we see is 28-35 years. Other than that, there really is no “typical" or “average" Extend Fertility patient. Our practice sees women from all over the country, and from all walks of life.
3. When did you open - have you since much competition since you began?
We opened our clinic in New York in August 2016 because we noticed a growing need in the industry for an egg freezing-only practice that catered to the main pain points people were having with the process — most notably the lack of specialization, high costs, and impersonal service.
Our practice chose to focus solely on egg freezing because women who want to preserve their fertility options deserve a customized, personal and positive environment just for them. While there are a couple newer boutique egg freezing clinics in the U.S. we don't feel there is anyone else quite like us with the same level of unparalleled hospitality incorporated into their business plan.
4. Do you notice are women afraid of a stigma or is it becoming more normalized?
Some women do find these conversations challenging. One of the biggest reasons is that we don't seem to talk much about fertility or fertility treatments with our families or communities. It's a subject that tends to have a lot of secrecy around it. Many women are surprised at how supportive friends and family members are when they share their egg freezing plans. In fact, a recent study conducted by NYU Langone Medical Center found 90% of women who discussed their decision to freeze with family/friends were met with a positive/ supportive reception. One of our patients said that when she began her egg freezing cycle and started telling loved ones about it, many of them divulged they'd had their own journey with fertility preservation. She was surprised no one had spoken up before. These women find that once they started opening up and sharing their experience, they realized their loved ones were not all strangers to the issue themselves.
5. Can you give us a rough number of women attending the clinic? Have you a percentage growth?
We have seen month over month growth since opening, and now we are performing the same amount of egg freezing cycles as the top fertility clinics in New York.
6. Why, in your opinion are women turning more toward freezing eggs?
7. Is this mostly single women or women in relationships coming to you?
We hope to educate all women on their fertility preservations options so they can make informed decisions that are in-line with their own personal vision and life goals. This is a deeply personal decision because it not only matters where your mind is, but where your body is. That being said, each woman's experience is unique, and our wide range of clientele reflects this (single, married, and everything in between).
8. How long do the eggs remain fertile?
Scientifically speaking, frozen eggs can be stored indefinitely. There have been numerous healthy babies born from eggs frozen for 5–10 years, with the longest reported successful thaw coming after 14 years. There is no evidence that the health or viability of frozen eggs decreases over time.
Judging from the best studies and data available: when eggs are frozen and subsequently thawed in a high-quality lab, they appear to have a nearly equal potential to produce a healthy pregnancy to fresh eggs.
9. Do you see this science as a rapidly improving field? Will it be much changed in ten years?
Cryopreservation is a decades-old procedure used in several branches of medicine. The basic premise is this: cooling cells, in this case, egg cells, to a very low temperature (think -196º Celsius, or about -320º Fahrenheit) stops all cell activity, including aging. In layman's terms, that means that freezing your eggs prevents them from aging as they normally would, maintaining their youthful glow (and lack of chromosomal defects) indefinitely.
Vitrification is a “flash freezing" technique that cools cells so quickly to a temperature of -196º Celsius (about -320º Fahrenheit) that they become “glass-like," or “vitrified," minimizing the chance that the water inside the cells will form damaging ice crystals. This is especially important for egg freezing, since eggs (as opposed to other things we might freeze, like sperm) are large size cells with a high content of water.
Vitrification is superior to any other method of egg cryopreservation. Studies have demonstrated that egg survival rates (meaning the percentage of eggs that are still viable after they're thawed) increase from 61% after slow freezing—the older method of egg cryopreservation—to 91% after vitrification. However, not every practitioner offering egg freezing uses vitrification.
Our laboratory team has unique expertise in this cutting-edge method. The assistant director of our embryology lab, Dr. Leslie Ramirez, studied with Dr. Kuwayama to perfect her technique. Extend Fertility is Dr. Kuwayama's East Coast representative laboratory; before any other cryogenic lab is permitted to use this method, their embryologists must train with Dr. Ramirez.
10. What's one common misconception about freezing eggs, and one thing everyone should know?
It is a common misconception that egg freezing is new and experimental. This misconception stems from the fact that, prior to 2013, anyone who froze their eggs had to do so under an experimental protocol, because the procedure was fairly new and there wasn't enough data available just yet. However, the processes used in egg freezing—like ovarian stimulation, egg retrieval, and even cryopreservation—have actually been in use for decades.
The “experimental" label was dropped in 2013 after the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) issued a statement declaring there was enough scientific evidence to show that egg freezing was safe and effective. Their decision was based on the success of vitrification, a more effective fast-freezing method, and new studies that determined frozen eggs have roughly equivalent pregnancy rates to “fresh" eggs when used for in vitro fertilization.
Another myth is that there is a fertility cliff at age 35. Age 35 doesn't represent some sort of hard stop for your fertile years. In reality, your fertility is at its peak between your late teens and early 20s and declines gradually throughout your adult life. However, the downward sloping line between age and fertility does steepen in the mid-30s. In fact, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine estimates that, generally, a woman's fertility “decreases gradually but significantly beginning approximately at age 32 and decreases more rapidly after age 37 years."
11. What's the price range?
Price plans range from $4500 - $10,000 depending on how many eggs you wish to have frozen, and the egg freezing cycles you decide on.
WRITTEN BY
Amy Corcoran