Everything Is Content - Everything in Conversation: Fertility Anxiety, PCOS & Egg Freezing

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Happy Wednesday and even happier Everything In Conversation day! The EIC newsroom is back open for business with the headlines you need to know. Hot new orca trends, disgraced TV hosts, Stormzy being a babe and more. Lock in!And then possibly one of our most expansive topics yet. Actress Florence Pugh has opened up about having her endometriosis diagnosis dismissed by a doctor and we want to know- what is happening with women's healthcare? Why do so many of us feel alone, in pain and under-informed when it comes to what is happening with our reproductive and gynaecological care? We share all of our thoughts and yours.Thank you a million for listening and for being so open with us about an enormously important issue. Follow us on Instagram @everythingiscontentpod so you can be involved in all future discussions.See you Friday for the main ep!-----------SHE MD - Florence Pugh on PCOS, Endometriosis, Egg FreezingTHE CUT - What if you hadn't frozen your eggs?THE GUARDIAN US - The invisible toll of life with PCOSPCOS Challenge GLAMOUR - I spent $17K freezing my eggs and I regret every pennyPENGUIN - The Panic Years by Nell Frizzell AMAZON - The Female Factor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth I'm Richera and I'm Anoni and this is everything in conversation an extra slice of pop culture discourse in your content pizza we'll update you on our headlines from the week before kneading the dough of a meaty topic together remember if you want to have your say in these extra episodes, just follow us on Instagram at everythingiscontentpod and shoot us a DM over there. This week, is fertility and women's health taken seriously enough? First, the headlines from the EIC newsroom. MasterChef co-presenter Greg Wallace responds to allegations of sexual misconduct, saying, I quote,

I can see the complaints coming from a handful of middle-class women of a certain age. North and Chicago West feature on their father's new song, Bomb. One of many critics said, this is the Kardashian equivalent of putting your kid's artwork on the fridge. Orcas have started wearing dead salmon hats again after ditching the trend for 37 years. Orcas off the coast of Washington state are balancing dead fish on their heads like it's the 1980s, but researchers still aren't sure why they do it. Billboard has issued an apology to Taylor Swift after they included a clip from Kanye West's Famous in a tribute video when naming her as second greatest

pop star of the 21st century. The scene features a wax reproduction of a nude Swift and the line, quote, I made that bitch famous. Outnumbered is returning with a Christmas special, the beloved sitcom which last aired in 2016 is getting a new lease of life this December with Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner reprising their roles as eternally stressed parents Pete and Sue.

On the 6th of January, MPs will debate an online petition calling for a rerun of July's general election after it garnered over 2.8 million signatures. A man has been arrested on suspicion of harassment and voyeurism following a series of viral Manchester Night Live videos filming intoxicated women in Manchester city centre. A black business owner, Faye Flowers, who called out a top UK brand for stealing the whole concept of her brand, And that's all from the headlines this week. Before we get into our main subject, we just wanted to say we are not medical experts or healthcare professionals and this episode is not a source of medical advice but rather a place for us to discuss all of our and your experiences around reproductive health. In this episode we are going to be talking about endometriosis and PCOS. Endometriosis is a condition that can cause

cells similar to those in the lining of the womb or uterus to grow in other parts of the body, causing severe pain and possible difficulty conceiving. PCOS or polycystic ovary syndrome is a chronic hormonal condition that can cause irregular periods, excess facial and body hair and fluid filled sacs around your eggs. Now none of us have a current diagnosis of either so while we've tried to get everything right if we do misspeak we really apologize and would appreciate any corrections we also do mention fertility and fertility struggles in the second half of this conversation so listen with caution as needed in an interview for she md podcast florence pew opened up about her personal journey with polycystic ovary syndrome otherwise known as pcos and endometriosis. She said,

my life has completely changed since finding out this information. She went to get checked, saying she had a sudden feeling that something might not be right, even though previously she'd never been worried because in her words, the women in her family are baby-making machines. On the podcast, her doctor, Dr. Taiz Ali Badi, gynecologist to the stars, said that PCOS patients have a lot of eggs but the quality lowers after 30 and endometriosis can lower your egg count in quality. So when you have a patient with both you want to see where that egg count sits. She then said if her patients are in their late 20s she goes on to have a conversation with them about egg freezing which Florence later went on to do. Florence said she'd want to be a mother since she was a little girl

and she said this is such a simple conversation she was a little girl, and she said, This is such a simple conversation that we should be having when we start our periods, or when we start having sex. It really, really should not take this long for someone to find out about this diagnosis, and that they have no idea what this is. She then mentioned that when she came back to the UK and relayed her diagnosis to a doctor here, she was told, That's just not possible. You don't have PCOS. How old are you?

Florence replied 27, and her doctor said, you're fine. And even if you do have it, you'll be fine to have kids well into your 30s. The symptoms for PCOS are varied and can include irregular periods, skin changes, weight gain, infertility, hair changes, among other things. And endometriosis can cause painful periods, fatigue, digestive issues, among other things, all of which can be brushed off as general women's problems, which Florence notes in the podcast. The podcast spread lots of reactions online, not least people asking if Florence Pugh, a famous woman with access and privilege,

is being dismissed, where does that leave the rest of us? I wanted to ask, how did you both feel after listening to the podcast? I was really, I was really pleased to hear it because of the resolution that she's got. And I think because she's a very famous woman, because she's in her 20s, I think it is really great for spreading awareness. Because if you are in your 20s, and you seek this kind of advice, if you talk about your fears about fertility, reproductive health, gynecological issues, very often you will run into someone who tells you to chill, tells you not to worry about it. And I think that's what a lot of women go through, especially with periods, especially with painful periods,

which is something that she talks about. We are told that is normal when actually it's not normal to have excruciating periods, even if it is common and often it's a signifier of something else. So I was really happy to hear that she'd gotten that resolution and also obviously finding it quite depressing that someone with her access was still running into those same barriers. I was really surprised to see her do this interview. I feel like I for some for some reason I think I thought it was quite off-brand for her in the sense that I don't think she's super vulnerable in interviews and I don't really know very much about her so I was really impressed and yeah really really inspired I guess by the fact that she did this and really shared her own story and spoke out about her experience of PCOS and getting that

diagnosis I loved hearing that a celebrity and somebody with a big platform spoke out about this and opened that discussion again because it is really important I agree actually with you I do feel like it feels quite off-brand and it's a random podcast which I haven't heard of it is an American podcast and I guess I don't listen to that many medical based ones actually also separately can I ask you about PMDD Beth? Yeah definitely so my experiences with reproductive health care have been always under the shadow of my diagnosis with PMDD which came in my late my mid to late 20s and for anyone who doesn't know PMDD is premenstrual dysphoric disorder. It's a hormone based mood disorder that lines up with your menstrual cycle. And I've written a lot about

this. I've talked a lot about this. It was such a battle to get to first find out what it was and then to get a diagnosis. And when I write about it, it's like having very, very severe PMS. So PMS itself is often debilitating, very, very upsetting, painful. With PMDD, it's like that, but it is really, really severe. So I understand it as basically being allergic to your own period, which isn't life, not feeling connected to anything, sleep disturbances. Even just one of those things, I think once a month is enough to make you feel like you're going crazy. Really misunderstood, underdiagnosed. There's no definitive diagnosis. You need to have a doctor who's really willing to look at your history, to track your own cycle with you, to kind of sit down, spend the time and then diagnose you and it has been I think has marred my entire 20s and into my 30s this monthly hell basically and so I do feel

an affinity with people who have PCOS, endo, whatever it is because it is classified as like women's issues and therefore not taken as seriously. I think what's because I only learn about PMDD maybe like five years ago. And before that, women were often getting misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder or other mental health issues that they didn't realize were very related to periods. And there's been so much said now about how pretty much all research is done on men.

And I know like Dr. Hazel Wallace wrote a book called The Female Factor. There's been lots of attempts now in order to try and get specifically people with uteruses medical experiences documented and understood more. But every time I read one of these things, because I suffer with such bad PMS and I can feel like quite down, then even reading about Florence's thing, I'm like, God, I got these things. I think what's so hard is all of these female related diagnoses, all of the comorbidities, all of the symptoms of it we all

suffer from so then it's so hard to know like when to go to the doctor because I think I would have so many friends it's only getting later into life whether that actually is this abnormal I've just always been told that yeah you might get this you might get that you might get that so we all just suffer through these things and think they're normal so it does take someone kind of putting their head above the parapet and going you don't shouldn't actually feel this way the other side of it I guess though is it making us become overly preoccupied with our own fertility and our own reproductive health which is something that I worry about as well on the other side which is why I often put my head in the sand and just try to ignore it all totally yeah I really relate to what you just said where I think I tend to play down

my symptoms and then when I read about other women's experiences then I can get into this headspace of thinking no I definitely have really painful periods and that is something that I struggle with they haven't been the most regular throughout my life and you know facial hair various other things that can be diagnosed as either PCOS or endometriosis I do find relatable at different times when I read into it so yeah I don't know it is it is really difficult exactly like you said of knowing when is it an issue that I need to go to the doctor, when isn't it, or am I just playing things down, or am I just getting quite afraid by reading into it. It's really difficult to strike that balance. Which also reminds me of a message we got from Kate,

which said, I have PCOS and was diagnosed in 2016. The amount of misinformation online makes it actually so overwhelming. Do I go gluten and dairy free and eat primarily vegan? Or do I eat a purely keto diet? How can I remove any toxic chemicals from an environment that could be impacting my hormones? Why is it that I need to take 12 different herbal supplements? She said she was told at 21 that it would be difficult to get pregnant. And now at 29, she's choosing to be child free. But how much did that advice subconsciously influence her decision to not want to have kids? She she asks it is mad how much it does fall to us to do our own research and then like you say get caught up in the research of like i'm thinking about this constantly because no one else would do this for me it's almost like trial and error

diet stuff i mean doctors will tell a lot of especially like fat women go and lose weight always as a first port of call but then the dietary stuff is so complex because there's truth in it, but then there's also fat phobic misinformation. And with me and my PMDD, I did all my own research and then decided off the back of that research to get the Mirena coil, which is a little T-shaped interuterine device, which stops your periods and it's hormonal, carries its own risks of potentially worsening symptoms. But I was at the end of my tether. So I had to do all of my own research. I had to advocate for myself to get this. I had to then endure all of the initial side effects by myself. And it did end up really helping because it stopped my periods, which were very painful and very debilitating. It has lessened the emotional

symptoms, but it was really like complete trial and error that I went through this run of the mill, very quick procedure, but it was very painful and it was really isolating. And I just remember thinking, is there nobody that could have maybe held my hand through this? Is there no doctor that might have sat down with me and said, yes, this is one option, here's what to expect, or maybe just guided me on it. And I think we've got so many messages from people just saying, yeah, I got diagnosed either in my early twenties or my late twenties. And then we're also kind of alone in it I think that's the really damning thing maybe Florence Pugh did get that second opinion and it sounds like she's got this great relationship with that doctor in the US but a lot of people don't have

that option and so they are up shit's creek really what you said about fat women as well that was really interesting because in this interview with Dr A Florence and Dr A talk about how luckily Florence was already on the progesterone only pill which already kind of aids some of the symptoms of her endometriosis it's one of the things they would have done to kind of ease the pain of her periods so that was kind of already being masked so she wasn't even aware of that happening which is a good thing and a bad thing because it meant that she hadn't necessarily interrogated that much and she'd just been put on it as so many women are put on the pill again that's like a contentious thing we can talk about in a bit maybe on another episode so much talk about but when it comes to fat women the thing that Dr. A was talking about was so many women are put on the pill. Again, that's like a contentious thing we can talk about in a bit, maybe on another episode, so much to talk about. But when it comes to fat women,

the thing that Dr. A was talking about was so many women with PCOS present with eating disorders or body image issues because PCOS directly impacts how you gain or maintain your body weight and your body size. So it's so diminishing to tell these women who are probably quite confused anyway about why their bodies look the way that they do, because in minds they're eating the same as their friends exercising as much as their friends to then be turned away by a doctor saying you just need to lose weight it's just another rung on this ladder of completely misunderstanding all of the kind of comorbidities that come along with something like PCOS and so not recognizing that as a symptom but actually blaming the woman and turning that into a cause there was another article that Beth shared with us in the Guardian which we'll link in the show notes as well which said in a survey

conducted by the non-profit PCOS challenge the National Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Association said that 62.15% of the 900 respondents reported high to severe mental health impacts caused by the condition and elsewhere in that piece and in the episode with Florence a lot of that is down to body image issues, skin issues, facial hair, hair in different places all of these things that plague women in terms of how they look and them then being punished for that rather than diagnosed with something that has loads of other impacts not just these kind of cosmetic if you will also something that's quite interesting I think possibly either in the same piece or a different piece regardless it will be in the show notes in the Guardian it says Picoste was only labeled in 1935 after two doctors discovered it even though it

is probably an ancient condition and this is an american piece but it says almost a century later there's still no fda approved drugs to directly treat this complex multi-system syndrome that can cause people who suffer with it lifelong ailments so So I don't know, it really feeds into this feeling I'm sure many women have, and the podcast did this for me, of just really finding it hard knowing that medicine often can feel as if it's catered towards men, it doesn't really understand female reproductive health or female conditions, and also feeling like you really need to push sometimes, really fight to feel as if your voice is heard about pain about suffering about any kind of condition that you have and I don't know it's

just it really does feel quite exhausting hearing that other people going through it through it because it reminds you of the times that you've been through it yourself so tied in with I guess the mental health conversation and the capitalist conversation because we're so we're so close to getting it right with conversations about mental health and then we stall at the point where we say, well, let's just talk about it. And then we go, well, we've talked about it. But what we need is funding when it comes to its convergences with reproductive health. And then we also need to address the social cause. And in the case of this, when it comes to funding and treating studies about the uterus or about the uterine lining. With endometriosis, you have similar material that would grow in the uterine lining growing outside of the uterine

lining. I mean, that blew my mind when I found out that's what it was. You'd think that that would have incurred the kind of funding that anything that potentially 50% of the population might come up against. And it just hasn't. Advocates are just saying the money's not there. The knowledge isn't there. The workplace adjustments are not not there the social understanding that is not there and it's so tied up with the mental health conversation it is an issue of justice and it's an issue of capitalism and it's an issue of access which just isn't there you know what i was saying to a friend really recently it's funny that i mean we had a discussion recently about the fact that there's very there's very pertinent fears about women not having enough children and the population suffering as a result there's all of this kind of focus on

women really need to start having children but there's not very much focus on the health conditions that could be stopping women from having children or the kind of pain that they might be in that might mean that they do not want to have children i just i find that dichotomy really fascinating and really infuriating totally and I think even access to sexual health care and actually I wanted to go and get a screening recently and it was like I didn't know that loads of walking clinics have basically been closed it's quite hard to get an appointment with your GP even if you just want kind of like a routine checkup it's not the easiest thing to do and so much of this falls on the women I'm actually just thinking about I recently saw my friend Grace doing her show at the Apollo which is incredible and her

whole show is basically about having an abortion and men often not wanting to wear condoms and how much of that I know this kind of going around the houses but just thinking about reproductive rights sexual health like we have this massive thing that all of us deal with day to day and don't really talk about don't think about we're so used to it whether it's pain mental health all the things that come with having periods and then on top of that when any of these issues arise from like sexual activity or other things, I often wear the ones that end up bearing the brunt of that. Sometimes that is pregnancy and abortion. But to go back to like a really bad experience that I had at a sexual health clinic, I came off the pill when

I was at uni and realized that I really didn't get on with hormonal contraception. I now know as an adult, I've been diagnosed with depression. Makes sense, but it was exacerbating myating my depression which I can come in and out of I think when I was on the pill it made me quite depressed so I got recommended to go and get the copper coil and when I got it fitted it was so painful and I've got quite high pain threshold that I went green and I went to get the tube and I was like oh my god I'm gonna be sick so I got off the tube and I rang my mom and I was like is this normal my mom used to be a nurse she said it should have been like painful when they inserted it but like it shouldn't be that bad anyway days go by i'm feeling so sick and then just fell out in the shower and my sister was like they'd obviously not like put it in right no wonder in so much pain

it's obviously probably like sticking into you the pain of like a coil no one have warned me they literally basically like pierce your uterus there's no pain relief they just do it it's and i have had my nipples pierced tons of. I've broken my ankle and had an operation with it pinned and plated. Having a coil was the most singular, most painful thing I've ever experienced. And there is no pain relief when you're getting it done. It's just wild. Oh, that is almost exactly my story. It is nuts.

And I'm such an advocate for it. I haven't had a period in eight years, which for me is excellent. I've had no real troubles with it. People have huge success stories. But one, the fact that they call it a pinch. I've had it done by a man and it was my second one. He said, oh, it's just be a pinch. And I went, I'm going to stop you there. This is not going to be a pinch and you wouldn't know. This is going to be very painful. So just talk me through it and take it slow. I have already dosed up at home on my painkillers. I've taken

the week off work. This is a very quick procedure, but it's very fucking painful for a lot of people. And it's mad. And we got a message from Ellie who, and this is sort is sort of on the topic but she said a GP responded to my questions by saying that he didn't really know much about women's health and isn't that just the bottom line for so many of these things they don't know what this is like they don't seem to care and I don't know how people can feel at all empowered in their kind of reproductive quests and their fertility and especially when it comes to investigating something that might be wrong might be a chronic condition condition that needs treatment and help, how they could feel confident in asking these questions when there's really a mentality of, oh, do you know about that? It's women's issues. It's absolutely infuriating. One thing I want to say is I feel like I'm sure everyone listening

understands this. Doctors are brilliant. This is not a case of doctors are shit, doctors don't get things. They're absolutely brilliant. But the reality is lots of these experiences don't have a place to go as women we don't have a space to talk about it we don't have that audience to share our stories so not only is this episode a space to do that I feel like in general that's probably why social media you know places like TikTok have become a resource for all of us to kind of feel seen and heard that we're not alone and we're not going through really horrible experiences and just being isolated in that I guess. Doctors are amazing however the NHS is so severely underfunded that I think when you go in with an issue often there isn't enough time to talk about it when you go to the GP you get that 10 minute slot you're only allowed to talk about one thing and if they can't decide it then and that I really don't think it's

individual doctors I mean sometimes it is but exactly what you said Ruchira I'm quite lucky I feel quite educated like my sister's a doctor my mum was a nurse I really feel empowered to advocate for myself and if I feel like something's going wrong in my body I have someone to turn to and go is this normal most women don't know and put up with chronic pain for years I have a friend who had endometriosis like really awful pain didn't get diagnosed till her late 20s because she'd gone to the doctor but they were just like oh it's probably like period pain and then once she found out what it was then they could there's no way of like testing your pain receptor to see how much pain you're in and if people walking around with the level of pain that some women are walking around with and because we've been told well don't worry that's

fine we just do trust doctors and I think it is good to trust doctors but it is good also to be armed with the knowledge of when to advocate for yourself and when to trust yourself it's a horrible cocktail of just medical misogyny and general misogyny basically with more and more famous people talking about PCOS so I think the first time I heard of it was Victoria Beckham and this was years ago and she was talking about her fertility Emma Thompson has come out and talked about it Daisy Ridley has talked about it. And then there's an activist called Hanum Kaur. I don't know if you know her. She's a digital creator.

She is an anti-bullying advocate and a model. And she's a PCOS sufferer. And she has a beard. And she talks a lot about the stigma of that, the kind of the judgment, the exhausting questions. And especially in this moment in time where TERFism, especially in the UK, seems to be on the rise. PCOS will cause or can cause

irregular levels of testosterone. I mean, quote unquote irregular, because obviously they do exist in a lot of women. And so it's only irregular as it comes to kind of treating it. And the side effects can be you will grow hair, or you were to have an appearance that if you're a TERF, you're going to say you're a man. All of these things I think are converging and they are connected, this rabid obsession with what a woman is. And I think it does hurt all of us. I think it hurts cis women, it hurts trans women, it hurts intersex women, it hurts women with PCOS. And it is directly opposed to justice for women because it comes to stuff like this, where a woman might also feel quite self-conscious if she is growing hair on her face or on her body.

I just found myself really frustrated, actually. I was reading an interview with Hanum earlier, and she's talking about this. And I thought, what a cruel world made even worse. I will say also, I'm thrilled for Florence Pugh, but it is quite jarring to think that's what money can get you, the treatment we all should have, which is just comprehensive, compassionate, and kind of exhaustive. If you are suffering with a problem, it should be, well, we'll figure this out and I think as you say the NHS queues the you know medical misogyny things like that most of us don't have that and and I think it's difficult reading everyone's messages that we got of people who are still very much in it in a fight to get diagnosed to get treatment it's the gulf between what's available to the every woman, the every person and someone who can go and see the Doctor

to the Stars is enormous. Yeah, I mean, I've been confused whether to say this or not, but I feel like it is important. I am on a waiting list for something in relation to the subjects we're talking about. I don't feel like I can talk about it because I am too deep into it and it's a bit too close. I definitely will speak about it when I'm on the other side. But the waiting list for this issue that I have is a year. And I just got onto the waiting list a month ago. It was so shit, actually, just like getting the courage to get the help that I need and then to find that out. And it's just it is really difficult. It's a hard pill to swallow, pardon the pun. And I love the NHS, but it is really difficult coming forward, having that bravery, speaking out, advocating, and then just like having to be in the system where you just can't get the help that you need sometimes. And it takes it takes fucking ages. It is difficult.

Not to lighten the mood too high in the sky, but just to quote Mean Girls, I was just thinking about how literally at school you're taught don't have sex or you will get pregnant or die and thinking about what Florence said in the interview where she was like I think girls should be told about this as early as they start menstruating or when they start having sex it may seem like a lot to put on a young young woman at a young age we definitely don't want people panicking about it but I do always find it so funny and interesting how you spend one portion of your life absolutely terrified that if you even go near a penis you will end up with a baby to suddenly being like absolutely panicked about whether or not you'll even find it possible to have a baby and you kind of go from it's one day you wake up and you're like oh my god I don't want to get pregnant don't want to get pregnant don't want to get pregnant and then the next year

like oh maybe I want a baby oh my god can I and I feel like that the fact that that gap is not closed earlier and there's not something in the middle is just wild so when we come on to egg freezing which I think is like our next half of the conversation it kind of feels like that jump of going you will get pregnant too actually no you might not so you need to make this really big financial investment on something that you still might be able to do naturally but actually out of fear I feel that I feel quite worried about the rising trend in egg freezing for people that potentially don't need it which is where with the Florence Pugh interview, again, I think it's amazing she's done that. I do worry though, if that's going to encourage younger women to feel like they have to. Again, we have to remember Florence Pugh's a very rich woman. Egg freezing is a very expensive, very invasive process, which

is not going to be available to everyone. So that makes me slightly nervous as well. I don't know how you both felt about that. I don't know if egg freezing is something you would ever consider. I'd be interested to know. It's not really something that I've considered. Maybe I'm quite avoidant about thinking about fertility. Maybe it's just because, as we've spoken about before, having children is not a super present concern of mine. So I don't really think about it. But one thing I will say is I definitely have fallen into the kind of the presentation of egg freezing as being this perfect solution for women who have career aspirations, who aren't ready to have kids just yet. It's been presented. I feel like it's been presented, sorry, as if it's this like perfect, perfect solution. And there's just no issues with it. And we should all be subscribing to doing this regardless of the cost, of you know the impacts and looking into it

researching it us speaking about it before this conversation has made me realize that I don't really feel like the other side to egg freezing is spoken about as widely and I've had to do my own research to find out that information yeah I feel similarly I feel really lucky actually in this moment in time as a 31 year old that I if we consider wanting children as I guess either a spectrum or a pendulum that can swing from one to the other I really am over the other side of probably not doesn't worry me the idea of not having them it just feels I feel fine about it we got so many messages actually more than I expected about egg freezing some people are getting it done and they're really really excited other people are doing it because they're really

unsure of what comes next other people just said I can people just said, I can't afford it. And I can't afford it. If I wanted it, if I thought, okay, I'm 31 years old, I'm single. I'm probably, if I want to have children, it will be, I will be trying later in my thirties. If I wanted it, I couldn't have it. And I think that is quite a mind blowing thing to think that options have closed off for women so early on. I didn't know anything about it. I'm going to be honest. Everything I've read has schooled me a lot. I didn't realise that it was, one, as expensive as it is. I didn't realise that most of the women don't use their eggs. It's more of, I guess, you're paying for peace of mind. They didn't realise how exhausting it is. I kind of thought you trotted it off the street, you plop some eggs out and they put them in the fridge. It's really, it's months of injections.

It's, you're advised not to exercise you're advised you're going to feel a lot you're going to feel very hormonal it's going to cost a lot of money just to keep them in the fridge I was very very ignorant I agree with everything you said about especially about that pendulum versus spectrum and to go back actually to our listener who messaged and was like I wonder how much her difficulties with her PCOS has informed her decision around having children I also wonder if the fact that I'm single, I'm 30, I feel quite stressed about this fertility conversation. I read this book called The Panic Years by Nell Fazal, which is amazing, but I read it when I was 27 and it was about how at 30, I'm going to get

really scared about not being able to have kids to the point where I think I've talked myself into accepting. And basically I every day go not every day I kind of think to myself you're not going to have kids so I can get comfortable with it in the likelihood that that might not happen for various reasons I'm single I'm 30 if I met someone maybe I'm that age all of these things I couldn't afford to freeze my eggs so I've done it just out of like self-preservation but there are people obviously who genuinely just want to be mothers that is their life's desire and they're going to sit they will never be able to get to the place that I've got to. One of the messages from the listeners when we asked if you wanted to freeze your eggs,

they said yes, but the cost of doing it versus the increased chance of a live birth is actually really rubbish when you look into it. It's far better to maintain overall health, e.g. low booze, cigs, healthy weight, etc. And another listener messaged in about Alex Light, who's an influencer who froze her eggs and then managed to give birth naturally. And all of this makes me think it's such a new phenomenon. It really does feel like an insurance policy for those who can afford it. I think actually very infrequently people use their eggs. And that worries me in a landscape where there's so many aspects of this conversation, but I do worry that certain people might hemorrhage money, like spend money

they do not have in order to have this insurance policy which they may never really need and there is this other side to things which is you know that there's all these like fertility, fertility there's all these kind of testing things that you can do now which you can buy online and test your fertility. I think it's one thing if you have PCOS and endometriosis and certain conditions which mean that you your fertility levels are definitely impacted but I think there is a whole market and industry now targeting women's insecurities meaning that if you find out you have slightly lower egg count than normal that you suddenly make decisions which may really implicate you financially or mental health wise whereas if you just carried along on that journey and tried you know in the traditional sense you probably

might have been able to fall pregnant but I worry that there's so many elements to this that we're being fed off on every side where we're not getting enough care then we're looking for information in other places then we're being scaremongered it's a whole mess basically yeah the cottage industry that's propped up feeding off fertility anxiety is so real and I've definitely felt that before where it feels like it feels very distasteful like I'll get targeted ads for egg freezing I haven't had them for a while but I noticed at one point I was getting them and it was really it was really gross actually I just I don't love that side of this I think it's quite horrible and I think you are right I think there is a side of this conversation it's a very emotionally charged conversation around fertility and the ability to

have children and the idea that we're kind of being fed further anxiety and ways to consume, to buy, to purchase things to make us feel better, but might actually lead us down more paths of, you know, invasive procedures. It's horrible. I don't like it at all. Because it is a wonderful technology. I'm very glad that it exists. Anything that can help people to have a baby on their own terms or at all, especially something we discussed offer is its availability within the NHS, which isn't particularly broad, but it can, depending on your location, depending on your circumstances, help people going through chemotherapy, help people going through gender affirming care, things like that. I'm glad that it exists. But when I see the numbers of how much it costs, you know, $17,000 for this,

$1,000 a year just to store them. It really made my head spin. And just the idea that some people would be saving for this rather than being like, I'll just dip into my nest egg, whatever it is. It's a lot of money, but I can afford it. I read a piece in Glamour actually by Hannah Selinger, who talked about her egg freezing at 31 years old. And it sounded really brutal. The transvaginal ultrasound, the appointments every other day, the kind of monitoring her eggs. She couldn't exercise because of potential ovarian torsion, which can cause ovary loss. She gained, I think, 13 pounds, which she then said, I wasn't really able to lose that afterwards. And the story ends, she moves out of New York, which is where she was getting the procedure.

And because of a lack of communication or the messages were just not ending up with her, she thought her eggs were being stored. She hadn't paid to keep them stored. So they'd just been destroyed without her knowledge. I think she did go on to have a baby with her partner. But all of that, I think, just to find out that we've chucked them in the bin because it is a business and it's not run on goodwill. I think there's so much about it.

It's a difficult to navigate system. It is women. It's coming out of women's pockets because often it's single women who are paying for it. It's not a partnership where two people are splitting the cost. it is her money for the option to have children I was really blown away just how disempowering I think a lot of it can be for some women we also had another message from a listener who said that they had been considering

egg freezing and they were doing it very recently despite the fact that they were 85% sure they didn't want to have kids but they just don't want to have any regrets. I just I thought that answer was really fascinating because you're right it does feel like egg freezing has almost been presented as an option that's an insurance policy on not having that right or the ability to have children removed from you. It is yeah it's really interesting. What do you think about that? To go back to the episode we did about motherhood and Britain's falling birth rates, and all of the reasons we spoke about that, biological selves haven't evolved in the same way that this capitalist system has. But what that is emerging from that for me is not a class who can and can't in terms of biologically, but who can and can't financially. And that is what makes it

quite dystopian, because I think a lot of people want to have children later in life, it's kind of sickening and rank to realize that we could be viable as mothers biologically from as soon as you start menstruating i got my first period at like 14 biologically we're capable to do things that societally we don't prove of and instead of female health care and reproductive rights catching up to the point where we say there are ways for you to viably have children healthily and safely on the nhs or through these like free health care systems we're making it exorbitantly expensive through private healthcare systems. And we're also stripping back women's rights on abortion and reproductive rights in terms of like terminating pregnancies. And again, the women who

are able to find freedom within these laws and financial structures are the ones who have the most money. And so it's just scary on both ends of the spectrum that really, I don't think it's anyone's fault. So much of this is down to luck. For me, a lot of I think about it now, it's just scary on both ends of the spectrum that really I don't think it's anyone's fault so much of this is down to luck for me a lot of I think about it now it's like I can't even think about whether I want to have a baby because I just don't know if I will meet someone in the right frame of time if I do that I might think about it but that's also luck and dating's become harder meeting people it goes so far back so I just think I understand when people want that insurance policy and I understand why that person might make that decision but I think so many people will be so far removed from that and I think that will actually encourage more people to just go oh I guess I just won't do it at all then. I'm just so shocked that

someone would and completely without judgment that somebody who really falls one side of that of that pendulum probably doesn't want them but is so keen to have those options later on that they're willing to spend the money I think because I'm so indecisive, that just could never be me. And also I'm probably really stingy. So I'm like, I'm going to keep that money and I'm going to go on loads of holidays when I'm a sort of single income, no kid woman. I'm really fascinated by that. And I think it can probably feel super empowering to have those options. But then on the other side, I read in 2021 alone, the number of egg freezing cycles for fertility preservation in the US increased to about almost 25,000, which was almost double what it had been in 2018. And I think we'll see that trend because

now it's not just for women who are perhaps putting it off for chemotherapy or people who have a diagnosed disorder that has set alarm bells ringing and they want to have children for sure. It's kind of opening up as like, that's just what a woman does when she turns 29, 30, when she enters, as you called it, as Nell Frizzell called it in her book, the panic years. It's just what a woman does when she turns 29 30 when she enters as you called it as nelfrazel called her in her book the panic years it's just i mean it's going to be great money for some people it's going to be freedom for others but for me it just feels like an egg-lined prison so we did have another message from a listener because there are so many different ways to have a baby at the end of the day and casey said i have pcos and when i was diagnosed at 15 my doctor simply told me to come back when i wanted to get pregnant. No support whatsoever in dealing with the symptoms relevant to a teenager.

On a related note, I'm 30 now and my female partner and I begin the IBS process in 2025. In some ways, I feel like I at least benefit from the combo of my condition and being gay. At least I never expected conceiving to be a walk in the park, whereas perhaps some women don't anticipate difficulties until they arise. That, and as we're fortunate enough to be able to afford sperm we have an extra womb to try with i loved that message i thought it was really sweet but i guess to go to that there are there are so many other reasons as well i think we put it so much down to female fertility we haven't even touched on the fact that a lot of the time it's the swimmers that aren't working it is it is the

most expansive conversation maybe that we've ever attempted to have but getting the messages that we got so many of them on the same thread of I feel alone I feel like it's all up to me it is women kind of guiding other women and what we have is conversations like this one happening constantly between women it's a kind of whisper network but it's it's probably like a shouted whisper network and that's both heartening and it is depressing and I think it is all connected in terms of women wanting to live the lives that they want to live whether that is I don't want to have a child I want to be supported I might want to have a child I want to be supported I am in great amounts of pain I don't know what the implication of my future is thank you so much for all of your comments and thoughts and for

listening this week and we also just wanted to say if you feel like you're not being heard please don't be afraid to ask see a different doctor or push for a referral always believe in advocating for yourself you know your body best and thank you so much for sending us your messages remember to follow us on instagram at everything is content pod and also on tiktok we will see you on friday as always bye