Girls Gotta Eat - Spilling the Fertility Tea feat. Dr. Sean Henry

Episode Date: August 19, 2019

Ooh baby baby, we're talking fertility on this episode with renowned gyno-to-the-stars Dr. Sean Henry. We discuss how to know if you're fertile, what can affect/not affect your reproductive abilities, all things egg freezing (age, procedure, cost, etc.), more. And we have a very special guest MERRILL (!!!) join us to discuss her recent "baby insurance" policy. We hope you enjoy! Follow us on Instagram @GirlsGottaEatPodcast, Rayna @OneHungryJew, and Ashley @AshHess. Check our website for tour dates and merch. Thank you to our partners for this episode: LiquidIV: Get 25% off at liquidiv.com with code GGE at checkout. FabFitFun: Get $10 off your first box at fabfitfun.com with code GGE. HelloFresh: For $80 off your first month, go to hellofresh.com/gge80 and use code GGE80. Ritual: Get $10 off your first 3 months at ritual.com/gge. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Plan B, technically, what, 72 hours? Right. That's a lot of time that an egg could get fertilized, right? It's also kind of like, what are you doing for those three days? Raina, what are you doing? I'm not sure. Like, you know what I mean? Ask Raina.

Listen, I'm busy. I got layout. I eat a lot of snacks. Okay. Our episode of Girls Got to eat. Welcome back. Summer's almost over. Yes.

No, actually it's not. I hate summer. It's not even September. It's my parents anniversary today. Is it really? Yeah. If you're listing on August 19th, it's their anniversary, 41st. Wait, that's crazy. My mom, this is so crazy. My mom told me, I saw her yesterday and she was like,

today would have been my 40th anniversary with your dad. Really? So our parents got married the same week. Yeah, the same time. Isn't that so crazy? That is so crazy. Anyway. It's weird to me to think, like my parents got divorced like, oh gosh, like 30 years ago. So it's crazy. Anyways, great episode. We're talking about fertility and freezing your eggs today. Oh, man. I'm so excited about this. I have friends doing this. I didn't know what went into it until really in the last year. so because it's something that I've never really considered, but it's something that's people want to know about in their 20s and their 30s and we have the best guest to talk about it. Yes, we searched for a long time for the right guest for this. We wanted somebody who could speak knowledgeably about it,

but also be really funny. So we have our friend, Dr. Sean, coming on. Celebrab gynecologist. The vaginas he's seen. Spoiler alert, it's somebody in this room. Also, guys, get so excited because we have Meryl coming in hot later. You guys have asked us to bring her on and she actually did some fertility treatments. Recently, we'll get to it. We're not going to give you any spoilers. Whatever, she froze her eggs.

And after we never done this, where we've had two guests, but after Dr. Sean, he's going to tag team, Marilyn. I'm excited. We'll do a separate episode. I mean, I've always wanted to do an episode about child planning and when to have kids. Do you?

Never. People have asked you, like, you know, Ashley, you don't have kids. How do you discuss that with? your partner and I definitely want to do an episode like that down the road. But this is just strictly like, how do you test your fertility? What is egg freezing? Things like that. Yeah. All these things you guys want to know. And age is what ages are appropriate to do it at. The price aid all that kind of stuff. But yeah, we'll have Dr. Sean. Then we'll have Merrill. I'm so

excited to have her all. Finally, make her girls got to eat to be. We only talk about her every other week. Her voice is so soothing. Wait, you guys hear it. It's very ASMR. I can go to sleep to it. Okay. Also, this intro is going to do. We're going to do. We're going to do. Ashley's in Atlanta Day. I just got back from Chicago. We just got back from Dewey. So next week we'll record an update. I know you guys want to know. We knew this episode is going to be long and we're recording it before we go to Dewey. So next week, last summer my favorite episode was, I'll just say it, low-key, favorite episode, high key actually, is can you turn a vacation ship into a relationship?

And the whole first half of it was all about Dewey Beach. For your first time in Dewey Beach, it was about Matt Heseltine and world famous everything. And I, I don't know. Who knows what's going to happen? At this point, we don't know. Matt and I are getting tattoos together. Oh, shit. I can't wait. We'll see. We'll see. Is Matt not going to do it?

You guys are going to do it this? You're going to try to do it in Dewey? Oh, yeah. If you talked to Matt about this? He has like a special tattoo artist. Oh, well, then I will text Matt today. We're doing it. It's happening.

I'm going to come back with a girl. Me and Matt are going to come back with girls. I've got to eat tattoos or not. Okay. You know what? Next week, guys, you'll hear if this actually happened. And we'll give you a full recap. Yeah.

But before we're showing in the episode, we do an announcement about ticket sales and new cities. You guys have been asking about certain cities So we couldn't say no So we have added St. Louis and New Orleans To our roster for the fall Oh my gosh We will be in New Orleans on November 14th

And we will be in St. Louis on November 15th Yes, we are so excited We were just like, let's do it Get a lot of requests for it Who doesn't want to go to New Orleans I'm excited for St. Louis Some of these cities I've never been to I always fall in love with them

And we added a extra Columbus night So Columbus Day I'm just kidding. The Monday before the Tuesday show. What's the, I don't know the day? It's the 23rd. It's the 3rd. It's 3rd.

That sold out so quickly and you guys wanted tickets. So we added a night even though we said we weren't going to. Yeah. So Columbus, Monday and Tuesday, and that's in September. And Atlanta. Okay. Here's what we're doing in Atlanta. We are center stage.

So our center stage show is sold out. We are going to do a more intimate show the night before. So October 23rd. Oh, you stumped. May 24th. While you're talking, I will confirm. So whatever, the night before our big center stage show, we are going to do a more intimate show at the punchline in Atlanta. It's a great club. I performed there before. I love it. And that's going to be a more intimate comedy experience. So it'll be kind of more what we do at the comedy clubs. You'll get a lot of the same stuff that you're

going to see the next night, obviously, just without all the fireworks. All the fireworks, all the pyro. It's the 24th. Thursday the 24th. Okay. So Thursday the 24th, 10th. 10 p.m. is start time. So actually, interestingly enough, our friend Samarrell is performing there before us. So we're basically taking the late show. Uh, going to be great. Late show, intimate, really cool. If you guys come drunk, we don't fucking care. It's 10 p.m. If you didn't get tickets to the center stage show, or if you did, you want to see us twice, uh, come to that show that, obviously on our website will be tickets for that. But that's, that's really because of our schedule. We couldn't do another and their schedule. We couldn't do another night at center stage. We'll come back to Atlanta.

and we'll do another big theater show, but unfortunately we weren't able to do that. So we were like, let's just, let's give you guys something. We love Atlanta. We're so excited about the listeners there and you guys wanting to come to our show so at least that's what we're doing. Yeah, I know that we want to give you guys

big picture just so that you know which. You always say like, are you going to come to this city and the city? I know that we need to come to Houston. In San Diego, we will group those with the rest of the state when we're there, but these are our last fall tour dates. We are not adding more dates. These are the cities we're going to be. And if you want to see us, come to these cities.

This is the last shows we're doing, except for New York. Yeah, through the fall. But we'll be, well, yeah, I mean, we're looking at, we're looking at San Diego, L.A., that kind of stuff, early, early 2020. Yeah. Absolutely, Houston.

We'll root that with Dallas and Austin and do it right this time. We'll start making the rounds again. Chicago, obviously, come back to Chicago. So, yeah, it's just going to be next year. Yeah. So if you're like, I can't live if I know if I don't see, one more time. Come to New Orleans.

It's got to be these ones. New Orleans. Poo, that theater is awesome. It's big. It's going to be a lit night. I can't imagine how much fun it's going to be to perform that. Joy Theater. Ever heard of it?

It's only my middle name. I can't where your middle name is Joy. Why? It's like, it's like saying slut. It's my middle name. Like, Joy, it's my middle name. Joy is my middle name. It's also my mom's middle name,

but I feel like it's more appropriate for her. She's like a really happy kind person. You're nice to me. Most of the time. Whatever. I have a good heart. Whatever. Anyways, I'd just like to make it clear because we get messages from you guys.

I'm traveling to the city. Do you have anything coming up? We don't for the rest of 2019. we're just doing a New York show for the holidays, that will be it. I think. I don't know. I might bully Ashley in a morgians. I'm just kidding.

That's it. We're looking at Australia for the winner. We're looking at Australia. Love for you guys in Australia to tell us where we should go. Obviously, we're looking at Melbourne and Sydney. But I've been wanting to go there forever, my whole life. It's my number one bucket list item. And so we are hopefully going to be doing that in January.

We're just giving out all this stuff right now. I might not come back from Melbourne. I can't wait. I mean, I don't know if you fully understand what's going to happen the first time I get to meet a koala in the wild, like in the flesh. Like it's going to be tears. It's going to be waterworks. I can't even, I can't think about it. Like, I don't if you guys know us about me. I'm obsessed with koala as I follow every possible koala Instagram account there is. I just like, I can't wait to meet one. Oh, I've said this before in the podcast. And people DM me and said that they have

Chlamydia. Please don't do that. I get. I know. Ashley's going to come back with chlamia. The chlamia issue is, I get it. I know about it. I don't need you to remind me. It's really sad. Anyway, save the koalas. STD test all your koalas. That is it. Use condoms. Stay safe out there. Next week will be our last episode that we record in this apartment.

Are you okay? I don't know if I'm okay. I'm going to be great. We might do two more here. I'm going to be great. We're right. All right. Let's not jump the gun.

We'll let you know. We'll do some stories. I want to blow our load, really. But as always, stupid live shows. com for those tickets. Check them out. Come to our shows. We can't wait to meet to meet you guys in all these cities.

Thank you for giving us your money and coming to the shows. Yeah. And sorry there's not more personal anecdotes in this intro, but like we said, we have such a special episode with two special guests. So you want to kick it off right now? Yeah. So we are really excited. We have in the house studio with us and Dewey, a good friend of ours.

He is an OBGYN. He has had a practice in New York City for 15 years in the Upper East Side. He is currently the director of labor and delivery in New York City at a very prestigious hospital. You might have heard us on his podcast to reveal life. He has also been between Ashley's legs and seen her vagina. Please welcome to the house studio with us in D'S and Dewey Dr. Sean Henry.

Hey guys, what's up? How are you? It's great. How is Ashley's vagina for you? Pat Stewart came back perfect. First guest that has fingered me. And touched your tithes. He's the only second and third base.

We skipped first. Only guests had seen more of Ashley's body than I have. Oh my God. I have to tell you, I was on my way over here. I was talking to this guy that I'm dating. And I was like, I think we'll just maybe FaceTime you. while he's there, and I'm going to have you guess which vagina he's looking at. What? Wait, hold on. What are you saying? I was on my over here. I was talking to the

guy that I'm seeing. I heard that part. Well, I heard it. I heard it. I heard it. I think we'll just get, like, examinations while he's there. I'm going to have Dr. Sean FaceTime you, and I'm going to make you guess which one is mine. Oh, like out of me and you? Yeah. Oh, this is sick. But you're kind of now, though, huh? Yeah, but I'm talking to his best friend. So we'll make him both guests. Both guests. He was like, that looks like a familiar landscape that I, that I recognized. Oh my gosh.

We're off to the races. Also, just feel free to like get right up in it. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Never been a problem before. Again, guys, talking about the mics.

We said to this sweet little girl we had on a couple weeks ago, I was like, just feel free to eat it. And Raina was like, she means her pussy. And I'm like, Raina, I'm not happy unless everybody is uncomfortable from start to finish on this podcast. Perfect. Perfect. But we're going to talk to you, I'm not actually, we're going to talk to you today about fertility.

We're going to talk about egg retrieval, IVF, all these things. You're an expert. I thought you could, well, that's about, you can introduce yourself. Yeah. So, what's up? So basically, um, so it's, you know, it's a huge, it's a huge topic, right? Particularly in New York. Wait, I need to back up.

You are, we're not going to say any names, but you are, you were. Yes. A celeb. Yes. Yes. And which comes to the sun, some of issues. Right. But, like, you've told some.

Crazy stories. Clearly, if you have, what is the word, privacy? What's the word? Private practice? No, like you can't talk about it. N.A. Yeah. Is that what he had to sign before he went down on you? Oh my God. Yeah, similar. I'm part of your celebrity practice. That's right. But you, I wish I could say the names, but like, huge celebrities. You'll get, with a celebrity client tells sometimes you get like, you have to put up with a lot. It's not just like, you know, it's a little more demanding. Because, yeah, they think you're like on the morning. Like on Sunday, you get like a text. It's like, I think I have an infection.

I'm like, yeah, I'm sleeping. Oh my gosh. Like if you're in labor, call me. Right. Like if you're itchy, maybe you can wait until like seven. Did you, again, no names, but I feel like you told us this story when we met that somebody like got something stuck up in that. That's pretty common. Models.

They do that. Yeah. Was it grapes? It's grapes, yeah. What? I have such a good memory. Wait, why grapes? I don't know what they were doing, but there were grapes in there.

Like four green grapes I'd get there. What? I called a rabbit's foot out of someone's bedroom. A rabbit's foot key chain once out of someone's been there. Listen,

we're going to scrap this episode. I only want to hear about stuff you put it out of people's bodies. Okay, what are other weird things you take that of people's body? That's the weirdest thing I've ever pulled out.

So the weirdest part about that story was that the person thought there was a diet, like a playing dice and never died. What? Yeah, but what it actually ended up being was a,

I don't even know where you buy one of those rabbits' feet anymore. Like, you remember those two-tone rabbit's foot of key chair. You can buy them in Times Square. Oh, you can? Oh, sure.

Wait, with you? Yeah, do you want to look at my vagina? It's one thing, like, okay, a die. It's a little weird, but it's something like, you know. Right, the die. Like a dead animal in there. So I put the speculum in. I'm like, what the fuck?

And I pulled it out and said, I go, no memory of this? Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. How is this even possible? I just think that people, you know, they're intoxicated or they're whatever and things just kind of get in. I've never been so intoxicated. I'm like, let's see what it'll fit there.

Yeah. Maybe you'd be surprised. I am surprised. Anything else crazy? We'll see. So rabbit's feet. The most common thing is usually just like, there's like condoms are very common.

They get like launched on the same. So I would say like, and you'd be honest that what's the most common? Once a week. No joke. Once a week. Every year for 15 years is a left in tampon.

Which is like, well, yeah. I have a story. I have a story. I, this happened to me in college. Right.

No, it's terrifying. I went to the clinic and they had to like pull it out. I mean, I thought I had an SDD because it starts to smell. Right. Raina can't look. She knows the full story.

Right. And, uh, yeah. It also gets to be like the size of like a, like a dishwash sponge. Like it's like huge. Well, and I didn't look, but they had to call in for backup and like, pull it out and like put it. And you can use that room the rest of the day. Put it in this little lunchbox thing and like. Yeah.

It's really. It's really. Well, they were like, it's. This is so graphic. I mean, whatever. It happens to the best of us. They were like, it's going to really smell bad. And I was, I was, I just like covered my nose until it was over.

And then I was so excited that I didn't have an STD that I had to fuck somebody that night. Right. Well, usually what happens is it's always a Monday morning too, right? So people go out. Totally. And so they're probably drinking or whatever, and they're not in a sober mind.

And they go to the bathroom and they think that they took the old one out and they put another one in. Ah, yes. Well, I had been putting another one in. Like, I think I had sex. Like, it was a bad situation. Because it gets to be that, like, if he didn't feel that, then like, you probably should have been in.

When you said it became the old was. the size of a dish sponge. I mean, it's huge. I mean, it's swell. I wish I would have looked now. I don't know. It was. It was.

It was the best story. Because I had zero inclination that that was what it was. I was like, I have an STD. Because people feel really bad too. Like, look, it happens, right? It's just happens. It's like, but people get so upset.

About that? I was so happy. That's all it was. Well, I think once they, once you tell them one of this, they're embarrassed and they forgot and like, yeah. They feel like, like, you know how I, you guys don't mean. I'm the least judgmental person in the world.

Right. I don't care. I'm just glad. I mean, you could die from that. Right. Exactly. Toxic shock syndrome. But I mean, you'll know because it starts.

Right, right, right. Well, you know something's up. To smell. But I was never so happy in my life. Right. No, yeah. They immediately were like, we know what this is. No, I can, I know right away.

I'm like, okay. You walk into the room and you can smell it. We have a room. Oh. It was room one. We only is room one. Room one. That was me.

At Redfern Clinic in Clemson. I thought we were never going to have to talk about this again. Here we are. I finally stopped having nightmares about it. Here we are again. Here we are. Okay. So anyway,

I just had to say, right. A-list clientele. I wish I could say just, all right. You know what? Forget. Just the biggest female,

celebrities, actresses, singers, models you can imagine. Not Beyonce. No. But same level. Pretty much.

Okay. Lots of models. Yeah. They're the ones with the rabbit feet and the grapes and all that. I don't understand grapes. This is so, whatever. Here's what I'm thinking,

that they were like, they had an anal bead vibe in their head. So they just started shoving grapes up there. Well, the thing is, I was impressed that they were still intact. Yeah, that's... It's fairly easy to break a grape. Absolutely. Let's kind of crush grapes in our pussy later.

You have a nice, soft, cushy vagina if you can keep a grape in there. That's how you know it's soft. But the thing was, as I was taking them out, like, I broke quite. Like, it's hard to, like, you know, like, because they're, like, jammed in there. Yeah. You're, like, trying to pull them out with a cleanse of why broke a while. Do you think if you keep grapes in your vagina long enough if they turn into wine?

Maybe. What better place for fermentation? inside your vagina. That's what I'm saying. We are fucked up. Okay. I'm surprised I've never thought of that before. I'm sorry.

That joke. Yeah, that was good. It's good. It's good. It's good. It's good. It's our. We own it.

Would you call it? Bwina. That didn't hit. I'm trying to think of what I would call it. Yeah. Pussy noir. Amazing. Okay.

So we want to talk about fertility today. Yeah. And we have a, we've, let me, women of all ages listen to this, but we do have a lot of younger listeners. And I find it fascinating that you say that you have women come in at early 20s. Well, I think particularly in New York, there's a special kind of woman in New York. If they come in, they're like 24 years old, they want to freeze their eggs.

I'm like, oh, let's see how the weekend goes. Let's just give it some time. Maybe you'll get pregnant this weekend. I'm just saying like... We have like the best audience. They're so great. We asked for questions and so we wanted to sort of like see what you want to talk about. So we're going to talk to you about today about like free.

using eggs, testing fertility, ages you should do it at, cost. Okay. Maybe I jump the gun. Maybe I jump the gun because one of the main questions we got, which I actually don't know the answer to this, and I've never thought about this in my life, because I don't want children. But they asked, how do I know if I'm fertile? Right. So the best thing is that let someone come inside you and see what happens. I don't have a better friend. I don't know if I'm fertile because I love people do that all the time. Right, right. Maybe I can't have kids. Different episode.

That might be grabs. So do you get this a lot? All the time. Okay. So it's very common. I also think it's a normal fear. Like fundamentally, if you just think about just a fundamental between men and women, like it's something that men just never have to think about, right?

So it's on women, a lot of women's minds from a very young age. Just this whole thing, like this whole, like, built up idea of, like, getting married, having a kid. Like, so as you get older, the anxiety that comes with that builds and builds and builds. But what I'm seeing is that now it's starting much earlier, right? And so you don't really, unless you really start having kids in your 20s, there's no reason to start obsessing about this, right? Because it's just not.

Why do you think, I'm just trying to get the mindset in my head of why you want to know before you even would start having kids. Well, that's the whole thing. I just think it's anxiety. Anxiety, yeah. It's not, you know, there's, and as I said, I think the most important thing is age, right? So if we're talking about when you start thinking about it, you know, if you're in your 20s, one, I don't think you should be thinking about it at all.

Unless it's, you know, you're ready to have kids. Right. But going to get your fertility tested in your early to mid-20s, late 20s, when you're not even entertained the idea of actually getting pregnant, it's only going to be anxiety-producing, right? To get accurate fertility testing, you have to come off your birth control. And so, I mean, most women in New York are on birth control, right? But they'll come in and they'll say like, oh, I want to know if I can get pregnant.

I'm like, okay, we have to come off your birth. And the idea of coming off your birth control is also another thing. We're like, well, what am I going to do? I'm like, listen, that's my whole point. Like, there's no point in doing this right now. There's no point. But then what do you do? Well, the thing is, that is probably the most common question.

I don't even know if I am fertile. Right. I think a lot of women are like, I've been on birth control my whole life. I've never gotten pregnant. National scenarios, like, well, because it works. It is the most common scenario is you come off of it, and most people will get pregnant, right? But it does, it can take up to six months just to get regular periods once you come off birth control, particularly if you've been on it for years.

So your ovaries are basically been suppressed for years. And so it just takes time for this whole system to reboot itself. And so it's not just your ovaries, right? You're basically suppressing the birth control pills. and the nuvarian, all those things are hormonal ways of blocking ovulation. So ovulation is a fancy where for every month women, in your brain, there's pituitary glands, right? And that sync releases in a very specific set of pulsations to stimulate your ovary to release an egg, right? So what the birth control does is it's blocking that, right?

So you're doing that for years. So after 10 years, it just needs a couple months to kickstart itself, right? That's normal. Which I think people would want to hear that. Right. I'm so glad you said it. Yeah, but it's good that you, because again, people will call them, like, I'll get a message or an email and I'll say, like, I came off my bird control and I haven't been able to get pregnant. And you, when you actually answer it?

And I'm like, why, when did you come on? When did you stop? It's like, oh, a month ago. Like, I go relax, Gina. Like, it just takes some time. Karen, take it down and not. Do you call everybody, Gina? I can just see you doing that.

Somebody's a big one. Sarah, and you just called them Gina. Karen. And it's like above 50, so they're just blanche. A little more respectful. But if you're not on birth control, the best indication of your fertility is whether you're getting regular periods.

If you're not in any kind of birth control and you're getting regular periods, you're probably fertile. Okay. And what is, when you say regular, every 28 days or is every like 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 35? 5 or 7 days. Okay.

At most point in, you know, when you read a textbook, it'll say an normal cycle's 28 days, but less or minus, you know, 5 to 7 days. Right. You know if you're regular. Right. Even if you get it every six weeks, not for the upper level of normal,

But if you're getting in a predictable regular pattern, then that's a very good indication that you're fertile. Okay. And more like every 35 days. I was always wondering if that's weird. So 35 is the higher end of the regular cycle. So this is important, too, when you're trying to get pregnant. So in a 28-day cycle, most people ovulate midway, so day 14, right? So that's when the most likely time to get pregnant.

And again, this is also why a lot of people don't get pregnant is they, and this is why I think shows like this. And when we had a podcast about women's health or even. why I went into women's health is as progressive as we become as a society women's health in general is very underserved. I think it's shocking that you can talk to someone who's very intelligent and they know nothing about their body, right? They don't know nothing about

how their period works. And they're like, I can't get pregnant. I'm like, well, when are you? When are you having sex? And I'm like, oh, like the day after my period ends, I'm like, well, that's, no one's going to get pregnant. And it's funny because I feel like I only realized in recent years how that works. Right, no, it's unsaying. So I think that's good to talk about it. You know, but you guys have a huge audience and I think it'll be helpful.

hopefully to a lot of people just to even know how your freaking period works. So, okay, this is my question. Yeah. When we talk about days, when you end your period, the last day your period is the next day, day, day one? Right. Okay. So two weeks after that, okay. Right.

So you actually would count on the first day of your period, right? That's day one. So if you say a 20-day cycle, it would be 14 days in from the first day of your- from the first day of your period. I didn't know this. And then when you go to the guy and they're like, when was your last period? I'm like, I don't know. But it's important when things like this are happening.

And a lot of times, and again, particularly where we live, women are working a lot, they're traveling a lot, or their partners are traveling a lot. And so a lot of times it's not, they go into an immediate panic, they think they can't get pregnant. But in fact, it's just a lot of times it's timing. So you actually talk to the patient, and they'll say, like, oh, my husband travels six out of seven days a week.

Okay, well, did you add that into the three days or four days where you're actually fertile? Right. So you can't get pregnant, and it's just your timing is off. And so a lot of this is just about debunking people's fears, I think, and if you actually straight it out, and I really do believe that. And it's not because I'm a guru or something like that. But a lot of times it's just diffusing that anxiety.

And people will get this. I've had my period in three months. And they'll make an appointment. They come in their crying. And you talk to them, and like, literally the next day they're like, oh, I got it. Right. You just need to relax. Well, yeah, Blanche.

And also, I mean, if you don't have regular periods, it doesn't mean you're not fertile. I mean, I have a friend of mine. she's four kids and she just kept being like, I'm not, I can't have a kid. I don't even get my period. Kid number three. And it was the fourth one happened the week before her husband scheduled vasectomy. Oh, God.

What? But she's the best mom ever. She just is five kids. And she had an IUD. She got a copper IUD. And this is not saying anything bad about it. After the fifth kid? Right.

So, and I can't get pregnant again. I'll die. 99.9.9% effective. Right. IUDs in general. Yeah. And she, but you know, because she's been pregnant five times, she felt like she was pregnant. and so she came into the office

did an ultrasound and sure enough she was pregnant with an IUD I had a friend that happened she's like how did this happen I go basically the baby's holding IUD and like giving you the finger that is so crazy yeah so and again that's a whole other

like people the terrifying experience right and so I want to jump into I think a lot we'll talk about today mostly is egg fertilization but I think you were saying

before you started recording you look at somebody's age and you're like okay I make a diagnosis for do you want IVF do you want to stimulate the ovaries do you want egg retrieval? So, like, maybe you could talk a little bit about age and, like, what you should be doing? And what you just turn someone away, like, 22 or you like, get out of here.

Well, no, I'm just like, you know, I'm just like, you know, like a pat on the back, like, don't worry, champ. Yeah. Like, everything's going to be fine, right? But again, it's interesting because the flip side, like, I just remember when I was in the 90s, most of my friends were worried about just the thought of getting pregnant was terrifying. Right. And now people are coming in like, do you think I can get pregnant? I'm like, well, do you want to be?

Like, you're in college. Like, let's take it step by stuff. just look at it, Dick. You'll get pregnant. You're 19. Yeah. But yeah, so people come in, so we're going to talk about egg freezing or egg retrieval, right? So it's huge now, right? And so it's particularly, you know, it's probably any big city, but especially here in New York, like, it's like people talk about it all the time. And because we're like people do stuff later in life. Sure. It makes sense. Yeah. And again, I understand like some people. And a lot times, a lot of my patients will say, well, my mom's offered to pay for it. It's like,

it's like an insurance policy. I hear that a lot. Which I think it's interesting, right? I think it's cool in a way that your mom's like, hey, champ. It's free those babies. Or some of those people's work will pay for it. I've heard of that too. I've had a friend that she was like, did that right before she quit her job. She was like, I'm going to have them take care of this. That's right. That's great. I think New York women, a lot of women in major cities, not just New York, like work and work and work and then they're like 30 and they're like, should I start thinking about this now? Right. So what I usually tell people to do is, I think I have to take each case, case by case, right? And so this is like, notwithstanding,

there's someone with other medical problems. So if you have other comorbidities, like, say, you're diabetic or other things that can affect your fertility, then that's a whole other set of issues, right? And so you may want to start it earlier, or you have to be more, depending on someone's age, be more intense about it. People, so everyone's fertility or the fancy word of that's fecundity. What? Frecundity. That sounds sexual. Right.

That sounds like you made that up. Dr. Sean out here making up words. No. So that's the word. Fecundity. That's someone's ability to get pregnant. So it starts to decrease for everyone at 35. Okay.

And so each year after 35, it goes down significantly. Wow. So when you're 40, it's fairly difficult to get pregnant without any assistance in general. So someone's say that comes in like early 30s, right? And again, it ranges with the degree of panic. Right. So some people are just like, hey, I just want to talk about this, right? And that's healthy.

Right. But sometimes people come in, like, their tears are already, flowing. And like, there's not even a problem yet, right? So he has to be like, listen, there's no reason to think that you're like, what's your game plan here? Like, what do you want to do? Like, what do you want to get pregnant? Like, what is your, like, why do you want to freeze your eggs? And again, I think the most, the best time to start thinking about it is if you can't, if it's something you really want to do, right? So say, and again, everyone's different reasons, but if you're not in a relationship, you don't foresee yourself

being a relationship, but you want to get married. So there's all these different scenarios. Absolutely. The most scenarios, usually that I hear, it's like, they have this, like, they have this, like, idea of what they want or this old school fairy tale of like getting married and, you know, which is, I think, kind of antiquated in a way. For sure. So I also try to break that down a little bit. Because when you start talking about this, you can't believe how people sometimes will

unravel, right? I think it's just a very real fear that like your whole, especially like growing up the Midwest and the South, yes, you're 30 years old, you're an old maid, you haven't done these things. And so the panic that starts to set in, like, I have made all the wrong decisions and I don't have a husband. You can be like the CEO of a huge company. Absolutely. I'm a failure.

Well, it's a matter of how you pictured your life. So, I mean, even I pictured my life differently a year ago. And I think we're helping people a lot of times actually think about what they really went out of life. But, I mean, if you really thought your entire life, you were going to get married and have kids and you are at an age and you think it might not happen, you're freaking out. Right, right. I think sometimes people also think it's easier than it actually is. Like, I think they really just believe you show up one day in the office and, like, you harvest like 30 eggs and like you put them in the family. So there's a process to it.

So, but if it's something you really want to do, and as I said, But it's, you're going to get more eggs the earlier you do it. Right. So in general, someone who's 30 is going to get more eggs during the egg retrieval process than someone who's 41. Absolutely. Usually what we do is when you start worrying about fertility, is there's a couple blood tests you can do.

And again, you have to be off birth control because the hormones and the birth control are going to make the blood test inaccurate. Of course. So if you're off the thing, so the first test that we use now, it's called AMH, right? And so it stands for, you know, it's too technical, but just so it's an AMH time. Well, you're making up words already. So just, we already don't trust you. And I've checked your vagina.

Right. Zero trust. All the A-listers that come to you. Yeah, you might want to get that redone. Oh, my God. Just go somewhere. Excuse me. So AMH is, it's called anti-malarine hormone.

So what it does basically is a simple blood test that doesn't necessarily need to be tied. All of these other hormonal blood tests, you have to be like the third day of your period. The AMH test, it tells us what the ovarian reserve is, meaning it tells you how many eggs you have left. And are you looking at that for IVF as well? Or this is just strictly for egg fertilization. What you start with, just in general, just fertility. So say someone comes in and they're going to entertain the idea of doing egg freezing, and then they're like 33 and you do an AMA.

I like to do it just so I, and again, it's not foolproof, but you can say if your AMH level is high, so it's above like one, one and a half. And you can say it's to someone like, look, you have time, like relax. Sorry to interrupt you, but I'm just like, because we do have a lot of younger listeners. I mean, if you have the money and the time, I mean, is it crazy to do this at 27? No, because you're going to get more eggs? Yeah, no, definitely not. Okay.

I think it's, you know, and again, it's, it's a, yes, exactly the scenario. If you have the money and it's no big deal and you just want to do it, then great. Then do it. There's no harm to it. Well, I mean, there is this procedure. Okay, absolutely. We're going to get to that. And the cost.

But, yeah, I mean, that's, you know, yes, that's great. Yeah. But again, not too many people are in that scenario. But say that 27-year-old comes in, and they want to talk to you about it, I do an AMH test and it's super low, meaning that, oh, my God, very unexpected, even though she's having normal periods, her blood test shows that she really doesn't have much ovarian reserve. So let's do this. I send my to a fertility doctor.

Absolutely. And so, and again, that's not to freak people out, but it does very rarely happen. It's not expected. And so I say that's the best place to start. It's like, hey, let's just see where you're at, right? Like, if you come in, we do a blood test. And most of the time, it's like, again, like, you're fine. I mean like enjoy your day, right?

So you can drink tonight to do whatever you want to do. But say it's someone's like 35 or so. There's still candidates. It's great, but you may get fewer eggs than if you were 30 or whatever. But that is the time. If you want to do it for sure, my advice is to definitely do it. And if you can, a little bit between like 33, 30, definitely under 35, right? So again, that's when 35 is where things can start in your egg reserve is going to go down.

Gotcha. But these are the things that a general OBGYN doesn't do. So you do all the basic testing with your general OBGYN. And then, again, depending on where you're at, I use the same place all the time. That's the place called RMA in the York. It's a reproductive medical associates. And they're awesome.

So it's a private fertility egg retrieval place and IVF center. They're all over the place now. It's right here by my office where you go to Madison Avenue. And so right away, you just send them right there. And so that's all they do. Right. You want to go to somebody who's like, this is what they do. Right.

Like you want someone who's going to be like, oh, let's see how it goes. Right. and injecting with hormones and all kinds of shit. Like you don't want that. Right. So basically with the egg freezing, an retrieval process,

so you do get a referral, you go to this place. They'll do an ultrasound first. They do a transvaginal ultrasound? I don't know if we did one on you when you came in. Is it to see if you're pregnant? Right. So one that goes inside the vagina.

Right. So we just knew I wasn't. Right. Oh, we weren't sure. Right. Well, no. I hadn't slept. I think I was in mid-dry spell when I came and saw you.

No chance. Okay. But we used this transvaginal ultrasound. It doesn't hurt. It looks scary because it's just like a long pro, but it's basically to look at your ovaries, right? And so you can actually directly look at your ovaries and you can see follicles, which is a fancy way for how many eggs you have. That's usually how you start. So they'll start and look and like, oh, you always look great.

Or again, if it did it all, then you have to be more aggressive about it. Right. So you start with that and they'll do more blood tests, and then they start to stimulate your ovaries. So there's a protocol of medications that you go on to prepare your eggs. So what you're doing is just, and again, it's manipulating this whole system, we were talking about before, are this connection between your brain and your ovaries into hyperstimulate. You don't want to hypersetum.

You want to stimulate your ovaries to produce as many eggs as possible. So normally each month your body, your body, most women's body, is only focused on releasing one egg per month, right? This is like tricking your ovaries into like being like, hey guys. Yeah. Let's get working.

So are you on medication or is it shots? Is it oral? It's both. Right. So if you're doing it, you get sent home with shots to give yourself or to have someone give you. Yeah, this whole thing. They have nurses that show you how to do it.

Okay. And how long, like, could we talk to me about that? I don't know anything about this. So, like, how many shots do you need per day? How long do you do that for? It's usually the process is, like, all cycles. So you usually just do one. You start with that.

And so that process usually is like four to six weeks. Okay. And then, so once the ovaries are really stimulated. But every day you're getting the shots. Right. For two weeks, right? Yeah. So, again, it depends on where you're, how fertile you are.

How much you need. Right. But every day you give yourself a shot. for two weeks. Right. And how do you feel physically while this is happening? Well, sometimes you get a little bloated, right? Because, I mean, it's like, it's like your period times.

It's your period sounds like. Yeah. And we're just, we're having someone come on at the end of the show, our friend Meryl to talk about her experience. Obviously, you can speak on this too, but everybody's different. She had a pretty easy time.

But it's just like people's pregnancy. People have terrible pregnancies and people have easy pregnancy. So in general, this process is typically pretty benign. Can you drink while you're doing it? Oh, you probably shouldn't. You shouldn't. I mean, just making an investment. Just curious.

Right. I mean, I'm just saying that was the first question I asked her, which that shows what kind of friend I am. Can you drink? When she was like, so I'm going to freeze my eggs. I was like, ew, can you drink? And that's not like, knew I was a... Right, right, you guys were on different schedules.

That's when I knew I wasn't meant to be a mother. I mean, I already knew. But I literally think I go, ew, what? Two weeks? It's summer. Do this in February, bitch. It's New York summer. We have boats to go on and rosé to drink.

Well, how could you do this to me? Right, right. I totally get it. But some people go through the process. And again, so if you go into this process at 40, the process is the same, but you may only get like three eggs. Right. So whereas someone, as you didn't mention before, it's 27. She may come out and be like, I had 37.

Oh, wow. It's that different. Right. Is average, like, teens? Yeah, I would say probably, I mean, most people go like 15. And then so one full cycle is just, just talk to me like I'm an idiot. One full cycle is two weeks. Well, no, it's like four to six weeks.

Two weeks are. Right. Right. So it's pills, shots. And you have to go in fairly frequently for blood work and ultrasounds. So what the ultrasounds are designed to do is to see the effect of the medication. So the doctor can say, like, we're ready for this. Everyone's like, we've recruited as many people as we can. And we're going in.

We're ready to play. Right, right, right. Pre-season's over. It's time for the Super Bowl. Send the A squat in. Right. And it's good, you know, you want to like, a lot of times your attitude, right, during this process. It's important.

Same thing with IV. We'll talk about IVF next. It's been like, you know, the more positive you are about it, more likely it is to succeed. Yeah. So, you know, because a lot of times people get to this point, but particularly more so I think with IVF, it's upsetting. And the infertility process can really be horribly psychologically traumatic to people. And sometimes it causes problems in relationships. Yeah.

So you really want to be motivated for it. And rather than being, like, going into it depressed, you want to be like, okay, I'm going to get this a shot and like really be motivated. And do it in February. And do in February, non-drinking season or January. even. And Merrill can speak on this too. She just felt really empowered. She was like, I'm taking control of my body and I'm happy and I'm positive.

And yeah, I mean, I'm just so big on like your mental state affecting what's going on in your body. And in general, I think you know, I mean, just even if you're, when it comes to, like, a lot of you, it's, I kind of quit coming to the gynecologist like, we're going to the dentist. Like, nobody really wants to go. Yeah. Like, I mean, like, no one's ever like,

I got a gyno appointment. Well, I was excited to come to talk shit with you over my vagina. Yeah. We had things we want to talk shit. on with you. Oh yeah, at that point. Yeah. I was like, oh my God, I can't wait to see Dr. Sean Rain. I was like, you can't wait for your gyno appointment. And I was like, I'm so excited to talk shit. And then you're, you were overlooking the park. I took a stroll in the park afterwards. It's a nice place. Yeah. We met you in a very like shit talk scenario. So let's just that we're going to interject. I know you guys are really, I feel like we're we cut in the middle of

this egg process. But let's tell the story. Fuck it. Yeah. It's a short story. Sort of. We met you on your podcast. You invited us on your podcast, which is now to in the early days of our podcast. Like, I mean, a few months in. Yeah. Yeah. And we, so we came on your podcast, which is now defunct. We had so much fun with you guys.

You and your co-host and this guy was in the room who was a smoke show. Oh, my God. He might be the hottest guy of ever. One of the hottest men ever. He was a producer, whatever. He was in there. And, I mean, Rana, we were like on fire. You were like really showing, you were being very funny.

I was worried you weren't going to, you were going to clam up because he was that beautiful. I'm the opposite. When I know I'm performing for an. audience, I'm on fire. If I know it's just Ashley and Dewey, like, I can't even get it up. So they already like me. I felt nervous though.

I was like, he's so beautiful. I thought you guys had met him before. We had not met him before. So we do the podcast and then we go out for drinks afterwards. One of you. You guys never go out after. You were saying, like, we never go out. I don't go out that much after we record a podcast.

Because we had done our, we had done two of ours that day. Yeah, you were like in the studio for a long time. And you came down to our studio, which was not even, right? It was a long day. But Raina, I mean, nothing gets her going more. Like that's like her, her cocaine is like a hot guy, like to keep her going all night. So we went out with you guys and we were hanging out at that, it's now a different bar. I figure that it was called.

Whatever. It was like a cool basement bar. Yeah. And so we're hanging out. We were in Tribeca, right? We were in Tribeca. Yeah. And you were like, you lead over to me.

I was like, he's so hot. And you're like, you should fuck him. I'm like, doctor. I can't believe you're like this. And I was like, doesn't he have a girlfriend? You're like, I don't know. But you should fuck him anyway. Whatever.

So I'm like, just trying to be a supportive. So one by one, I started picking all of you off. I'm like, if you guys leave, one by one, I was picking you all off

and I ended up staying out with him all night long. Nice. She, Rana texted me, like, okay, you can leave now. Oh,

did you really? Yes. What was she had? She had, so was the three. Yeah, I think I was like mid-burger and you're like,

what's your plan? I'm like, I'll finish my burger. I was like, can I finish my meal? I was like, Dr. Sean, we're supposed to leave now.

Yeah, You told me that. I was like, okay. Like, I guess it's Craig paying? Like, what's, like, we're saying. Right. Yeah, we're like, Dr. Sean, you need to pay? And then we have to leave.

And he looks at me and goes, then we close at the bill. And I think he was like, well, I'd be, like, down to get another drink. I think you don't have any plans. And I was like, I mean, I'm kind of busy. But you had an early flight. I did? Yes. I remember.

I was like, is Rainer really going to see this through? Like, I know what time is bitch to wake up and fly out? that's why I know how crazy you were. Like, we're not trying to interview like any doctor. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Somebody that will support my need to have sex. I mean, being a gay gynecologist is, that's kind of who you want to go to, right?

Or a woman, I'm like, I just, straight male gynecologist, I don't trust him. I'm just, I'm just, like, this man's fingering me. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, I don't know. Well, that's not really what's happening, but I just... He's like, I actually have to say that technically that's not. He's actually like doing a medical procedure, but I get it. I get what you're saying.

The imagery is perfectly clear. But yeah, when I have patients that come in, like they walk in and they're like, high-fiving me. I'm like, it's weird. Yeah. When I came in for mine, you were like, oh, my God, I've been up all night. I'd like delivered all these babies.

I was like, are you okay? I had like seven deliveries that night. Yeah. What? Yeah, it was crazy. Ashton was like, should you be fingering me right now? Oh my God. I was like, again, that's not what it is.

I got out of here. I got to go to bed. Okay. So, let me recap. Yeah. Four to six week process. You go in. This is egg, true.

It's an egg freezing. They stick the ultrasound up. You feel around. Fairly expensive. Yeah, we'll get to that a second. And then you usually get sent home with shots for the next two weeks. Yeah. Sometimes, like the place that we said, I think they will do it for it.

It depends. Well, in part, like for I, Merrill did her own, which I think is admirable. She'll talk about it again. I don't know that I could do it. The thought of it makes me feel really weird. And they, you know, the doctors is there. That's, their only job is to is patient education. Okay.

And once you're, and these places, yes, it's expensive. but like this is what you're paying for, right? So it's places where it's all about education and they kind of take the anxiety of it away and someone shows you, even if you're really uncomfortable with the idea of giving yourself an injection. By the end of it, it's really, you know, that big of a deal. And it's, I don't know.

I mean, everybody's different. I'm like, people that do it, I'm like, you're badass. I can't. I will take this. I have a buddy, a straight buddy who called me, this is fairly recently and he was completely freaked out. He, I guess, was that kind of dating this girl was early in their relationship and he found needles.

Oh, right. Right. I was like, oh my God, I think that she might be like a drug addict. Like, was it like a label on it or like, like, and he was like, yeah, it's like, maybe she's like, like, yeah. Heroin doesn't come with needles. Oh, right. Doesn't come like with a prescription. Right.

With it needles. It ended up being what it was. So, okay, so people do this and then what is the actual retrieval process like? Right. So what they do basically is under, during the transvaginal ultrasound, they put a needle in the, usually through the cervix, right, through your vagina. and then you harvest the eggs through your... Does that hurt? It's a little uncomfortable, but it's not terrible.

And then it's usually just a one time. And then say you get like 30 eggs, you're good. You just do it one cycle. But then is there time? I can't remember with Merrill, time between the shots and the that process? Like a couple weeks there. That's why you're going in for the ultrasounds, right?

You're going in for regular ultrasounds. Because those injections are stimulating the eggs to, so these follicles to get bigger. And as they get bigger, then when they're big, that's when you're when you retrieve them. Okay. Do you, and this is like the dumbest question, is it, is it okay to have sex when you're doing all this?

Yeah, I mean, again, some people get, they feel really bloated and so you. Okay. Maybe you don't want to. Oh, that's a good question. Do you feel horny at all? Like, you know, people get horny when they're pregnant? Again, I hate the word horny.

I can't believe I'm saying it. But like, you said to take a case by case. Right. But it's fine. Yeah, you usually tell people it's fine. Okay. And so you do that, and then there's a freezing, then the freeze process.

And so this fertility clinic that you're going to is going to be in charge of, like, it's like a cryo, so it's like a deep freeze kind of thing. Okay. And so, I think a lot of the good questions is like, one of those six, like, so you bank your eggs or you're 25, like, are they still going to be viable when you're 35? And so, you know, this whole thing is fairly,

it's not, it's a newer procedure, yeah. So you don't really know. But again, it's, it's such an interest, if you really think about it, just such an interesting, there's so many aspects to this process, like, you know, the fear of not being able to get pregnant, to feeling empowered by doing it. But then in reality, being like, well, is it really going to work?

You just don't know. Because I don't know at my age now, I have friends doing it, but no one's not a baby from it. No one's gone in to get them. So, and then I don't really know if I know this. Like, then when you want to get pregnant, what do you do with those? Take them off ice. Right, right.

And so you usually would do like an IVF process then, right? And so we can go into that. But with the man's sperm, I don't understand. So I was saying you earlier, I have a friend who is doing this now, and she's with somebody that she thinks she's going to marry, but she's not sure. So the doctor said to her, we want to retrieve these,

but it's a higher success rate if we fertilize them. So we'll take his sperm and we fertilize it, but you freeze frozen eggs. So. Fertilized, yeah. So frozen embryos. So that's, like, most people, though, in this process, they're not in that scenario.

They're not in a relationship. Right. So they're coming in just to bank the age. Yeah. Not to give to it. She's cancer. So that's why they're trying. That's also, that's, I was glad you wrote that up, actually.

And so that's the conversation that you want to have your OBGYN, if you're going through, if you're about to go through chemo radiation. Yeah. My friend did that too. Yeah. So it's important to bring that. Usually if you have like a good doctor, they're going to, you know, that's all part of that process. But I'm glad you brought it up because it's something that. And again, like, you know, there's been a couple patients in my practice who had like childhood cancers where like, you know, when the kid's 10 years old and has like a rare bone cancer, they're not talking to her about egg preservation.

Right. Right. And that's sad, you know what I mean? So a couple of, and I've had a couple of patients. in my career where, you know, now they're married and it's just, because it wasn't talked about, they're in like a different scenario now. Yeah, right. But again, you know, but now there's also another option.

You could do donor eggs, right? There's a whole other thing. For sure. You know, it's everything, it's not like the game's over. For sure. But I know two people like got cancer at 28. One was married, one wasn't. So one fertilized eggs.

Yeah. Do you know people that have retrieved their eggs and they have children now? Well, I've had people who have had frozen embryos, right? And so the IVF process. But I don't think I've had any patients as of the hundred. the patients that I've done froze their eggs, I haven't had any that I've actually used them yet. Oh, that haven't used them yet.

So when you say a frozen embryo, that means you fertilized the eggworms. Right, right. Yeah, those people, they use them. But again, in this scenario, too, like, so do we know success rates at all? Well, that's something. So you don't know for that, you really don't know, right? But for frozen embryos, it depends. I mean, so what you're going to do, too, and was what to maybe segue into that,

just so we can make sense to the audience. So the IVF process. So it's kind of, it's kind of the next step of this. So you're harvesting eggs, right? So you're going to go into the same process of stimulating your ovaries to get the eggs. And then you're fertilizing that egg to get an embryo and then you're freezing that. Or that's to save eggs, right? So usually when you do this, when you do IVF, you're not just going for one, right?

So even though you want to get pregnant while you're doing, so you're going through that process to get pregnant at that moment, most of the time you're getting as many eggs as you can. You're going to usually put back in New York now. We usually still more than two, right? And the whole thing was a big thing. When I was a resident, you know, 20 years ago, people were putting like four embryos inside people.

And so that's not really safe, right? And then you have like pre-term births, it's a whole, you know, because there's a whole other host of issues. And have a bunch of kids? Like, if you have twins and triplets and stuff like that. It's very popular for them to put like three or eggs in. I know a lot of people got IVF. A lot of people don't have to have twins.

Right. Twins is, you know, but even though, I mean, twins is the norm now. So most of doctors I work with won't put more than two in and every time. And again, there's a loss rate. So the idea before was, well, let's put four in there because one or two are probably not going to make. So I understand the theory, but when it does work. Oh, geez. Yeah, that's how you have like octum and all that.

I know, it's crazy. But just to clarify, because, I mean, again, I just don't know this stuff. IVF is like you're going to do some freezing involved. You can just doing it right now. Well, you do it, but in another way, but you are freezing the other one? So when you take, so in other words, you do this stimulation process and then you fertilize them. And you're going to put one or two in, but say you got six. The other four

You can freeze. You can put the other ones on ice. Right. For, you know, if you want to have more kids after that. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, I think people want to know what's the success rate and it's kind of unclear.

It sounds like. For the egg freezing, yeah. For IVF, it's fairly high now. Right. But, I mean, I think people, probably our listeners are wanting just, it's more egg freezing at this point. Right. Because it's a lot of money.

So we'll talk about money, but like, I mean, am I doing this and there's a 20% rate? Is there a ballpark you can give us? For the freezing eggs? Yeah. I think it's higher than that. I definitely think it's higher than that. There's just no way to know really.

Let's talk about money. Yeah. So initially it was fairly expensive. I think it was in the range of like 15 grand. But now I think you could do it like around seven. Oh, yeah? Yeah, so it would come down. And then monthly, a monthly rent, right?

Your yearly like storage fee. And what's that look like? That's not bad. Oh, it's not bad. But it means like a thousand a year? Probably comes out to that. Yeah, I mean, that's significant for a lot of people. Yeah.

So, okay. So up top, we're in the seven. to eight grand range and then around the thousand a year. And then do you think this is one of those things that's more expensive in Newark? Or is it kind of standard across the board? Most of the places here, like these fancy practices are more towards like the 10 plus range. But with that comes all the frills. I'm saying, you could get this done for like seven or probably.

But it may not come with all the frills of a, you know what I'm saying. It may not come with all the perks of the other stuff. You just want to get it done, right? Yeah, because I feel like I've heard 10 is what I feel like I've heard. Yeah, it's around there, I would say, with everything. Are there people doing this more than once, or are a lot of people doing it? Well, yeah. Well, so I think also, like, again.

How many eggs you get, right? Well, either that or like people are just, cuckoo. They get, like a little upset. They just get, they like it. They're like, you know, it's all nice. You know, just like the sperm banks, people also donate their eggs, right? And so there was an episode of Will and Grace once.

I don't know if you guys watched Will and Grace, but. Your personal friends. Yeah, well, again. You're very good friends with Debra. Yeah. She's the best. But there was an episode where Will, I think it was one in the final episode. So where they do IVF and they have a baby.

And they're joking about, because of some girl donated her eggs. But Will says she donated her eggs to pay rent. That's kind of off-collar, but it's funny. What do you mean? Ashley and I was like, should we talk about donating your eggs? And Ashley was like, I would never do that. What did you say? It was very funny.

I mean, I just said, I don't want these jeans. Just anybody getting them. Right. And I was like, fuck that. When I was 22 years old, when you moved to New York City, you have no money. You have sent out 200 resumes. Nobody will hire. You have no money.

the first stop for me with the fertility clinic. I was like, let's talk about donations. Oh my God. How much do you get? I don't know. I never ended up doing it, by the way. The process is very complicated. They want to know your whole family history,

your medical history. You can make a lot of money. But also, yeah, you have to go through all the same thing. It's the same process of doing egg freezing. Right. Stimulating the hormones and things like that. But again, so some of you will come in, I think it's just, it's person's.

the person, but I've had patients do like three rounds of it, which also is probably not the best for your body. Right. I'm just saying, if you got 15 and that's, you're probably good. Yeah. And to go back again, you got 10 or 12. Like, where are we going to? Because guys, we don't even know if this works.

I'm just saying, like, how many do you want? Like, it's like, type A overachiever. Like, like, you're good. Can you put them in, this is a really morbid question? Can you put them in different freezers? Like, what if one of those buildings burned out? No, but that's an interesting question. So even with like, I'm sure.

But people ever, like, lost those eggs? I'm sure. Well, do you see in the news the other day? It was a couple where they did IVF. This is in New Jersey. I noticed like two weeks ago on Channel 7, and there was a couple that did IVF, and it's a really terrifying story.

So they mixed up the eggs. Oh, my God. And so they found out, I think, a year after they had their child, that it was someone else's kid. Jesus Christ. Yeah. And actually, another case where there was a race thing, so they mixed up the eggs. And I don't remember if it was an African-American,

families that had a white baby or a white family that's a shock that would come out of me having that that baby. Well, it's also kind of like, you look at your partner, looks at you like, so. How did this happen? Like, I think I missed something. I think I missed. My man will be like, how did this happen? I can't imagine.

But that's why I was like, if you're like a psycho paranoid person, you might be like, I'm putting in two freezers. Right. Well, that's, so I'm so glad you brought up because it's really something that, you know, if you really think in the process that you would think about. So not just that even like people store their core blood, you know, when the baby's born. and you can still stem cells to, like if the baby gets cancer,

leukemia, lymphomas. But a lot of these companies will advertise that they have, you know, there are like earthquake-free environments and like, you know, geologically sound. It's really, I mean, the light-goat is low, but it's a well-thought-out process. Yeah.

Like you don't want to store your eggs on the San Andreas fault. Right. Like, yeah, it's true. You know, yeah, so it's an interesting process. This is like a kind of a random question I just want to forget it. We got this a lot.

I think we already discussed being in birth control forever, doesn't really affect your fertility. What about plan B's and abortions? Right. Well, it's not so much having a termination that... The problem with having multiple terminations is not so much that you can't get pregnant again, but there's a chance of scarring in your uterus.

Okay. Every time you have a procedure, any procedures, not just terminations. Even if you have, like, a DNC is a fancy word for, like, having a DNC and having a termination of a pregnancy is basically the same procedure. What's a DNC? A DNC is if someone has heavy bleeding. It's what ZNC stands for dilation and curatage, another fancy word, which I did not make up.

Is it an abortion? No, it's not. You just do this process for people who have heavy bleeding. Or if you have like a polyp or something like that, but it's the same procedure. But again, like, you know, if you can avoid having multiple terminations, it's probably better for your body in general. Just because the more times you instrumentize your uterus, there's a higher chance that something can go wrong during the procedure. So, in other words, an instrument can go through your uterus, which is called a perforation. Oh, my God.

And that happens, you know, that happens. It's not infection, right? Every time, you know, because you're, I mean, the vagina is filled with bacteria, right? And so, and you're putting an instrument through your vagina into your uterus. And so, you know, the more times you're dragging bacteria, if there's a chance she can get into arthritis. I have a friend. She has had two abortions. She had one in college and one, and she has two healthy children, too.

So, I mean, of course, yeah. But, I mean, I love that you would mention the risk that it's not totally something not to think about. Right. Definitely. I mean, if you're on like your fifth while, you might want to come up with another. Right. And just check your life choices. I mean, you know,

We are very pro-choice. Up until four. When you're on number five, guys, what are you doing? What is happening? Do you watch Amy Schumer, one of our first stand-ups, she talks about the plan B. This is when Plan B was still- Oh, girl, please. I am the foremost expert on comedy specials, okay. She goes, this is when it was still, you need a prescription.

And she goes, I go into Duane Reed. It's Sunday night, and then pharmacist is staring at me. Like, she doesn't know what I'm here for. Right. You know, I had a friend. she just had an abortion and she had taken a plan B. And, you know, I always, Raina takes it and I'm always like, Raina, go the next day.

Because isn't the longer you wait? Well, the sooner you do it, the better. Yeah. I mean, it's technically, what, 72 hours? Right. That's a lot of time that an egg could get fertilized, right? It's also kind of like, what are you doing for those three days? Raina, what are you doing?

I'm not sure. Like, you know what I mean? Like, ask Raina. Listen, I'm busy. I got layout. I eat a lot of snacks. Okay. I take long walk.

Sometimes I'm not near a Dwayne Reed. Sometimes I don't realize until Sunday night. I need a plan B and it's sold out. They're like you again and I'm like, me again, you've got to stop waiting so long. I cannot. You cannot get pregnant. We'll have a mommy podcast.

It'll be great. Oh my gosh. Wait, so do you want me to finish up on the IVF thing? Yeah. So IVF, right? So this is, and this process is a little bit different. I think psychologically can be more traumatizing. So people don't want to have IVF.

I mean, I don't think anyone's like, oh, I really want to go for IVF, right? So it's usually after a process where they've exhausted to all the other possibilities. And so, and you're talking about a lot of stress, stress on your body, stress on your own psychological health

and stress on your relationship. And so, and I've had relationships end over these, over infertility, right? I'm sure it's really stressful. I mean, I can't imagine, like,

when you think that you're, you are born as a woman to produce, and when your body is not doing that thing that you were born to do, I'm sure it is devastating. Absolutely. I'm like, bless up. Well, I'm sure for a lot of people,

it's really hard. I'm really embarrassing. And, no, I get it. I'm not taking it. I'm not taking that away. It's a sense of it. What's the right? It's like they feel like they failed in the way.

Yeah, well, your body is failed. Yeah. Which it hasn't. It's important to debunk that, right? Yeah, yeah. I think that's heartbreaking. You want to change that out. You want to make sure that the person's going into this process because it is taxing

on your body with the best attitude, right? So yeah, although it sucks that we're here, we're here, right? So let's give it the best shot. Yeah. You really want to be as motivating as possible. Right. And if you don't have a doctor like that, then find another doctor. Yeah, good call.

Same thing. like when you were talking about like so when people were judging things. Oh yeah. Actually, it took a walk. She went outside of an answer door. I was telling him I saw a male gonacostrate male gynaecologist. He like,

slut shamed me. It was crazy. Yeah. And I think it's like you're, that's not more there for. But also the flip side of that, it's like we're friends. Like when we call me right.

But like you're not friends with all you like I don't need to hear the story. Right. Like all of times people come in. They're like, so then we went in the back. I'm like, I don't. No, you need a therapist. Like that's an SDD check. Right.

Like, I don't care what his name was. Like, I don't care. Like, just tell me what happened. But it's a good point. You should be with somebody you're comfortable with. Like, that guy, I was in an age. I was like 22. I didn't know, like, what to say to this guy.

Like, I just had been having, like, unprotected sex. And I didn't know. You're already afraid. You're already like, you're feeling judged to begin with. Yeah, I didn't know what to be like, fuck off. But yeah, it's a good point. Like, be with somebody that you feel comfortable with. You want to be with something you're comfortable with.

I think it's really important. Yeah. regardless of it's just a pap smear or just go like if go to someone else that right exactly like this is very important for a second it's the wrong match absolutely and you don't have to say you don't have to go on with that right and so I think it's important it's a part of women taking charge of their health which is really the reason I went into it the field right because it was and to this day I so feel it's very underserved right I mean it's it's it's in like it's it's strides people know women are making in general but like it has to keep going right you want to

make sure that people are kind of like, you know, what, fuck you, dude? Like, yeah, and chlamydia. Like, it happened. Right. Like, I had a great time. I don't need, I don't need the judgment. Whatever. Had a great time on my way to the chlamydia.

I had a great time. Yeah. Hashtag, it was worth it. It happened, right? If anything, you should be praised for taking care of your body. Yeah. So you're going to the doctor because you're worried, right? Right.

You don't need someone to be like, oh, really? Like, maybe want to examine your life choices. No, yeah. Oh, fuck that person. Yeah, like, thanks, dude. Okay, so you, IVF. Right. So it starts with kind of the same process, right? So you're stimulating the ovaries to produce eggs. Then you're harvesting those eggs and then you're externally fertilizing with sperm, right? And so whether you have a partner or you're married or you're going to a sperm bank, whatever the thing, that process is the same. Right. So you're taking the sperm, fertilizing the egg and then usually putting, re-implanting that into the uterus. But that process too is more medication because you're stimulating, you're belying every uterus to be ready to take any. And then usually putting, re-implanting that. Putting back in.

in into the uterus. And so, but that process, too, is more medication when because you're stimulating, you're bellying every uterus to be ready to take any. egg, right? And so that requires medication, too. So that's a little bit more intense than just it is, okay. The egg freezing process, and more expensive. How much is that? Yeah, the ranges, but you know, you're up in the 50s. But again, in the 50s? No, 15. You're not 15. 15. Okay.

For cycle or 20 for cycle. Yeah. Nowadays, a lot of the bigger insurance companies that will cover. Years ago, most of them didn't cover it. Okay. It was not a pocket expense. But nowadays, it's something you really want to look into, too. Like, say you've got the, you're looking for a new job. You really want to look at your medical plan.

Some are unlimited cycles. So if it's something that you're worried about, you want to look into that. Yeah, get your job to pay for it. I remember, like, I heard about this couple that, I mean, they were both teachers. They don't make a lot of money. They were spending all their money on the first one didn't work,

and they did again. I'm like, this is heartbreaking. No, it's terrible. I can't, oh, my God. Yeah. The good news is that over the years, we've really gotten better at it. And those success rates now are fairly high for the TVF.

But still, it's still a process. And so it's taxing. your wallet and your body. And so, but again, so that's kind of like egg freezing, but a couple more steps.

Sure. And so it's, and again, you want to go to some place where either you know, you really want to research these things, right? You don't want to leave it to chance.

So a lot of it, there aren't, you know, even here and where we live, there's, even think in New York, there's not any sketchy, but some people do some sketchy things,

right? Right. You know, like, in the hospital the other day, I saw someone was like pregnant with twins, IVF at like 53. So, I mean,

good for her, but the thing is medically, body is not meant to be pregnant at 53 per se. And so you just have to pay more attention to her, right? So you have to worry about her health, I mean, our heart, her kidneys, things like that. So it's a process. And so. Oh, gosh.

I think as Ashley said before, though, most of our listeners are probably in that 25 to 35 range. And they're like, is it time from you start thinking about the egg freezing my ex? I think if you're like, if you're getting to like 32, right, and you're worried about it, then that's the time to at least, look, it doesn't hurt. I just, if people are talking about it, I tell them you don't have to do it, go for a consultation. And so the place I was talking about before where I said my patients, they're great at it.

And they start with like, and most of the time it's just about. What's the name again? RMA. RMA. You put up to medical associates. They're great. But you can go to any of the big centers in New York, which is one of the other things. Yeah, Mary will talk about living here.

She had a wonderful experience. NYU, Columbia, Cornell. They all have great programs, right? So, which is one of, which is just being a resident of New York City is something that, like, you know, you're living in, like, a lot options. You have a lot of options, right? And so, where you live in some places. else, maybe there's none, right? And then I think maybe a question people have is if you're,

whatever, any age, but maybe you're in your 20s and you don't have regular periods and you're like, I feel like I probably, maybe you have a family history, whatever you think you have fertility issues, obviously go talk to your doctor, but are there, maybe this is the dumbest question, are there things you can do? Sure, absolutely. Okay, but like not, but like over time or just when you're ready to get pregnant? Well, yeah, I think it's what, a lot of sense, like we casually just brought up before we started taping a, that, a papilla. E-C-O-S, this polycystical variance in which we can go into maybe another time. But like, but does someone who does, you're going to feel better a lot of times if you have

regular periods, right? Or whatever the scenario is in your body. But a lot of times you, these things can be corrected, just, and it's so frustrating to hear, but it's just diet and exercise, right? Which is always, if you hear that, and you're like, fuck, right? But it's true. But it's true. I actually, I was weird when I was, like, in New York when I first moved here, I worked

one time. I think I worked like double shifts at the restaurant. I was at 14 days in a row and I skipped my period for like a whole week. Because I just was so stressful and I was working so much. I mean, if you watch that documentary What the Health, I mean, you watch this woman who couldn't even walk up right, like go plant base for two weeks and like changed her entire life. She was like dying, basically. So of course, your diet exercise lifestyle affects your health on every level.

Yeah, totally. And so again, going into this process, particularly if it's going at the IVF route, you want to go into it. You want to optimize your health. Right. And again, even if you're just getting pregnant in general, like you might. I want to, if you have the opportunity to prepare, right, you want to, I mean, look, most people don't.

Like, it just happens. You're like, okay, well, I guess we'll go with this. But like, if you have the luxury of planning it, you know, maximize it, right? You're going to have a healthier pregnancy, less risk of complications, less risk of C-sections, all these things. If you're, if you're in the best physical health that you can't be before. I have another question. If you, if there's a couple that is trying to get pregnant, just standard fucking, you know,

and they are doing it when they're supposed to during the cycle and she's got regular periods. Like at what point... Did you need help? Yes. At what point are you like... All age determined. If someone's over 35, I give them six months. Okay. A regular unprotected intercourse. If you don't conceive within six months, then let's talk. But if you're under 35, then you should give you a year. And yeah, I had a friend that she has two, again, healthy children now, but I mean, it took her... I think it took her almost two years to get pregnant. And she just kept being like, I've been on

birth control forever. And I'm like, that wears off. Like, I don't know what that's it. And we were worried. We thought that it was... And the first separate... really in that process is to do a semen analysis, right? Which a lot of times you'd be surprised how many times with the other side. It's like completely freaked out about doing it. And it's kind of bullshit because you start with that one because it's not painful. It's easy, right? You know, you should start an infertility workup with the woman, right?

Because it's more invasive. And meanwhile, 40% of infertility is male factor. I love who you said that because I don't think, we didn't get a lot of questions about this. 40%. That's a huge number. Right. So, you know, I understand that maybe he's uncomfortable while, you know, whacking off in a cop. somewhere. And that's all that that takes. It's not sticking something up your dick, right?

Right. No. They just jerk off. Right. So I'm just saying if a woman wants to tell a man that, like it's easy. But you'd be surprised. But they get nervous. But they get nervous. Because they're possees. And we'll have to do a consultation, right? And we're like, you know, I'll give them prescription for their husband. And they'll come three months later. I'm like, I'm still not pregnant. I'm like, well, I never got the semen analysis. Like, oh, he won't go. I'm like, well, he needs to go. Also, don't date that guy. That is so fucked up. That makes me, that enrages me that any man would not think that he could be part of the problem.

But it's very God me. You'd be surprised. I'm furious right now. I wouldn't be surprised, actually. I can see most men being like this just on you. Guess what? It's not.

There's two, what are you talking about is on me? This is two part thing. Yes. You probably wouldn't find yourself with that kind of guy, but it's, it's very common. Ladies, if you have a man that won't jerk off in a cup

to see if you guys can have kids together. That is a bad dude. It's 40% a male factor. So it's 40% male factor, 40% female and 20% unknown. And since you talked about it for like a second. I just got a lot of questions.

I don't want to talk what I like, but what is polycystic ovarian? Right. So it's a PCOS is polycystic ovarian syndrome. It used to be called polycystic ovarian disease. And so what is, it's really a metabolic disorder. I mean that it's all of the ovaries in there, it's not really just the problem with your ovaries.

It's a whole metabolic disorder. And so it's tied into a lot of times having like, it's going to be, it's really kind of tactical, but it's like glucose intolerance. So your body is, if you look at something, if you do an ultrasound, you look at these people's ovaries, it's called polycystic. And there's sists on your ovaries? Right. But they're like, it's called a pearl string appearance. So when you look at the person's ovaries,

it looks like they're kind of wrapped in pearls. And all these little fossils. Sounds pretty. But it's not. It's so cute. And I have a question. Is it age related? No.

No. Suddenly it happens right from when you start menstruating. And so. And there's varying degrees of it. But the one thing I think the listeners should take away from it is that if you have it, it doesn't mean it's nowadays in particular, it's very easily treated and we can fix it. And so I think when people hear that diagnosis, they freak out. and they think they're never going to be able to get pregnant.

And in fact, with modern medicine, it usually will work out. Okay. That's a great thing to say. And I think that that's like an easy explanation. We have a lot of questions about it. But just about like, can I conceive if I have this. Right. Yeah, you definitely can.

You might need some help, but you can. Okay. So. Well, this is really informative. It was good. I love you guys. We love talking to you. And I think what we really want to like, hope we always wrap up everything.

And so like I think that like the takeaways should be like maybe start thinking about this at 32. If you're really concerned, cost is probably around $7 to $10,000. Right. We don't know about the success rate. Go to a reputable place. Yes. Do this all day every day.

And I think also just like if you are having anxiety and you're 22, just go talk to your doctor. Go get a consultation. Yeah, go to a consultation. You can't hurt. Like these people are, medical professionals are there there to alleviate your anxiety and help you with your problems. Oh my gosh. Thank you, Dr. Salman. I'm sad that you can't do my, we'll do an exam after this.

Yeah. Perfect. We got to FaceTime my man. Awesome. If he thinks in my vagina is your vagina, we're going to have a discussion. What the fuck? What the fuck is that supposed to me? I mean, if he looks at yours and it looks familiar.

It's bigger, too. I'm a bigger person. You know what? All right. Forget about it. All right. Thank you. All right.

Second portion of the episode coming in hot. We have the one and only Merrill McDermott. Hi, guys. Oh, my God. You guys might recognize her from pretty much half of the episodes of this podcast. No. Third, unofficial, or unofficial third host. Yes, she was one of Ashley's friends and now you're one of my friends too.

We usually do a game at the end, a game segment at the end, but we thought it would be really cool now that we talked about freezing your eggs and all the technical, like, nerdy stuff. You actually have gone through the process. For that. Well, let's chat a little more before we make Merrill just start diving in. We've been sitting here for two and a half hours. Merrill has polished off an entire bottle of champagne by yourself. Okay, I exaggerated.

We, you came over, you both. you came here at 3 p.m. It is 549 p.m. Yeah, I feel like this is the olden days. We used to record here. Three hours. I used to come over to Ashley's when I first met her. I used to come here at like noon and it would be 8 p.m. We'd be like, I don't want to record. We would just go out to dinner and just not record. But you brought a bottle of champagne. Now I get wide. This is so fun. We had a lot to catch up on. You've been gone. I haven't seen you guys in so long. Can you just run through where you were? I don't even want to. It's so obnoxious. You were in Greece for like Every day I was like, how is this still happening?

It was ridiculous. I've had a really good summer. I'm sorry. You switched jobs. Well, that all sort of happened like in between the trips. Yeah. Conveniently. So I went to Italy twice.

Wait, you went to Italy twice in addition to your 25 days in Greece. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I did. People already turned off his podcast. Different areas of Italy. I know. Kill me.

I'm sorry. But yeah, I went to Bologna for a long weekend. Bologna for you Americans. Also known as the spam like meat that we eat here, which I was a big fan of. But yeah, I actually had gone to school there for a year. And so this was a reunion. And so I went there for a long weekend. Then I went back for a wedding on the Italian-Slavonian border.

This is all ridiculous. I know. I like a podcast. No, here's a deal. You are single. You are in your 30s and you're living your best life. That's what I always say. We're not out of you're saying that we're 22 have trust funds that let us.

us travel. Exactly. Sounds so good to me though. We are in our 30s, living our best lives, and that's the goal of this podcast. And everyone I see, they're always like, oh my God, you travel so much. You're like never here.

And it's like, yeah, I do because I don't have kids. I don't have a house. I don't have like those kind of responsibilities. If someone says, do you want to come to the Italian-Slavidian wedding? I say, yeah. Right. Like, obviously I'm going to say yes because I can't. Why not?

Yeah, I'm just trying to live my best life. Merrill, where are you from, Merrill? I think the people want to know. Oh, my God. So funny. I'm from the Bay Area of California. I'm from the East Bay. That's why you sound so zen.

You're so proud. You have the Bay Area pride. I got a lot of East Bay, East Bay Pride. One of our favorite shows we did, San Francisco. We are there. Merrill is our second guest in a row, also an Ivy Leagueer. Fuck off. I can't believe you did that.

I'm so embarrassed. But also not. She's like, I'm so embarrassed and I'm so much smarter than you guys. No. That's not true. Look at what you guys are doing. Are you kidding? She went to school in Philadelphia.

Let's be clear. It wasn't Cambridge. No. It wasn't Cambridge. A small school in Cambridge. Someone told me that once. That's what Francis says. Of course he does.

It makes me laugh. It's dropping the age one. But I want to give you credit. You don't like come for money or anything. Like you went to an Ivy League school. You built this great career for yourself. You do really well. You're killing it.

All on your own. And that's what we like to showcase on this podcast. We all live on the same block. Yes. Oh my God. And now you're going to be even closer. I'm inching closer. Slowly inching closer.

Yeah, thank you for saying that. I mean, I like to surround myself by women or anyone who really inspire me and work really hard and I feel like you guys are definitely huge inspiration. Let's talk about your ovaries. Okay, cool. So walk us through it. When did you first start thinking about it? Sure.

Okay. So I am currently single, but a lot of my life I'd been in relationships and it's only been the last few years that I've been single. So I kind of thought, I just. had never thought about this. I had never thought that, I really had, to be perfectly honest with you, I had never thought about children. Like having children, do I want them? Do I know about them? How many do I want them? How many do I want? I know a lot of little girls, like, grow up kind of with that dream, perfect family. Like, I just had never had never had never assumed maybe in my relationships, you know, we'll probably get married, we'll probably have kids. You just thought it would

happen naturally. I just thought it would happen. I never really was forced to make a decision about it yet in any of my relationships. And so it was really the last few years where, you know, you hear about egg freezing and it was all like, oh, I'm going to free my head. Oh, I'm looking into it. Oh, like, it's so expensive. And I started hearing things about it, but I really didn't know anything about it. And so, you know, clearly when you're single and you're realizing, okay, I'm only getting

older, like, do I want this? Do I not want this? I started to really wanted to, I started asking my doctors. I think it was a couple years ago. So I'm actually 35. Which I will say this. I feel like most guy knows it's like you're 32 maybe ish and that's when they're like what is your what do you want to do because I feel like that happened to me and she said this to me and like I was

31 or 32 and she said that and I was like don't want kids and she was like great like they like want they asked you they're single they did not ask me okay but you started thinking about this at 30th yeah because I asked my doctor it was like two years ago I remember asking her was doing my annual physical thing and I basically was like so like this little egg freezing thing like, what is it? I was like, how does it work? Like, what's the deal? And I have a pretty great doctor,

and she basically just looked at me like point blank and was like, so let me explain it like this. She was like, do you have car insurance? Or have you ever had car insurance? And I was like, yeah. Do you know you could be saving 15% more with GEICO? Use the code GGE at checkout. Oh, my gosh.

Sorry, my aunt's a state farm agent. We've got to be state farm family. Keep going. Don't get anyone. No, right. So basically she's like, if you drank as much as Merrill has today, do not drive a car. You would never tell.

You're killing it. Thank you. You sound great. I should listen up. I don't podcast. Like, I don't do this. You're podcasting.

I'm podcasting. I'm podcasting. I'm podcasting. I listen to like five, six a day. What? Yeah, it's disgusting. It's like, I feel stressed out about it because I'm when I'm behind and like, oh my God, I have to listen to me.

I was like really intellectual. She reads a New Yorker. She's very cerebral. Yeah. Thanks, guys. But like not pretentious. Okay. That's so cool.

Okay. So, where was I? So, okay, car insurance. And I was basically like, yeah, I lived in California. Duh. And then she was like, well, when you had car insurance, did you ever want to use the car insurance? And I was like, no, Dr. X.

And she was like, well, that's exactly the same thing. She was like, I see egg freezing exactly the same way. You don't egg freeze in hopes that, yes, this is like going to be how I'm going to have children, but you have it as a backup in case things don't work out the way that you plant. And at least you have that. an option. You can even not use them if you don't want to. The eggs could end up maybe perhaps not working out, but it's something you can do as an insurance policy. And so I felt like that really relieved me because I think I had a real hurdle I needed to overcome that was like, this isn't

where I pictured myself, right? Like I never thought I would have to make that decision. I thought it would just sort of happen and I would not have to do this kind of bizarreo egg freezing thing and spend all this money on something that I thought I would have done naturally. And so that's when I started thinking about it. I personally was in like a weird, crazy career transition. I like was in finance for years and I ended up dramatically leaving and wanting to work with startups. And so, you know, insurance was weird.

I was transitioning careers. So I was like working part time. Like things were, I just wasn't in a financial place where I could feel confident in like spending that kind of money. So my goal to myself, two years ago when I started learning about this, I was like, you know what, they all say 35, 36. That's like where the real cliff. Yeah.

The cliff is. Yeah. The egg cliff. Or no man will ever want you again. I guess so. Even though ironically, it's like our sex like period, right? Isn't that like where we're like the most, our sexual prime? Yeah.

What the fuck? Isn't that a fucked up like we can't have children but it's our sexual prime? It's fucked up. That's what the fuck is. That's what you fuck people in their mid-20s. They never stop fucking. That's so mean. Anyway.

Yeah. So thanks God. If you're out there, whoever it is, which you probably aren't. Clearly. You hate women. You hate women.

Sorry. Carol's just out of your doing crowd work. She's roasting the audience. She's roasting God. She'll polish up an entire bottle of Chardonnay. By myself. For second. She's talking, everybody.

Oh, my God. Thanks, Trump. Who created this? Trump? Okay. Anyway, politics aside. 35 really seemed to be like the marker. And that's what Dr. John said.

Right. Well, and then, okay, so 35 is my mental. Like, I want to be in a career place and, you know, a place where I could financially do this. And if I have not met someone by then and I'm not in a place where I'm like with someone and I can potentially just do this naturally, I want to, I want to proceed. I'm going to do it. I'm going to suck it up. It's so weird. And it takes a lot of time and it's expensive.

But I'm going to do it. Because I really thought a lot about it, and like, I really do want children. And hopefully I'm fortunate enough to be able to have one. I know a lot of women who've gone through tons of difficulty. Yeah. So we'll see. Who knows what will happen? But basically, you know, this was the year where I was like, I'm going to freaking do it.

And so I started asking a lot of my friends and talking about it more. And I'm in the age group where I do have, you know, friends, luckily. I've had like four friends that have already been through it. And that was huge. Yeah. Because we basically, I would like sit them down and be like, tell me everything. It's like step by step, I need to know every single thing that happens. Because then I didn't feel like it was so intimidating.

Right. And then, I mean, we talked a lot about the technical process with Dr. Shans. You don't need to really go through that. But, I mean, I talked to you a lot throughout it. I mean, total, do you feel like it affected your life for like a month, right? Six weeks maybe? Yeah. I would say it was a solid month, like max five weeks.

So really in the big picture, you look back, it's nothing. Right. It's a Greek vacation for you. It was just like my trip to Greece. And you did the shots yourself, which I was very impressed. Yeah. Yeah. Was that scary?

It's really weird. If you have a needle thing, maybe it's scary. I do not. I do not have a needle thing. I don't have a blood thing. I'm pretty good with that stuff. I had like allergy shots growing up every week. Nerd.

You know, nerd. Total freaking nerd. Basically had like an inhaler around my neck. Oh, God. Actually, you probably shut up. What? Did you have headgear? I didn't.

I say this because my brother was like that nerdy kid growing up. Like as big as the way he looks now, you've never guessed. He had headgear, allergy shots at home. He was like, he's so big now. He's like, say something. So you did your own shots. Yeah. So did he go through like the shots and stuff?

Is it daily for like two weeks? Oh my God. It's so you start out with two shots every day for like two weeks. Where do you put? No, but then you move up to three. Wait, where do you put them physically in your body? It's all around your stomach. Stick it in your stomach, guy, in your butt?

No, well, you could do your butt, but for us, I mean, I guess every girl I knew did it around their stomach. Okay. You were doing two or three shots a day in your stomach? Uh-huh. Yeah. You are the bravest person I've ever met. It's weird.

I mean, here's the thing. Every nurse that you meet. So when I was going, where the facility I went, I was a really big fan. Oh, can you say what it is? Sure. Trellis. Okay. T-R-E-L-I-S.

Because Dr. Dr. Sean mentioned one, and you went to one that was solely focused on that, right? Extend fertility. It was like, it sounded like MDMA, which is a drug. I swear it had three letters. But this is in Manhattan. It's in Manhattan. The reason I really like it is apparently it works.

So the way it all works is there's this infertility clinic called SIRM. I have no idea what it stands for. But basically they do all aspects of infertility, right? So for couples, for, I don't even know, to be honest. I'm very like not super well versed and all the other aspects. But freezing your eggs was a portion of what they did. And because it's become so popular in the last five years, they built an entire other facility just for the egg freezing.

And that's what Trellis is. So it works within SRM and all these doctors that have been doing this for like decades. And they just like built this beautiful office space like in flat iron and it's gorgeous. It like looks like the wing. Yeah. It's like beautiful. Well, it's like because you're there a lot. Yeah.

You go there like every other day for a while just to get checked up and do all your blood work and stuff like that. So it is nice being around, and it's like mostly women. So you walk in and they're like, hey, Merrill, what's up? That's a great experience. I'm like, yeah. I have a question for a question for you. I feel like, and like I'm not so far away from thinking about this either. Like it's definitely something that I want to think about.

Did you feel like when you were doing it like I can't, like, what was your mental state like? Because I think that you probably go through like a range of emotions. Like I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe at this age I'm here. I thought I would be in a day. Or did you feel like really impetable? and I know the answer to this. So, like, I just want you to talk about it a little bit.

No, that was good. Yeah. So I think leading up to it, you feel a lot of mixed feelings. Like, I was really scared. You definitely, I never would have expected I would be doing something like that, to be honest with you. Yeah. No one gets excited in plants.

Yeah. They're like, cool. In their 20s and they're like, at 35, I hope to be egg freezing. Yeah, exactly. So it's weird. And then going to Italy twice. I just know the answer. That's why I asked it like this.

No, but I'm glad you did. It was a good. prompt because I, yeah. So, but then something that was funny going through it is that, you know, at this age, I've been to a million doctors forever. I've just never thought or had any connection to my own fertility, like in any way. I don't even like know what it looks like in there. I don't know. Like, I mean, all of it was so new to me. And so I even remember the first time I got an ultrasound, they were like counting. They were telling me, oh, you have more on your left side. And I'm like, what the fuck? Yeah, I don't know. And I was like, what's normal? What's average? And they

were kind of like checking things out. And so I will say and like, and the more that I went through it, it felt very like, wow, I'm like, I'm doing something. Like I'm learning about my body in ways I never even realized. Like the female body is fucking crazy. Yeah. And I don't even know the extent of it. Yeah. And so like just to even be in touch with like, wow, like my body, my body, not just everyone else's body, not all my friends having kids, like me, myself. Like I can make babies. Oh my God. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah. And so. you know, once I started going in more, my, like, eggs were getting bigger. And then, of course, obviously after it was all done and they finally, like, retrieved eggs and I ended up getting a number I was really happy with.

I don't know. It felt really empowering. It felt really like I was taking action. Like, I was doing something to ensure that I could get closer to a future that I want to have. And I can only hope that happens. But who knows, you know, life is a funny way of just kind of tricking you all the time. but I don't know what will happen, but now I know, like, I did what I could because I am healthy and very lucky. I had the financial means to do it. I had the time to do it. And now I kind of have that as a little safety pot just in case. And I feel like it just, yeah, and I think also just in terms of dating and, like, meeting people,

I'm not the kind of person who meets someone is like, oh, my God, you're going to be my husband. But I will say, it kind of relieved a little bit of that pressure of like, I don't. need to be like taking every date as quite as seriously. I want to meet the right person, basically. And I feel like it kind of, I feel better about that for me personally because it's like, well, I have this stash of little potential. It's so weird, kind of, but I have my own safety net in a way. Yeah, I think that's huge. If whatever happens and who knows, but like I took control in a way where I wasn't sort of just sitting around waiting to see what would happen. I, I I did something about it.

And that's really satisfying. Merrill, I wish sober I could say scept as eloquently as you did. I know. I know. Everyone's like, oh,

Merrill's the new podcast. So if someone's going to review it and say you're better than one of us. They will. They all get out of here. It might be right. It might be me. Who's to say?

He'll be like, who's this old hag? Stop it. It'll be me because people think I'm the dumb one. No. So stupid. But people think I'm the obnoxious one.

Okay. So I've heard that a lot from people I've known that have done this. Before that, like you said, you have to look at every guy. Like, could that be the father of my children? Yeah.

And you just get to relax a little. I don't know. It takes the pressure off. And I just feel like that's when probably you would even also get pregnant. It's a whole thing. You know that whole thing. Yeah, it's so mental. It's like the sex and the city, Charlotte thing.

Like what? They adopted that baby. And then she was able to get pregnant. She couldn't get pregnant for years. I mean, that's a show. You've seen a lot. There's so many stories like that. I mean, I use that example because I referenced that and everything in my life.

But there's tons of stats around that. I know people. that were like adopted and then had a kid. Normally, I know a couple people like that too. And Dr. Sean, he said a lot of things about your mindset. And he was like the number one thing that it goes, you don't understand how much your body is linked to your attitude and women that go in so negatively.

Like, I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe I got here are probably not going to do as well. Yeah. No, I mean, I think that's everything. And I also think on another level too, I kind of going back to the like I didn't know what I wanted. and I never really like actually thought about my future or what I want, you know, what I want from a family. And I think it's very satisfying for me to kind of be like, I want kids.

It's so weird because I think I had never, I'd always been with, been with boyfriends and we talk, we kind of like loosely talk about it and make jokes. I even have one boyfriend that we talked how we would raise them if they would be Jewish or not because he was Jewish. I look at Raina. Jews are the best. Well, like Ashley is Jewish. We're all Jewish here. I know. Well, we had a whole conference.

of like how we would raise our children, right? But still, even then, I was young. I was like in my 20s and young 20s and it was like, I wasn't really thinking about kids. Right, right? And now to be in this situation where I was like, no, you gotta put money behind this. Like, this isn't just, oh, do you want kids?

It's like, no, you gotta pay like, you know, your money where you're overreys are. Fribing five figures behind this. Do you want this? And I think that was actually a good exercise for me personally to be like, I do want kids. Yeah. I know, Raina, that could happen to you. You're like on the fence. I mean, I don't know,

Merrill, where you were prior. Like, I think we all know, I've said a million times in this podcast, like, I don't want children at all. Yeah. Zero percent chance. I don't care. I could be totally infertile. I would not care at all. But you're, you kind of started this podcast with like, I definitely want kids. Now you kind of go back and forth. So I think, you know, you might hit a point where you might have to consider this. I absolutely. And we said at the beginning up top, we'll do a whole episode about how you decide when you want to have kids, if you want to have kids. But yeah, I mean, my whole life I was like absolutely non-negotiable of course I want to have kids and in the last year I've been thinking like do I really want this do I want it to affect my life the way it's going to affect my life what is the point of this but I don't want it to be completely off the table but I don't want it to be completely off the table in five years or something like that 10 years um yeah I mean I love what you did I love you like took control of it and yeah I don't want to decide I don't want this for a

couple years and then decide I do and have no options. And that's kind of like a lot of the mindset too. I have a couple girlfriends who are maybe not as firm about having kids. Like I have one that you know that she's been thinking about it for a long time. And she's kind of like thinks she's pretty sure she wants kids, but she's not 100%. And I think she's actually going to end up doing it in the next few months. Just as a backup. As like, you know what? And she's also like a lawyer. She makes enough money. The finances are a huge piece of it. It is a very expensive situation. So I totally understand that people may not just be able to afford that. Yeah. I have a tough question for you. Do you think that you would have a kid on your own? So it's not a tough question. I've actually been asked that.

I feel like I've talked about that with people before. So I think I've actually met a lot of really amazing women in especially the last few years that have had women on their own. And I think it's so baller and it's so cool and they're sort of what do you say you said have had women on their own we'll edit that up no i'm drunk the bresco here it's coming here you last it way too long sounding amazing so here it comes the bottle of boseco you drank the bottle of boseco it's coming up you didn't actually interrupted you to correct you did you have something to add to it meryl comes i know a lot of women that have had women didn't even catch it Ashley caught it and she just kept on going.

She kept the train rolling. Okay. You know women that have had kids on their own? Yeah. I know I've met a lot of women. That have had women on their own. I know a lot of kids that have kids on their own. I know a lot of kids that have women on their own.

Don't drink a bottle of Prosecco when the other two are not drinking if you're recording a podcast. Well, I drink. I realize there is Persego left in New York after what I did last night. Oh my God. I am not okay. Suck the city dry right in Greenberg. Suck the city. try.

That's what she said. All right. So all I'm saying is I've met a lot of really impressive women that have had children by themselves. And I think that's, I think it's beautiful. I think if a woman really sees that as their future and really wants that for their life, I think that's wonderful. I couldn't support it more. I think for me personally, that is not the journey that I would want to be on.

I think for me, a lot of the child rearing or having a child, like to me, to me, me it is the beauty of kind of two people doing that together. And I just know myself, like, I'm a very independent person. I have been my whole life. Like, I've definitely been more of a caretaker with my parents or with my mother specifically. And so, like, I'm looking forward to, like, having help. Like, I want to do this together with someone. Like, I've done enough on my own, and it's awesome, and I'm very proud of myself. But, like, I think what appeals to me most about children is like creating this world. This family.

Yeah. Which is not saying that a mother and her child is not a family. Exactly. I'm not saying everyone's definition of what a family is is different. Well, you and I both grew up with divorced parents. Nobody's out of your saying it's not a family. I just, you know, if you choose to do on your own, I think it's a beautiful sentiment that you're like, look, I want this.

This is my dream. I will have children and I'm not going to wait for a man to give it to me. And I think that's beautiful too. But I also think it's beautiful to say like, yeah, a lot of what's really great about having kids, you get to share it with some partnership. Yeah. And that's just the beauty of being. being a woman, an adult that makes choices for yourself. I don't want kids at all. I know women

that will have a child by themselves, raise it alone, multiple kids, be a single mother. I know people that would never do it. Obviously, you're saying you'd rather have a guy. I know women that, you know, it's just kind of like, everybody can make their own choices about their body and their family planning in their life. Exactly. And I think everyone also like kind of wants to recreate sometimes like what they didn't have. I mean, maybe that's just me. If you come up from a family of like divorce and complicated parents. I mean, I love my complicated life now, but it took me a long time to get there.

But when I think in the future, I kind of want to create this thing that I never had, which is like this nuclear, happy, safe, consistent family, you know, which I think that has me to do with it too. I love who you asked that because I think a lot of people are like, yeah, you did this. So what are you going to do with the eggs? I loved you asked that.

Well, Maril, I just have to close with saying that, like, obviously I think you're going to find that because I think you're so wonderful in any man or person. I don't know. You could end up being a lesbian. Who knows? It would be lucky. I would be lucky to be with you.

If only. This is one of my favorite segments that we've done. I would love to be lesbian too. And you're going to have these beautiful blonde kids. It's going to be so annoying now. I know. But no, I'm really glad you do this. I think you humanize the experience for people.

I mean, yes, it's nice to your doctor terms, but I think people, I think a lot of things you said will really land with people and they'll land it with May. Thank you. Yeah. I also want to say like. Do you ever go check in on your eggs? Are you like, are so there?

Hey, what's up? Mommy's here. Because you're paying rent. More like check up on the people watching them. That's what I'm saying. I would go talk to that. How cold is that? Crypto freezer because those little babies better be great. And we asked Dr. Sean, like, I'm not trying to be like a apocalyptic type of person, but like, I don't know. They could lose power. Your ex could stay. Yeah, I want to know. I'm going to be there every single day. How lay were you guys out last night? Buzz, buzz. Mommy's kids. What did you do yesterday? You guys talking with each other? Don't hit your brother. Can you imagine if you were, because I mean, New York, it's crazy. Like, there's, there's, there's, there's. blackouts, not all the time, but like the city blacks out. Can you imagine? Can you imagine if you were...

I'm sure they have generators. Yes, of course they have generators. I'm just saying if I was, if my eggs were frozen somewhere and I was paying rent on those motherfuckers, that the city blacked out, I would make, be making some calls. I would show up. I would take a bike. I would take a city bike over to the place and be like, are my eggs staying cold? Are they on ice? Where's the generators? Buzz buzz. Someone works at these fertility clinics is thinking about giving this for us for free, I guarantee it.

And they were like, never mind. Not for Ashley. Well, we all know where I'm going after this. It's going to go check on my eggs. Can you imagine? I am so crazy about everything, especially when I'm putting money into it. Let me just knock and hey guys, just here check on the eggs.

Check on the, check on the kids. You are their worst nightmare. I would go there and talk to them. Mommy's here. How are my little babies doing? Maybe that'll help them. I like going there. I start playing like Drake and Beyonce.

They're like, they're not kids. Yeah. I'm like, I heard that. I heard the music. In the womb is great. They're like, they're not, you don't get it. I talk to my plants.

I whisper to them. I'm like, I'm like, your mommy's, your mommy's favorite. Now you guys are trying to, don't tell the other plants. I would say sorry for not watering you. Now you guys are flexing with your plants.

You both have beautiful plants. Of course. Where are your plants at? Girl, you know, I have no. He has a big dead one. I have no sunlight in this trap house. And when I'm moving to my new place, you guys will come.

That won't be the case. You'll come do my plant stuff for me. All right. We're going to wrap up. Yeah. We want to thank you for being here. This was really special. It's one of my favorite moments of the podcast.

I love this. And then what do you feel like if people, I mean, I guess it's just talk to your doctor, but if someone's considering this, obviously, like you recommend your place, Trellis, and just talk to your doctor, right? Yeah, I would definitely say I loved Trellis in New York, but otherwise, definitely ask your doctor, see what they have to say about it. And also just, I don't think there's any shame in it. I don't think you should be embarrassed if you're asking about it.

And you could be surprised that your friends have already done it. or perhaps I've already gone through way more meetings than you have. I think I learned a lot from my friends when I just started talking about it. I mean, I am in an older age group, but even then, I just think it should be more talked about. It's not that weird. And we live in a day and age where people settle down much older. And it just makes sense that this is a more common treatment or like a procedure.

And I don't think there's any shame in it. I think we're lucky to have that as an option. I'm like, why not use it? I mean, I will say something going through this whole thing. Every woman I met, like all my aunt, my mom, all these like nurses, every second they're like, oh, I just wish I had this when I was your age. Yeah. Everyone kept saying that because this is a newer technology and that's kind of weird.

But you know what? It's medicine. Like, we're lucky to have this. And so like use it. Anyway, that's it. That's it. If you can do it, do it. I mean, there's no shame.

But yeah, obviously women, all this stuff should be talked about more. Yeah. What a flex. You're like, this costs 10 grand. What nice coach bag. All right. It's Friday night at 7 p.m. We need to go eat something.

I'm drunk. All right. Thank you, Meryl. Guys, obviously follow us at Girls' Got Eap Podcasts and Instagram. Girls Got Eat Podcast.com and Stupid Live Shows. com for all the shows we just announced today and all the other ones.

Girls underscore Got to eat on Twitter. Ash Hess and One Hungry Jew on Instagram. Merrill McD., you want some followers? Sure. What do you want? What do you want? I mean, I have like $1,000. Are you private?

If I get $2,000, that would be so exciting. You're open. right here. I'm private, but maybe I'll go public. Well, guys, give it a whirl. I'll give it a whirl. And we'll see you guys next week. Thanks, guys. Have a good week. Bye.