Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Fertility Myths Every Woman Needs to Stop Believing | Science-Backed TTC Advice

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode contains discussions of miscarriage, pregnancy loss and IVF.How do you know what's actually true when it comes to fertility?This week, Dr Zeynep Gurtin, Associate Professor of Reproductive Sociology and Women's Health, UCL, joins us to unpack the realities of egg freezing, IVF, miscarriage, fertility testing and the growing pressure women face when it comes to family planning.This is one of our most nuanced conversations yet, cutting through the myths, misinformation and fear surrounding fertility.What you’ll learn:💔 How 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage🧬 The biggest fertility myth women are sold🤍 How to support a friend through infertility📉 Why IVF succeeds only ~30% of the time⚠️ Why egg freezing isn't the guarantee women think it isDr Zeynep Gurtin is an Associate Professor of Reproductive Sociology and Women's Health, UCL, and a Board Member at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. She regularly writes and speaks about the social, cultural and emotional aspects of reproduction, fertility and family life in the media and to a wide range of audiences.You can read her article about Tahlequah the Orca here:https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/oct/30/moment-changed-me-miscarriages-devastating-orcas-grief-try-againZeynep is currently conducting research on the experiences of women whohave thawed their frozen eggs, and on women who have chosen freebirth.If you are interested to find out more about being involved with theseresearch projects, or in booking Zeynep for consultancy, you can contact her at [e-mail]://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/67708-zeynep-gurtin/grantsP.S. We've also been nominated for ITV Podcast Creator of the Year (!!!) 🏆If you've learnt something from our podcast this year, I'd be so grateful if you could take a minute to vote for us. It genuinely means the world: https://bit.ly/4ynqe45Select ‘Creator Shortlist’Scroll down to ‘Podcast bCreator of the Year - Her Discussions with Dr Faye Bate’THANK YOU 🤍🔔 Join the HERd* broadcast channel here: https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==📱 Find us on socials:Instagram & Tiktok - @drfayebatePodcast Instagram & Tiktok: @herdiscussionspod📩 Want to reach out?Email: [e-mail]🛑 Disclaimers:Opinions are my own. This content is for educational / entertainment purposes and not medical or financial advice.

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of like egg freezing as a graduation present. I think that's just crazy. What I don't want is egg freezing to become a band-aid for a society that is just putting way too many pressures on young women. Zane Upgerson has navigated miscarriage, pregnancy loss and IVF firsthand whilst researching fertility, reproduction and family life for two decades. The success rates for egg freezing

are not what most people would assume they are. If a company is just paying for egg freezing but won't pay for IVF, doesn't have good maternity leave, then you can sort of see that there is a culture at play that might say, well, don't have kids in this workplace. Even IVF only has a success rate around 30%. We're never ever going to be in a situation where everyone can afford egg freezing.

When you are in that point where you've just lost a baby, and actually you don't know if it's ever going to work for youth. She's a lecturer at UCL and an authority member at the HFEA and one of the most honest voices on what fertility actually means. Have a guess at the grand total number of women that have frozen their eggs in the UK to date. I have no idea. And before we get into the conversation, if you could do me a favour that literally takes you two seconds, hit the subscribe button or leave a five-star review depending on what platform you're listening on.

It really helps us to continue to grow the podcast and bring you guests to help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you. If I'm so honest to have you on the podcast, not only because you are, a phenomenal force in your field, but also because you're probably one of the most influential people in my life over this year, because you are my module lead for my master's. I want to give others a small section of the gifts of knowledge that you've been able to impart on us. The whole fertility world is such a minefield. And, you know, I first started trying to document my journey because every single time you go out on the tube,

it just feels like there's more and more and more adverts popping up, there's more anxiety around it. And I think you just do a wonderful job of finding that nuance, that balance, but in a really interesting, emotional, heartfelt way. Oh, thank you. Sorry, that's not the way to make someone feel comfortable at the start of a conversation.

That's very kind, though. Just flattery. But first, I want to talk about something that's probably a little bit more controversial, and that is egg freezing because I got my eggs frozen in November last year. And I'm still very torn on my stance. And there's a particular issue that we've had a conversation about. And that is the fact that I didn't pay for my eggs to be frozen because of having a profile on social media. That is rightfully an issue that should be discussed at length.

But first, let's just start with the basics. I froze my eggs because my partner is a little, he's a baby. His birthday starts with a two and I felt that where I'm a little bit older, the opportunity came up. My AMH was a little bit low, which we know isn't an indicator of whether you will get pregnant at that time. But the issue is that is not something I foresee for quite a while. The opportunity came up to freeze my eggs and I froze them.

Let's just start with why most. women tend to freeze their eggs. Okay, so I've been working on women's reasons for egg freezing or thinking about egg freezing for about a decade now. And actually, the reasons are starting to change a little bit. So when I was first interviewing women who were thinking about egg freezing or freezing their eggs, it was almost exclusively for partnership reasons. So there were women who just come out of relationships in which they thought they were going to, you know, go ahead and have children or sometimes that was a divorce, sometimes that was just a partnership dissolution. There were women who weren't in the right relationship yet, and then there were women whose partners

were not committed, weren't sure. So it was really all about relationship reasons, partnership reasons. And 10 years ago, when I did that study, it was mostly the average age of the women I was interviewing was 37, 38, so slightly older women. Obviously, over the past decade, egg freezing has become a lot more common. We hear about it a lot more. It's sort of available a lot more in lots of different clinics. And now we are seeing some younger women freezing their eggs who are planning proactively. So that might be women who are engaged in long-term training for their jobs. I've spoken to some women who are going abroad with their jobs and know that they don't plan to become mothers until, you know, the end of their secondment or the end of their

whatever, their job overseas and things like that. So we're now seeing some women who are planning and freezing their eggs for reasons other than just relationship reasons because they know that they don't plan to have children in the next two, three, four, five years. So it's kind of a mixture of reasons. And let's tackle it head on. What are the issues with influences getting their eggs paid for? Yeah.

So on the one hand, obviously everybody's just trying to make their lives work, right? And this is what we can discuss about companies paying for egg freezing as well. So actually, if you want to do something and somebody's paying you for it and you've got a fair exchange, okay, I'm going to talk about it and you're going to pay me or whatever. On the one hand, I completely understand how that works. I think where there is a potential problem with it is especially on social media where people are not clear and on. about any kind of paid relationship and where what they say about their experience might be mitigated by that financial relationship. So they might feel a pressure to present the process as easier than it was, as more positive than it was, as less stressful than it was,

because they sort of feel financially tied to giving a particular picture, which then, of course, is misleading for all the people who are, you know, watching that or listening to that. think my problem is really where, and in this industry we're seeing this quite a lot, as in many other commercial industries, where there is kind of a bit of a mismatch between the actual truth and the version that's being presented on social media. And of course, young women are generally quite savvy. They know that whatever appears on their Instagram feed or whatever isn't necessarily the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But still, I think if you are in a position to be influencing people, you also have a responsibility to be honest about things like

this, particularly medical procedures that have risks and side effects. I think also there's that subconscious bias. Like even if I try my best to give an honest portrayal, and with all the will in the world, I want to give that honest portrayal, there is that risk, like what you said, the pressure, even if I'm not consciously recognising that, am I subconsciously. tweaking some of the words, the tone that I use, the experience that I have. And also, I think when you're paying for something, it undoubtedly changes your experience of something. Yeah. And also, I mean, at the end of the day, you've got your eggs in that clinic. You don't want to have an unpleasant relationship with that clinic. And I'm not saying necessarily there

would be a reason to, but you can imagine how somebody, if they were being paid to freeze their eggs and say they wanted to freeze their eggs anyway. So let's completely forget about, you know, inducement to freeze your eggs when maybe it's not, you know, necessarily what you want to do. So they want to do it. They're being paid by a clinic to do it. They freeze their eggs, but they have a really terrible experience. They suffer, you know, from side effects. They have maybe OHS, something like that. They would probably be reluctant to speak about that because those eggs are stored in that fertility clinic and they're precious. So there is this kind of relationship that probably can impact how honest people can sometimes be about that experience.

So that's my only worry really, because I think what's really important is that people make really informed decisions about these things. And, you know, we hear so much about the amount of misinformation on social media. But actually, oftentimes influences can feel more trustworthy than a medical professional. And so if an influencer who you really like and follow anyway, then ends up saying X, Y, Z about their fertility experiences, you're probably a little bit more likely to believe that and take that on board. So I think that's the concern I have with, the kind of potential paid relationships. Another concern I think I have, again, very hypocritical, but the shifting of baseline expectations that people have, that we can see it across everything.

The lifestyles that people see on social media are not reflective of people. people's lives in general. We're living in a cost of living crisis, a lot of it. Absolutely. Not just egg freezing. They're getting everything, a lot of things for free. And I think a concern probably I have is it's not financially attainable to a lot of people. But if you look on your feed and you see so many people on social media getting their eggs frozen, it can feel like that's what you should be doing or that's what's expected. I know how much the process costs, but I remember seeing how much my prescriptions cost

and I wasn't paying for my prescriptions. That is expensive as well. Car shopping this civic holiday weekend, most car dealerships are closed and all you'll find are crickets. Not Performance Auto Group. They're open this Saturday and Holiday Monday for their annual Civic Holiday Sales event.

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Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad free? Don't worry, we get it. Every $20 ticket could win you $3,000 a month for life and supports life-saving cancer research at the Princess Margaret. Feel free to buy your payday for life ticket today. Raffle number 155-21. So expensive. So I think there are a couple of things there that I'd like to reflect back on from what you've said. One is just the price of egg freezing will always mean that it's an elite technology. We're never ever going to be in a situation where everyone can afford egg freezing, right?

And yet some of the discourse, particularly for young women around egg freezing, is almost as if it is, you know, something really easy and simple and something everybody should consider as part of their fertility planning. Egg freezing is never going to be that because it is just plain unaffordable for most people. So, you know, let's have that as our first base. Secondly, even where you'd look at the prices of egg freezing, and we did a research project a few years ago, most of those prices are not fully inclusive and accurate. So when we did that research project, we found that for most clinics, the final price ended up being about a third higher than what was quoted.

And that is an additional piece of stress that's, you know, completely unnecessary and potentially avoidable. They could have told you it was going to cost 5,300 instead of, you know, 4,200 or whatever. But also, as you say, medications, which will be different for everyone depending on their hormone levels, which are then again several thousand pounds. So it is a really, really costly process. And so for women who are considering egg freezing, one of the things they have to think about, even if they have that money, right, what else could that money be used for? How is that money best going to enhance their life and their options? And I think it's not necessarily in freezing your eggs, particularly because we know that the success rates for egg freezing are not what most people would assume they are. because we see it, you know, all around us, as you said, on the tube, on social media here, there and everywhere, we sort of are almost lulled into this false sense of security that egg freezing is a really finely tuned technology that if you freeze your eggs, you're going to have these eggs for backup. Well, in actual fact, we know that even IVF only has a success rate around 30%. So the chances of you being able to conceive using those eggs are definitely not something that we would, you know, want.

people to think of as a guarantee. So if you're, if you are a young woman who's thinking about freezing eggs, then the financial consideration is a really, really important one. I just think about how I was freezing my eggs. I wasn't doing IVF. I wasn't doing embryos. I knew that I was okay in, in terms of, I knew I was probably going to get quite good retrieval. And I wasn't paying for it. And it was still an extremely emotionally taxing process. And stressful. And stressful. It's a full-time job. You're in the clinic. like quite a few times a week, it's a really, really intense process. My heart goes out to women and couples who go through that when it's having a severe impact

on their finances and they have the pressure of it being a successful cycle as well. You said something really interesting that I wanted to learn more about was it's always going to be an elite technology. Why is that? Just because of the pricing. I mean, it's, you know, again, like you said, we are in a cost of living crisis. There are people who are having a hard time, a very hard time covering, just the basics. And these are people in full-time employment, just trying to make everything work, rent, heating, food, etc. The majority of people are never going to find five, six, seven thousand pounds to be able to spend on a speculative technology like egg freezing, which may or may not work. You know, I think

a lot of the way egg freezing gets talked about is as if it's something most people are doing. Now, I think you'll be surprised to hear that if we look at the data from the human fertilisation and embryology authority, have a guess at the grand total number of women that have frozen their eggs in the UK to date, the total number of women who have frozen their eggs. Number or percentage? Number of women, say since 2008 to 2023, I think, is the, or 24, the last day. we have data for the total number of women who've frozen their eggs.

Guys, they up did my module of facility in the facility, so I should be able to answer this. I can't remember. I have no idea. No idea. So it's 22,000 women in all that time. Yeah. 22,000 women in all of those years since 2008 that have frozen their eggs. Now, if you think about the fact that in one year,

we have about 70,000 people going through IVF. So egg freezing is actually a relatively minute reproductive technology, but it's getting talked about as if it's something everyone's doing, everyone should be doing, everyone should be thinking about doing, everyone should at least consider. And that's just, if we look at the numbers, that's just not the reality of what egg freezing is. Egg freezing, and you know, let me be really clear,

because I sometimes get misrepresented as being like completely against egg freezing. I'm not at all. But let's be very clear about what egg freezing is. it is an elite niche technology that will be right for some women who go into it with sort of full knowledge of their options, of the risks, of the side effects, and decide to do it anyway, knowing that it might not be a guarantee because they know that it will give them an additional chance at having a baby later in time when they know that their fertility is going to be, you know, worse than whatever it is currently. So in some instances, it can be a really, really helpful

technology, but is it something that young women should do full scale? I absolutely don't think so. You mentioned something there that I probably have a little bit of a controversial opinion on that I'd love to hear your thoughts on, that egg freezing gets a way disproportionately talked about. And I found that as well when I was speaking about my experience. And obviously, I do recognise there are controversies attached to me sharing my experience full stop. I found that the reaction to me sharing my experience was disproportionate to actually what I was doing. I felt like I was making a decision right for me based on these reasons being open. The reaction around egg freezing feels like there are undertones of being anti-female empowerment.

And I don't think that egg freezing should be heralded as this huge marker of equality of reproductive equality because it's not that. But I think sometimes the reactions can feel. It's heated. It's heated and I think we can see it across history sometimes when women have taken control of their reproductive choices. There does seem to be this. It feels uncomfortable, this backlash. Well, let's break it down, right? So you know I'm a medical sociologist.

So what I'm really interested in other social sort of receptions and reactions and contexts and contexts within which these technologies exist. So there might be several things going on with those reactions. So one might be a set of. reactions coming from people who are well aware that that technology is never going to be available to them, is never going to be accessible to them, right? So those people might be triggered or angry, rightfully, that something that is absolutely out of reach for them is being presented as the answer to how to plan your life. So that's one thing that's going on. Another reason for why we might be seeing disproportionate coverage of egg freezing, if you think

about it from the other side, right? If companies providing egg freezing make a large majority of young women feel they should freeze their eggs, what happens? They expand, they hugely expand their potential sort of client base. You can't do that with IVF. It's only going to be people who can't have kids either, you know, for medical reasons or because they're in same-sex partnerships or whatever, that are going to be going for fertility treatment. But if you change the conversation in such a way that you make egg freezing seem like a must or the obvious thing to do or the necessary thing to do, you could potentially market it to all young women. So then you have this absolutely huge client base. And then the thing you have to think there is who stands to benefit

from that. Is it really women who are taking charge of their fertility? Or is it the people who are selling them the egg freezing technologies. I mean, as I say, I am absolutely not against egg freezing. I've frozen my own eggs, so we can also talk about my experiences with that. But I am definitely against egg freezing being presented as the main answer or the only answer. Egg freezing has to be something that we think about in conversation with better childcare, better maternity and paternity leave, you know, more job security, flexible working so that women can genuinely make a decision about when they want to have children rather than because women are living in a society where it's so difficult to actually be young, trying to get

ahead in your career, trying to settle in your relationship, trying to afford a house and trying to have a child. So you have to delay having a child to the point where your fertility has declined beyond what is, you know, what is best suited to having children. So what I don't want is egg freezing to become a band-aid for a society that is just putting more. way too many pressures on young women and making them solve it, you know, by their own individual efforts, whether that's egg freezing or whatever, rather than saying, okay, we as a society need to be set up in such a way that women can genuinely have children when they want to, whether that's in their 20s, whether that's in their 30s, whether that's in their 40s.

So I think that's sort of the part of the conversation we need to be really cognizant of when we're talking about it. Did you see the Chris Williamson video? No. Chris Williamson when he was on Stephen Bartlett and he was talking about birth rates declining. Basically, he said that women are selfish for not wanting kids. The birth rate is declining because women have become more selfish. And I made a video about it saying, what do you mean women have become more selfish? Women, one, have been arguably one of the most selfless groups across history have been taking on the majority of care burden, you know, across the world. And now, Maybe we do look at the world and we go, this is completely inhospitable for mothers.

I have a story that I'd love to share with you about a doctor that I worked with. She'd just come back from having her two kids. And she said to the hospital, big London hospital, one of the wealthiest trusts in the UK. She said to the hospital, can I have a room to pump? And the hospital said, oh, you can pump in the toilet. I mean, I think that story, you will have women attesting to that story from every single profession. Yeah. But, yeah.

We haven't made it easy some others. What are your thoughts? He said our birth rates are declining because women are selfish. Okay, so two things. One is the idea of being selfish, so thinking about yourself. Firstly, what is inherently wrong with that? And, you know, that in itself is a very misogynistic comment, right? So we live in a society where men are expected and encouraged and valorised for thinking about themselves and their self-improvement.

When a woman does that, selfish is used as a very, derogatory term, right? So that in itself I have a real problem with. But yeah, the broader point is that actually our society, our capitalist patriarchal society, relies on a huge amount of unpaid labor from women. And that is incredibly difficult. So you have lots of different groups working on flexible working arrangements, better child care, better job opportunities, fertility-friendly workplaces. But it is still the juggle that young women face right now in terms of their role in the labour market, their role in the home, their role as mothers, and also kind of this increasing pressure to be fulfilled, to actualise yourself. It's actually like an insolvable Rubik's Cube.

Nobody has that many hours in a day. Nobody has, you know, that much resources available, whether it's money, time, emotional energy. So the reason women aren't having children or the birth rate is falling is because actually many women are being presented with an absolutely insolvable puzzle. And people are responding to it in different ways, right? Some of them are opting out of the kind of career hustle and having their families. Some of them are having families later when they've established themselves in a career and then kind of sometimes taking the hit of the fertility decline

and the need for fertility treatment that comes with it. Some people are choosing to have child-free lives, and that is an absolutely valid choice. So I think, yeah, I think, you know, if somebody feels that the problem with the falling birth rate is that women are too selfish, then, you know, they have a very good job to do to influence men to do all the unpaid care work,

unpaid labour, which would really ease the burden for women, right? Something I find really interesting is when we talk about that women have only worked up until recently. And women have been working the whole of time. It's just it's that unpaid labour. You know, women have been paid for their work recently. Yeah. And I think one of the things that's happening now, which we're not talking about really yet, sociologically and, you know, in the media, is that now what women are facing is not only are they working in the labour market,

often, you know, doing same jobs as men getting paid less, but doing the same jobs. They're also doing a lot of the unpaid labour caring for their young families. But also right now, women of my generation, are doing a third shift of caring for their parents as well. So actually things are not getting easier for women. In many ways, things are becoming harder for women. Coming back to that unsolvable Rubik's Q, I would love to talk a little bit about the other options for women who financially fertility preservation is not an option. That's an interesting way to think about it, right?

So even just posing the question in that way, other options for women for whom fertility preservation is not an option, makes it seem like fertility preservation is the main and most obvious option. So I wouldn't phrase it in those terms. I would think, well, what options are available to women? And I think, you know, some of them, a lot of them, are suboptimal. So you could choose to have a child when you're younger. that might not be possible because you might not be with a partner,

your partner might not be ready, you might not be able to support a family, you might leave it later and take that gamble that, you know, your fertility is going to enable you to have children. For a lot of people, that works out. For some people it doesn't. And, you know, that's obviously incredibly difficult when it doesn't. People might choose to have child-free lives.

I think the thing that, you know, younger women or women of your generation are sort of getting quite savvy about is trying to get as much information as you can so you understand all of those different options. So I'm actually, again, fertility testing gets a bad rap. I'm actually all for fertility testing because I think getting as much information as you can just gives you that little bit more of a sense of knowledge to be able to make the choice that's right for you because that choice is going to look different for every single person. Well, you know, it's going to look different depending on your priorities and what's important to you.

But to be able to get as much information as you can, even, you know, if you're planning to, say, become a doctor in the same way that you would look at, okay, how many years is it going to take me to qualify, what are going to be the demands of the job, you know, what's going to be my working schedule, also arming yourself with knowledge about your own fertility testing and knowing that that information is not sort of 100%, but to sort of say, okay, you know what, everything looks well,

everything looks healthy, I don't have a reason to be unnecessarily concerned, or alternatively, well, actually, this is flagging some things up, and maybe those are things I need to take into consideration as I make my life plan. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly, 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

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Watch the Hulu original series Furious. Now streaming only on Hulu on Disney Plus. That's really interesting because I think the fertility testing topic, I've gone back and forth like a metronome on my opinions about it. But what I always come back to is getting those tests brought about really important conversations with myself and my partner about what is important to us. And I think when you're young as well, in your 20s especially, You can feel like you're invincible, you know?

Yeah. And it did feel like a reminder of, oh, wait, Faye, like you're actually not 16 anymore. Every time you go on the tube, there's a reason and you see these ads. There's a reason it makes you feel uncomfortable. I'm a firm believer. Knowledge is power. What we face, we conquer. And facing up to those things with information, it actually reduces anxiety for me personally.

I know it doesn't for everyone. Or for some people, it might increase anxiety, but that might be appropriate. That might be increased anxiety. about something that is, you know, happening in your body that you need to address. Fertility testing is a really interesting one. I think there's complicated things going on in that arena, some of them to do with commercial biases and interests and things like that. But I have spoken to a lot of women who have used fertility testing in a really smart way.

So women who felt very certain that they've got endometriosis or PCOS and they've just been bounced around from GP or from this person to that person. And so actually they've used fertility testing in a really savvy way to get the data they need to be able to then go back to their GP and say, look at this, refer me, you know, and to actually cut down some of that waiting time within the NHS to really, you know, give themselves more options, more information. So it's interesting that fertility testing is getting this bad rat, as if women are completely easy to, you know, so vulnerable,

dupes, can't make sense of information. Well, actually what we know is young women are pretty good at deciphering information. Everybody's doing research. Everyone's looking into their symptoms on Google. So to actually get that testing, you know, and I'm talking about the fertility testing companies that actually look at a whole range of things, they're not just looking at AMH, which I think just looking at an AMH is very, very limited in its value. but really looking at a whole range of things

can just give you a very helpful set of information to work with. Yeah. And we can't ignore that these things exist in a world where women's health concerns are dismissed. There is a value in that power that you have by having that date. You know what? So I got married very young. I got married at 23 and then I got divorced at 30.

So just at the point where I would have been thinking about having kids or whatever, I got divorced. And actually one of the very first things I did was, and at the time there were no fertility test. in companies or none that I knew of anyway. I actually had an appointment with my GP and said, you know, can I just have tests done to see whether I'm ovulating properly, etc., just so that I know where I stand or have some indication, some better indication than I have now of where I stand, so that I can kind of gauge the amount of anxiety I feel about that. So that was something I did

for myself, so I can completely understand why. And the GP did it for you? Actually, they referred me to the kind of the local hospital and I got some of those tests done, yeah. That's brilliant because now I think the guidance is they won't do those tests until you've been trying for a year or two. And as we know for women, when that hate the term, biological clock is ticking, a year or two is, that's really hard. I've been working in this field for quite a while by then. So I was just like, you know, I was probably more stressed about it than your average person would be because I'd been, you know, doing a lot of work with people. who were having IVF and stuff. So yeah, it made sense to me to want to get more information. Your 20s. I've heard that your 20s is the best times to freeze your eggs because you get

the biggest retrieval. And that definitely, I would be lying if I said that that didn't play a part in me deciding to do that now. How old are you? 27. What are your thoughts on that? Okay. So that question is difficult to answer. So from a scientific or medical perspective, absolutely, the younger you are when you freeze your eggs, the more eggs you're likely to get, the more healthy those eggs are likely to be, you know, the more genetically or whatever, they're more likely to be healthy and you respond better to the medication. But the way I also think about it is from a sociological perspective, which is that most women in their 20s have no need to freeze eggs

and will never use eggs that they freeze because life will pan out in a way that they will not need to use them. And really, I think for a lot of women who freeze eggs in their 20s, that's plan A, right? To never need to use those eggs. I don't know. It's just a case of whether it's better to do something that you're very unlikely to ever need or whether it's better to, you know, wait till you're a bit older. I mean, I think basically if you're in your early 30s, that is a really good time to freeze eggs because you're still young enough for most people, you know, for general people who don't have fertility issues. You're young enough that you're going to get a good response and you're a bit older. So you have a sense of maybe your reproductive trajectory. You know, sometimes you hear of these stories. of like egg freezing as a graduation present. I think that's just crazy. Like, because why would you undertake an invasive, a stressful, a difficult medical procedure that has some inherent risks and side effects when you have no idea what the next 15

years is likely to hold? So that to me feels a bit like putting yourself under risk when you have no reason to benefit from it. So for me, I mean, yeah, for me, it would probably make more sense in your sort of 30 to 35. Yeah. But it's different for everyone, right? So it really depends what's what your decision making process is. I know a couple people who got boob jobs and nose jobs from their parents for graduation.

And why I've got a mum who's very, you know, I come down the stairs in makeup, I'm just like, see, you're beautiful the way you are. So I can't fathom why, you know, anyone would ever do that for their kids. but yeah, the egg freezing or plastic surgery. I'm like, guys, do you know that these aren't benign procedures? Yeah, I think you know what is in each of those cases, you have to think about like the balance of risks and benefits. And for people who really have a sense of body dysmorphia,

those risks, the potential risks of surgery are minimal compared to what they stand to gain, which is a sense of confidence. And, you know, I wish people could gain that sense of confidence without having to go under the knife or whatever. But you can completely see that for some people, that really makes sense and that will improve their life. But I think, again, you know, the concern is that are some people feeling that sense because they're having so many, you know, not objective,

you know, very invested advertising and social media messages bombarding them about what they're supposed to look like. I do worry that. younger women, you know, when everybody's got a filter on Instagram, how can you not feel, you know, lacking in confidence about the way you look? Because you don't look like an Instagram filter. Yeah. Pressures have a lot to answer for, yeah. Yeah, for sure. We mentioned earlier about companies offering egg freezing. So I've got a stat here that apparently, I think in 2022, up to 40% of large employers in the US offered some form of facility benefits with approximately

19% specifically covering elective egg freezing. What are your thoughts on this? So, interestingly, when egg freezing exploded into sort of public consciousness conversation was around 2014-2015. And the reason for that is because Apple and Facebook started offering coverage of egg freezing as part of their employee benefits. And that was really kind of how that conversation erupted. And there were people for it and against it.

And there were feminist voices on both sides of that debate. And the feminist voices against it were saying, well, if an employer is offering those benefits, then is that an undue inducement for women to work through their 30s and delay childbearing because their employer sort of wants their best years for them? Now, I've interviewed lots of women who have done company-sponsored egg freezing. And in each one of those instances, those women say, I am so lucky and so grateful that I work for a company who pays for. for this. So I don't think we have any data to show that women who would not have wanted to freeze their eggs are freezing their eggs just because their company is paying for it.

It seems that women who wanted to freeze their eggs are just really glad that their company is covering it, right? But I think the important thing is, again, to look at those company policies in their actual context. So if a company is just paying for egg freezing but won't pay for IVF doesn't have good maternity leave, doesn't cover, you know, flexible working for mothers, then you can sort of see that there is a culture at play that might say, well, don't have kids in this workplace. If a workplace, on the other hand, covers all of those bases and say, we'll pay for your egg freezing, we'll pay for fertility treatment, we'll have medical benefits around reproductive

health in general, we have really good maternity and paternity leave policies, then that's a workplace that's saying we're really committed to keeping the best people in this workplace by offering them the perks and the benefits that will allow them to have families as and when they want them. So it just really depends on the context in which that offering is being made. And do you have much data on comparatively how these companies are doing in those other areas? I think most of the companies that Fund Egg Freezing are actually providing a suite of sort of fertility friendly policies. And I, you know, it's really interesting that some of those big companies in Silicon Valley were leading the way.

My initial reaction is an ease. A discomfort, yeah. And that discomfort is understandable because you're like, you don't really want your employer to be involved with your reproductive decision making. But then that's true of like a lot of medical benefits. Like you also don't want your employer to be involved with whether you're getting a filling or not. But actually, if you have to get a filling, it's great if your employer is paying for brilliant dental care. Yeah.

And there is a move right now. to try to get workplaces in general to be more fertility friendly, both by providing, you know, flexible working for parents, but also by, you know, enabling some of these technologies. And I think if all workplaces did that, many more people would have many more options, which would be a good thing. Before coming on to your own experience,

I'd love to talk a little bit about donor conception. So now one in 170 booths in the UK are solo, solo, solo, same-sex couples, single women. How has the shape of family changed across your career? Yeah, so I think it's really, really amazing what we're seeing in terms of different and new family forms. So obviously we've got donor conception, families that have been conceived, heterosexual families that have been conceived using donor sperm or donor eggs, same-sex families that have been conceived using donor sperm, donor eggs, surrogacy, solo moms. You know, there's been a big growth in the number of solo moms. And what's really beautiful is one of my professors at Cambridge, Professor Susan Golanbach, she is the person that.

has sort of done decades of research into these different family forms and how children fare in these different families, right? And her sort of 40 years of research can really be summarised by saying that what matters in families is the relationships, the warmth, not the form of the family. So children in donor-conceived families and same-sex families and solo mum families, as long as the relationships are warm and nurturing, those children fare just as well.

as children and heterosexual relationships. And I think having that data has really helped to cut down a lot of taboos. You're bringing a child into the world that is extremely wanted. Absolutely. And extremely, you've almost had to think through that process of having a child, arguably a lot more than in natural conception. So it's, yeah, that was really interesting. Yeah.

I'd love to come on to talking about your own experience. Sure. Why don't we just start? What brought you into reproductive sociology? in general because was that before your experience? Wow. So I finished my degree and then I did other things for a little bit. And then I wanted to go back and do a master's in sociology.

And I was just really interested in family life. And at the time, there were lots of really interesting conversations about embryo research and IVF. And so that was a field I was just really fascinated by. And I started working in that field. And I've always been, you know, exceptionally lucky with the professors. and mentors I've had who were all, you know, brilliant people at the cutting edge of what was happening in terms of reproductive technologies and family life. So I always stayed in that field and I looked at individuals' experiences of going through IVF, egg sharing, egg donation,

and then egg freezing. I was really young when I got into it. So all of that was before I myself tried to have children. So when I was trying to have a family, I had probably a little bit too much information about all of that. And yes, we've said knowledge is a good thing, but I sort of knew everything that could go wrong. And, you know, so it's been a kind of interesting relationship. And then in the last 10 years, I've been through a lot of the things I've studied. So that's also been really interesting. And in many ways, I now have so much more insight. Because yes, of course, you can study something and learn about it. But actually then living through it gives you a completely different sense of understanding and empathy for people.

I was reading the article, an article that you wrote in The Guardian that was, I'm going to, I'm going to butcher the name, Taliqua. Teliqua, I think. Yeah, I've only ever seen it written. I've never heard someone say it so, but yeah, it's a difficult name. The Orca and I just was struggling to keep it together is an absolutely beautiful article documenting, which was quite a challenging, well, very challenging and emotional. journey for you.

Yeah. Would you feel comfortable of talking about that? Thank you for saying that. You know, that's probably the most personal piece that I've written. I originally wrote that piece for Baby Loss Awareness Week. And then The Guardian published it.

And I've had so many really lovely sort of connections with people over it, including with like a much older gentleman who wrote to me about, you know, being able to support his daughter better through her miscarriages because he'd read it. So, you know, I really appreciate that it's connected with people. piece I wrote not too long ago, but it was about when I lost my twins. I was pregnant with twins. And in fact, that was my forced miscarriage. So it was sort of a very, very difficult time. It was one of the most difficult things I've been through. And I think, you know, with that piece and with that period of my life, I think,

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I had this real sense of dissonance because the world was sort of saying, oh, don't give up, keep going. You know, we do live in a culture that really praises effort and keep going and da-da-da. And really, it was a time in my life where I just wanted the world to stop spinning. And I just did not know how. how to take the next step. And so this orca, there was this orca in the news whose baby was born dead or died very shortly after he was born.

And she swam for 17 days, you know, keeping his body afloat. I mean, I think that story touched so many people around the world. And there was something in that story that really resonated with how I felt because all I wanted was to still be thinking about and trying to keep something alive. of those babies that I'd lost because it felt like such an enormous loss. Yeah, so that's the piece, you know, about that experience. And it wasn't for quite a long time after that that I felt ready to try again. And really what happened in between was COVID.

And I think, you know, COVID was a terrible time for many, many reasons for a lot of people. But for me, it was the first time in my life where I had that sense of like a pause button. You know, I wasn't going out to work. I was at home with my gorgeous dog. The pace of life just slowed down enough where I could heal from that really huge loss. And it was only after that that I sort of felt, okay, I think that's one of the things that miscarriage itself doesn't get talked about that much, you know, considering how many

people experience miscarriage. It's not something we talk so much about. And I think what we really don't talk so much about is kind of that the aftermath of miscarriage because whenever miscarriage is discussed, it's predominantly from the perspective of someone who's then gone on to have children reflecting on that loss. So it's always this arc, it's always this story arc of, you know, adversity, but then triumph. And the reality is when you are in that point where you've just lost a baby, a really very wanted baby, in my case, two babies, you don't see that arc. And actually you don't know if it's ever going to work for you. So it can be

quite a difficult situation to grapple with. You said about the miscarriages being widely experienced, not dealt with very well at all by society. And there was a part in the article where you spoke about the retained products of conception, and the way the language, I think, often that is used around miscarriages and how it's handled. I don't think women are showing enough compassion because it's seen as common. Yeah. And you know what?

I think a lot of that is getting a lot better. You know, I've got some colleagues who are doing really brilliant work, working with hospitals to, you know, improve the kinds of language. And also, miscarriage experiences can be really unique. Not everybody, you know, experiences in the same way. Not everybody thinks of what they've lost as a baby necessarily. Not everybody is grieving and some people are. And so people need space to deal with it in whatever way is right for them.

And, you know, we've come a really, really long way. But still, I think since my miscarriages, I've had lots of colleagues and friends who've spoken to me about their miscarriages because I am really open about all of it. And, you know, it's shocking the number of people who might turn up at their 12-week appointment having no sense of what are missed miscarriages until they themselves are in that position of, you know, being told there's no heartbeat. And that's devastating because then you also have to deal with the sense of, oh, can I trust my. my body, you know, and the amount of anxiety you might feel with a future pregnancy, but also, again, medically, until very recently, people were told, oh, a miscarriage is a bit like a heavy period. A miscarriage is nothing like a heavy period for most people. I mean, it's a frightening amount of blood for most people. So, and even that can be quite traumatising, because it's

terrifying. I mean, you have no reference point of what looks like, you know, hemorrhaging to death. So I think, yeah, these conversations, they're not nice things to talk about and nobody wants to be part of that club. So they are still a little bit shrouded, which can make it more difficult for people when they experience it. And so I think people do gravitate towards whoever they know that is open about those experiences, which is why I just feel, you know, a real sense that I don't mind talking about those things. So I feel it's really something I love to do because I know that somebody, else is going through the same thing and they might not have someone else to talk to. And I think it's extremely admirable because it can't be easy, you know. And where so many of us

will go through a miscarriage or will have a friend who goes through a miscarriage, do you have any advice on how to best support those people in our lives? Yeah. And so far I think also a lot of people have friends who are going through very lengthy fertility journeys, right? Even if we're just talking about friendships, right, girl friendships. It's a tricky thing to navigate because oftentimes somebody might be really concerned for their friend and to not upset their friend, but what that looks like is distancing. And actually that's much more hurtful. I think most people are quite generous about other people fumbling or saying slightly the wrong thing when they realize that the intention is there to be supportive. So for example, again, I've interviewed so many

people that have held lengthy fertility journeys. And one of the really difficult things about that lengthy journey is that you end up out of lockstep with friends who you've shared life milestones with, right? Friends you've gone through uni with, friends you got married around the same time as. And then suddenly they've had their child, sometimes two children, and you're still trying to conceive your first. And what people talk about is this sense of being left behind and left out, you know, because your friend might be, they might be trying to be considerate by not inviting you to their baby shower or not inviting you to their kids' first birthday party. But actually that's just more hurtful. And what would be better is to invite someone and say, hey, listen, I know this might be tricky.

And I, you know, I didn't know quite how to tell you this because I didn't want to upset you, but this is what's going on or we're having this occasion. You know, a lot of people say the only thing that's worse than being invited. to a baby shower is not being invited to a baby shower or, you know, people not being able to talk about those things with you. And also, I think toxic positivity has done a lot of damage to a lot of people. So sometimes you don't even have to say anything. You can just sit with somebody and just say, you know what, this is really shit. I'm really sorry you're going through it. And I think that's just an honest and simple thing to say. You can't fix it for somebody else. And, you know, it's not helpful to say things like, I know somebody who did this. My friends

sister, you know, do, do, do. Have you tried this dying? Yeah. Have you tried to relax? But just to say, you know what, I'm really sorry you're having to go through this. This is really unfair. There's definitely a tendency, I think, especially when we see someone we love hurting to try and fix. Of course. And with fertility, there's sometimes you can't, you can't fix. The only thing I would say is that my go-to, whether it's, you know, when somebody's going through a really difficult time, when someone I care about is going through a really difficult time, whether that's a miscarriage or fertility treatment or loss of another kind, I think the only thing that genuinely helps is like getting food delivered.

Because actually if you have to just not think about having something nice to eat, so I tend to sort of send people vouchers for nice food or something like that because that's the one way to just say, I know I can't really do anything. But, you know, maybe this will mean you don't have to cook for the next two nights or whatever. Food. Food, yeah. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

That's really, really, really useful. I first became quite engaged in facility because one of my consultants on one of my rotations who I had really good, really good relationship with her. She was going through quite a really, really difficult Ivy F Jr. I was on this rotation and I, you know, I just, and especially, I was 20, like, 4 at the time. I didn't know what to say because, and especially because I was not engaged in that world at all. I didn't have any friends who'd ever gone through that. It was completely alien to me and I just felt almost paralysed.

And I think that so everything you've just said is extremely, extremely beneficial. So thank you so much. I would love to know how your experience with IVF and egg freezing, whether that changed any of your viewpoints. And the issue I possibly have is I'm someone who has benefited from egg freezing. There are parts of it that don't sit right with me. So egg freezing is now a 500 million pound industry in the UK. At what point do you think fertility goes from being healthcare to a product?

To be honest, I think we're at a point where it's both, right? So I'll talk about my experiences. I decided to freeze my eggs because, as I said, I got divorced when I was 30 or 31. And then I didn't meet my current partner until I was 35. And so I knew we weren't going to be immediately having kids. But I sort of went into egg freezing really with my eyes wide open. I was already researching it at the time. And I was like, this is probably just a shot in the dark.

But I'm really involved with this world. And I remember having a conversation with a good friend of mine. And I sort of said to her, listen. And at the time, you know, hardly anybody was freezing their eggs. It wasn't really something that's nearly as sort of talked about as it is now. And I said, you know, I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to freeze my eggs. And she said, oh, I'm surprised you haven't already.

Like, you know, you're so involved with that world. So that was helpful to me because I was like, am I doing something totally crazy? But I froze my eggs and then I thought, I'm kind of going to forget about it because the chances are it won't work. And then when we started trying to have a family, I had three miscarriages back to back,

which was really difficult and unexpected. And, you know, and then it was. it was recommended that we do IVF with genetic testing because it was presumed that the reason for the miscarriages were genetic anomalies. So then we did IVF. I had PGTA testing, had two sort of perfect embryos put back and that's when I was pregnant with my twins, with our twins. And then that ended in a sort of a very catastrophic miscarriage. At which point I just, I was like, we did everything we were supposed to do. And I remember being at the hospital in the aftermath of that miscarriage and sort of saying,

but I'd really like to have some sense of why this is happening. And then it was quite a young female doctor. It's interesting, you know, in those emotive moments, you really remember the specific doctors. And she was sort of, she just said, oh, well, these things happen. It was probably genetic. And I said, but these were tested embryos. And she was like, I don't know. And it was just.

And then she said something like, oh, Who knows? Or something like that. And, you know, bear in mind I'd been working as a reproductive sociologist for like a long time at that point. And it was just, and I just thought, okay, I just have to take a breath. And I just said sort of really calmly to this woman and I said, listen, I might be one of 30 patients you're seeing today. And for you, it might be as easy as who knows. But for me, this is a really, really important life-defining event.

And for me, it makes a lot of difference if we can get any more. information because, you know, it's really important to me. And so I just sort of felt I had to really say that and explain it to her because she'd kind of gone down. She was probably super busy, you know, but I just thought, hang on, that's really, it's not okay to sort of speak to a patient like that. But anyway, I diverge. We then, then, you know, a long while later, when we felt ready to try again, we had another embryo left over from the IVF cycle. So that was my first son. We went and used that embryo. And really, I didn't go back to use my frozen eggs until we were trying for a sibling. And at that point, you know, and the reason I never went for the frozen eggs was because

I just thought it probably won't work. I don't know if it will work. I don't want to rely on that. So when I was young enough to still be doing IVF or felt like I had a good chance, that made sense. And unbelievably, it did work. And I did have a baby with my frozen eggs. But of all, the eggs I had, all of them thought, he was the one embryo. So it could very well, you know, I feel like it's this real sliding doors moment. It could not have worked. And I could have been one of those people who sort of said, well, actually, egg freezing's a bit of a sham because you can freeze your eggs, but then, you know, which a lot of women are saying now, a lot of women are going back to use their eggs, well, still small in numbers, but a lot of the women who are

going back to use their eggs are not successful. And so for them, if they have relied on it as something, their hopes have been dashed. If you freeze your eggs, make plans for the next five, six, seven years, relying on those eggs being able to turn into a baby for you one day. And they don't. I think that's quite a tragic sort of turn of events. But I've veered quite a lot from the question you asked, didn't I? That's a perfect example of how something that is solid.

to us as a product doesn't actually give us anything. It might not give you anything. Exactly. Exactly. And I have a PhD student right now who's analyzing social media representations of egg freezing. And there is now this growing number of women who are posting about their experiences of thawing their eggs. And that's really, really interesting. And I think it's really important that their voices are out there as well so that, you know,

women don't go into it with unrealistic expectations. And so if it works for you, what an amazing thing, because I probably would not have had a second child if it hadn't been for my frozen eggs. And he is exceptionally cute and lovely and wonderful. And so for me, of course, it's been amazing that it worked. But it might not have worked. That is absolutely everything that I was hoping to get from this conversation

is that the really beautiful nuance of having frozen your eggs, but actually there are issues. I think in this world of increasing polarization, we really, really don't get that balance being that feels maybe in some ways contradictory, but actually it's just nuance. And we don't have enough. Hear that? It's your money calling. It wants a promotion.

Elevate your savings with the Scotia high interest savings account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply. And you know, Scotiabank.com slash h-I-S-A to learn more. Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think. And you know what? One other thing that I think is a bit concerning is something I've started hearing quite recently, which I didn't hear 10 years ago when I was researching egg freezing,

from some of the younger women I'm talking to about who are thinking about freezing their eggs, is now I'm hearing like rumblings of partner pressure. And I think that is really concerning. So women saying that their partner, you know, that they're having conversations with their partner about whether to have children or not. And their partner is saying, well, you know, you can just freeze your eggs. So I actually had several of these conversations back to back in the last couple of weeks. So it was sort of a bit jarring for me where women have said, I don't, I actually really want to have babies now.

And we can. We're set up. We're in our early 30s or whatever it is. But, you know, he sort of pulled this joker card saying, well, actually, we're not under any pressure because you can go. head and freeze your eggs. And I just thought, oh, hang on, that's really concerning because in the same way that we don't want employers to be, you know, pressurizing or pushing women to freeze their eggs, we certainly don't want partners to be pressurizing or pushing women to freeze their eggs. And I think that might be sort of a rumbling of something that's

maybe happening. And that might partly be because men are even less aware of the reality of egg freezing. You know, how stressful is. it is how difficult it is, the side effects, the low success rates. So maybe the guys who are saying that are also working with a misconception that it's a really easy technology that you just go in quickly and get it done and that it has very high success rates. So it's really important for men to be part of the kind of slightly more nuanced conversation as well. For everyone listening or viewing, where can they find the most reliable information about

facility? Perfect. So in the UK, we're really lucky. to have the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the HFEA. They've been keeping data since 1991. And so they have all of the data, all of the information, and unbiased, objective information about what the process involves, how much it's likely to cost, what the success rates are likely to be.

And they don't have any vested interest. They're not trying to sell you anything. They're not trying to stop you from having anything. So I think for anybody who's thinking about these things, whether it is genetic testing of embryos or egg freezing or IVF or donor conception, the HFEA is an amazing source of data and knowledge. And also you can check the clinics. Did you say that? You can check all of the each of the clinics, which is so, so, yeah, I thought is really helpful. Exactly. You can look through and see, you know, how the different clinics are rated. Zaynap, what do you wish every woman knew by the time she was 25? I think the thing I wish everyone knows where the time they're 25 is that there will be someone out there to love you exactly as you are. And there will be somebody out there who will love what it is you have to offer in terms of like jobs as well.

I think a lot of younger people feel very stressed trying to mould themselves into certain things. And I just have to say to people, remember that there are people making money on social media like crowsy. brushing soap. Whatever your passion is, you will find your people and, you know, you will find people that love you exactly as you are. But by being authentically yourself, you know, that's how you do that. That's a brilliant one to end on. Thank you so, so much.

That's been an absolute pleasure and exactly, exactly what I knew you deliver on the nuance and the intelligence. So, yeah, thank you so much. Perfect. Thank you.