The Liz Moody Podcast - The Truth About Freezing My Eggs: What I Wish I Knew

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Are you considering freezing your eggs? Zack and I are diving into our experience freezing embryos with no details left out, from our decision-making process to preparation for the procedure through to post-procedure effects. We’ll get into the most difficult aspects of the process, the unexpected emotions that came up, and the actual retrieval procedure itself, and the one thing that everybody wants to know: just how much it cost. 1:17 Why Freeze Embryos? 12:17 The Hormone Injections 28:04 Egg Retrievals 34:20 Post-Procedure Effects 37:57 The Cost Of Freezing Embryos If you liked this conversation, you might like Liz’s interview with Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh AKA The Egg Whisperer.  For more from Liz’s fertility Dr. Aimee, you can follow her on Instagram @eggwhisperer or online at http://www.eggwhisperer.com/. You can listen to The Egg Whisperer Show on your podcast platform of choice or on YouTube. Listen to last week’s episode: Kids Or No Kids? Sharing My Choice And ALL The Reasons Behind It. Listen to Liz’s episode with Heather McMahan: Heather McMahan Unfiltered: Sex, Money, Beauty Standards, and More. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome. This episode is sponsored by: AG1: visit drinkag1.com/lizmoody and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. Puori: go to puori.com/LIZMOODY and use promo code LIZMOODY for 20% sitewide. Goodles: available nationwide at major grocery stores or visit www.goodles.com. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. If you have ever wondered what it's like to freeze eggs or embryos, I am going to share my entire personal story today, including how we decided that this was the solution for us, what the entire process was like, and the really surprising symptom that caught me very off guard. Today, I am joined by my husband, Zach, and we are going to get into all of the details. We will be sharing our exact numbers at the end of the episode, just to be sensitive to anyone who might not want to hear them. So you can listen to the entire episode and then we will be very clear when we are about

to get into the amount of eggs, the amount of embryos, all of that kind of stuff. And if you want to hear why we decided that we wanted to have a kid after years, after so many years of debating, and everything that we considered, that is all in last week's episode, which I can link in the show notes. And obviously, if anything around the topic of fertility is not what you want to here right now. I support that completely. I am sending you so much love, and I will see you next week. So I think the best place to start is why. Why did we choose to freeze embryos instead of trying to have a baby as soon as we reach the decision? Yeah, because I think both were options. But at the end

of the day, I think the thing it really came down to was time. Time to develop things a little bit more, like our career's time to check through various bucket list items, especially since we've kind of added more things to our bucket list recently. And I think more than anything, time to kind of sit in the space that we are in right now. Because our life has changed a lot in the last few years, and we really like kind of where present has gotten us. And it just didn't necessarily feel like quite the right time to gear shift to a whole another phase of life. Yeah, I totally agree. It is interesting because once you have a kid, you're a parent forever. It's not 18 years. My dad is still a parent. My mom is still a parent. They remind us of that. Yes. Well, and I remind them of that,

too, you know what I mean? And so I do think that it feels like you are saying goodbye to one phase of your life and entering a different phase of your life. And I think you and I talked about it a lot. and didn't feel quite ready to say goodbye to this phase of our life. Exactly, yeah. For me, there was also an element of risk mitigation. I'm 38 years old right now. I've had a number of friends have complications with their pregnancy, have miscarriages, and I really like the testing element of freezing embryos

and being able to mitigate those risks as much as possible, especially because I'm not getting younger. Like I'm 38 now. If I had a kid, I would be 39 at this point. And so I think any risk mitigation strategies that could be put into place given my age and the fact that my age is just going up was really helpful for my peace of mind. And if we did end up struggling with fertility issues, that also adds more time. So I'm 38 now.

And then if I tried to have a kid for a year and struggled with that, which I have seen that over and over and over again with so many of my friends, then I'm 39 when I'm freezing my embryos or embarking on that process. Yeah, exactly. So plenty of people have to do this anyway. So getting to it kind of as early as possible just helps reduce risk. Yeah, it felt like hedging bets a little bit. Okay, so let's talk about how we were feeling going. into it. Yeah. There were feelings. There were a lot of feelings. Yeah. I had a very complicated mix of feelings. Let's start with you because I feel like I had so many separate feelings. Were you trepidacious? Were you anxious? Were you excited? What was your frame of mind once we made the decision? I think once we made the decision, I was net excited because it felt like action. I think for me, action is important. It's really often easy to talk about doing things, but until you take steps,

You're not really, you know, committing to it. It's like if you're moving once you book the delivery truck or the moving truck or whatever, like, oh, or like once you give notice or once you do this, like it starts that process. And in starting the process, you're like, oh, this is really happening, which can be scary, which I'm sure we'll get into. But I think it also brought about some excitement because you're like, oh, wow, we're actually, you know, taking steps in a direction that we want to go in, which I think was really awesome. I was nervous. A lot of my nervousness was for you, kind of on behalf of you, both from it's stuff you're doing to your body. And I also kind of knew that some of it would bring up feelings of comfort and, you know, burden and other things like that. Yeah, I had a lot of feelings. Let's start with the anxiety. I had a lot of anxiety about the bodily elements of things.

injecting these hormones into my body. If anybody listening is not familiar with my story, I had a substance-induced seizure when I was 19 years old that later led to PTSD, which led to pretty extreme agoraphobia, panic attacks, all of these things. And a lot of those centered around feeling out of control in my body. And for me, a huge way that I kind of initially dealt with that anxiety was trying to maintain a lot of control over my body, which resulted in me really looking for homeostasis in my body. I don't like taking new medicines. I don't like taking new supplements, really. I get very nervous. I'll take like a new type of fish oil and I'll be like, okay, Zach, I took this fish oil. Like, watch me and see if anything bad

happens. I just feel like if things are going swimmingly in my body, do not mess with it. And I've worked through a lot of my fears and my PTSD. And obviously I live this big, beautiful life now that I'm incredibly proud of. But one of the lingering fears is just kind of like, if we're going well, don't mess with the body. And hormones are scary. That's a lot of change to my body. That's the most change that I can think of that I've added into my body. And it's what it's trying to do. You're trying to induce change actively, right? Like it's not a side effect. It is the goal. Yeah. Yeah, that's the goal. And so that was a huge, huge fear of mind. The second thing in my stew of feelings was a feeling of shame or anger around being in this place in my life.

It was hard for me to even put my finger on it or admit this to myself. But I think that I felt that I should be in a certain place by 38 years old, that I should be ready with my house and my yard to welcome my children and have this image of a family. that I thought I had let go of. I thought I'd let go of so many of these shoulds and I've done a lot of work to unlearn these shoulds in my life. And it was interesting how the idea of having to admit to myself that I wasn't ready yet brought those shoulds back up to the surface and brought some shame and some some anger along with it. Do you feel like you had those shoulds when you were younger, or do you feel like those shoulds have become more prevalent in your life as you've gotten older? I think when I was younger, I thought that by this age, a switch would have flipped,

and I would want, you know, a movie-type family life. Like, I'd want a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and these kids running everywhere. And I have friends who have that life, and they love it. They adore it. And that's amazing for them. But it was not a lot. It was never a life that I wanted when I was younger. And it has been a lesson for me, I guess, that it's still not a life that I want now. My values have actually stayed shockingly consistent over time. And I'm really grateful that I was able to kind of finally recognize it, that I didn't force myself into a life that wouldn't ultimately feel good for me because that's what society tells me that I should want or what I have a lot of different friends doing. And I'm

like, oh, I should want what they have. They seem happy in their choices in their life. I'm really grateful that I didn't make those choices and that I'm giving myself the time to have a kid in a way that feels true to me and feels true to the way that I want a parent, which is going to feel really different than the way that a lot of my friends parent and a lot of my friends set up their lives. So that's part of the time component is setting up our lives and figuring out what we want our lives to look like with a kid in it because that feels very different than anybody we've

had modeled for us. So we're trying to have a lot of intentional conversations about that. But for me, that also came with some shame about deviating from the norm. And who am I to say that this should look or feel different than what other people are doing or whatever? And some anger that I couldn't just have every single thing that I want right now that past me hadn't set present me up to have exactly everything, you know. And I also think there's a grappling with, I'm not going to get everything that I want in all of this. And that's going to be okay too. But that melange of feelings surprised me a little bit. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then the third thing that came up for me when we were going into this journey was when we found out that our cat Bella had

cancer, we already had scheduled this for January. And we found out that Bella had cancer in November. And it was a really back and forth process with her oncologist and our vet of like, what's the timeline on all of this and everything? And I said multiple times to the oncologist, I need her to be alive for this big step I'm taking in my life. Like I need her to be here for me for this transition, for starting this next phase in my life. And because she had a really what they thought was slow growing cancer, the oncologist and the vet kept reassuring me that she would be, that she would for sure be there in January when I was freezing my embryos.

So when she died in early December, and I didn't have her for this, like, transition that we were making in our lives for this, stepping into our future that we were doing. It was like devastating. So that was something else that came up. Not that she like owed it to me or anything. But I just wanted her to be there for that. And yeah, the fact that she wasn't was really sad.

And we'll get into some of the mental health stuff. I felt as a result of the experience later in the episode. But that might have colored it. The grief over Bella. And just not having her. You know, it's another example of you have a picture of how your life will go. And life sometimes doesn't get that memo. Okay, let's talk through the actual process because this is something I was also very, very nervous about.

I had no idea how long I would be not feeling well in my body, the extent to which I would not be feeling well. I had this whole month of like question marks on my calendar of like, will I be able to do podcast interviews? Will I have brain fog? Will I feel really, really bloated? Will I be bed bound? I had no idea. So let's talk through what we actually did and how I felt as a result of that. The first step was to find a practitioner.

And I feel really, really, really lucky about this because I had done a fertility episode with Dr. Amy, the egg whisper back in the spring when we weren't even really like seriously having this conversation. No, but I think at the same time, after you had her on, we started talking about it more seriously. This is true. This is true. And it's a really, really helpful episode. If you haven't listened yet, she answers all of your fertility questions, all of my fertility questions. I'll link that in the show notes if you'd like to listen. But Dr. Amy is local to the Bay Area. So when we were like, should we do this? Should we talk to an expert about this? We reached out to her, made an appointment. She talked us through our options, which is really, really helpful. And then we did a number

of fertility tests, which we felt very, very lucky, came back as positive as they could be given our age at that time. And we made a plan for when we were going to start the hormones, do the retrieval of those things. If you're not familiar with this, you start the hormones on day two of your period, I believe, or at least I did. And then the egg retrieval is sometime around ovulation. So we looked ahead at the calendar of when I was going to be menstruating in January and made those plans accordingly. And then the things that she had me do to prepare was just to continue to eat really well, to work out to kind of do my normal health supportive practices that were already built into my life. And then she had me add in two different

supplements. One was called a nositol. It's a white powder. It's flavorless, colorless. You just mix it into any sort of drink. And that, helps with metabolic function, egg quality and ovarian health, I believe. And then she had me add in another supplement that was sort of like a fertility multivitamin, and that had CO-10. It had methylated folate and vitamin B12 that had vitamin A, vitamin D3, iodine, iron, coline, B6, and chelated minerals. That's it.

And that was my whole plan. And you actually, I feel like the month of I had it harder, but I feel like you had it a little bit harder in the time before that when we were prepping our bodies. I mean, I had it, I think I had it relatively easy across the board, but I had to take away some luxury items. One luxury item. The luxury item is heat, right? I had to take away the luxury item of warmth, which in the winter, even in the Bay Area, can be a critical item. And we have a hot tub. We have a hot tub, yeah.

So Zach was not allowed to heat his balls. I was not allowed. I did put my feet in the hot tub on occasion. It was counterindicated for me to... It was strongly discouraged. Jump in, like, hot bodies of water, take hot baths, or do my favorite thing. Our hot tub's great. My gym has a sauna, and I love sauning.

I love that you took the care to not offend our hot tub. Yeah. It puts in the work. Hot tub's great, but I like my sauna at the gym more. I also think we would never choose a rental based on if it has a private hot tub. Yeah. Right? Like that was weird.

And also when we got the hot tub, it was not in great shape. So I put a lot of love into like cleaning it and using like really good like eco-chemical. I mean, not eco-chemicals because like there's no such things as eco-chemicals, but like the less harsh stuff on your body is in there. I treat the vintage hot tub with a lot of care. Well, and we'd have friends over and like me and. the friends would be in the hot tub and it'd be like, oh, sorry, Zach. Like, you can stand. Yeah, it was, it was an absolute ding to my social life for sure.

You really sacrifice. And we appreciate that. So, my period comes, which is, right, right, right, you. There's a lot of fanfare. It's just, it's, like, crazy. You're, like, you're based all of this stuff on, like, when will my period come and all that? And I'm pretty regular, but we're watching it, like, the days tick down. Well, and before that, like, the other window was, like, Christmas.

Yeah. And Amy was, like, basically on a holiday every. Yeah. Amy was like, yeah, we could do like Christmas. We could do around Christmas. And we're like, how about not? How about we don't have you come in an ultrasound me on Christmas? That sounds great.

So my period comes. We go into the office. She ultrasounds, which I also thought was interesting because there can be things that happen that make that cycle not a great candidate for the embryo for the egg retrieval, which I didn't know either. I didn't know that you could come in. And she said there's a 25% chance up to a 25% chance up to a 25% chance. up to a 25% chance that that cycle would not be a good candidate.

And I was like, Amy, I cleared my whole schedule. Like, I needed to be a good chance. And luckily it was. And then she concocks all these hormones. She kind of makes us a prescription of hormones formulated based on my hormone levels, I believe. You're taking blood tests that day. And we took blood tests that day. She played Chapel Rhone when I was getting the blood test because I was really anxious to be getting blood tests.

But she played chopper run and we danced chop around and got the blood tests. And so she sends us home with these vials that then Zach, like a scientist, mixes in our kitchen before injecting me with a needle into my stomach. And I am just like, who I'm watching you that evening. We were so nervous the first night. I'm watching you that evening. And I'm just like, who, shouldn't we have to take a test for this or something? Like, who decided that we should be trusted with mixing?

these hormones that we're going to inject into my body at home. These very expensive hormones. But also just like, who cares about? What about my body? Oh, right, right, right, right, right. Yes, that's the, that's the one. And it is weird because it's like a lot of the hormones are really unstable. The reason you don't just get like a nice, like.

I feel like there's a joke there, but I don't know what it is. They're not the only unstable one. Is that what you're looking for? I don't like it. Yeah, no. Yeah, so they're short-lived things and they have to be in different preservation states. It's either some of them have to be kept cold, so they arrive in ice and you put them in the fridge. Others are powders that you have to mix and you only use some and then you have to save the rest.

And others are just like straight out of the vial, but you still only have to take some. So there's this whole process of like somewhere between like two to five things every day that are different that you have to. And you have a checklist. Yeah, yeah. These are the things you're doing today. And I think this was to minimize the number of times you had to be like shot in the stomach, which bless, there are steps in which you have to like, okay, now take that, now put everything from syringe A into syringe B, now take all that and take another thing, put it all into

syringe C. Now put it all into, I say syringe, I mean vile. And then you put it in this like kind of a chunky syringe, like a thick boy, a thick boy syringe. Yeah, yeah. We're like, you're like, oh, like if that's spilled on the ground, there'd be like a lot of liquid everywhere. Yeah. With a very small needle. Yeah. And then proceed to. ask Liz to remove her bag of frozen peas, which she's chilling her stomach with. And then you have to be like, oh, look over there and stab it in. But you can't do it quick because, again, it's a ton of liquid. So you're just kind of sitting there being like, yeah, I'm only halfway through. Okay, Brett, a little bit more. Were you nervous about being like the mad scientist in charge of mixing all these things? Like, were you nervous you're going to get wrong? I was definitely nervous I was going to get wrong. I was, I guess, like better me than you. Like I felt like I, not that you couldn't do it, but like I think you would have been really stressed. Like I was stressed, but I think you'd been really stressed.

Yeah. You would just had Heather McMahon on the podcast. She's a comedian. She's a comedian. She has a bunch of comedy specials you should watch. They're 10 out of 10. She's absolutely hilarious. And we had been doing research for the episode and just just going through all of her specials. Yeah. And she does this special about how she felt like a mad scientist when she was going through a fertility treatment and basically came home with all of her drugs. And she mixed all of her batches for the whole week ahead of time, like meal prep. And she was like, she's like so proud of herself and da-da-da-da. And then it didn't work right. And she was telling this. And she was like devastating. She was so much money, so much time, all this stuff. All of these things. And then one of

her fans came up to her and was like, hey. At the airport. Like shouted at her at the airport was like, hey, she was like, hey, I heard you're cool like, I'm, you know, running a drug house like, sketch about, like, fertility treatments. And you know, you don't do them all on day one. You don't mix it all then. You have to mix it per day. Otherwise, it doesn't work. And she was like, jaw drop. Like, oh my God. So really? Hey, girl. Hey, moment. Yeah, hey, you know, like, and then had to do the whole thing over again, which then she was successful. But I got that in my head, like, so hard. So thank you, Heather. But I was also just like, okay, cool. One day at a time, don't mess up. Because if you mess up, like, you're flushing like, what, five

grand of drugs down the drain? And you're potentially shooting my body with the wrong hormonal mixture. Which I think. That feels the bigger to me. I think you'd be devastated with that and then also pissed about the money and also pissed to do it more times you need to. Yeah. Yeah, more times than I need to. I was like, I don't want to put my body through this more than I absolutely have to to get the results that I want to get. So it's like, it's like, was it that hard? No, I do harder step by step processes most days. Was it high risk? Like, it felt, it felt high stakes. High stakes. So there was anxiety about it. And I basically approached it every single day that I did it. Like, you could absolutely screw up, don't screw up, double check, triple check. I, like, laid everything out. This is what checklist

before. This is like why medical people do things right is because they go through the checklist and they do it every time. Like, it's the first time. And that's what I tried to do. And it was your first time. I guess not. By day, what, like 9, 10, you were pro. Well, no, and I think that's where people can make mistakes. They're like, oh, like, I'm just on autopilot and then you forget something. You're like, oh, I forgot to go to the fridge and get the third, you know, da-da-da-da. Well, it was hot watching you do it.

I will say I felt both like good. He needs to put in the work. Say that again? What was it? It was hot. Like, watching you do it. It was hot. But I also liked that, like, I wanted you to kind of have to, like, put in somewhere because I was doing this thing to my body.

So I like that there was a task for you and that it was a little bit of a tricky task. For sure. And I kind of like that when you were not hot tubbing too. I was kind of like, he should suffer a little bit. Although, let's also say, okay, so when we got closer to the, what is it, the last 30 days, the part where I'm going to have my body injected with the hormones, all of that. Wait, before you get into what I know you're going to say, I want to say shout out to the people who do this solo. Yeah.

Yeah, who are mixing it themselves and are injecting themselves. Like, you're the heroes of that story. And I'm in awe of people who do that. because I think, I am too. I'm in awe of you, too, babe, but I also think like... I'm in more awe of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's a hard layer to add to stuff.

It's a hard layer to add. It is, I mean, it's the singles tax exists in so many different parts of our lives, of things just being harder. And I want to say if that is you, I see you, and I have so much compassion for you. Yeah, and just you're a badass. And you're a badass. And Zach, speaking of suffering, What did you have to do while I was being injected with my hormones for the 30 days?

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So you have to really prime the pump a certain number of days ahead of time. You have to have regular, you have to ejaculate regularly basically every the day, every like 48 hours or so to basically train your body into not getting lazy in sperm production. So what you want to have happen is for your body just get like really comfortable just like banging out on the assembly line. So it's like. So you get fresh sperm kind of, right? Yeah. So you but you basically want to do like every 48 hours, same time doesn't think it really matters.

But like it's like you want your body to be comfortable and in the state of being like, oh, we are just. just making this and we're making it at like a regular pace. And I think until a few days before and then it was a hard stop. Yeah, but people apparently that's only like, you only wait like three days. Maybe they say two to five days, but a lot of people apparently from what Dr. Amy said and also I heard some other people say this is like they people hear like, oh like five days and actually like five days is you don't want to wait that long. You kind of you kind of want like about three days. So Zach, if you got confused during his euphemisms. I really stopped the euphemism after primed the pump, which I like.

Zach had to ejaculate every other day for the month until three days before when he had to stop ejaculating. So again, there was overlap of like six, seven days where I was injecting my body with hormones. And Zach's difficult, difficult task was ejaculating. So the whole process was, I think 12 days. I got my first shot on a Monday, and then I had my retrieval on Saturday. And we were going into the office every two or three days that entire time. Amy would do an ultrasound and would take a blood test and then adjust the hormones that I was getting injected based on those two things. And as it got close, she was doing it like every day.

It was like every day. It was like every day. Every single day just to get. And she asked me on Thursday, I believe, and said, hey, I think we could get a little bit. a few more mature eggs. If you're not too uncomfortable, I think we could do retrieval on Saturday. No, on Wednesday, she asked me that, I think. Wednesday or Thursday.

And I was like, I'm not too uncomfortable. I want to get as many mature eggs as possible. So let's push it to Saturday. And that's when we scheduled the retrieval for Saturday. I want to speak to how uncomfortable I was because this is something that I was really nervous about. And I do want to say everybody has really different experiences, which is part of what makes this process so hard. You read about, you talk to your friends about.

And you get this whole, like, different range of stories. But for me, in my experience, and I want to say this because some of the stories that I heard made me more scared of how I'd feel. So I think it's helpful to counterbalance that with, I felt really quite good almost the entire time. I would say four or five days before my retrieval. So I started on Monday by the following Monday, Tuesday, I started to feel pretty bloated and just sort of heavy in my ovarian area. And by Thursday, Friday, I felt like a little waddily. But I was worried about brain fog.

I never had any brain fog. I was recording podcasts the entire time I did interview episodes. I did solo episodes. I didn't feel mentally that off until later, which we'll talk about in a second. And physically, it really wasn't even that uncomfortable. I'd say Friday, I could feel like my ovaries when I walked. and that felt a little bit weird, but then the retrieval was on Saturday. So if you're listening, I'm just one experience, but I was so, so nervous about how incapacitated I would be and how terrible I

would feel. And by and large, I felt really pretty good. Also, I was very nervous about the needles for the injection and I put my frozen peas on there. And it hurt like a little bit, but it was really, I don't think of myself as a person who's great with needles or anything like that. And I did not find it very bad. So Saturday rolls around. That is the day of the procedure. I was not allowed to eat or drink anything before. So I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. And I'm very anxious. But it was a weekend. We didn't have to wait in traffic. So that was excellent. That was really nice. So we go in. It's a really nice clinic. Everybody's so sweet trying to make me so comfortable. The anesthesiologist comes in. I give him my regular third degree. I always get very nervous, particularly about the anesthesia part of surgery,

because for many surgeries, that is the most dangerous part. They're suspending you, like between life and death. And I just like the anesthesiologist to understand that I understand the gravitas of the work that they are doing. And so I was like, has anybody ever died on your table? And he was like, yes, but never with this procedure. And I was like, okay, that's good to hear. I mean, I'm sorry that you've had to deal with people dying on your table. But it's good to hear that that's never happened here.

Yeah, yeah, that is great to hear. Do you remember what you said right before you went under? They told us afterwards after the procedure was over. Yeah, I was, wait, no, you say it. You don't remember it all. I like, no, I vaguely remember. You remember them telling you. I remember.

No, I definitely don't remember saying it. Are you kidding me? No. When I am wheeled into the room, I'm also always trying to be like extra affable because I'm like, if they like me like me, they're more inspired to not let me die. So I'm always like really trying to turn it on and be extra sparkly and witty so that they feel kind of like when they tell you when you're kidnapped, you should like tell them personal stories so that they're like, oh, she's a real person and they'll take you back.

This is from a different surgery, but when you got your, nose. Your breathing fixed, when you came out of surgery, you were like being really nice and really good. And you got to the car and you were like, I just think it's really important to be really nice to everybody to like let them know how much you appreciate them, like, holding your life in your hands. And I was like, you can just like, you can just like, you can just, like, you can just like come out of anesthesia and be like a normal person. It's just like how you always think pilots when you're getting off the plane. And so they feel appreciated and then they don't crash planes in the future.

You know what I mean? It's like the same energy. That's the choice. They're like, ah, people weren't so nice to me. You want to feel appreciated. I don't know. I want my anesthesiologist. Like, I wouldn't model like me.

Yeah. So Dr. Amy and the anesthesiologist were like cracking up when you can do the, like, Liz, do you remember what you said to us right before you went under? And was like, no, I have no idea. That was, you know, going under. And they were like, you were just starting to pass out. and you just started like kind of doze off.

Your eyes open really briefly. You got like Ramrod's train and you looked up and you're like, just so you know, I'm not a redhead. And then like immediately like became completely unconscious. But that's because redheads need more anesthesia. So I don't, wait. Yeah. So the, I'm not sure what I was trying to communicate with it.

But redheads need more anesthesia. Yeah. So the rationale is like, you were like, uh-oh. They might think I'm a redhead and give me too much anesthesia. Like they don't know. They don't know what. What this blonde hair is covering up? It could be full.

It's a warm, it's a warm copper. Sure, yeah. Oh, you think they were like, oh, that's red. I don't know. Like, the lights are bad. Like, oh, the lighting in here is awful. Who knows what color my hair is? Okay, so they do my procedure.

It's like 10 minutes. And meanwhile, they usher Zach into a beautiful boudoir that's lined with silks. Now, what was your little room like? And were they, like, explicitly like, here's a cup. We need. Yeah, they give you, they give you, the poor, the poor people who have to, like, speak in, in code. In code for this whole thing.

They're like, here is your, like, they're like, they like, sample, probably. Yeah, that's, that's fine. Like, they give you, they give you a plastic cup and they're like, you know. But what's the room like? They're like, okay, well, here is a computer for, like, resource material. And then they're like, here's this. And I, like, I could you not.

Like a sticky computer. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't touch it. But there was, and then there's like, what can only be described is like a hospital version of a lazy boy chair with, and you know like the paper they put over the thing. There was just one of those on the seat, not the back, but the seat. And I was like, sanitary. I don't know. Well, because you still have a shirt on. You don't need to take your shirt off to.

None of it. None of it like sits perfectly with me, but I also recognize the utility. And then there's a little box in the wall with a little window and you like open. Oh, so you don't have to go through like. The shame of handing somebody here. Here it is. So there's like a little wooden cupboard and you put your sample in the cupboard and you close it and you flip a little switch and a light turns on. And apparently that means to somebody like, all right, go go hunt this thing down on the other side of the wall door.

So that's what Zach did. Well, I got my surgery. Well, and what's crazy is not because of anything I did, but like the timings weren't that different. I was done. Oh, yeah. I was done. I was done. I sat down, like, checked my phone, sent an email, maybe three men.

minutes and somebody came out and got me. And they were like, oh, this is done. I was like, no. It's a very fast surgery. Because I thought something was wrong. I was like, oh, what? And they're like, yeah, she's done. Everything's fine.

Great. It was just ridiculous. Like 15 minutes tip the tail, I think. And then they sent us home. And I felt pretty good. Again, I'm one person's experience. But a lot of my friends had a harder time after the procedure than they did before. And I feel like that day even, I felt so much better in my body.

I had felt, again, that heaviness right towards the end. And I felt a little bit sore, a little bit crampy. I put a heating pad on over my uterus, over my ovaries. And that was really, really helpful. And we laid around and watched younger that day and ate some, like, yummy food and things like that. But I immediately felt just pretty good in my body and a lot more back to, quote, unquote, normal in my body.

However, I want to talk about a few different things with recovery. One is that I was definitely constipated. That was something I was warned about. Dr. Amy prescribed me laxatives and was like, take these before you think you need them because you're just like in that area around the bowel. And then also the painkillers and the surgery and all of that can just slow things down a lot. So that was definitely a thing. And as a normally like quite good digestion girly, that was uncomfortable and really not fun.

I want to say that because that was like a big question. mark I had in all this process and because the last thing that I want to talk about is the main, main symptom I had post facto was I felt pretty depressed. And I want to talk about this because it's a thing that's missing from a lot of the conversations that I've heard about embryo freezing, egg freezing, fertility treatments, any of these things where you are changing the hormonal state of your body. I hear people talk about the bloating. I hear people talk about the physical effects. My effects were so mental and so obviously happening too. Like I felt a very noticeable and strong sense of depression, I would say, after the procedure.

And it didn't resolve until I got my period, which was two weeks or so later. Yeah. And I'd say it was actually the nice part about it is that, you know, sometimes people get depressed. Maybe you're depressed because of some sort of hormonal imbalance and you find something and you latch on to it and you're like, this is why I'm depressed. I feel like maybe there's a little bit of that for you. But like, you're mostly like, I'm feeling depressed and it's just like there. And so I think for that reason you got, you kind of were able to be like, I'm really just going to sit on this. Like it didn't feel tied to anything, but I would wake up and just start crying.

And I just, I didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to do things. And that took me a back, but I asked Dr. Amy about it. I also looked it up online, and it is a symptom that people have. And so I want to talk about my experience with that because if anybody else feels that way, I want you to be like, oh, it's not me. This is attributable to this thing, and it will probably resolve with time as your hormones sort of balance out and your period flushes some of these excess hormones out of your body. And I think having that permission was really nice for you because, again, I don't feel great today. I feel really down, but I'm going to just let that be and just expect it to get better.

And I felt less of like, like, I need to solve this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was really, really, really hard. And I felt really mentally bad for, I'd say, two weeks after. Yeah. And that was, yeah, it was really hard. Did you notice a strong turnaround right at the next menstruation period?

or was it slow like kind of pull out of it? It was a slow pull out. I expected to feel like a huge sense of relief in your next period after all of this tends to be like a more robust period. You tend to have more PMS. You tend to have more blood, all these different things. And that was all true for me. And I kind of thought it would be like, whoosh. And then it was done.

And it didn't feel like that. But I feel so much better now. And I'm two weeks out from the period time when we're recording this. And so if you are in that place, now I will say like there is light at the end of the tunnel and I feel a way today that I did not think was possible when I was just like laying in bed crying and of course insisting that like it wasn't the hormones and that everything in the world was awful. Yeah I guess you did do that. Yeah. Yeah. Well and and also you know just to to roll back to what you're talking about at the beginning of

this recording which is that you had this expectation that Bella would be there and that she'd be there for that that part of the experience and when things got harder and kind of as your emotional support being other than me. And I think that that was something that I think the depression latched on too hard as that grief that was still there. Yeah, I agree with that. The last thing I want to talk about is money. And then we can share our numbers of everything that we got.

The main thing I want to touch on with the money conversation is it is expensive. It's an expensive choice. Yeah. It's like a you got to save for this choice. Yeah, it's an expensive choice. But what you and I did is we ran the literal numbers. This is what I often do when I'm feeling financial anxiety is I combat that anxiety by getting as granular with like details and plans and actually like, well, what does it look like if we run the numbers

all out? And we did that with this. And we realized that making this choice now was a better financial choice for us than having a kid right now. And I think that's something that I don't hear a lot of people talk about. The embryo freezing is obviously really, really expensive. But having a kid is also incredibly expensive. Neither does Zach nor I have jobs where we have paternity or maternity leave? So we have all of our lost wages for the time that we would be caring for our newborn.

And if anything potentially happened with my pregnancy, and that's outside of just normal costs of pregnancy and having a child in America. And then, you know, child care, neither of us want to or have the ability to be a full-time stay-at-home parent. So yes, there's the cost of the embryo freezing. And I just want to say so clearly, I feel so lucky and so privileged that we were able to make this choice. And I recognize that it's not a choice that everybody gets to make. And I feel so, so insanely lucky that we were able to do it.

And there's a lot of factors in the choice that aren't just like, this is expensive and this is cost-free. There are costs to everything. And so we had to kind of lay it all out, put the puzzle pieces together and say, what are the prices that we are able and will. to pay at this moment. Yeah. And one of the factors that we modeled into this, because we did do a model, was what's the potential that we would have to do this anyway, right? Which is going to have its own percentile of like chance. Yeah. Yeah. So I would just say if you're thinking about the money part of it to just try to think as holistically about all of the costs of all of the choices as you possibly can. The last thing that I want to say before we share our numbers is I had a lot of

anxiety about recording this episode. I had a lot of anxiety about many choices that we made from deciding to freeze embryos in the first place to doing genetic testing of the embryos. And I was talking to a friend about it and I was like, gosh, I'm worried people are going to judge me. And she said, you know what? Part of parenthood is that everybody judges everybody for every choice no matter what. And I think there's truth to that and it was very permission giving. And I would encourage anybody listening to reflect on that. I have been reflecting on how much judgment there is of other people's choices on their path to parenthood, on their decision to be a parent or not, on what they do when they become a parent, how they become a parent on what we call

being a parent. I saw that Lily Collins recently got a surrogate and her comments are filled with people who are saying, you're not a real mom, you're not a real mom, you had your baby via surrogate. Nobody has any idea why she got the surrogate. She has not been public about that. But everybody's like, you're not a real mom, you got a surrogate. And so I would just invite people to reflect on the amount of judgment that exists around all of these topics and maybe see if we could all do our part to step that back a little bit. I think everybody is doing the best they can, trying to be a human, trying to make these incredibly difficult, very lifelong choices. for themselves, for themselves and their partners, if that's the case.

I'm trying to practice as much grace as possible with myself and with other people through this process, and I would invite other people listening to do the same. That's really wonderful. Okay. Do you want to share our numbers? Yes. Yeah. And I want to just do a little trigger warning here.

I know that numbers can be hard for people to hear, which is why we put them at the end of the episode. So if you don't want to hear numbers, we are not people who have explicitly struggled with fertility issues outside of I am 38 years old. My age is sort of our primary fertility consideration. But if numbers and your age two, although your dad had you when it was like 57. Which is its own.

Not recommend it. His mom is not 57 if you're curious. So if you don't want to listen to this part, I've loved hanging out with you and I'll see you on the next episode of the podcast. And if you do want to listen just because we're trying to be as transparent as possible and helpful as possible,

then these are the numbers that we, that we ended up with for everything. Yeah. And just, you know, we asked a lot of our friends how they're, like, kind of what their results were for this. And it was a helpful data point. So we're just kind of trying to be one more data point for people's experience. We ask so many friends. Like at every stage we're like, what was your number for this?

What was your number for this? And I don't know if that's helpful or not. But yeah, go ahead. Sure. If I mispronounce words, definitely send me a personal message. Call my home phone and yell at me for it. Per my last, like, message to actually. everybody about judgment.

Yeah, exactly. Like, yell attack for this. Okay. The retrieval, the actual like surgery itself, 22 uocytes. Eggs, basically, right? Eggs, yeah, yeah, were retrieved. Of those only... Not only.

That's not. All of 15 were fully mature and ready to rock and roll. The other seven were basically just like kind of... They were great. Kind of just a little on the immature side. Right, which we celebrate here. Of those that were mixed up with my stuff, 11 were fertilized. So, and that takes a week process.

So they mix it. No, no, that's like a, that's like a night. So like this is just the fertilization. Excuse me. Oh, I'll go into the details, right? So that's the next day, 11, like, took to each other, like, liked each other in the petri dish. We did a Zymot test, which you can ask your doctor for, and I highly recommend if you can add that on.

It's not a very expensive edition, but it can really increase the amount of viable embryos that you get. Essentially, what does it do? It picks the healthiest, like the most viable sperm. Yeah, either it picks them. Like, it helps the fertility doctor basically pick sperm that have been able to pass some sort of performance test. Yes, performance test. But I had one girlfriend, and the first time that she froze embryos, she got one embryo, and then the second time, and the only thing that they switched was adding in the Siamat test,

she got nine. So that's a substantial difference, and I think it's worth asking your doctor about. So we got 11 fertilized, which then went down to five within that like five to seven days. So in the five-day, six-day, seven-day window, they were able to grab about five. Grade 1 expanded blastocysts. You know, how they do. Blastocysts, is that right? Based on the spelling.

It's not blastocytes. It is not blastocytes, but you can just email me if I pronounced it wrong. That was all done in the first week. So seven days later, we got the number five. And then those five were sent off for genetic testing to basically check if they were viable. So we took about two weeks, but then we... got back three that did not have extra chromosomes or some other, I actually looked like the chromosomes that there was like two with doubled up chromosomes that would have been totally just non-viable.

I would have had a miscarriage. Yes, they would have been miscarriage. They would have resulted in a miscarriage. Yeah. So that was our final thing. So three grade one expanded blast assists on ice. Which we're really happy with that. From what we understand, that is a great result for people are.

age, you have a 95% chance of one human child with three viable embryos. It's 65% per embryo, and then because of the way stats work, that goes up to 95% if you have the three. So we really wanted three so that we could have as good of a chance as possible of having one kid. And that's what we got. I really hope this was helpful. I do want to say that I am not a fertility expert. I'm not a fertility doctor in any way. I just wanted to share my experience. I just wanted to share my experience. because I loved during this process learning about other people's experiences. And also, I do think there's a lot of fear of aging, and I found it hopeful and heartening that at 38 I was able to have the results that I had.

So I just wanted to add that to the pool of stories that exists in the universe. If you do want to hear from an actual expert, my personal doctor, Dr. Amy, has a great podcast. That's called The Egg Whisper. It has tons of information. and she has a website with blog posts and also online classes. So I can link all of that stuff in the show notes, along with the episode where I had her on the Liz Moody podcast.

And if you're going through any fertility stuff in any way, I just want to send you so much love. It is all so hard and you're amazing. And I'm just, I'm sending you a big squeeze through the internet. That's all that we've got today. Make sure that you're following the Liz Moody podcast and Apple Podcasts on Spotify on YouTube. Following the podcast means that the episodes will show up right in your feed and you will never have to miss one. We have one coming up next Monday that's about a theory that has

completely changed my career, my relationships. It's very helpful. Trust me, you do not want to miss it. Also, we are able to bring you this show completely free because of the brands that you heard in this episode. You can save money on amazing products while supporting the show by using the discount codes that we share. There's a full list of all of our active codes at Liz Moody.com slash codes. You can head over to Liz Moody.substack.com to send it for our newsletter, the takeaway, where you'll get key action steps for each episode, downloadable transcripts, and tons of bonus content. And also come hang out on Instagram. I'm at Liz Moody. You'll get tons of behind-the-scenes content of my everyday life. I shared my morning routine today. That was fun. And you also get

little daily reminders of science-back tips and tricks that you can use to live your best life. Okay, I love you. I so appreciate every single person who has come along on this journey with me. I think many of you will relate when I say one of the biggest things through all of this is just to not feel alone, no matter what your path is, what your decision is. So I so appreciate every single person out there who's made me not feel alone on this journey. And I hope I was able to do the same for some of you. And I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician,

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