How many eggs do I have? Should I be freezing my eggs right now? When is the right time to get pregnant? Am I too late? Do I have time? What if I have to do IVF, how long does that take?
As an (almost) 29 year old woman, these questions pop into my head quite frequently, (and if you’ve been wondering anything about your reproductive health than this post is for you too). With an extremely busy life and career, I’ve always wondered when I actually have to start making moves to get pregnant, and not just when I “should.” There’s so much talk in the media about freezing eggs which has me like 🤷🏼♀️😬🤯…So I jumped at the opportunity to open the conversation with Modern Fertility.
Modern Fertility is a female founded company dedicated to making fertility information more accessible, earlier in life. They make the same fertility hormone test (that has traditionally been used in infertility clinics) available to women at any point in their reproductive journey…which I’m ecstatic about.
BUT I wanted to make sure to include my community of girlbosses too, so I took to IG stories and asked my following to submit questions they have around fertility. With the help of Modern Fertility, I’m super excited to share the answers with you all. Hoping that it helps you decide when it’s right, for you, to start thinking about pregnancy. 💘
1) What would that test tell me about the likelihood of getting pregnant in the next few years?
Your hormones are not a crystal ball but they can help you understand your reproductive career – and how to think about getting pregnant. They can indicate early menopause, health conditions like POI and PCOS, and get you data to think through egg freezing or IVF (fertility treatments are not right for everyone!). Keeping track of hormones over time helps you know where you are and get ahead of discussions with your doctor or partner, financial decisions, or treatment plans that could otherwise come out of nowhere.
2) How many eggs do most women have in their lifetime?
Women are born with all the eggs we’re ever going to have – 1-2 million! When we hit menopause, we have 0 eggs left. Speaking of: the clinical definition of menopause is 12 months without a period.
3) What is the average amount of eggs as a women between 29-31?
At puberty you have approximately 400,000 eggs and at menopause that number ticks down to zero! Every woman loses her eggs at different rates. The best proxy for the number of eggs you have “waiting in the wings”? Anti Mullerian Hormone, or AMH, which measures how many eggs you currently have.
4) How much does the take home test cost and how does it work?
Our test retails for $159. It’s the same fertility hormones test that has traditionally been done (reactively) in infertility clinics available to women before their first or next child. It’s a finger prick that you can do at home, in your jammies, and once you send it in you’ll receive results on your customized Modern Fertility dashboard within 10 days.
The test measures up to 8 key fertility hormones–mapping to ovarian reserve (how many eggs you have), ovulation, and other general body factors that have implications for fertility like thyroid health. These levels can help you or your partner identify any red flags and understand menopause onset as well as success in egg freezing/IVF.
When you order the test we’ll send you everything you need to check in on your fertility. You do a very simple finger prick using the lancet – takes just a minute – and then you leave about 4 big drops of blood onto the collection card. Once dried, you repackage and send it in. Results are uploaded onto your dashboard within 10 days.
With Modern Fertility you also get access to a one on one consult with a fertility nurse and an invite-only webinar (“Egginar”) to get more context on your results and get your questions answered.
5) Info on PCOS
Polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, is a condition in which the ovaries develop follicles but don’t release an egg. PCOS affects one in ten women of childbearing age. The exact cause of PCOS isn’t always clear, but it’s due to hormonal imbalances in the body – particularly imbalances of androgens, or male hormones. These are present in all women, but women with PCOS may have higher levels of androgens. Androgens disrupt the menstrual cycle and impede the ovaries’ ability to mature follicles into eggs and ovulate, which is why you may see some of the following as classic PCOS symptoms:
- Infrequent menstruation or anovulation (a fancy word for the total absence of a period)
- Having signs of excess androgens (things like excess facial and/or body hair and acne)
- Having laboratory values consistent with excess androgens (typically a combination of high AMH, high testosterone, and high luteinizing hormone)
- Polycystic ovaries (polycystic translates to “many cysts” which can be confusing, because the “cysts” in PCOS doesn’t refer to ovarian cysts. Rather this refers to the high number of large follicles found in the ovaries of women with PCOS)
6) What’s the age range to start freezing your eggs?
If you are sure that you want to freeze your eggs, the earlier the better, since your egg quality declines with age. The main reason for this is that egg freezing is all about preserving your viable eggs, and the younger you are, the more eggs you have and those eggs are of higher quality. Unfortunately for us women, the quality of our eggs declines with age. However, egg freezing isn’t right for everyone, so make sure you do your research! Here’s a great place to start: https://modernfertility.com/blog/freeze/
7) How much is egg freezing?
Egg freezing can cost upwards of $10,00 per cycle, but this varies clinic by clinic and state by state. For a more detailed cost breakdown, check out this blog post.
8) How old is “too old” to have a baby? Typically…
This can vary person-to-person, but as you age your risks to things like gestational diabetes, preclampsia, miscarriage and downs syndrome. We have an amazing tool on our site called the Timeline Tool which helps you visualize your family planning and explore risk factors of having kids at various ages. Feel free to play around with this!
👉🏼 I hope this Q&A sheds light on some mystery areas we face as young women. I believe we should be able to have access to this information much more easily than spending thousands of dollars and getting 5 referrals to an infertility clinic. Which is why i was so excited to partner with Modern Fertility.
I’m going to be taking the at home fertility test very soon and sharing my experience on the blog. So if you enjoyed this post be sure to follow along for my results!
