Fertility Myths Every Woman Needs to Stop Believing | Science-Backed TTC Advice

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**Zeynep Gurtin** (0:30)
These stories 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 bandaid for a society that is just putting way too many pressures on young women.

**Dr Faye Bate** (0:41)
Zeynep Gurtin has navigated miscarriage, pregnancy loss and IVF firsthand whilst researching fertility, reproduction and family life for two decades.

**Zeynep Gurtin** (0:52)
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. Leave an 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 you.

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:20)
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.

**Zeynep Gurtin** (1:29)
Have a guess at the grand total number of women that have frozen their eggs in the UK to date.

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:33)
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. Zeynep, I'm so honoured to have you on the podcast. Not only because you're 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 masters. 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 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, emotive, 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 birth year 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.

**Zeynep Gurtin** (3:59)
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 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.