Episode 24: Egg freezing and fertility preservation
For many women, fertility can feel like a ticking clock – especially when conversations about egg freezing and fertility testing are becoming more common.
But how much do we really understand about ovarian reserve, egg quality, and the realities of fertility preservation?
In this episode, Dr Peta, Dr Thea , and Sam break down what the AMH test (often called the ‘egg timer test’) actually tells you, when egg freezing might be a good option, and why this whole conversation is bigger than just biology.
🎙️ Listen now to find out:
🍃 What the AMH test measures and why it doesn’t predict your ability to conceive naturally.
🍃 The truth about ovarian reserve and how age, lifestyle, and stress impact fertility.
🍃 How the egg freezing process works – success rates, costs, and key considerations.
🍃 The biggest misconceptions about the pill and fertility (does birth control really preserve your eggs?).
🍃 Why most women who freeze their eggs never use them – and what this tells us about fertility, career, and life choices.
This is a must-listen episode if you’re curious about fertility preservation, feeling anxious about your biological clock, or simply want to make more informed decisions about your reproductive health.
🎧 Listen now.
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Episode transcript:
E24: Should you freeze your eggs? What you need to know about fertility preservation
Peta: [00:01:00] Welcome to another episode of Women of the Well. I'm Dr. Peta Wright.
Thea: I'm Dr. Thea Bowler.
Sam: And I'm Sam Lindsay-German.
Peta: So today we were going to talk about, egg freezing and talk about, when somebody might make that decision or what might lead somebody to make that decision and what's involved. And also I'm talking about a test called the AMH or the anti malarian hormone test, which is sometimes done. kind of often as like an egg timer test or a marker of fertility. Although I think that, a lot of people don't understand it or how to interpret it. And it can often provoke a lot of anxiety.
Um, and I had a patient like this the other day. And so we just wanted to sort of demystify that, talk about that. And then egg freezing and, and when, and if, and all the details around that. So, tell us about the AMH.
Thea: Well, [00:02:00] AMH is a hormone.
it's anti malarian hormone that's released from the immature eggs in the ovary. And it is touted as a marker of ovarian reserve. So, a very coarse marker of how many eggs might be left in the ovary.
Peta: And it isn't actually reflective of, say, if your number's 35, it doesn't mean you have 35 eggs in your ovary, just FYI. Some people think that.
Sam: How is it actually tested?
Peta: It's just a blood test.
Sam: It's a blood test? Mm hmm. Okay.
Thea: Yes. it can be a marker of ovarian reserve, but I suppose what's important to know is that, the process of fertility and falling pregnant requires The ovulation of one egg to meet with the sperm to form a pregnancy. And the AMH level doesn't tell us anything about your ability to ovulate each month and the ability for that egg to meet with the sperm each month.[00:03:00]
Peta: Or the quality of the egg.
Thea: Or the quality of the egg. Yes.
Sam: So what does it actually say? What does reserve mean? What do you mean by that?
Peta: As a general rule, it's like if you're young and you have lots of eggs Which is correlated with a young person who also tends to have higher egg quality. Um, you tend to have a higher egg reserve because they haven't died over time. They haven't all been ovulated. But it's more about the age over time.
Sam: So in the Eggs in the In the bank, yeah. In the bank.
Peta: And when you're older it tends to be less.
Thea: That's right. So we've talked in previous episodes about how the process of ovulation involves recruitment of a number of eggs on the ovary. Often it's sort of, between 10 and 20, all of which grow, one ovulates and the rest regress away. And so over the course of our reproductive life, we're losing these cohorts of eggs every month until we get to the end of our supply of eggs, which is metaphors. And so
Sam: When you're younger, do you release more eggs at the beginning? Do you have like more eggs when you're ovulating?
Thea: Yes, often that cohort of eggs that comes through to [00:04:00] respond to the hormone each month is higher.
Peta: But you still only release one egg?
Thea: That's right, so you're not ovulating more, but you have more in the bank that are responding to hormone.
Peta: And also another thing is someone said to me, that their GP had thought if they were on the pill for a long time then they would have a higher AMH because they wouldn't be ovulating. But that is not the case, because the eggs are still undergoing atresia, which is like their sort of programmed cell death with time. So if you're on the pill for a long time, it doesn't, like, protect, it doesn't save your eggs.
Sam: That's a kind of real, that's a bit of a mic drop actually, because that's, I think that's a really big misunderstanding. So what you're saying there is, if you're on the pill, and you're therefore not ovulating, your eggs are still releasing but they're just sort of going to nowhere.
Peta: Well they're not really releasing but they're still, aging and you're still losing good quality numbers of eggs that are going to be available for recruitment when you do ovulate.
Thea: Yeah.
Peta: so that's important to remember. And so really it's a So [00:05:00] basically, if it's a low number, then it's seen to be, uh, well, patients often come in really panicked about, oh my god, I'm not going to be able to fall pregnant.
If it's a high, high number, then that's, well, it can be reassuring or it can be sometimes associated with having lots of follicles in conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome. but the The low number for your age, because of course it's correlated with your age, so, you know, someone at 20, the number is going to be an average for a 20 year old and a number at 40, it's going to be a lower number because most people have a lower number of eggs at 40. That's right. And so
Sam: Do we have general numbers that you go, this is the number?
Peta: Well, corresponding to age. Yeah. Okay. Yep.
Thea: for a cutoff of a number typically below four is considered to be low ovarian reserve.
Peta: Less than the 5 percentile.
Sam: Yeah.
Peta: so I guess If someone does a screening test on you and your AMH is low, like what does that actually mean? And think what's really, really important to know is that it actually [00:06:00] says nothing about your ability to have, to fall pregnant spontaneously. So that it isn't correlated with a lower chance of having a spontaneous pregnancy, because as Thea said, having a spontaneous pregnancy is about growing and releasing one egg per month.
our own age, is the absolute biggest predictor of pregnancy, far and above an AMH level. What it can tell you is that maybe your number of eggs in your ovaries aren't as someone else of your age, so perhaps your reproductive Like lifespan may be shorter. Um, I think sometimes people think, well, maybe it means I need to have a, like, either get pregnant now, or do something about it now, freeze eggs, etc, while I have a reasonable number of eggs.
Because I guess what it does tell us is that for most people it may indicate that you'll have a lower number of eggs stimulated with an IVF cycle, basically, that are able to be retrieved, which is of obviously no consequence if you just spontaneously conceive and have a [00:07:00] pregnancy, like it doesn't matter. Absolutely.
but it's still quite worrying for someone to have this result, to have like a level of, you know, three or whatever and then think, Oh, I didn't want to have babies now, what will I do? And this is often, this is an occurrence that we see.
Sam: Especially if it happens out of context, if you're just going to a GP and they don't have that capacity to speak to you about it.
Thea: That's right. And you haven't, you know, for a lot of women, they're doing it never having tested their fertility, meaning they haven't even tried to fall pregnant and that can be a really tricky situation. can we talk about. I guess firstly, before we talk about what you can do if you have a low result, like are there other things that can make your AMH low?
Peta: Yes, so if you are on the pill, there are some studies that say that the AMH level can be falsely low by sometimes up to 20%. So because the pill is blocking the stimulation from the brain to the ovaries, so you're not recruiting follicles, so it can [00:08:00] definitely show a falsely low level. decreased AMH. so I would usually say going off the pill and then testing at least three months after being off the pill, probably six months to see if it's you know, remaining low or going up and it certainly can go up by doing that. and then the other situation is when someone has a condition called hypothalamic amenorrhea which is It's kind of similar to the same mechanism as the pill in that the brain that is controlling ovulation and sending the signals down to the ovary to say, yes, it's safe to produce an egg this month.
in certain situations where say, it can be related to an issue with the pituitary gland that sends those messages, but most commonly it's an issue with a woman having, either like a low body weight, so either like not eating enough. Doing too much exercise, stress is another thing that can all inhibit the release of those hormones from the brain to [00:09:00] the ovary.
And you're getting, in essence, the similar picture with the pill in that the ovaries aren't being stimulated. And I've certainly seen that in young women. And then, you know, that's really concerning. And then, you know, you think that it probably is that, but you can't be 100 percent sure, obviously.
And in those situations, Sometimes I've gone on to do an IVF cycle and an egg freeze and those women then and the women that I've seen have gone on to have like totally normal numbers of eggs when they're getting the correct stimulation because an IVF cycle is simply giving the ovary the stimulation in higher amounts that the brain would be giving every month if it was working.
Thea: That's right. And I guess we can correlate that as well. Like if someone has a low AMH and we're thinking it might be along those lines. either pill or brain suppression of ovarian function is we can correlate it with an ultrasound as well So often we'll do an ultrasound and look at the ovaries and you can actually see the number of little follicles that are getting ready to grow For the next month or that are sitting there frozen by the pill [00:10:00] and if that's really high then that's reassuring
Sam: And it just means that it could be lifestyle shifts that need to occur to help them get back into that state of sending the right signals
Thea: And there's certainly no harm, like you say, in waiting and rechecking the test again in, you know, six months or twelve months and seeing if it's shifted at all.
Peta: And if it hasn't, or if it's gone down, um, you know, within that, you wouldn't do it at closer intervals than six months. then the question is, well, you know, again, It might not, change your spontaneous pregnancy at all. but I guess for people who are not in the position that they want to have a baby in the next couple of years, it's an important discussion to have with a fertility specialist about, well, it, it might mean that your eggs, you're going to have a lower number of eggs if you're going to delay this until later, so maybe it's worth doing something preemptive.
And I think, even having this test, it's like, it's probably important if you're going to consider [00:11:00] having this test, that this is something that you might consider. Otherwise, what's the point of doing it? so then what you can do about it is you can, and I guess if you are going to do something like an egg free, is it earlier better because then we're getting, Generally, both higher numbers of eggs and better quality of eggs and, um, and then hopefully reducing the number of IVF cycles to get a certain number of eggs that we would want.
So if you were, again, say you had a 25 year old lady, Thea, who had a low AMH and she didn't want to have babies until 30. 30, and in this scenario was wanting to go ahead and do an egg freeze. how many eggs, and this is something that often you get asked, but how many eggs would you be aiming to get that would give you a good, not a guarantee, of course, cause there's no guarantees, but a good chance of success, which might be at least one baby.
Thea: Yeah, I think the [00:12:00] number of eggs that we aim to get increases with age because of that declining egg quality as we age. But usually for someone, you know, in their twenties or thirties, we'd be aiming for probably 20 eggs ideally, because the rate of pregnancy per egg is actually very low. the eggs have to survive the freezing and thawing process.
And then probably about 80 90 percent will survive that process. Then the eggs have to be able to be fertilised. And then probably of those eggs only about, I think it's 50 70 percent will be fertilised. And then the fertilised eggs have to grow to a day 5 embryo. And rate of growth to a day, or making it to a day 5 embryo is about 40%.
So there's a lot of attrition along the way, and the pregnancy rate per egg is probably around ten, percent, um, so aiming for, fifteen to twenty eggs is usually ideal to guarantee or ideally give the highest possible chance of a pregnancy, whereas if you're talking about someone who's [00:13:00] in their forties, that would be sort of 40 or 50 eggs, even more.
Sam: How many would you get in one sort of IVF cycle? You know, if you were stimulating, how many would you get?
Peta: Depends on the ovaries. So, again, if you've got a higher number, say if we did an ultrasound, and we saw that there was 20 little eggs there, we can probably stimulate nearly all of them, so you might get 15 to 20 eggs. And that would be a really, really good result that usually happens if you've got younger eggs. But generally on average I would say probably 10 to 15 eggs would be the average but again like it's an average and a lot of people who are coming who have a low ovarian reserve tend to have lower numbers of eggs than that. But doing it younger means the eggs that you do get are likely to be higher quality so you need less if that makes sense. And so it often might mean to save your ovarian reserve or when we do a scan is like say you have five eggs, then you might need to do two or three or four [00:14:00] cycles to get that.
And so it's really important to be counseled about that prior to going ahead and doing IVF because it can be really, expensive, but, and, and you may never need to even go back. And the truth of the matter is, that most women who do social egg freezing, don't actually use those eggs.
Thea: No, the utilisation rate, I always tell people this because I think it's astounding. number of people who go back and use their eggs is 10%. Who freeze it in this scenario, like social egg freezing. And so
Sam: if you, if I had decided to do that, I would have my eggs frozen at this point, they would just stay as they are then. Nothing would happen to them until I decided that I then wanted to go ahead and get pregnant today I needed to. So where did they go?
Peta: They just go to the lab and they just get frozen in little
tubes of liquid nitrogen. So they just got to stay there. And I think what happens to most people is they either meet somebody and then they [00:15:00] like get to the time in their lives where they're ready and they just have sex and it's all fine or they decide that you know, they might not meet somebody and then they might, you know, not want to go ahead and be single parent.
Thea: they might just decide against having children.
Peta: Yeah, and they might. Exactly. So it is, there's a balance between frightening women that they all have to have their eggs collected, or else they're going to be infertile,
and guarding against the real biological facts that our fertility gets much worse as we age.
And I would much rather have somebody having frozen their eggs if they really didn't, weren't sure about pregnancy. They did have a, a low AMH and having a baby was a long time in their future. I would much prefer that they spent the money on egg freezing at that point than spending money on doing an IVF cycle at 40 because the yield and the success rate is likely to be much, much lower with 40 year old eggs.
And this is why I find it actually quite astounding Medicare wise [00:16:00] that So an, an, IVF cycle probably without a Medicare rebate would be about 10, 000 roughly. Um, most people, if they have infertility, so if you're 40 and you're trying to have a baby, and you can't, you'll get a Medicare rebate.
But if you're 25 and you're just wanting to do fertility preservation, with your eggs. then you don't get a Medicare rebate unless there's a proper medical reason, like a low AMH or something. But then again, that person who freezes their eggs at 25 is much more likely to have a successful pregnancy than the 40 year old who does IVF later on.
Thea: Yes, and require far less intervention.
Peta: That seems quite like a backwards way of doing things to me. You know?
Sam: Yes. It's interesting, isn't it?
Thea: I guess egg freezing is, in the scheme of things, a relatively newer technology so maybe Medicare hasn't quite caught on yet. But it is a really interesting, like, ethical, area, I think?
Sam: I often wonder, one of the things I've often wondered is, if I'm 25 and freezing my egg, and then I [00:17:00] don't use it until I'm 40. And, and that egg is frozen at that 25-year-old. Mm-hmm. And it's, it's just interesting, isn't it, to think that it was the egg of a 25-year-old, so it's missed out on those years of being inside the mother. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. . And I don't know, there's this, a little bit of me that just goes, it's missed out on quite a lot of,
Peta: it probably would've been ovulated out.
Thea: Yes. It might have been lost.
Sam: It might never have made it.
Peta: It might've died along the way.
Sam: Interesting to sort of contemplate that even. And then, how does the body respond to a younger egg? It doesn't mind?
Peta: No, it likes the younger egg.
Thea: It loves the younger egg. It's so youthful. The younger egg makes it very happy.
Sam: Okay, so the younger egg forgives it. Yeah. And then what do women do if they decide they don't want to use their eggs?
Peta: So interesting. So that, yeah, there was, a fertility conference that I was I saw this, uh, lady present a few times, actually. I'm sorry. I can't remember her name, but she was speaking [00:18:00] about the fact that we have. a low number of, good young eggs for women who are older who are needing, like, an egg donor, right? But, we have this huge glut of eggs that people freeze and then never use. And then eventually, like, they don't want to pay the storage fee anymore. They decide that they're not.
Sam: Do you have to pay storage fee?
Peta: Yeah. And so they say that they're not going to, to use them. Um, they just go out onto the bench and use them. demise, you know, and so she's saying, why can't we, this system seems ridiculous that we have, a low number of good young eggs for women who need it.
And we have like a ridiculously high number of eggs that no one is going to use. Why can't we either use those eggs and aren't going to be used for donors? to help people have families or for research Because often people are maybe uncontactable when they do freeze their eggs or whatever But there needs to be sort of a tick box when you even go or a counseling session when you go to freeze your eggs if you Don't want to utilize them.
Would you be comfortable to [00:19:00] donate or to donate to research or to someone to help with the family? Yeah, so it's just very very very interesting because in saying that the vast majority of women don't end up using them That's right. guess that also tells us that's also quite a reassuring thing and that most people then go on to Who want to go on to probably have a family and those who don't want to Yes, that's right
Sam: And I guess we can look at it that, as my brain immediately goes, Gosh, so those eggs are just, discarded. But they would have been discarded in our body anyway. Yes. So, I was just going to say that because my brain did start to go to, Oh, that's, doesn't seem right, but that would have happened anyway. Yes. It would have just been part of the process from when I was 25 to 40 of the number of eggs that I would have lost anyway.
Yeah, that's right. Okay. So, So, it's not really something we need to worry about too much, ethically. Because that would have happened. But it is more that question. You're right, because it's such a big thing to go through IPF. And so, if that woman has already been through it and would be willing to donate those eggs, that would be
Thea: Because actually getting an [00:20:00] egg donor, if you need one, is incredibly difficult. And a lengthy process.
Peta: Someone can donate one, but then that's quite a lot or you can buy them from the world egg bank, but they're quite expensive as well. yeah, so that would sort of fix that problem to utilize those eggs that are just in storage. But I guess the conversation that you would want to have with your fertility doctor, if you're considering freezing your eggs is maybe to think, because it's wonderful that we have this technology to enable women who aren't sure, it's not the right time of their lives, if they can afford it to do this procedure and have those eggs there. Perhaps just to reduce the number of sort of futile IVF cycles later on. But I think the other conversation that's worth having when you might be considering this, rather than just like buying into the, oh, well this technology's here, let's just all, Concentrate on other things and freeze our ways and we'll worry about it when we're 40 is that it probably is worthy [00:21:00] of a deeper conversation about well What are my priorities?
How can I set my life up to support me if I do want to have a family and like just even having that conversation about Prioritizing that aspect of our lives, which is often so Deprioritized.
Thea: Absolutely.
Sam: Yes, such an important point, isn't it? That yes, we can do, it's quite a privilege to be able to freeze our eggs. That's the first thing to recognize, that it wouldn't be available to everyone. And then secondly, we wouldn't actually be having this issue if we could prioritize having children at the right time of life. That's right. And yet we're still being met with, the job, do the thing, earn enough money, blah, blah, blah, and then have the child, which. It's clearly not the right way because the body isn't designed that way.
Peta: Well, it's also not an easy option just to freeze your eggs because then if you're just relying on that, then you also then have to do more IVF to..
Thea: [00:22:00] Yes, and more procedures to actually get pregnant.
Peta: Yeah, exactly. yeah, so I just think it's really, really worth considering that. And like, you know, again, having this, um, a couple that I saw the other day, it was, Having that whole conversation, yes, well we can, for sure, we can do an egg, um, egg freeze, we can see how your ovaries respond, then there's the other thing of, well, the other option is maybe you could just try and see, you know, and often my patients will say, oh, but we want to be financially secure and we want to have this and I want to have tick, tick, this box in my career, and I think there's never a right, and I say this again from the, position of obviously doing the career first but I think being basically brainwashed into thinking that I had to and also not having met the right person which is a very real reason why people will put up having children for a very legitimate reason and it's definitely better to you know it can preserve your fertility in that way if you haven't met the right person I think then rush into it with The wrong person or to like let that go, let the [00:23:00] dream go. But if you are in a position where you've got your person just realizing that there is never, never, never a right time to have a baby. And then it's also not like if you are leaving it to your, like late 30s early 40s then that comes with its whole host of other challenges at that time with the pregnancy, with the energy you have afterwards. That's right, yeah. The fact that your body is about to go into perimenopause.
Thea: Well, that's what I always think, I think we're all putting off having babies until we're in our late 30s, myself included, slash 40s when actually we're running straight into perimenopause and having, like you say, the energetic things that come along with that which can make it more difficult, not always. Um, but I agree, I say to my patients all the time, like, there's never a good time to have a baby and if you think it's something that you really truly want for your life, then prioritizing that is key.
Sam: And also, just that IVF is not a easy thing to do. That whole journey is not [00:24:00] easy. What you have to do to your body to go through it, I think that's, you know, really understated. Because it's hard and painful. I don't know, I haven't done it, but it sounds hard and painful and a real journey that you have to be very committed to. So, to do that if you're doing that to freeze your eggs, then you'd have to do that again at the other end when you decided to use the egg, presumably.
So it's a lot to put yourself through, isn't it? rather than just doing what is the way that the body is designed to do it. Yes. But I guess one of the things we're talking about is if there really wasn't another option for someone. then this is a good option. And it's great that we have that capacity for someone who absolutely has got something challenging happening in their body and they, you must have seen women like that. Or someone going through chemo, or I'm presuming they're the same cases if someone's going through something like that. Yeah,
Thea: there's lots of reasons why people might, you know, [00:25:00] need to preserve their eggs for those reasons or have a really low AMH either for for unknown reasons or for endometriosis and things like that, and for those people it's an awesome insurance policy.
But I agree, I think it just needs that deeper inquiry if we're, when we're thinking about doing it for the non medical reasons, for the social reasons.
Peta: And I think we should be having this conversation about egg freezing so that people know that it's available to them, but we should equally be having this conversation about it's okay to want to have a family. And it's okay to want to have that be at least as important as your career or whatever else you're doing.
Because I just, I feel like women, again, you say with your daughters, it's changing and maybe I'm still like stuck in my own programming, but it was just, like you will not have a baby until you are 30. That was like my conditioning.
Thea: And I think there's so much fear. Before you have a baby, around, my career will die, you know? I'll fall off the ladder and I'll become [00:26:00] irrelevant and I'll never
Sam: Well even the idea that, I don't know, but maybe we need to sort of pull it all back and go, Why do we need a career? Yes, absolutely. You know, I'm just like, actually, being a mother is a very worthwhile career in itself. It is the ultimate.
And if you have a craving If you find yourself sitting in front of a doctor asking the question, what are my levels of fertility? That is an indicator that you have a craving to have a child that your body is saying, I'm ready because you wouldn't be doing that otherwise, would you? You wouldn't be in there saying, can you tell me what's happening?
Would it, should I freeze it? Cause you wouldn't be having those questions if you didn't have that deep yearning. And I guess what's sad is that so many people, because we've been told to put other things first. end up missing the opportunity maybe to meet their partners or have the time to meet that special person and make that time for that commitment. And that's why some of these women find [00:27:00] themselves on their own as well.
Peta: Or you just think you have all the time in the world and that can come later. and like you might be someone who just doesn't want to have children or be a mother and that's also completely fine But if you are someone who, where fertility is a concern and is something that you want to do, the least complicated, most successful way is, you know, doing it and prioritizing it when you're younger and thinking about it as much as the career stuff. but I just think women need that permission to be like, it's normal, it's a normal, natural thing to want to have a family if that's like, as part of our biological role.
Yeah.
Sam: Have either of you thought about egg freezing? Did you ever contemplate it?
Peta: No.
Sam: And you had looked, presumably learnt about this all whilst you were going through, but you didn't think, neither of you thought about it?
Thea: I would say it wasn't as readily available. No.
Peta: And you probably got married, what, pre [00:28:00] 30?
Thea: Just after, yeah. Okay. Yeah, so it wasn't You know, like I was in the fortunate position of knowing that it would happen, you know, um, which is different for someone if they haven't met that person. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Then, and I think for a lot of people, like, you know, it takes the pressure off relationships as well, because you know, when you're in your thirties, there's that feeling of like, God, I've got to meet someone. I've got to sort this all out to have a baby before I'm 40 kind of thing. And I think a lot of the time, if people have frozen their eggs, it does take a little bit of pressure off those. You know, those situations, yeah. So you can meet someone and get to know them without that,
Sam: Hanging over you.
Thea: Yeah. Which some people do find beneficial.
Peta: Yeah, that's very true. Yeah, I didn't think about it, but then again, again, I was like, so actually remember going out with someone. whose sister had her babies at like, you know, 20 years. And I remember like him thinking that that was wonderful and whatever.
And I just had this thought [00:29:00] that it's okay for other people, but it's not okay for me. Like, why can't I? And I remember like being, I remember having worked like some ridiculous number of 12 hour shifts in the birth suite and, having helped someone have their baby and then, doing some suturing and it was probably like 10 o'clock at night and I just, I actually remember sitting there feeling like, is this ever going to be me or am I just going to be this person who's around all of this?
And like, is it ever going to be? And I think I almost shut it out, like, and I think I also thought, well, I want to be around for my child. Maybe it's not fair for them. I wasn't sure about work life balance. I just really. It kind of shut it down. I don't know. I think that was also a lot to do with that conditioning at that time of, it's about succeeding in this career and you put all this time into this and you're looking after all the other people and yeah.
Thea: And ticking all those boxes.
Sam: Do you think that kind of, because I often [00:30:00] contemplate this, the fact that we spend so long shutting it down. Do you think the body responds to that? So like, I don't want to get pregnant, I don't want to get pregnant, the fear of getting pregnant. We spend quite a lot of years not wanting to get pregnant.
Do you think that can have partly to do with the signaling to the body? Do you think the body can sort of go, okay, let's not get pregnant?
Peta: Possibly. I don't know, I mean, it's, it's, well, it's a high stress environment that you're in. I just remember thinking, like, I wish I could just be, yeah, I don't know.
And it just, and I would see young people who would be, and I'd think. Oh, you're very young, at like 25. That's very young. And, or I remember going to, um, even when I was working up in Darwin, and I was working in a lot of Indigenous communities, and so younger girls were having babies, you know, like late teens, early twenties, and everyone being like, well, that's terrible, that they should be doing that, they should all be like going to university, and I did think at the time, But really, like, is this, I mean, I [00:31:00] understand, it's our kind of colonial lens, so like everybody has to be in this capitalist society, otherwise their life is a waste, but really, biologically that is what our life is for.
and then we've actually made it seem like. If you want to have babies and prioritise having babies and having a family, that you're somehow strange. Yes, that's right. Which I just think
Sam: It's back to that whole thing of we create the problem. Yes. And then, ooh, here's the solution to the problem. And, uh, oh, now we have, you know, created something that can help you to, do the thing that is the problem in the first place. It is just the machine. Mm, that's right. And we're on the machine. and as we're talking, and we're always really careful to try not to offend anyone when we're talking about all these type of things, because it's such a big thing. But that's half the problem too, that it's so obvious that what we're doing isn't working, and yet here we are still going round and round on the machine.
Thea: Well that's right, but when there's a very simple problem, which is to lean into our biology and do [00:32:00] this. innate thing when we're at the right age to do the thing, rather than putting it off and putting it off so that we can work and then have a medical intervention to solve, to solve that.
Peta: But it's because of feminism.
Thea: I was going to say, I'm a feminist, but,
Peta: because it has told us that our work and our worth is intrinsically more important to be working for somebody else, to be earning an income, to be contributing to the economy that benefits the capitalist society.
Thea: And that success is to be doing what a man does, basically.
Peta: and look, I, again, with the caveats of, of course, of course, of course, feminism has done wonders for us opened up opportunities, and choices that we would never have had. But I also think having being someone who sits in an office all day talking to women who.
We have taken up those [00:33:00] choices who often are ridiculously burnt out, unhappy, because we're trying to do all this stuff and we think that that's going to make us happy, but it doesn't seem to a lot of the time. No, a lot of the time it doesn't. So I think we always, again, we have to like think about what we've been taught and question everything like who is it serving, who is it benefiting, and really without, just coming back to ourselves.
Thea: Listening to what your inner voice is telling you. Yeah. And I think as well, having, having come through that and being the career people and then had children, certainly I've realised that like work will always be there. You're not going to become irrelevant. You're not going to, you know, never work again.
All of the fears that we tend to have before we've done it. In fact, work enhances motherhood and motherhood enhances work.
Peta: Correct.
Thea: So we've started out with a scientific discussion and we've ended with a philosophical one.
Sam: That's right. But it is, and it's probably where it always [00:34:00] has to go with something like this. Questioning why have we got to the place where there is such a big demand for fertility? And if we're not going to unpack that, if we're not going to be brave enough to look in the corners of that, then, Really, we have to start questioning why. Why are we willing to just sit quietly and ignore it?
And just keep going, you know, spending money. Uh, because, the point is, we actually only have to work because of the machine. So, if you decide to do IVF, that's very expensive. Which is going to require probably for you to keep working in order to keep funding. And then maybe paid off, who knows, unless you're fortunate enough. So, the whole thing creates more.
Peta: And of course you want to help women and identify women who may be at higher risk of having issues with infertility and then, working individually with them. But also, I think the whole thing of like, well, let's everybody just freeze our eggs before 30 and then that [00:35:00] will help. Maybe we could put that awareness and that money into creating societies or environments in which we support both women and men. To have families and to prioritize that. and to like
Thea: And for workplaces to be more accepting of it.
Sam: Well imagine if all the money being spent on IVF for the ladies in the 40s was being spent on supporting younger women to be able to have children. And maybe creating a way that society could help to support women to stay at home and have children. This would surely work to some degree. But it's where the money is being channeled. And actually that's the point. It's not being channeled towards supporting women to have babies at a young age, because that's why, that's why it's not seen as a career choice, because it's actually seen that you're not providing, you're not, you know, helping to pay a mortgage or helping to, but the point is it's, our world has become unsustainable, [00:36:00] living that life.
And that's why You know, both parents need to go to work, and then we've got the challenge of what happens to the child because the mum can't stay at home. And so it's just, I don't know, it is one of those things where you can go, yes, feminism has hugely helped us, and our Western culture is hugely privileged. But when we look at it, it is also a massive mess.
Thea: Mmm. Well, the pendulum has swung a bit too far in one direction, hasn't it?
Peta: And like, billions and millions of dollars are spent trying to figure out ways to like, fix like an aged egg, right? Like, you know, with the mitochondrial function and all this like, so this is like the holy grail of Yeah. Fertility treatment, you know, because if you could fix that egg quality, but there is a way to fix that egg quality, which is 15 years. And think if having a family is a priority to me, what can I do to set myself up for that? What can I, what changes in my life can I make, or how can I prioritize at least that as much as the other stuff?
and I think that is [00:37:00] just a really interesting, important question that we should all be having. And asking ourselves.
Thea: Absolutely. And you might still go on and think egg, egg freezing is the thing for you and that's wonderful. Yeah.
Sam: But also as well saying that it could as well be that being in those environments which are very masculine and very stressful is what is harming the quality of our eggs even more. So if a woman is, you know, has been going through working in an environment that's very stressful for her, she's been She's pushing herself to strive and, you know, do better and achieve, and then she reaches, you know, 35, 36, and starts to find that she's unable to get pregnant. The stress of that job is not helping that scenario at all.
And yet, that's part of the cycle that she's in. And so it's just that constant stress that we're under from the word go, from school. Absolutely. To keep achieving and to be successful. The definition of [00:38:00] success. It's really,
Peta: It's crazy. And to be completely out of alignment with our biology. And I just honestly think that women, and because we see this every day, women are like the canaries in the coal mine of the fact that our environment just is not set up and our biology, is just screaming about that far more.
Thea: And it just always baffles me that like there's so much intervention aimed at overriding our biology. Which has lots of problems associated with it, when actually we could just work with it. That's right. And we wouldn't need any of that stuff.
Peta: That's right. I was just listening, this could be slightly off the topic, but a bit similar. I was listening to a thing about how all the psychiatrists have resigned in New South Wales because of their work conditions and their, you know, like there's such a shortage, compared to the mental health crisis that's going on. And they're like, the the fix is, we need to train more psychiatrists.
It's like, does anyone else think this? Maybe we need to think of why is everyone having a mental health crisis? [00:39:00] Perhaps it's because of the way we're living. And perhaps we need to look at that. Does anyone else think like this? I don't know.
Sam: It's so true. It's actually, yes. What we're saying is we need to convince more people to become psychiatrists. Or, should we actually help people to not need them?
Peta: Like being adapted to an incredibly sick society is not health, that's not normal. And there was another thing I heard the other day that was like, you know how people hear about the honeybees? How they're dying out and how that's a big sign that the environment isn't great.
It's that human beings are no more suited to this environment than Honeybee. It might have been Martha Beck who said it, but a honeybee. We're not, like, this is why we have rising chronic disease and all these other things. So I guess this conversation is just to say, egg freezing is a fantastic, but I, we, we, I guess the thing that we try to do on this [00:40:00] podcast is to just, instead of just taking everything that we hear for granted and not questioning anything, it's just to question. Why? And try and see the bigger picture in all of this, and who things are serving, because it's often not serving us.
Sam: And looking at it from a holistic point of view, and that doesn't mean looking at it from a, a non scientific point of view, but from the whole picture, in which we look at everything in our lives. what are we actually being shown? What is actually appearing for us? And the first really simple question is Do you feel happy? Are you happy? Do you feel joy? Do you feel content?
Thea: But it's almost like, permission to ask yourself those things. Because a lot of people would never even contemplate thinking that.
Sam: And what happens when you don't, I mean this is the thing, because a lot of women might go, well I don't feel those things. I don't feel joy or happiness or content in my job, but I'm stuck. And we've been round here many times in our [00:41:00] conversations. This is the problem. Mm. So women right now, and I can really feel this, just, probably just from seeing it and just when I observe and feel, how do you help people when they're saying I'm stuck.
And the point is we actually are probably, as a society, getting to the point where everyone's gonna be so stuck that there'll be a huge sort of explosion of that. And I feel like that's the kind of rising of. true feminism that we need. The point where women just start to get so frustrated with not being content, happy, joyful, where they are.
Thea: With the system that we're forced to exist within.
Peta: Did they start questioning that and then thinking, what do I actually need? And like not listening to those other voices, which can feel scary, counter cultural, all of that. But I actually think that is the way forward. And there's no point us sitting here going, well, society should be this.
Society should be that. It is what it is, and the power that we have resides within us, and it's [00:42:00] about remembering not to be asleep at the wheel, and be like, I'm here, I actually have power and control, and I can change my life, I can do what feels right for me, and it doesn't have to be dictated to me by my, our school systems, our, you know, society, et cetera, et cetera.
It's like that waking up to the possibility that you are the person who's in charge of your life. Yep.
Sam: Yeah. And that's coming back to that sense of being sovereign, which I think is true feminism. Yes. That's right. And sovereign, yeah.
Thea: And trusting. Like trusting your inner voice. That's right. Yeah. Trusting your intuition.
Sam: And it's, it's the not trusting, the pushing that down, the walking away from it, that is. It's really bringing up so much of this disease within us, which is why when we see women or women come see you guys, they come see me or they come see anyone here, generally what's happening is something [00:43:00] is not going right for them and it tends to be that they're not happy, they're not feeling content, they're struggling.
And when it comes to it, it's, if we unpack all the biology that's occurring and get underneath, it tends to be that. At some point they're doing something they don't want to do, because they feel they should. They were told it would make them more worthy, more loved, more successful. And the truth is, there's nothing that's going to make you any of those things apart from following your own inner calling.
That's when you're going to really find that,
Peta: That true power. And that's probably the thing that's gonna save humanity at the end of the day, is if, if we can all step out of the, the cages of the conditioning that we're in and follow that inner voice and, and stop trying to fight against our biology and actually, align ourselves, align our lives so that we're, yeah, going with the flow of it rather than against [00:44:00] it.
Sam: yes, I've that beautiful, I've got that vision. Do you remember that book? by, um, Glennon Doyle. And at the beginning it talks about Untamed? Oh, the tiger. The tiger, I was just literally seeing that tiger. And I feel like that's, that's women these days. We're just there. We have to explain it quickly before we Someone else does, they'll never get it right. The tiger. It was a cheetah. Cheetah. It was a cheetah. Yes. And it was in the zoo.
Peta: It was a wild cheetah. It was a tamed, I guess, cheetah that was in the zoo and they were trying to Show it how it could hunt.
Thea: And they had like . That's right. They had a dog and it was friends with a dog. Yes. And the they got it to chase a bunny.
Peta: Yeah. But like a, um, a soft toy bunny. Yes. Like that they had on a
Thea: Yes. So, sorry. Not a real, not a real rabbit. Right.
Peta: And they were trying to get it to chase it and that was the reward.
Thea: And they had a piece of steak that it would run towards.
Peta: Yeah. Mm-hmm . And what Glennon Doyle was saying is that. Kind of, we have become like conditioned to be like, let's get that pair of jeans, or [00:45:00] that handbag, or that job, or that house, or like.
Thea: But then they watched it doing that trick, and then remember once everything had finished, the tiger was just pacing up and down looking at the horizon, sorry, the cheetah. Pacing up and down looking at the horizon, and she thought, it's the cheetah knowing there's more, but not knowing what it is. And having that feeling of like, I know there's more to life than this.
Sam: And that's what I think women are experiencing now more and more. They're waking up to that. To realizing that the programming is keeping us in this.
Peta: And it's not satisfying. Any of that isn't satisfying.
Sam: But it's not, exactly. Because if it was satisfying we wouldn't need more of it. The fact that we keep reaching for more handbags, clothes, whatever it is, is our thing. Achievement. Achievement. Yeah, all those things. The fact that we keep reaching for it is the sign that it's not satisfying us.
Mm hmm, mm hmm. So where, yeah, we, we need to find the thing that is actually our natural state [00:46:00] and in the natural state we will be satisfied, satiated. And it might not be that it's as clean and, you know, sort of tidy as our current world but that's the point. Women are not clean and tidy and, yeah, and this is the issue.
Peta: So if the thing that is going to fulfill you is Is the, yeah, having the children do that. The thing that's going to fulfill you is having Whatever career it is or both or whatever do that, but listen to your, to your heart.
Thea: Yes, like have the courage to listen.
Peta: Yeah, have the courage to listen and if you hear signals in your body or anxiety or pain or any of the things that we talk about that pop up. That's not a sign of your body being broken or betraying you, it is a sign like that cheetah, of being uneasy, not satisfied, what is it that your body is trying to tell you. So, thank you everybody and we'll be back next week with another rambling rant. Discourse on on [00:47:00] civilisation. And maybe a few practical pointers. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye
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DISCLAIMER:
This podcast is for information and educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
