Our founder’s recent interview on the Podcast “Technophobia” got us thinking about common misconceptions about egg freezing that we hear in our Ovally consults:
1. I’ll wait until my mid/late 30s to freeze my eggs:
Does drinking coffee or tea affect fertility?
“Can I have caffeine before and during my treatment?” is a great question we’ve gotten from our egg freezing and IVF Ovally customers. As is so often the case, the research on this question isn’t as clean and clear-cut as we’d like: It’s hard to separate out variables besides caffeine that can affect fertility outcomes, and many studies rely on retrospective self-reports of consumption, which can be unreliable. However, high-quality studies looking at a relationship between caffeine consumption and the ability to conceive during IVF treatment suggest that 1-2 cups of coffee per day don’t significantly affect the ability to conceive. Surprisingly, however, 1-2 cups of coffee a day (or the equivalent level of caffeine in another drink) have been found to double the risk of miscarriage during pregnancy.
Does acupuncture help with fertility treatments?
Acupuncture is a Traditional Chinese Medicine technique that uses thin needles to stimulate specific points on the body to release blocked energy and jumpstart a healing process. In the context of fertility, acupuncture may help improve blood flow to the uterus and reduce stress and anxiety. It may also play a role in regulating certain hormones that play a role in fertility, including beta endorphins and insulin. However, data from randomized experiments are very limited, and scientific results on the effectiveness of acupuncture for fertility treatments are inconclusive.
Do I use up precious eggs if I freeze them?
We hear this concern frequently on our Welcome Consults for Ovally: If I freeze my eggs, don’t I decrease the number of eggs I have available? Does freezing my eggs therefore lower my chances of conceiving naturally after freezing them, because I have fewer eggs? Luckily, the answer is no – egg freezing takes advantage of eggs that would’ve otherwise disintegrated, and the number of eggs you freeze in a typical cycle is really tiny compared to the number of eggs you have available.
10 questions to consider before starting IVF
At Ovally, we talk to a lot of women and couples who underwent IVF before coming to us and didn’t have an entirely positive experience. In many cases, they didn’t have enough time with their doctors to comfortably make critical decisions, or had decisions made for them without knowing that they had a choice. Given the complexity of IVF, it’s very hard to know as first-time patients what questions to ask. As part of our IVF series, we’ve put together 10 questions to consider and discuss with your doctor as early as possible in the process:
10 reasons to freeze your eggs in your 20s
You’ll take advantage of…
1. More eggs to collect: Your number of eggs declines with age
2. Better egg quality: Also declines with age
3. Lower treatment cost: Given 1. and 2., you’ll likely only need one egg freezing cycle to collect a good number of high-quality eggs
IVF – how does it work, and what happens when?
Ovally now supports patients undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in addition to our egg and embryo freezing patients, by matching you with clinics that are up to 70% more affordable than comparable top clinics in the US, supporting you throughout your journey as your personal fertility coach, and serving as your individual travel planner for your IVF trip to Spain. That’s why we’re kicking off a new blog post series on IVF, starting with the basics: How does IVF work, and what happens when?
Putting my fertility on ice allowed me to become a Mom
This week, we have a guest post from an Ovally contributor about her very personal journey from freezing her eggs to becoming a Mom of twins. We’re really grateful for her story and thankful to her for sharing it:
What’re the diagnoses behind fertility issues? Part 1/4: Issues with ovulation
Every year, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) publishes statistics on reproductive health, including a small section on patient diagnoses underlying infertility. These diagnoses are based on data from ~260k IVF cycles that were done at 463 fertility clinics in the US (most recently in 2016). Next to “diminished ovarian reserve” (31% of diagnoses), the most common diagnosis women receive has to do with “ovulatory dysfunction”. We at Ovally set out to unpack what that means:
Embryo freezing & IVF: What happens after the retrieval? A personal account (3/3).
This is part 3 of Ovally founder Kathy’s personal daily account of her embryo freezing journey to Spain. Read the previous two posts on the stimulation period and egg retrieval. This set of posts takes you from the egg fertilization through embryo development, genetic testing, and freezing. It doesn’t include the last IVF step of embryo transfer.
The Ovally Blog 