Former Olympic runner Alexi Pappas recently revealed she froze her eggs in her early 30s because she wanted to buy herself time. In an effort to empower others to be proactive to preserve their fertility, she wrote in Outside, “I encourage any woman, whether you are single or partnered, whether you think you know what you want in the next five years or you have no idea, to consider freezing your eggs.”
Pappas isn’t the only top athlete to prioritize her fertility. Several other Olympians have followed this same proactive path, fearing age could impact their ability to build a family. This includes hurdler Lolo Jones, who froze her eggs in 2022, and four-time Olympic gold medalist in bobsledding, Kallie Humphries, who froze her eggs and underwent IVF in 2021.
This is a growing trend among young women under 38 who are planning ahead with cryopreservation of their eggs, and according to experts, it’s the best way to ensure future motherhood. I wish I had done the same.
When I was single in my 20s, my career and social life took priority, and I didn’t even think about trying to conceive. My mother got pregnant without any need for medical intervention, so I was surprised when my husband and I wound up struggling with infertility for a decade.
During that time, I endured over a dozen fertility cycles, close to 40 gynecological procedures, and suffered four recurrent miscarriages in one year. Then, when I finally became pregnant with my son, I was labeled as being “advanced maternal age” and having a “geriatric pregnancy” due to being almost 40. This required additional monitoring and caused unexpected complications during pregnancy. If I’d frozen my eggs when I was younger, I would have had an easier path to motherhood.
Experts Featured in This Article
Jaime Knopman, MD, is an endocrinologist and the director of fertility preservation for CCRM Fertility.
Alease Barnes, BS, is a certified embryologist and the founder of ReproMedia.
While there are risks associated with the preservation process, this proactive method increases the likelihood of pregnancy and birth. In an NYU Langone study, 70 percent of women who yielded a rate of 20 oocytes or higher carried a child full term. The author of the study, James Grifo, MD, PhD, also indicated that multiple retrieval procedures increased success rates.
“The earlier you freeze your eggs, the better the quality will be,” endocrinologist Jaime Knopman, MD, tells PS. “You will get more and they will have more potential for success,” Dr. Knopman adds. “I always compare them to lottery tickets. When you are young and you freeze your eggs, it’s like someone whispering the first three numbers in your ear; that increases your chances to win. As you get older, it’s as though you have no intel, so your chances of winning go down.”
Even though she ended up raising me alone, my mother believed in the traditional values of “settling down,” getting married, then having a child. I saw firsthand how hard being a mom was after my parents divorced. It solidified my intent to wait until I had a partner to raise a family.
I also assumed it would be easy for me to conceive, knowing my mom got pregnant right away at 22. When I was in high school and college, she advised me to protect myself using contraceptives to avoid an unwanted pregnancy, so I tried a combination of the birth control pill and condoms. I was so focused on not getting pregnant too soon, that I never even considered what to do if I couldn’t get pregnant when the time was right. That is, until I couldn’t conceive naturally on my own.
My perspective has changed since then, based on what I know now: freezing your eggs earlier increases your chances of having a baby and could prevent exhausting and expensive procedures, not to mention the heartache of infertility and pregnancy loss.
When I started IVF, I thought it would be a quick solution, but it didn’t work right away. It took years of IUIs and then IVF to finally have our first child. We returned to try for our second, and once again my high expectations were shattered.
After another few years of failed cycles and recurrent miscarriages, I was thrilled to welcome my second child at 39. Due to my age, I had to be monitored by both an ob-gyn and a maternal fetal medicine doctor for the entire pregnancy. It was anxiety-inducing and I wish I would have frozen my eggs earlier; it could have prevented the prolonged treatments and factors that come with a high-risk pregnancy.
“As we age, our eggs get worse at repairing DNA, which leads to aneuploidy, a genetic abnormality,” says embryologist Alease Barnes, BS. “Over the age of 35 our rate of chromosomal conditions such as trisomy 21, 18, and 13 rise in probability.” These conditions can result in pregnancy loss, as well as a range of disabilities including Down syndrome.
As a result, egg freezing is becoming more common. The National Institute of Health found in January 2024 that women are “driven by feelings of fear” to freeze their eggs, which saw an increase during the pandemic. This concern is based on a number of factors, including age impacting egg quality, lack of a suitable partner, and the potential threat of access to fertility treatment.
This approach, referred to as “social egg freezing” by the NIH, affords women the opportunity to “finish their studies, become financially stable and achieve their professional goals.” It’s no surprise then that there was a 400 percent increase in the rate of egg freezing between 2012 and 2020, according to a study in the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology originally reported by The New York Times in 2022.
Egg retrievals cost between $8,000 and $15,000 per cycle, while storage fees can run from $500 to $1000 per year, if you have to pay out of pocket. Some insurance plans now pay for IVF and fertility preservation coverage, depending upon your plan and the state you live in, although we should fight for more coverage. And yet, despite the financial and emotional costs, this uptick shows that more are taking control of their fertility, in hopes of having a better chance later on, once they are ready to conceive.
While I’m grateful for my two beautiful children, I wish I could have frozen my eggs years sooner. Alexi Pappas and these other Olympians have the right idea. I urge women to consider the option of cryopreservation, as early as they can. If you can afford it, it’s worth the price to preserve your chance at motherhood.
Related: The Complicated Reality of Bringing Millions on Your Fertility Journey
Lisa McCarty is a writer and women’s health advocate. In addition to PS, her work has been featured by The New York Times, HuffPost, Newsweek, “Today,” and more.
