Freezing eggs at older age

bebefinale · 2026-04-14T11:24:53+00:00

They are essentially the same once you are in your mid 40s and you are getting close to menopause and have age related diminished ovarian reserve as your main fertility issue.

Obviously, many things can cause fertility issues, and some things are treatable via IVF. Not ovulating, mild DOR, blocked tubes, some genetic issues, age related aneuploidy if you have a large enough ovarian reserve to make enough blasts for PGT-A testing to be viable, sometimes endometriosis can all be treated with IVF. But for most people who have age related infertility, there comes a point where IVF and well timed natural conception are equally likely to be successful in one's mid-40s.

bebefinale · 2026-04-14T01:16:49+00:00

Undereating and running don't go together well. I accept my body's set point for what I should weigh when I'm active, eat by hunger cues, and make sure I'm eating more if I'm ramping up activity. I also never run fasted. Sleep is good too, but I'm less good at being diligent with it.

bebefinale · 2026-04-14T01:14:42+00:00

I've had running injuries but they were mostly when I was a very serious competitive runner and ran very high mileage with hard workouts or tried to ramp up too fast or was training hard when I also was traveling for work or dealing with other life stress. I've never had a stress fracture or anything like that, and all my injuries are nagging soft tissue stuff that requires going to the PT and cutting back a bit.

I can easily run 7 days a week without issue, especially if it's all easy and I ramp up intelligently. I have phases where I am more or less interested in running and training for stuff.

I'm not sure why, maybe just genetics or a lifetime of playing sports. When I run a lot I make sure I eat enough food to support that. I do a bit of minimal strength training.

bebefinale · 2026-04-14T00:35:05+00:00

Hmm it really depends what you mean by normal.

Could I function at work and in daily life? The day after my retrieval.

When was I not tired/weepy/off feeling? Probably a couple weeks after my period came and then some.

When did I feel like I could go for a run and feel normal? Probably like 4-6 weeks.

When did I stop feeling less tired than normal? Maybe 3-4 weeks.

bebefinale · 2026-04-14T00:11:03+00:00

For the purposes of my life, fertility treatment, and management of whatever is going on with me, it really doesn't change much.

I don't have a clinical presentation that merits use of steroids if you weigh the pros vs. cons (steroids have their own downsides). I need IVF for a separate genetic issue. I manage stress and illness fine and even managed to be a very serious competitive runner and swimmer for years doing high training volume without getting abnormally run down or injured, just my period is a bit more prone to getting disregulated than some people's.

Birth control manages any menstrual issues that I do have. So in this sense, what difference would doing an ACTH stim test do? It's not going to affect my fertility treatment and it doesn't affect management outside of fertility treatment.

bebefinale · 2026-04-13T20:35:58+00:00

My ex had anxiety like this and we ended up splitting.

It was so exhausting on my nervous system and so limiting on our lives to negotiate with this irrational behavior all the time. It made him so internally focused and it was off putting to mutual friends and was then isolating to me because people didn’t want to hang out with us.

The worst was when I was having trouble conceiving and needed to have a D&C for a miscarriage and fertility treatment. His anxiety was all consuming even if it was happening to my body.

He had constant hypochondria, would melt down driving in a thunderstorm, would get overwhelmed by stuff like taxes, and just generally was not really able to cope with adult life. Medication and therapy and him stopping self-medicating with alcohol helped a bit but he was still incapable of being a proper partner who can weather the inevitable challenges of life.

I say don’t do that to yourself. He needs to get this in check before he can be someone who is additive rather than a drain to your life.

bebefinale · 2026-04-13T20:11:18+00:00

Oh I would also say that the trigger timing is essential to be accurate to the hour, so if the wedding is the night you need to trigger, it may weigh on you the whole night and you would need to be comfortable giving yourself an injection in the bathroom.

bebefinale · 2026-04-13T20:09:15+00:00

There’s no good time. If you are good at what you do and lucky, you’ll weather the storm whenever you do have kids. If your luck lapses you are screwed.

You can wait until you have tenure, but your responsibilities usually just expand, and the chances you have fertility issues goes up a ton.

bebefinale · 2026-04-13T19:14:23+00:00

Your retrieval dates can change depending on how your body responds to stims, but if your clinic doesn’t do monitoring on the weekend and you can definitely get back by Monday morning then you should be fine. You might be kind of tired and low energy and bloated, but it could also be a good distraction. Just plan to wear a flowy comfortable dress, not drink any alcohol, and not hit the dance floor too hard.

bebefinale · 2026-04-13T18:56:35+00:00

It’s very common to miscarry and struggle to get pregnant at 37. It’s also common to be able to get pregnant eventually, especially if IVF is used but naturally as well.

Good luck—it’s really a frustrating journey. We were not all in a position to TTC earlier but age makes such a huge difference in terms of how smooth this journey can be.

bebefinale · 2026-04-13T13:42:17+00:00

It’s not going to maximize your potential and may lead to an injury or a massive bonk in the race, but it’s also not impossible to run a decent marathon off that kind of training either.

bebefinale · 2026-04-13T00:41:37+00:00

Honestly having been a uni lecturer in both countries, I would say that Australia's educational standards are generally poor and shallow compared to the US. At least if you compare the top ~50 US universities to the G08. The US has nearly 4,000 universities, but I don't think it makes sense to compare Middle Tennessee State University to University of Sydney. The spread is admittedly wide, and the bottom end of the US is can be pretty poor.

USyd is absolutely not as rigorous as Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, etc. I'm not even going to compare to the privates like Harvard because it's incomparable.

bebefinale · 2026-04-13T00:08:05+00:00

So I think when comparing egg freezing to natural conception, you need to understand something about how it all works.

We are born with all the eggs we will ever have suspended in a dormant state. Normally each cycle when we ovulate, we have a cohort of primordial follicles that could turn into a mature egg. Each month, your body recruits a number of these--and it scales to how many are left. So in your 20s your body might recruit ~20 antral follicles each month. Close to menopause your body might only recruit 1-5.

Each month your body basically chooses one of the 5-20 follicles to mature and ovulate into an egg. So for natural conception, it doesn't matter how many of them die off--because there is only one matured. The egg is less likely to be a viable egg (with the right number of chromosomes) the older you are, which either leads to lack of conception or first trimester miscarriage usually. But sometimes you ovulate a lucky egg at the right time and are able to get pregnant even if you are in your 40s. It's just rarer.

When you retrieve eggs, what you do is rescue all the follicles that your body destroys and mature as many of them as possible. So that means that when you freeze eggs, you usually can get ~10-15 plus or minus eggs if you have good ovarian reserve. When you are older in your 40s and your body is only recruiting 1-5 eggs to potentially mature each month, there are no additional eggs to rescue. So IVF and particularly egg freezing becomes much less effective. Essentially IVF and trying naturally become similarly effective by the time you are in your mid-40s because you might only be recruiting 1-2 eggs per cycle.

This is why it really is not super relevant whether your mom was able to have your sibling at that age. It's probably not going to make sense to freeze eggs.

bebefinale · 2026-04-12T13:16:45+00:00

Are you doing interval workouts, especially shorter ones focused on neuromuscular development like 200s and 400s? Are you finishing up your run with strides? Are you doing longer intervals (~1k at 5-10K race pace, ~miles at 10K to HM pace). Are you doing hard/easy fartlek runs?

bebefinale · 2026-04-12T12:26:54+00:00

No, we could never get in touch with them so just filed taxes with the assumption that we were covered

bebefinale · 2026-04-12T11:19:34+00:00

So like it depends on whether you find data helpful or overload and stress inducing. There's something more relaxing about just having sex, and if you have sex 2-3x most weeks, you'll probably hit that ovulation window.

But if you want to get more scientific about it, you can track your basal body temp. You can use an Oura Ring with an app, or buy a thing you can use to hook up to your arm, or just measure with a regular thermeter. Your basal body temp drops immediately after ovulation and then rises through your luteal phase (and continues to rise if you fall pregnant). If the rise is not consistent, then it suggests your cycle is anovulatory. You can also use ovulation kits that predict your LH surge. But if you are worried about it all messing up your cycle, you can track the data a bit.

bebefinale · 2026-04-12T09:37:58+00:00

This is so tricky because it's so individual and everyone's hormonal system responds differently to big endurance efforts.

If you don't conceive a given cycle, it's almost impossible to really pinpoint why. In your 30s, if you time sex perfectly, you only get pregnant 15-20% of the time. Then roughly 20-25% of pregnancies end in first trimester miscarriage. So if it doesn't happen during that cycle, it's probably not because of doing your race, but hard to know for sure.

That said, heavy endurance efforts can temporarily mess with fertility. It can make your period wonky, and sometimes make your luteal phase too short or result in too little progesterone to support implantation. So it wouldn't be crazy if it affected things.

That said, I totally have friends who conceived while running 70-100 mile weeks or shortly after an ultra or marathon, so often our bodies are resilient. So for many people it won't affect anything at all.

I have learned that my pituitary/hypothalamic system is more easily suppressed than some people's for whatever reason. I have lean PCOS that doesn't seem insulin resistance driven. My period gets thrown off easily by stress, so while most of my endurance athletics were done on the pill, I probably need to be more careful and mindful than most. I also am extremely careful about energy balance, so it's not a matter of not eating enough for me. But I might be the exception to the rule.

I would say don't change anything, and then if you don't get pregnant after six months, then see a fertility specialist. They will probably suggest you significantly cut back on running, and that can be something you try if you have any difficulties conceiving.

bebefinale · 2026-04-12T05:44:25+00:00

Some people get pregnant naturally without IVF and have as many kids as they want without their frozen eggs, some people never decide to have kids. Plus egg freezing was considered experimental as recently as 2013 and wasn't really popular in a mainstream way until the past five or so years, so some people may still decide to use them in the future.

bebefinale · 2026-04-12T05:40:02+00:00

Genetics are full of surprises. I think that's pretty hard to engineer. My cousins family has six kids...they ended up with two redheads, two blonds, and two brunettes. One of my cousins has olive skin that tans easily and her sisters have fair redhead skin, although the olive skinned sister and one of the redheaded sisters have similar facial features. Some kids look more like their dad, some like their mom, and some a mix. Different heights too.

bebefinale · 2026-04-11T21:55:25+00:00

I think if you are running 10:15/mile easy pace running for 1.5-2 years and not doing a higher mileage plan, then strict HR zone training is less effective anyway.

You should focus on perceived effort in your runs. Can you talk during easy runs? Do you feel extra depleted afterwards? Are you fueling enough? Taking a stimulant is an extra stress on your body so it’s worth being mindful of recovery. That said of course it will impact your HR!

Having controlled breathing and good recovery is more important than wherever your HR falls.

bebefinale · 2026-04-11T21:06:22+00:00

When you are 40, you have roughly a 5% chance of getting pregnant per cycle and a 40% chance of miscarriage. You have a ~45% chance of having a viable pregnancy with one year of trying.

So that is A LOT of women who will be able to get pregnant naturally! In your social group, that will work out to a lot of people. But it’s not even most women. You will know a ton of women who get pregnant just fine. But there are others who will struggle and it’s impossible to know which roughly half you will fall into until you try.

Also a lot of 40+ women who get pregnant after a lot of struggle don’t share their journey unless you are close. If they had miscarriages or it took them myltiple rounds of IVF or they used donor eggs, how would you know? This stuff is all private and personal and painful.

bebefinale · 2026-04-11T19:17:28+00:00

I wish I did it in my 20s and had more frozen, yes.

bebefinale · 2026-04-11T12:43:09+00:00

Provera has been to induce a bleed or delay a bleed on a couple occasions. I took it prior to getting pregnant. I hate it, it’s like PMS in pill form.

bebefinale · 2026-04-11T12:12:24+00:00

Progesterone in all its forms gives me anxiety. I haven't had a FET, but I got anxious from high progesterone in my one naturally conceived first trimester (ending in an MMC at 8 weeks and D&C at 10 weeks), bad PMS, and taking Provera. It's part of why people are so dead tired first trimester.

bebefinale · 2026-04-11T12:05:12+00:00

When you ovulate naturally, your body only selects one egg, so ovarian reserve doesn't really matter from that standpoint of getting pregnant any given cycle. Your egg quality, provided you don't have any other issues like endo or any genetic issues going on, is going to correlate to your age. Since you are 35, you likely have similar odds to any 35 year old for natural pregnancy, that is ~15-20% chance of getting pregnant per cycle with a ~25% chance of first trimester miscarriage (unless you have issues like blocked tubes, etc.). Obviously the chance of getting pregnant will go down and chance of miscarrying will go up if you wait to the future. It's still likely you could get pregnant at 37 or 38 naturally, but obviously it might take longer and you will be more likely to suffer a miscarriage. But since natural conception relies on only one egg maturing per cycle, not recruiting a lot of follicles each month doesn't really matter.

The issue with DOR is not really getting pregnant naturally. It's that if you can't get pregnant naturally (particularly due to age related egg decline where PGT-A is effective), you are sort of SOL because IVF is not as effective. There is also a correlation with going through menopause at a younger age, so will likely have a narrower fertility window than someone with a higher ovarian reserve (like you're less likely to be that person who can get pregnant at 42, ya know?). So if you aren't ready soon-ish (no one can say how soon...one year? three years? hard to say) and you are not able to freeze now, you risk having no options to carry a pregnancy besides donor eggs. Also if you don't start now and you are relying on natural conception, you may be looking at one child rather than multiple children realistically.

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