Today, Whitney Bischoff Angel is joining me on The Egg Whisperer Show, and we’re talking all about Egg Freezing. Whitney is a fertility nurse and patient advocate, specializing in fertility preservation for women.
Whitney made the personal decision to freeze her own eggs in 2013, which she credits for making her an even stronger fertility nurse. In 2015, Whitney joined ABC’s The Bachelor, and since then she has used her platform to promote egg freezing, educating women around the world to be proactive versus reactive when it comes to their reproductive health. She’s appeared on ABC’s Nightline, Good Morning America, Extra TV, People Magazine, Women’s Health magazine and many other publications.
Today we’re covering 8 great reasons to freeze your eggs. These include helping your future self, how freezing eggs can be an insurance policy, the genetic reasons you may want to freeze your eggs, and why you might want to freeze your eggs even if you aren’t sure if you want to have children or haven’t found the right partner and so much more.
Dr. Aimee: I have Whitney Bischoff Angel joining us today to talk all about egg freezing. Welcome, Whitney.
Whitney Bischoff Angel: Hi, Dr. Aimee. How are you?
Dr. Aimee: I’m doing great. I’m so glad that you’re joining us today to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart, fertility preservation. There’s no better person to talk about it than you.
Whitney: Thank you. I’m so glad to be here and that we finally get to meet. It’s been a long time.
Dr. Aimee: I’m sure like a lot of people who’ve been watching you for almost 10 years, I think… How long ago were you on The Bachelor?
Whitney: Oh my gosh. Let’s see. We filmed in 2014 and it aired in 2015. It seems like a lifetime ago.
Dr. Aimee: A few years, but I think we’ve gotten to know you quite a bit. What you’re doing for women’s health is tremendous, so keep doing it. That’s what I want to talk about today.
First of all, how did you get interested in becoming a fertility nurse?
Whitney: That’s a really good question. I almost fell into it. When I started my nursing career, I was working in the cardiac ICU and telemetry. I thought that was where my path was going to take me. I quickly realized that I needed to pivot, because it just was a lot to take home every day, there was a lot of loss and death. I just needed to figure out a different avenue, so I did the opposite and we’re bringing life into the world and helping women achieve that goal of becoming a mother.
Dr. Aimee: There’s a lot of drama on both sides. Giving people that gift of life by being their own egg donor certainly is so rewarding. You had your eggs frozen in 2013. A lot of people weren’t doing that back then. What helped you make that decision nearly 10 years ago?
Whitney: When I made the decision to freeze my eggs, you’re right, it was definitely not in vogue at the time. I was working at an IVF facility in third-party reproduction, so: women who were having to utilize either a surrogate or an egg donor. Part of my role as their nurse was not only assisting them with their cycle and the things that you would think about in a normal nursing role, but also just listening and being there for them.
I would hear so many women say, “I wish I had the opportunity to freeze my eggs. I wish I could go back in time and do this for myself and my future.” For me, I took a step back and it’s kind of like a lightbulb moment. Why am I not doing this? I trust the science, I trust the experts that I’m working with. For me, I always say this, I don’t know a lot about life, but I always knew that I wanted to be a mom. If there was anything that I could do to help control that, even just a little bit, I was going to take it.
Dr. Aimee: That’s awesome. I want to make sure that people know what Egg Freezing.Tell us about that
Whitney: I would say probably around the time that I was coming off of The Bachelor, Colleen Coughlin, who is our lab director and founder, came to me with this idea of having a home base for women that were going through fertility preservation, and she asked if I’d like to help her with this. For me, because I had been on the patient side, I knew that there was so much education and growth needed around this topic. The number of women that I would say didn’t even know about their own bodies when I was telling them about this in 2013 was astonishing to me. She asked if I would be interested, and I was so excited to help with this.
What we did was we really just took patient experiences to help build the business model. Asking women that had gone through the process, “What did you like? What did you not like? What would you do differently?” The two pieces, I would say: the critiques were just that women felt their expectations weren’t managed and also women a lot of times felt like they got lost in the shuffle at the IVF clinic. We use those as our building foundations, and it’s just an extension of the IVF clinic to have a home base for women that are going through fertility preservation, whether that’s egg or embryo freezing.
Whitney: We specialize specifically in egg freezing. We’re owned by the laboratory, which I also think sets us apart. Many women, when thinking about freezing eggs, may just Google fertility clinics, but you’re not thinking about the experts in the lab that are going through the actual vitrification process, and that’s very important. We really focus on the experience for the women, this is an elective procedure, and we really focus on education as well.
Dr. Aimee: That’s super huge. I know that you do that also on your Instagram account. One of my recent favorites was a big list of reasons to freeze your eggs. I would love it if you could walk us through those. Number one: How does freezing your eggs when you’re young help your future self?
Whitney: I think this is so important, to educate women at a young age, because we know as we’re getting older the quality and the quantity of our eggs is going down. By freezing your eggs when you’re young, you’re giving yourself more chances of success for the future. We know that you likely won’t need as many cycles, you won’t need as many medications, but also that the percentage of success of that egg turning into an embryo and a live birth is going to be higher.
Dr. Aimee: I would say 10 or 15 years ago, women were freezing their eggs as a reaction to their levels changing, they were older, their FSH was high, their AMH was lower. Finally, I’m seeing that script flip. Now people are freezing their eggs when they’re younger, making it way easier for me to help them when they’re ready to use their eggs. So, I couldn’t agree more.
Number two: You talk about having your eggs frozen (I’m going to roll my eyes now) as an insurance policy. How can that be helpful to people?
Whitney: The key piece of management of expectations. It’s very important that we tell women when they are coming in to freeze their eggs that this is not a guarantee. This is giving yourself more control than if you did nothing and let Mother Nature continue to run her course, but it’s not 100%. We need to be sure that patients understand that when they are investing into their future that they know it’s not a guarantee. That’s really important.
I think the insurance policy catchphrase is more so because you don’t know what is going to happen in the future. I swear, when I froze my eggs, I had no idea what was going to be happening within the future 10 years, a decade later. That’s one thing that always stayed consistent for me, knowing that I had those eggs there, so it took a little bit of pressure off.
Dr. Aimee: I agree. I feel like nowadays people are even freezing more. I think in the beginning people were just doing one set of eggs and thinking that was enough. It’s really great to see people do more work to preserve potentially what they may need for their second kid or third, or ninth like Elon Musk (just kidding).
Number three: Many people worry about a biological clock and finding the right person. How does egg freezing change that?
Whitney: For me personally, it took that pressure off and that stress, as I was just mentioning. I think as women we always feel that clock as we’re getting closer to 30, and then 35. I hate to hear that someone may have just chosen a partner specifically because they felt like they had to because of their fertility. This is giving women the option. Again, you don’t have to settle. Go live your life. You’re allowed to have it all. This is going to help have just a little bit more control so that you don’t have to worry about that.
Dr. Aimee: One of my good friends always says you can have it all, but maybe not all at the same time.
Number four: This breaks my heart when I see patients that have a terrible diagnosis like cancer. How can egg freezing help with that?
Whitney: Unfortunately, when patients do have that diagnosis of cancer and they’re going to have to be on treatment like chemotherapy, we know that is going to affect their fertility. It can sometimes push them into menopause. A lot of times, women will want to go through the egg freezing process before they start that treatment so that they can have a chance of a family in the future.
Alternatively, sometimes women have other chronic medical conditions that may impact them from even being able to carry a baby in the future. Anytime that you have a preexisting medical condition, a chronic medical condition, even things like diabetes or high blood pressure, that could affect your future fertility or impact you carrying, I think it’s always a good idea to think about.
Dr. Aimee: One of the things that I do with my egg freezing patients is I always ask them a series of questions that let me know if they actually have to do IVF to have a baby. Let’s say they had a ruptured appendix as a child and they were in the hospital for three weeks, and the surgeon told them that there’s so much infection around their pelvis that maybe their tubes are blocked. Tubal blockage, history of chlamydia or gonorrhea, having an ovary removed or something like that, maybe IVF is the path forward, or a genetic mutation for example. Knowing that in advance, and when you’re doing your egg freezing is a great time to learn more about your body.
That leads to number five. One of the things that I talk about is your TUSHY check, if you haven’t heard of that. The Y is your genetic profile. What genetic situations come up that might make it so a person should consider egg freezing?
Whitney: I think you hit the nail on the head with that BRCA gene, any sort of recessive genetic disorder. I think it’s important to educate women, if they want to check on that recessive genetic panel to see if they are a carrier for recessive genes. If they know already that they are or if they are with someone that they know carries that exact same gene, by freezing eggs, you’re able to do that testing on the embryo to ensure that the embryo we would be transferring is not affected. It’s important to educate on that.
Sometimes women choose not to do that testing at the time of egg retrieval. They may not want to do it until and if they come back to use the eggs, which is fine as well.
Dr. Aimee: I agree, it’s fine. For example, the other day I diagnosed Fragile X in someone. Knowledge is power. Know your genes. The more you know, the better things will go. Now she is going to freeze even more eggs. That’s just one of many reasons why sometimes knowing more early on is better. I’m glad that you guys offer that.
Number six: Women are often waiting until later to have kids. Around here, people are showing up at 41 for their first baby. Age at first birth was 32 when I started my practice, and it has creeped up to 39, and now my average patient is in their early 40s. Why is egg freezing an important option for someone traveling or focusing on their career goals?
Whitney: We’re in the 21st Century, in this day and age, women should be able to do, as I mentioned earlier, anything that they want to do, and they shouldn’t let their biological clock or their fertility be holding them back. Whether that is going to further your education, traveling the world, maybe that’s just because you don’t know if you want to have children, this is just opening up the options so that you have more control.
Not just saying, “If I’m going to travel for the next several years,” or, “I want to go get my master’s in something, so then I have to sacrifice my family.” By freezing eggs, you’re able to open up the doors to all different things where you don’t have to be worried about that biological clock.
Dr. Aimee: There’s really something that I think comes with egg freezing. Even if those eggs don’t turn into a successful pregnancy, there is something psychological that I think could be beneficial. You’re proud of yourself, “I did this for myself.” I think that’s pretty amazing. You learn so much about your fertility along the way.
That takes me to number seven. Some people say to me that they don’t know if they want to have children, even though they’re considering egg freezing. Why might someone in that situation want to freeze their eggs?
Whitney: Because it’s giving them more time to think about it. It’s just giving more options. I talk with a lot of women that say, “I don’t know if I want children,” but they’re gathering information about egg freezing because I think it’s, like you said, more psychological. If they learn about egg freezing and then they say, “I know these are my options, but I’m going to choose not to,” that is easier to grasp than someone that says, “I never knew it was an option. I never knew that I could freeze my eggs, and I wish that I would have.”
By coming in and just talking about it, even if you do ultimately make the choice that it’s not right for you, but you gathered all of the information, again, it’s just more about that knowledge is power and knowing that you have options for the future.
Dr. Aimee: And then you don’t have any regrets. If you actually talked through it and said to yourself, “It wasn’t good for me at this time,” then later on if it turned out that the window wasn’t open anymore for you to do it, you can’t beat yourself up. Literally, you just say what I did was right for me at the time, and just move on.
This is number eight. How can egg freezing help with growing a family in the future?
I’ll just tell you a joke. Actually, it’s not a joke, it’s very serious. I say it in a joking way, so it’s not so serious. One of the questions from my families is the patients who come in who are coupled and I say, “What are the chances that you’re going to be together in a year?” Seriously. Five years ago, that was not a question that I would ask people. You can kind of see where I’m going with this. If your answer is not 100%, please freeze your eggs.
So, how can egg freezing help with growing a family in the future?
Whitney: I think when egg freezing first came out people a lot of times thought it was just for their first child. Am I going to need this for baby number one? I think that we’re seeing more and more women coming back with secondary infertility, maybe it’s for baby number two or baby number three.
Also, to kind of piggyback on what you were saying, sometimes a relationship may not have worked out, so it’s a second marriage. I think about all of the reasons to freeze your eggs. I think it’s easier sometimes to talk about the reasons like why wouldn’t you. The options of freezing your eggs, there are so many reasons why, but this is just one of them.
Dr. Aimee: That’s what I was going to say. Freeze your eggs for husband number two or husband number three. So many patients now are over the age of 45, their kids are grown, and now they’re ready to have another baby with their new husband.
Whitney: I think you’re so right. You’re being your own future egg donor. That’s the bottom line. I love it.
Dr. Aimee: When you talk to people about freezing their eggs, what are some of the most frequently asked questions?
Whitney: I think the number one thing is what are the side effects, what can I be prepared for, what are the side effects of the medications, or questions about the actual injection process, am I actually going to give myself shots. I think it’s very intimidating when you hear about the process. We really try to break it down and educate you on this. The more you learn about the shots and when it’s actually go-time, we’re sending you videos, and if you want to do a sample shot, you can do that. If you truly are like, “I cannot give myself a shot. You’re crazy if you think that I’m going to be able to do this,” there are also services available to women to assist with it.
But I think the number one questions that I get are about the actual injections, possible side effects of the injections, how long can the eggs be frozen, which we know is indefinitely.
Dr. Aimee: I’m a fertility myth buster right there with you. I think another question that people ask me is, “You got 12 eggs. Does this mean that I’m going to go into menopause 12 months earlier?” Then there’s, “Is this going to cause cancer?”
Whitney: Or, “Am I taking eggs from the future,” which we know is not the case. We’re actually saving eggs that you would have lost that month anyway.
Dr. Aimee: I don’t want to get too personal, but we know that you froze your eggs back in 2013. I have a feeling that everyone wants to know what happened. Did you need to use those eggs?
Whitney: I get this question all the time, and I am an open book, so it’s definitely not off the table. I didn’t use the eggs, but I did think about it. I have to tell you, my husband and I were trying for a couple of months. I needed to take my advice because I know it can take some time. But when it’s your body and you’re on this schedule, and I’m very Type A, I was wondering, “It’s been a couple of months. Why is this not working?”
I called Dr. Kaplan and said, “Should I tap into my eggs that I froze when I was 27?” His question to me was, “Do you want more than one child?” Of course, I do. I was still young. He said, “You need to be patient, keep trying. Let’s keep those eggs frozen for baby number two or baby number three.” So, I did take his advice and I’m very glad that I did.
I eventually was able to conceive naturally. I have a 3-year-old little boy named Haze who is upstairs snoozing right now. My husband and I would love to expand our family, so it’s really nice to know that I still have those eggs.
Dr. Aimee: I want to see if there is anything else that you would like to add.
Whitney: First of all, thank you so much for having me on and reaching out and continuing to open the discussion around egg freezing. I think it’s really important that women use their platform that we have here to reach so many different people throughout the country and let them know about egg freezing and fertility preservation.
Again, the younger you are when you do this, the better, but any time is better than no time. Just get the information and check in on your fertility.
Dr. Aimee: I know that if I was someone who was considering egg freezing, I would love to have you be my fertility nurse and have you educate me about the process. I can only imagine that the clinic you’ve aligned yourself with and the lab is top notch. Thank you for all that you’re doing.
Whitney: You’re so sweet. Thank you.
Dr. Aimee: Thank you, Whitney, for coming on today.
Whitney: Thank you, Dr. Aimee. It’s been a pleasure.
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