What Is the Egg Freezing Process Really Like?

Nikkiey: Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.

But let me tell you guys, the emotional side of this journey is freaking wild. From the moment that I decided to pursue my egg freezing, I experienced a plethora of emotions. There was obviously anxiety about the process, the fear of the unknown. I had no idea what to anticipate, and I like to be in control. There are some things I can control, but there are other things I cannot control. Some of which kind of sparked my reaction to the team that I just shared with you today. This next couple of days is entirely out of my control.

Oh man, guys. What is going on? If you're watching this on video, you can see how I look right now, and it really matches how I feel. I'm going to take a second to fix the way that I look here. If you're listening through audio, you missed out on the way that I look, but I will explain it. I look frazzled. I look tired. I look drained. And welcome to today's episode. A little bit different of an opening.

Today, guys, it's episode 178, and I'm going to just meet y'all where I'm at. Today I'm going to share with you a deeply personal and transformative journey, and that is the egg freezing journey and my experience of it, which I am literally in the midst of. I actually just got off the phone with the team that I work closely with at the facility where I freeze my eggs. And I went in with some pitbull energy because it's 4:30 in the afternoon.

Typically I hear back from my team at like noon, 1 o'clock. And I didn't hear back from them, and it's 4:30 and I still didn't hear back from them. So I had to give them a call. I'm in the last couple of these days where hormones are high. I'm injecting myself three times a day with medicine. And I was frustrated that I didn't hear from anybody, and I didn't have any protocol for what my steps were to move forward tonight. So you guys are just getting real, raw, honest Nikkiey here right now.

I then apologized to my team member who called. Apparently my normal nurse was out today, and the doctor was in procedures. And I proceeded to say, I am so sorry for my energy, but I am hormonal, I am very tired, and I'm in the home stretch of getting these eggs retrieved. So forgive me. And then we all laughed. It was a good time. She clarified everything, and she reassured me that my feelings were valid and things were good moving forward.

But anyway, what I want to talk to you guys about today is, honestly, you guys are meeting me where I'm at right now. I am, again, in the home stretch. I have been injecting medicine on a daily basis in the morning and at night for the last two and a half weeks. When you first start the journey, everybody's normal ovary size is like the size of peas, like the peas that you eat.

Mine are the size of grapefruits right now. And I can't put the grapefruits down. I am carrying them on a daily basis. And inside of them there are about 14 cherry balls. Maybe they're a little bit bigger than cherries. But anyway, this may give you a bit of the gist of how the rest of this episode is going to go. I'm kind of all over the place, I'm not going to lie. As I said, I'm tired. I'm hormonal. Oh, and my estrogen, by the way, you guys.

She just let me know that it is 1,700. And that's a lot. That's pretty freaking high. I'm experiencing all of the effects of it: emotional instability, mood swings, sleep disturbances, not being hungry. I'm just here. And I just want to be open and transparent with you guys and share this experience with you, the process of it, why I decided to do it and some of the benefits of it.

And if you guys are ever thinking about this down the road, maybe for yourself, maybe there's one listener out there that's considering this or has done it. A lot of you guys actually reached out to me on Instagram, because I have a whole highlight story on this, just saying that what I do for the egg freezing process is very similar to the first step of the IVF process. Thank you so much for reaching out. It's reassuring that there are people in my corner that have done this before and have shared their journey too.

So it's very similar to that. But deciding to freeze my eggs was not a decision that I made lightly. There were several factors that influenced my choice, and that's what I wanted to share with you guys today. For many women, freezing eggs is about taking control of their reproductive future, and that was no different for me, point blank. I realized that what I'm doing, WarriorBabe, my career, my personal goals were so freaking important. And I wanted to have the option to start a family when the time felt right for me.

Look, this is my personal opinion. Some people out there say there's no perfect time to start a family, there's no perfect time to have kids. I am grateful for where I am in my life and for having the resources and ability to have the option to start my family when I feel like it's right for me, and not on the terms of my biological clock. So actually, this is my second round of freezing eggs.

Last year I started the first round of the egg freezing journey, so this is a second go at it. I'll share all of this in the podcast. But the more I researched the whole egg freezing idea and concept, the more I understood the actual benefits and the possibilities that this could offer me. The benefits included extending my fertility window. It also reduced my anxiety about future planning and the pressure that brings, and it gave me more time to find the right partner and achieve some personal milestones that I have for myself.

So once I researched and dove into it, those were some of the benefits and possibilities that I saw as an option for me. But let me tell you guys, the emotional side of this journey is freaking wild. From the moment that I decided to pursue my egg freezing, I experienced a plethora of emotions. There was obviously anxiety about the process, the fear of the unknown.

I had no idea what to anticipate. And I like to be in control. There are some things I can control, but there are other things I cannot control. Some of which kind of sparked my reaction to the team that I just shared with you today. This next couple of days is entirely out of my control. There's no ability to control when the right day is for them to retrieve my eggs. I'm at the whim right now of the way these follicles inside my ovaries are growing. And it's all dictated by my blood work and the medication I give myself on a daily basis.

And then not hearing from the team, it spiraled me. Not being in control, the fear of the unknown. Of course, with that there's also the hope for the future, right? I am excited that these eggs I'm freezing, I can use them up until the age of 51. That's huge to take into consideration, because a lot of women go through, you know, premenopause, postmenopause.

But most importantly, the reason I decided to do this was that after the age of 35, the quantity and the quality of our eggs decrease drastically. I'm going to talk about the process of consulting and doing all the testing at the beginning. But my doctor basically showed me a graph, and she was like, dude, in your 20s there's a high peak of all the eggs in your body. But after 35, the quantity of eggs that you produce decreases.

And the quality of them gets worse. So there was so much that was hopeful, but there was also so much anxiety that came along with this process. And I just want to be honest with you guys: there were times when I felt, and still feel, completely overwhelmed. When I underwent the procedure last year, I was crying the day before, because you have to be put under for the procedure. Granted, it's only 15 minutes, but being put under is scary in general. And then dealing with the hormonal changes, holy moly. You feel like you're on a high because you're pretty much stuck in the ovulation phase.

Ovulation is just a creative zone for a lot of women to be in. When you're ovulating, you feel on top of the world. But then it gets to the point where estrogen is so increased and all these other markers are changing, and it becomes extremely uncomfortable. You're feeling the emotional weight of anything that comes into your space, and you're just triggered by it. And not to mention, I'm grateful for my ability in this, but some people have to manage the costs.

You have to figure out how you're going to make this work for you. But at the same time, on top of all of this that I'm sharing with you, being overwhelmed and the hormonal changes and the ups and downs, I feel a huge sense of empowerment. I am making a proactive choice about my future, and that personally gives me so much freaking strength. So that's a little bit about the benefits, the possibilities and some of the things I'm feeling personally that made me embark on this journey.

If you guys want to dive in more, there's a whole highlight reel on my Instagram that you can click into, and it shows my entire journey last year. Honestly, this year I've been a little bit more quiet, as I'm so busy with WarriorBabe, and sharing this on Instagram feels hard for me to do. At the same time, I am personally struggling in these last couple of days leading up to this retrieval. So...

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That's WarriorBabe.com/apply. All right, let's get back to the show.

Nikkiey: What I want to do now is talk to you guys about the process itself.

Freezing eggs involves several steps, and I want to break it down for those of you that may be interested in this, or maybe you've done it and you're resonating with me, or maybe your kids are considering it. First and foremost, the journey begins with a consultation with a fertility specialist. One of my good friends did IVF and had a baby through this fertility specialist. They are well known throughout the world. My doctor conducted various tests to assess my ovarian reserve and my overall health.

That includes blood tests and an ultrasound, getting a baseline on where you're at. And overall, everything was really good for me. At the beginning last year when I did this, I was like, man, I'm fertile Myrtle. I produce a lot of follicles, and those follicles, if they get to a good size, produce the eggs. So I was really grateful to see that my health overall in this respect was pretty solid. Then what comes next is, well, last year...

I shared this on my Instagram. Last year was a heck of a lot different in terms of the process compared to what I'm doing right now. After you have that talk with the fertility specialist and do that testing, the fertility specialist is able to determine what kind of protocol to put you on for the stimulation phase. This involves the type of medicine that you're on.

That's to stimulate the ovaries to produce the follicles and produce the eggs. It's funny, if you watch my Instagram highlight, last year I started on cycle day one, started birth control for a week, and then started doing the hormone injections for about 10 to 14 days. It felt like a long period of time then, way longer than the process is right now.

But the way we did that protocol last year overstimulated my ovaries and overcooked some of the eggs. While I had 18 follicles in my ovaries, they were only able to retrieve 10 of them. And of the 10, they were only able to freeze six, because six were mature enough to be frozen. The rest were overcooked or undercooked. So with that feedback from last round, I went into this round doing the whole testing again, the blood work, the ultrasound, to see where I'm at.

But they proposed a different plan for this round. I had my cycle, and I didn't start anything until, what was it? We tracked ovulation. The team watched ovulation through blood work. And then I started a drug called Lupron, which essentially helps make the ovulation process happen.

While that drug was going, I also got my period, which is totally normal. I freaked out at that point. I woke up with cramps and blood and I was like, what is going on? This isn't supposed to happen, because I was so used to the other protocol. So I consulted with the team, and they said this is completely normal. So I've been carrying on with the Lupron to make the ovulation phase stick. In the morning I do the Lupron, and at night I do Gonal-F, which is an injection pen that helps stimulate the ovaries and produce multiple eggs, along with Menopur.

At the same time, I'm going every other day to get blood work and an ultrasound to track my progress. That's the way they track it: blood tests to see where my estrogen is, and an ultrasound to see how many follicles are developing. Basically I'm like a pincushion right now, because I'm sticking medicine into myself on a daily basis, three different needles. And I'm getting blood drawn from my arms every other day. Now I'm at the point where I'm going every single day so they can reassess the medicine,

to make sure the follicles are growing, and growing in the same range. Right now I have about 14, and they're all above 10 millimeters. The biggest ones are around 17. They want to get these up to around 20 to 23, but they want to make sure they all grow together. So that comes down to fine-tuning the medicine protocol I'm on every day. This phase is typically 10 to 14 days of stimulating the ovaries and making the follicles bigger, because the follicles are what hold the eggs.

The goal is multiple eggs, with each of those follicles having an egg. And let me tell you, this is where the hormones change and where all of these things are experienced, during the stimulation phase. As this is being recorded, it's Tuesday, July 30. I am most likely getting them retrieved the first weekend of August, in a couple of days. And this is where they move into the next step.

So the first step was consulting and testing. The second is the stimulation phase. And the third is the egg retrieval. When the follicles reach the right size, I undergo an egg retrieval procedure. It's a minor surgical procedure performed under sedation, as I shared, and they literally go in with a needle. I have to do a trigger shot right before this happens, once the procedure is scheduled. All the eggs are attached to the wall of the follicle, and after the trigger shot, the egg will find its way to the middle.

It'll float into the middle. And then during the procedure, they go in and suck the egg out of each of the follicles. Pretty freaking crazy. The process only takes about 15 to 20 minutes, which is freaking wild. I remember last year, one of the women there knew me from social media. She's like, you're Nikkiey Stott. And then she's like, I'm going to have some questions for you about diet and workouts when you wake up. I'm like, cool, great. I wake up to her asking me about macros, and I'm so out of it. But it was hilarious.

It's so fast. I couldn't believe it. And then honestly, a couple of days after is where I felt flat as a human, because all my hormones were trying to get regulated back. I felt like I wasn't even having a human experience, if that makes sense. I spent a couple of days crying, bawling my eyes out, just because my hormones were completely out of whack. Not because I was upset about anything. My hormones were just whacked out.

So it was a couple of days up to a week until I could really get back into any type of strength training. And during this whole protocol, actually, you guys, I am not working out. I'm walking, getting 10K steps every day, but I'm not going in for strength training, because during the stimulation phase you are required not to twist and not to bend, because that can cause ovarian torsion. So I haven't been working out. Can you guys imagine that? A lot of you guys find sanity in working out, right?

You find sanity in moving your body, and so do I. With my estrogen levels through the roof and hormonal fluctuations every day, the only thing I want to do right now is release some of this and go work out for my sanity, but I can't. Post retrieval, typically the day of the procedure, I'm kind of out. I'm just laying low, relaxing. The day after, I'll get up and try to move and do my best to get outside and walk. But there's a lot of pressure, and it's a little uncomfortable to do that.

But a couple of days after, you start to heal and get better. So after the retrieval, the mature eggs get frozen and preserved for future use. They're sitting inside, I can't even imagine it, a storage unit essentially, with all the other eggs frozen there. I have six now. I want 20. That's what I wanted to share with you guys. I want 20.

So I signed up for an Assure 20 program, where they can assure me 20 eggs. I'm hoping this next round I get 12 to 15 retrieved, because with the six, the protocol of medicine wasn't ideal. This seems to be the best protocol we've been on. So I'm hoping to pull as many as humanly possible so I can get closer to the 20 mark. But anyway, like I said, this journey has its challenges.

The hormone injections are physically and emotionally taxing. Sticking myself is painful. Last night I bruised myself. I'm not sure what happened, but I started bleeding more than I typically would, and I got a little concerned, and I ended up bruising. You're left to your own devices, because you're sticking yourself. And it's just emotionally taxing. There are days where I'm moody. I'm tired.

I'm so tired right now. I feel extremely bloated. And the only thing I can do is manage the logistics of the frequent clinic visits and maintain my regular routine as much as I possibly can, trying to eat well, though my appetite has been super decreased. I'm not sleeping well. Through it all, though, I'm reminding myself of why I'm doing this. And thank God for my family, my friends and my team. I'm leaning on them for support.

As much as I've shared the struggles of this, I am super grateful for this experience. Egg freezing gives me a peace of mind that opened up possibilities for my future that I hadn't really considered before. Navigating and researching this journey has truly been a journey of self-discovery and empowerment at the same time. And the benefits, as I touched on, are truly profound. It allows women to extend their fertility window, provides more flexibility in family planning and reduces the pressure and anxiety around our biological clock.

If any of you can feel that or understand where I'm coming from, I'll never forget when I was like 31 and my grandfather was like, oh, are you getting married anytime soon? Your biological clock is running out. And I was like, cool, Gramps, that's what I call him, thanks for that reminder. That's pressure. That's anxiety that a lot of people and our families put on us. They don't even know they're doing it, but they do it, and we're the ones that experience it. So this really gave me the freedom to focus on my career, on my personal growth and on finding the right partner. Additionally, it offers a form of reproductive insurance, essentially,

giving me more options if I face any challenges with fertility later on, as the quantity and all those things decline. So there's one thing I want to leave you guys with. Your reproductive choices are deeply personal, and it's essential to make decisions that align with your personal values and your goals, and to remove all the outside factors and environment that may put pressure or anxiety on you or make you feel like you need to do something at a certain

time. Ultimately it comes down to you and all the things that align with your values, your goals and you as a human. So whether you choose to freeze your eggs or explore other options, know that you have the right to take control of your future. And I hope that empowers you to make any of those future decisions that one of you may be considering, or even your kids are considering. For any of you that may be considering it, there are a few pieces of advice I would share from my personal experience. Number one, do your research. Learn as much as you possibly can about the process, the costs and

what to expect. Knowledge is power here. When I first consulted with a fertility specialist, I asked a ton of questions. Every single day when I talk to the nurse, I ask a ton of questions, because it gives me knowledge about this experience for myself. Another thing I would do is consult with a fertility specialist to understand your options and get personalized advice. This entire experience is personalized. Another thing I would say is prepare emotionally.

If you do move forward with this, understand that this journey is very emotionally challenging. Make sure you have the right people in place to support you along the way. And lastly, take care of yourself. Focus on your physical and mental health throughout the process. Self-care is so crucial, and so is knowing how to express your needs, your wants and what you're looking for, so that you feel the best you possibly can, with those around you giving you support for how you're

feeling personally throughout this entire process. So anyway, guys, I hope this resonated with some of y'all. Maybe you were intrigued by the journey I'm on. I appreciate those of you who reached out through DMs on Instagram saying, hey, I've been through this IVF journey, or I've done what you're doing and I understand what you're going through, and I'm here for any support or questions. This stuff means the world to me. Thank you so much. And thank you guys for tuning into this special episode of The WarriorBabe Show. Sharing my egg freezing journey has been an emotional but

empowering experience. I hope it provides insight and inspiration for anyone considering their reproductive options moving forward. So bless up, guys. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.

Nikkiey: Hey guys, real quick. If you're interested in taking your body to the next level, losing body fat, building more muscle and feeling more confident, do it alongside one of our 30-plus professional coaches. Work one-on-one with her to eliminate all of the guesswork you may have. All you need to do is the work she tells you to do to get to those goals of yours. To learn more, click the link below this podcast and apply to our VIP program right now.