Knocked Up Podcast - Fertility Through the Decades: What Really Changes in Your 20s, 30s and 40s
We take a look decade by decade at how fertility changes across your 20s, 30s and 40s.
We take a look decade by decade look at how fertility changes across your 20s, 30s and 40s. Dr Raelia explains why the 20s are considered the biological peak, with high egg number, high egg quality and fewer health conditions that can interfere with conception. She also unpacks why lifestyle choices, while always important, have comparatively less impact at this age due to stronger cellular health. For those not yet ready for parenthood, the discussion covers practical ways to protect future fertility, including STI prevention and why late 20s remain the optimal window for elective egg freezing.
Moving into the 30s and 40s, the conversation explores how egg number, egg quality and natural conception rates gradually decline, why miscarriage becomes more common, and what this means for both natural conception and IVF success. Dr Raelia breaks down realistic expectations for each decade, when to seek specialist advice and how conditions like endometriosis often come to light in the 30s. The episode closes with grounded guidance for each age group, including the importance of not delaying parenthood unnecessarily, the role of genetic testing in IVF for women in their 40s and why men also experience age related fertility changes.
TRANSCRIPT
Jordi Morrison: Hello and welcome to Knocked Up, the podcast about fertility and women's health. You are joined, as always, by me, Jordi Morrison, and Dr. Raelia Lew, CREI Fertility Specialist. Welcome, Raelia.
Dr. Raelia Lew: Hi, Jordi.
Jordi Morrison: In today's episode, we're breaking down fertility through the decades. We have mentioned so many times, probably every second episode, how age is a factor, but we've never really broken down in an episode what happens in each decade and how to optimise your fertility depending on where you are in your life. Let's start with the golden era, our 20s.
Dr. Raelia Lew: So the 20s, yep, they are definitely the golden era. It's your peak fertility. We've spoken before about how your fertility in your 20s is even higher than your fertility as a teenager. So we're pretty fertile once we get our menstrual cycle groove on when we're a teenager. But actually, interestingly, when teenagers have pregnancies that go to term, they're more likely to have babies with certain problems and abnormalities than women in our 20s are. And also from a fertility perspective, teenage years are often when our menstrual cycle is first getting its groove on, a lot of teenagers don't have a regular menstrual period and it regulates over time. But by our early 20s, we're entering our decade of peak fertility. And what does that mean? Our egg number is high. Our egg quality is high. Our cells are metabolically competent. We are at our most fertile. We're also less likely to have other things wrong with us that are severe and serious. So women are not born with fibroids or endometriosis or adenomyosis. Unfortunately, many women develop these conditions over time. So in our younger decades, we're more likely to get pregnant because we're less likely to be burdened by these other issues that can get in the way of being pregnant. And when we are younger, we're also more likely to have a younger partner compared to later in life. And male fertility is also at its peak in our 20s.
Jordi Morrison: In terms of getting pregnant naturally in your 20s, what are the chances of a natural birth?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Your chance of pregnancy for most people is extremely high. So getting close to 100%, it's not going to be 100% because things are never 100%, but your cumulative pregnancy rate, which means getting pregnant eventually, is very, very high for most people. In terms of that, the chance per month is going to be about one in five at its best, which means that every month that you try, there's a one in five chance that you would become pregnant and ultimately give birth. It does go down later in life but that's the best we can ever achieve in natural fertility. And I think it's a really good stat to remember because it gives you perspective as to what we can try and achieve in assisted reproduction, because we're trying to get people who are not fertile a lot of the time back closer to the population of people who are fertile. So if you remember that fertile populations have a one in five chance of getting pregnant per month in a natural context, that's a really good place to set our benchmarks.
Jordi Morrison: And if someone in their 20s isn't ready for children, what should they know about their fertility timeline?
Dr. Raelia Lew: It's hard because there's a lot of things in life people want to achieve before having a family and often people couple later in life even with the person they ultimately want to have a family with. And I think in generations past that happened a lot earlier. I would say very few people are having children in their 20s now, certainly fewer than ever before.
Jordi Morrison: Well, that's right. Actually, the average age of first maternity in Australia is about 32. That means that more than 50% of people are on the other side of that bell curve and having babies later in life for the first time. So some people are still, you might be surprised, having babies in their 20s.
Dr. Raelia Lew: And in fact, one of the stats, yeah, exactly, shock horror, maybe not in suburban inner city Melbourne and Sydney, but a lot of people actually in the country are. Our populations that we see in fertility clinics, we see a skewed population because people who get pregnant readily and easily and don't need our help don't come and see us.
Jordi Morrison: I was going to ask, do you see many people in their 20s as patients?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Look, I don't see many, but I do see some. So the type of patients that I see in their 20s, often people who have genetic conditions and are using IVF for that reason to avoid having a baby with a problem.
Jordi Morrison: Amazing technology.
Dr. Raelia Lew: Yeah, amazing. I also see proactive women freezing their eggs because they're aware that their fertility is the highest that it's ever going to be in their 20s. And I would say late 20s is a perfect time to freeze your eggs from an egg health and egg number perspective, electively. But a lot of people come later actually, even for egg freezing, because they're not thinking about having babies earlier these days. So unfortunately, we're not freezing eggs yet at the ideal time to freeze eggs. We're usually freezing eggs because women have the idea of the number 35 and they can't... want to come and freeze the eggs before they hit 35 because they say 35 is when fertility takes a nosedive. But it's not necessarily the peak age to freeze your eggs when you're, you know, kind of 34. So coming a little bit earlier, if you're thinking about that, is excellent. But obviously, if you come a bit older, it's fine. And we just need to freeze more eggs to compensate for the age you are when you freeze your eggs.
Jordi Morrison: So you're saying 20s isn't too early to freeze your eggs. It's actually the best time to do it.
Dr. Raelia Lew: I think late 20s is a sweet spot. I think if you said to me, when's the best age to freeze your eggs, I'd say 28. Because that's biological. I'm talking biologically. That's what we want. We want to know the factors we can't control.
Jordi Morrison: Yeah. We often talk a lot about lifestyle factors. If you're in your 20s, is this still relevant, lifestyle factors, when trying to conceive or think about your fertility?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Yes. It's relevant, but it's also less impactful.
Jordi Morrison: That's really interesting.
Dr. Raelia Lew: So it's relevant. Like smoking's bad. It's bad if you smoke in your 20s. It's bad if you smoke in your 30s. It's bad if you smoke in your 40s. There are certain things that you just should not do if you're trying to get pregnant. But our cells are healthier naturally when we're younger. So environmental pressures, they may still have significant impact, but their relative impact may be less. It's just like if you're training for a marathon in your 20s, it might be a bit easier for you than if you're training for a marathon in your 30s. And that might be a bit easier than if you're training for a marathon in your 40s. So your natural baseline fitness, medical and just biological fitness is better when you're younger.
Jordi Morrison: So other than freezing your eggs in your 20s, is there anything else you can be doing to impact your future fertility?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Definitely protecting yourself against future potential issues. So for example, a really straightforward one is STIs. One reason that people can be infertile is if they have blocked fallopian tubes after catching an infection. So just being vigilant with...
Jordi Morrison: Using a condom.
Dr. Raelia Lew: That's it. Barrier contraception. If you're in a new relationship and you don't want to use a condom, then getting both partners thoroughly checked out before you deviate from that is a really good way to safeguard your future sexual health. And looking after your body, because the thing is that a lot of things that happen to us happen over time. We put on weight. We maybe lose physical fitness. Maybe we don't optimize nutrition so we might become deficient in certain things. So just looking after your body, all the things that are good for your general health, good nutrition, healthy exercise, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, maintaining a healthy BMI, they're going to serve you well for your general health, which is going to serve you well for your fertility health. And that's for men and women.
Jordi Morrison: Your 30s. You've already mentioned 35, but before we get there again, what happens to your fertility when you hit 30? Is this a milestone or not really?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Look, it is in that your fertility throughout your 20s is pretty stable. It doesn't really decline. It does a bit, but not a lot. 30 is the age for women where egg count starts to change. The graph starts to change its shape a little bit and the decline becomes a little steeper. So we lose egg number. Egg quality is still pretty good, but our egg number starts to decline a bit in our early 30s. And so, for example, back to egg freezing, if you freeze at 28, you're going to get more eggs than if you freeze at 32. The quality per egg is going to be not that dissimilar, but the number you can achieve in a cycle is going to be better. Therefore, you need fewer cycles to hit your goal.
In terms of other things, yes, I tend to see more patients for endometriosis surgery due to pain in their 30s than I did in their 20s. And that's purely the factor of time and delayed diagnosis. Unfortunately, endo is common, it affects one in nine Australian women, and it's a disease that there is in general terms often a delay to diagnosis because early symptoms can be quite vague and people sometimes don't want to do the more invasive investigations at an early stage like a laparoscopy. When they've gone to their doctor, they've said hey I've got these painful periods or it hurts when I have sex, and their doctor said oh you might have endometriosis, let's send you for a pelvic ultrasound. And that ultrasound report comes back as not really diagnosing endometriosis because the signs, which may be real and may be there, are just too subtle to detect on an imaging modality like ultrasound. And so there's no certain diagnosis that's being made with the imaging and then the patient has to contemplate, well, do I take it further? Do I get a referral to a gynecologist? Do I have a laparoscopic surgery? What's my index of suspicion? And then they often have these kind of like feelings of self-doubt. Period pain can be normal. Maybe what I'm just experiencing is just normal for me. And so there's that. And so quite often in those early stages, endometriosis diagnosis is deferred. And by the time patient symptoms are getting to the point where they're actually, this is too much. It's not normal. It's getting worse. Let's take it further. The disease has gotten a little bit further along and time has passed.
So I see more women in their 30s who say to me, look, I've always had this idea that I might have endometriosis. Maybe my sister had endometriosis or maybe my mom had endometriosis. I've had these awful periods my whole life, but they're getting worse. And that kind of builds up that momentum to have a look and then you do a laparoscopy and actually, yeah, they do have endometriosis and it's quite bad. So the difficulty with endometriosis is that you can have quite widespread disease that doesn't distort the pelvic anatomy in an obvious way on scan, but it can cause symptoms. And another hard thing for doctors is that some women do have period pain for other reasons. They might have adenomyosis, which is when the muscle of the uterus is infiltrated by different glandular projections that cause bogginess and discomfort, or they might have pelvic injections. So they might have, for example, venous or veins around their uterus that get congested and that can cause pain. So there are other reasons that are not endometriosis that can cause period pain.
Jordi Morrison: I want to ask about natural birth because we talked about this in the 20s. What are the chances of conceiving naturally in your 30s? And also birth, you know, conceiving is one thing, but birth is another.
Dr. Raelia Lew: Another thing to say about youth is that you're more likely to have a natural birth. If you get pregnant in your 20s, you're more likely to have a natural birth than if you get pregnant in your 30s. And if you get pregnant in your 30s, you're more likely to have a natural birth than if you get pregnant in your 40s. And there's complex factors that interplay in that.
Jordi Morrison: And by natural birth, we mean vaginal rather than a C-section.
Dr. Raelia Lew: That's right. Or just also unassisted vaginal. So just not needing help in any way. So one, when our metabolism is faster, our babies are smaller and therefore they fit out better. Flexibility and connective tissue stretchiness is better. So we can stretch better. And those things together make us more likely to have a natural birth. And the younger you are when you have your first natural birth, the more likely you are to have subsequent natural births. So there's a bit of that going on.
Jordi Morrison: And conceiving in your 30s?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Conceiving in your 30s, it's going to be still, I would say, rounded in the early 30s to the one in five. But it starts throughout that decade to go more like the one in 10. So it can take you a bit longer. And it's not like it changes from, you know, kind of one in five to one in ten stat per month. It goes down. When you hit the age of 40, it's going to be about five percent per month natural fecundity. So that's your chance of getting pregnant per month being one in 20. So it's one of those things that every month that you progress, your chance gets slightly lower than the month before.
Jordi Morrison: So your early 30s. Yeah, that sounds very doom and gloom, but you're still closer to that one in five in your early 30s and it does deteriorate.
Dr. Raelia Lew: And that just means that if there's nothing wrong with you, it might take you a little bit longer to get pregnant. And these things do impact things like spacing of children, how long it takes to get pregnant between kids. And that in itself also impacts the age you are when you attempt your next pregnancy. And we do see in IVF in the 30s, particularly in the late 30s, we see a lot of secondary infertility. And that's when a couple have had a baby naturally without too much trouble the first time and then they try again and they're that little bit older and suddenly it's been six months, they're not pregnant, they come and see you, you try a few different things to figure out what's going on, you don't find anything wrong, and then another six months go and they're still not pregnant potentially. Or they might have become pregnant and had a miscarriage, which is quite common because as we get older, miscarriages become more common just because embryos making errors becomes more of a problem or more common a problem.
Quite often, we see a lot of patients in IVF clinics in their late 30s who probably might not have needed our help if they had had their babies a little bit younger. And age is actually the issue. So it's not that they have unexplained infertility. They have age-related infertility. And age-related infertility is the most common fertility problem. And everyone faces it. So the most fertile people who had all their children and stopped planning for more, they get age-related infertility too. They just have already got their family. So it's not a problem. But it happens to absolutely every person. We're also, all of us, a little bit in denial of that because of how young we feel in our 30s. We feel very young in our 30s. And I think we still feel quite young in our 40s, Jordi. I don't know about you.
Jordi Morrison: Some days more than others.
Dr. Raelia Lew: Some days more than others. Totally, totally. But you definitely notice a change in your 40s, which we'll get to.
Jordi Morrison: Let's do 30s.
Dr. Raelia Lew: Let's do 30s. From mid-30s onwards, from 35, egg quality decline becomes more profound. Egg number decline becomes more profound. It's less usual to be able to get the average number of eggs in an egg collection compared to when we were younger. We get a below average number from 35 onwards if we look at that cohort. And egg quality concerns become more common. Chromosomal random errors in eggs become more common. All of those things. Babies born with problems like Down syndrome become more common.
Jordi Morrison: That's also because of the sperm probably being older too.
Dr. Raelia Lew: Yeah, actually not. Interestingly. Yeah, there are lots of problems because of older sperm. It hits them a bit later. So paternal age over 45, we see problems.
Jordi Morrison: Is there a time when someone in their 30s should seek fertility help? There's a guideline here, isn't there, that you try for six months naturally. And if you don't conceive in six months when you're under 35, you see fertility. But no, six months, 12 months?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Six months. So if you're under 35, try for a year. If you're over 35, six months. And that just recognises the decline in fertility that happens over 35 biologically. And also, unfortunately, the decline in the degree of help an IVF cycle can give because we have to work with your egg and your sperm and the quality of gametes that you bring to the table is going to influence your IVF success rate substantially. So recognizing that if couples are older and they've been trying for six months, we want to get onto it as quickly as possible. Whereas when couples are younger, we give them a little bit more time as a general rule because we know that when they come and see us, we've still got time to help.
Jordi Morrison: And in terms of IVF success rates, how do they look like in your 30s?
Dr. Raelia Lew: So when you put an embryo back in your 20s, it's going to have about a one in two chance of making a baby as a blastocyst. It's more like one in three in your early 30s. And in your late 30s, it's going to be more like one in four. So what that means is that you have to have four embryo transfers to have a baby on average over 35. And some people over 35 will have more than that because not everyone gets pregnant in the average amount of time. And conversely, some people get pregnant with less than that as well because each embryo is a chance. And so you might get pregnant with your first try if you're lucky. But if you're average, it can take three or four goes in your 30s to get pregnant. And that's really important to understand. And I try and set that expectation realistically so that my patients don't spiral if their first embryo transfer doesn't work, because that is unfortunate and upsetting, but it's not abnormal.
We've got to remember that we're dealing with human biology. And when people need help, what that means a lot of the time is that they are behind the eight ball. Their fertility is lower than most people's. And what we're trying to do is get it back. And so it can be a struggle. And some people have really profound infertility and average fertility rates are unachievable for them. So we've got to get them there with their own egg and sperm if that's what they want and what we're trying to do. And that means we have to accept lower chances of success per attempt because their biological intrinsic problems can be profound. So what we're trying to do for the person sitting in front of you with their partner is get them the outcome they want with their own biology. Most of the time that's what people want. Sometimes we do have to pivot and consider other avenues. But if we're using your own egg and your partner's sperm, we need to do the best that we can with those parameters in mind. And it might be that average success rates are not achievable. We have to try and beat the odds for you in acknowledging the hurdles you face.
Jordi Morrison: And egg freezing, whilst optimal in your late 20s, is still relevant in your 30s?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Definitely. I would say throughout the decade of the 30s, egg freezing is relevant. The number of eggs that I would suggest freezing would vary depending on the age of the patient because we use age as a prognostic marker of egg quality and we know statistically that women as we are older require more eggs to achieve the same IVF outcomes compared to women who are younger, because the quality and therefore the chance of making a baby per egg is lower. So we can try and work that out for you. And actually we've got a great calculator on the Egg Freezing Australia website which I utilise, using Australian data actually, in consultations with my patients. And you can access that online, anybody can, and have a play. And you can put in your age as a marker of egg quality and you can play with a number of eggs that you either aspire to collect or that you've collected so far on a dial. And you can see what your chance of having one or two children is using those eggs in our lab. So it's a fabulous tool.
Jordi Morrison: Yeah, it is a great tool. Let's talk about our 40s. What are realistic expectations for natural conception in your 40s?
Dr. Raelia Lew: The chance of getting pregnant naturally at 40 is one in 20 per month, so 5%. It can take a little bit longer. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Lots of people will get pregnant in our 40s. Our chance of having a miscarriage if we do get pregnant, however, is extremely high. A lot of people have biochemical pregnancies, so they get pregnant, they get a positive, and then they get a period. And then unfortunately, there'll be an increased risk of miscarriage later on. So one in two pregnancies miscarry at 40. So it's a hard one. It's very hard. Nine out of 10 pregnancies miscarry at 45.
Jordi Morrison: I was going to say, we spoke about contraception on a recent episode, and you did say that the guideline for contraception use is into your 50s because of miscarriages.
Dr. Raelia Lew: That's right. So up to 50. So even though people will sometimes get pregnant, very occasionally someone can get pregnant and have a baby over 45 naturally. Everybody will have heard of someone who that has happened to, but it's the outlier, not the average. And most of the time in the contraceptive guidelines, we ask women to consider continuing contraceptive use to the age of 50 to avoid recurrent miscarriages, because getting pregnant with eggs that are likely to make mistakes most of the time, unfortunately, does create a burden of miscarriage in that population of women.
Jordi Morrison: And in terms of natural birth in your 40s?
Dr. Raelia Lew: It depends on whether you've had natural births in your 20s and 30s already. So if you are someone who's had babies earlier, then you've got a better chance. But having a first natural birth in your 40s, while it can happen, is also less likely because what happens is we're having a baby when we're metabolically challenged compared to our earlier life a lot of the time. So many women have problems in pregnancy like gestational diabetes and their baby can just be larger for gestational age. And so it can be more tricky. And also our tissues are less stretchy. So we're less likely to be able to dilate and have a baby naturally. We're more prone to things like serious and severe tears and prolapse and that kind of thing because of the integrity of our connective tissues being affected. We can be really fit in our 40s and some people will have a natural birth and we'll be fine, but many people unfortunately compared to in our younger years will require assistance. And sometimes people don't want to have a natural birth. I'm a big advocate for choice. I think it's reasonable for women to choose what they want. You will have more women asking for elective caesarean birth in our 40s because of all the horrible things that can happen, unfortunately. And it's reasonable. You know, I think it's reasonable, especially because women often in our 40s, particularly if they suffered infertility, they don't want to take risks. They want to potentially just have the safest birth possible. And if they have risk factors, they might just want to avoid those. So that's understandable as well.
Jordi Morrison: Definitely. What are the options if you're struggling to conceive in your 40s?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Look, if you're struggling to conceive in your 40s, I would say stop. Don't pass go. Go straight to a fertility doctor. If you've been trying for six months and you're not pregnant, it's enough. Go and see someone. We are pushing the limits of what is humanly possible having babies in our 40s. And we need to get help and we need to get help ASAP if we want to have a baby with our own egg in our 40s. If we've frozen eggs when we were younger, we might want to consider using them depending on the age you are rather than trying with your own eggs. Some people want to keep them for the future and I would support women in their early 40s trying to have a baby with their own egg. If they have a reasonable reserve and there's the possibility to do genetic testing of embryos, that can be very, very helpful because one of the main reasons embryos fail is what's called chromosomal aneuploidy. And picking that up before the embryo goes back saves a lot of heartache when women are subjected to the risk of miscarriage or just cycles that don't work. And we can pick that up for many embryos if we test them. But then again, not everybody is the perfect candidate for genetic testing of embryos, but it is very powerful. Interestingly, we normalise the chance of success to a great degree when we only transfer tested embryos for patients in our 40s. It can be extremely helpful.
Jordi Morrison: And the 40s is the big era for male fertility decline.
Dr. Raelia Lew: That's right. So men over 45 have significant fertility decline. Like us as women, men also collect pathologies as we get older. So men over 45 are more likely to have metabolic decline. They're more likely to have things like varicose veins of the scrotum, which can affect temperature regulation and sperm quality. They're more likely to have other conditions that can be negative for fertility, things like diabetes or pre-diabetes. They might be more likely to have conditions like obesity. So these things are all negative for fertility. We can also see an increased number of random genetic errors happening in sperm. So things like de novo mutations, more likely to have a baby with something like dwarfism, for example, because of a de novo paternal mutation, more likely to have epigenetic change in sperm, more likely to have a baby with autism or complex medical conditions like schizophrenia, also associated with advancing paternal age. So it's not necessarily absolute infertility that only declines, but it's also the health of the child.
Jordi Morrison: Yeah, so these things do decline. And also when you look at sperm counts, men who are older have lower sperm counts and they also have lower motility, lower morphology. So their parameters in the sperm are worse and DNA damage in the sperm is more common. So while men don't lose their fertility completely, they certainly decline with age. To finish off, Raelia, can you just give us one thing that you wish everyone in their 20s, 30s and 40s knew about fertility?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Sure. Do you mean specific to the decade or just in general?
Jordi Morrison: I think it's specific to the decade.
Dr. Raelia Lew: So for women in our 20s, I would say just know your physiology. Just be aware. Don't just know how not to get pregnant. Learn how to get pregnant. Think about what you want, not just for your life, not just for your education, not just for your career, but also for your family, and plan proactively so that you can achieve those goals.
For women in their 30s, I would say, and again, this is a little bit doom and gloom, but you don't have forever to have a baby would be my message. And if you want to have a baby, have a baby. One thing that I would say, looking back at my own life and, you know, without being too paternalistic or maternalistic, what I reflect upon... and I've achieved a lot in my life. I've done a lot of study. I've got a medical degree. I've got a PhD. I've got a master's degree. I've got a CREI qualification. I've got an ONG qualification from RANZCOG. I've done a lot of study and a lot of achievement and a lot of career progression. I've been a fertility specialist. I've been a public hospital fertility specialist, a private fertility specialist. I've been medical director of an IVF unit. I've achieved a lot in career. What I can tell you is that it is not a race to the finish and that these things are achieved over many, many decades. And I think that a lot of people, when they're on the trajectory, feel like they don't have time to have a baby or they want to achieve X, Y, Z before they have a baby. And what I would say to those women and couples is that you don't have to do everything all at once. Life is not a race. You can achieve many things over many decades, and you will. And there actually is time to stop and have a baby. And you will get back on your trajectory if that's what's important to you. You shouldn't be frightened. You shouldn't procrastinate based on fear.
And I think that is probably one of the things I got right in my life is I had my babies in my 30s. And I think that was in my early 30s, actually. And I think that was good. And it didn't stop me doing anything. So I think that's really important. I think people need to know that. And you can still travel and you can still do fun stuff when you've got children. And so I think, you know, if you're with somebody who you want to have babies with, then you should, if that's what you want. And don't put it off unnecessarily. I see patients come to me in their 40s who've been together since their early 30s a lot. And now they're ready. So look, and I don't mean that also to sound pejorative, but the thing is, it's difficult because they're ready mentally, but biologically they're way past their prime. So what we've got to do, and I don't think we'll ever go back to our grandparents' generation of being aligned and starting having our families at 21, I just don't think that's realistic. However, we've got to create a bit more alignment between what's biologically best and what is socially best. And we've got to think, well, how do we do that? How do we achieve that? What do we need to do differently to what we're doing now? Because I think we're kind of winging it and it's not working. So that's my comment.
Jordi Morrison: Thank you, Raelia. Definitely some food for thought. Okay, recording. And if you're in your 20s and 30s and you're really not ready to have a baby and you're like, well, that's fine for her to say, but I just can't right now, freeze your eggs. Freeze lots. The younger you are, the better. And we are amazing at making babies with frozen eggs at Melbourne IVF. So that would be my advice. To support Knocked Up, leave us a review or recommend to a friend. Join us on Instagram @knockeduppodcast and join Raelia @drraelialew. And email us your questions to podcast@womenshealthmelbourne.com.au.
Hosted by Dr Raelia Lew and Jordi Morrison
Dr Raelia Lew is a RANZCOG Board Certified CREI Fertility specialist, Gynaecologist and the Director of Women’s Health Melbourne.
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