WALNUT CREEK, California — On Tuesday night, a group of 30 men and women gathered at a restaurant in a quaint California town to hear an OB-GYN and fertility specialist known as “the egg whisperer,” Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh, discuss the advent of egg-freezing parties, a new trend that could help working women maintain what society has always deemed to be the foremost test of femininity–namely, fertility.
Dr. Eyvazzadeh calls her gatherings the “new tupperware party,” and her goal with the egg freezing parties is to provide women (and whomever they may have in their lives) with a comfortable environment in which they can ask questions to better familiarize themselves with the process of preserving their eggs and exploring their fertility options. She sees having access to information about the option of freezing one’s eggs as important, which has inspired her to host a series of egg freezing parties throughout the Bay Area.
It’s something Dr. Eyvazzadeh told Breitbart News that she was born to do. “I call myself Dora the egg rescuer,” she said. “I go to work every day to rescue eggs.”
Following cocktails, appetizers and a slideshow presentation about women’s reproductivity at 1515 Lounge on Main Street, Dr. Eyvazzadeh explained the process by which a set of tests determines numerical values in three different areas to plug into a mathematical equation that determines a woman’s fertility. “Now that this information is available, a woman can find out what her chances are at becoming pregnant based on her age,” she said.
Several societal misconceptions were set straight on Tuesday night. A variety of factors could push a woman to consider freezing her eggs, besides the most common assumption that doing so would be solely due to her career.
“I have frozen eggs in women as young as 21 who have a medical condition that requires egg freezing.” And conversely, she’s frozen eggs in women up to the age of 43.
In addition to several single women in the crowd, there were some married couples present.
“They’re here because they may not realize whether this is the right relationship for them. And they don’t want to wait until the relationship ends” and their window for conceiving has tightened due to the aging of their eggs, Dr. Eyvazzadeh told Breitbart News.
And with the rise in the number of divorces throughout the United States, Dr. Eyvazzadeh said that it’s not unlikely for a woman to “end up splitting up with the guy or the girl, and finding the right guy later after you’ve frozen your eggs.” She noted that “It’s nice to know that you can make the right choice for [yourself] using frozen eggs in the future and just wait for the right partner.”
Wendy Messman, 37, was present at the party. She is a single, working woman who has recently begun the process of freezing her eggs. She told Breitbart News that she simply was not ready to have a child in the past, but is now closer to taking that step, citing her desire to travel, live, and work on other continents, such as Asia and Europe as having taken precedence before.
Messman recently underwent a career change from working in mergers and acquisitions to acquiring her sommelier degree, in what she described as a path that will allow her to focus more on herself.
Asked what made her decide to go through with the process, Wendy said, “whether I am with a man or not, I think it’s better to have healthier eggs if I’m going to delay that process.”
Chris and Maribel Lalanne, who are “success story” fertility treatment patients of Dr. Eyvazzadeh’s, provided a different set of reasons as to why more women are waiting to have children.
The couple said the reason why egg freezing is considered taboo by many is due to a misconception that “people are putting off having a family to put their career first; and it’s not necessarily that. In my circle of friends,” Maribel said, it’s not so much putting their careers first.
“It’s more so Mr. Right hasn’t happened.” She also pointed out that a lot of her friends are “finding themselves divorced younger than they had thought” and cited infidelity as a main proponent of that cause.
Women interested in attending one of Dr. Eyvazzadeh’s upcoming egg-freezing parties can register on her website.
She points out that “the survivability of eggs is not 100%,” but that figure can increase or decrease based on a woman’s personal fertility equation. The process of egg freezing starts at approximately $15,000.
In closing, Dr. Eyvazzadeh told Breitbart News she wanted women to hear the following message:
Fertility is not skin deep and fertility problems don’t discriminate based on age, race, education levels, socioeconomic levels. And [infertility] hurts everyone the same way. So if you have the opportunity to freeze your eggs because you have information that may tell you that you might not have the opportunity to get pregnant in the future? Well that’s something that I wish every woman had a chance to do.”
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