Speaker 1: Hello Sunshine, Hey Bessies.
Speaker 2: Today on the bright Side, economist Emily Oster is back
Speaker 2: with more data driven insights on parenting, and today we're
Speaker 2: diving deep into a groundbreaking new research on fertility.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, March fifth.
Speaker 3: I'm Simoane Boyce, I'm Danielle Robe and this is the
Speaker 3: bright Side from Hello Sunshine. Okay, it's a new month,
Speaker 3: which means it's time for a brand new pick for
Speaker 3: Reese's Book Club.
Speaker 1: Yes, Big News.
Speaker 2: March's RBC pick is Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall Well.
Speaker 2: This book is all about young love and how it
Speaker 2: can shape future generations. Set in rural England, this story
Speaker 2: explores questions of morality and past lives as the characters meet,
Speaker 2: fall in love, and find each other again later in life.
Speaker 2: It's been called an evocative, sensitive and compelling novel. Well, today,
Speaker 2: our love story with data driven parenting expert Emily Oster
Speaker 2: continues and she's back talking about fertility this time. According
Speaker 2: to the CDC, just over thirteen percent of women will
Speaker 2: have difficulty getting pregnant and just over twelve percent of
Speaker 2: women will turn to fertility services. And these aren't just statistics.
Speaker 2: I'm sure everyone listening knows someone who has had difficulty
Speaker 2: on their own fertility journey or has had difficulty conceiving themselves.
Speaker 3: And as if navigating that journey isn't hard enough, there's
Speaker 3: so much conflicting information out there about fertility. I know
Speaker 3: so many women who struggle to determine where to turn,
Speaker 3: which doctor to go to, where to find sound advice,
Speaker 3: and that in itself adds a whole nother level of
Speaker 3: stress and frustration. So joining us today is everyone's favorite
Speaker 3: parenting expert, Emily Oster. Emily is an award winning economist,
Speaker 3: professor of Economics at Brown University, and a New York
Speaker 3: Times bestselling author. She's also the founder and CEO of
Speaker 3: parent Data, a data driven guide to pregnancy, parenting, and beyond.
Speaker 3: We have marveled at her parenting advice, and just recently
Speaker 3: her site, parent Data published over seventy five articles and
Speaker 3: started a new weekly newsletter where they explore all things fertility,
Speaker 3: everything from IVF basics to donor conception and even exploring
Speaker 3: fertility help for queer families.
Speaker 2: We are thrilled to have her back on the show,
Speaker 2: so let's get her in here. Emily Austur, Welcome back
Speaker 2: to the Bright side.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me back. I always love to
Speaker 4: see you guys.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's so good to see you. Too. Happy to
Speaker 1: have you well.
Speaker 2: Emily, you are such an essential voice in the parenting space.
Speaker 2: You focused on parenting for decades, but with this new research,
Speaker 2: you're specifically focusing on fertility, and so many people have
Speaker 2: questions about this. So what are some of the biggest
Speaker 2: questions that you set out to answer about conception?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so with this.
Speaker 5: New vertical and parent data, we were really set out
Speaker 5: to try to answer like three buckets of questions or
Speaker 5: sort of serve three buckets of things. One is for
Speaker 5: people just starting in their fertility journey, you know, just
Speaker 5: the basics of like how exactly does this all work?
Speaker 4: And this is the one that most motivated by my experience.
Speaker 5: I remember when I started to try to get pregnant,
Speaker 5: Like that was actually the first.
Speaker 4: Time I really understood how the menstrual cycle worked.
Speaker 5: And like, fair enough, maybe I should have understood this before,
Speaker 5: but like it was all really new, and there was
Speaker 5: a lot of stuff I wish I had understood about
Speaker 5: when in the cycle you can get pregnant and just.
Speaker 4: Like exactly how it goes together.
Speaker 5: And then there are a lot of people who are
Speaker 5: struggling with infertility in various ways, and when we looked
Speaker 5: out at that landscape, it seemed like it's hard to
Speaker 5: get unbiased, data based information about some of the basics
Speaker 5: and then some of the more complicated questions. And so
Speaker 5: there's kind of serving people who are just starting here
Speaker 5: and then trying to help people navigate when things don't go,
Speaker 5: like when you expect they don't go, like two months
Speaker 5: in you're pregnant, but you really want to know, like
Speaker 5: what are my options?
Speaker 4: What are the things that I could do? What would help,
Speaker 4: what would not help. So that's that's the goal going
Speaker 4: into all of this, is to answer those questions.
Speaker 3: Infertility seems like such a broad word. This may sound
Speaker 3: like a simple question, but how is infertility diagnosed?
Speaker 4: So it's not a simple question. So there's like two
Speaker 4: different questions.
Speaker 5: One is, you know, when do we start thinking about
Speaker 5: asking about fertility. So for people who start to try
Speaker 5: to get pregnant, if the woman is under thirty five,
Speaker 5: you basically want to try for twelve months and then
Speaker 5: if that hasn't worked, seek help.
Speaker 4: If people are over.
Speaker 5: Thirty five, that tends to shorten to about six months.
Speaker 5: So that's not a diagnosis of infertility. That's just the
Speaker 5: question of like when would you want to start seeking help.
Speaker 5: In terms of like how infertility is diagnosed, it's actually
Speaker 5: a much more complicated question. When you go into seek help,
Speaker 5: your doctors will do a bunch of tests for ovarian reserves,
Speaker 5: you have eggs, they'll do tests on sperm and ultimately
Speaker 5: sometimes there's something that can be directly diagnosed, like low
Speaker 5: sperm count or not having enough eggs, and sometimes it's
Speaker 5: just unexplained infertility, which just means you're struggling to get pregnant.
Speaker 4: We don't really know why.
Speaker 3: How many women are affected by infertility?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's about one in five women are affected
Speaker 5: by infertility. And I think people find that very surprising
Speaker 5: in part because until you want to get pregnant, usually
Speaker 5: you don't want to get pregnant, right, So I think
Speaker 5: we spend so much time in health class in sort
Speaker 5: of the education we give people about fertility, so much
Speaker 5: of it is spent on how to not get pregnant,
Speaker 5: And it's easy to conclude from that, like, well, when
Speaker 5: I want to get pregnant, it'll be easy, Like I've
Speaker 5: been investing so much in not getting pregnant. It must
Speaker 5: be that when I stop doing those things, it will
Speaker 5: happen right away. And I think that's that's not true
Speaker 5: for about one in five people. And we don't tell
Speaker 5: kids that certainly don't tell adults that much.
Speaker 3: So why is it harder for some people to conceive
Speaker 3: than others? Is there anything to the genetics of fertility?
Speaker 5: There's almost always a genetic explanation for most things. There
Speaker 5: are some things we know matter for conception, the age
Speaker 5: being the most significant for women in particular. And then
Speaker 5: there are some conditions that people can have that make
Speaker 5: it more likely that they will struggle with infertility, like
Speaker 5: pea cause or endometriosis sort of, some some kind of
Speaker 5: uterine and other conditions that will make this more difficult.
Speaker 5: There are some known conditions for men are surrounding sperm count,
Speaker 5: but a lot of infertility is unexplained, and that correlates
Speaker 5: within family in ways that suggest that there are some
Speaker 5: genetics or some genetics and epigenetics.
Speaker 4: But isn't that you could say, you know, here's the
Speaker 4: genetic code that tells you whether you're going to be
Speaker 4: fertile or not. We just like many things, know that
Speaker 4: there must be some some genetic.
Speaker 2: Component when it comes to fertility testing, what does that
Speaker 2: process usually look like.
Speaker 5: So there are a few very common things that will
Speaker 5: happen in infertility testing. So if we sort of think
Speaker 5: in general, there are like things that could be a
Speaker 5: problem with the woman and things that could be a
Speaker 5: problem with the man.
Speaker 4: And so one way I think.
Speaker 5: About it is, you know, in order to have a baby,
Speaker 5: you need eggs that are high qualities firm that'shih quality,
Speaker 5: a phallopian tube so the egg can get into the uterus,
Speaker 5: and a uterus where the pregnancy can grow. And when
Speaker 5: we think about diagnosing infertility, you want to they're going
Speaker 5: to try to evaluate each of those things.
Speaker 4: Some of those are easier to test than others.
Speaker 5: So testing for sperm, for sort of viable sperm is
Speaker 5: not that hard. Ejaculated to a cup and then you
Speaker 5: look at it, and you want to look at the sperm,
Speaker 5: and you look at how fast they swim, and how
Speaker 5: many of them there are, and what their heads look like.
Speaker 5: Sometimes there are problems where this heads are very pointy.
Speaker 5: They're not supposed to be a pointy close to be around.
Speaker 5: So male factor in fertility is something you could see.
Speaker 5: It's also possible to see, you know, do you have
Speaker 5: a functioning fallopian tube? Is the uterus a shape that
Speaker 5: you are the issues with the uterus. The thing that's
Speaker 5: most difficult to diagnose and is often where people sort
Speaker 5: of stop and then we don't really know is egg equality.
Speaker 5: You can get some sense of counts of eggs, and
Speaker 5: there are some hormone tests that will give you a
Speaker 5: sense of how many eggs someone has, but how many
Speaker 5: eggs is not self the same is how good the
Speaker 5: eggs are, and it actually itself is not necessarily a
Speaker 5: predictor of fertility. So those are the things you will
Speaker 5: be they will test for, and probably unfortunately, the one
Speaker 5: that you would most want to know about, which is
Speaker 5: egg quality, is something we can only see pretty indirectly.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with the Emily aster, and we're
Speaker 2: back with Emily Ooster.
Speaker 3: Emily, I froze my eggs a year ago, a little
Speaker 3: over a year ago, and it's become a huge topic
Speaker 3: among my peers. And in a parent data story you
Speaker 3: recently published, I saw a statistic that I was shocked by,
Speaker 3: to be honest, there was an eight hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: percent increase in egg freezing in the US from twenty
Speaker 3: twelve to twenty sixteen, and that number is just climbing,
Speaker 3: so almost a nine hundred percent increase. So before I
Speaker 3: froze my eggs, I did a lot of research. And
Speaker 3: the problem is is there's actually not that much research
Speaker 3: around because it hasn't been around.
Speaker 1: For that long.
Speaker 3: What does the research say about the longevity of frozen
Speaker 3: eggs and their eventual viability?
Speaker 5: We don't really know, I mean the eventual viability. You know,
Speaker 5: we can see numbers like seventy to eighty percent of
Speaker 5: thought eggs we expect to fertilize, and about sixty percent
Speaker 5: of those we grow into into embryos. So one number
Speaker 5: that we quote in one of these articles is, you know,
Speaker 5: each egg has about a seven percent chance of becoming
Speaker 5: a live birth.
Speaker 4: But those numbers are based on.
Speaker 5: Small sample sizes, based on pretty old data, and some
Speaker 5: of the questions you want, like okay, well if I
Speaker 5: leave over five years, is that okay?
Speaker 4: What about ten years?
Speaker 5: Like, we really don't know, because this hasn't been around
Speaker 5: for long enough, not enough people have actually tried to
Speaker 5: sort of go through to the end of the of
Speaker 5: the eggs reising and see what happens.
Speaker 3: I read a New York Times article a few years
Speaker 3: ago that said only three percent of women who freeze
Speaker 3: their eggs actually go to use the eggs, which is
Speaker 3: very low.
Speaker 5: So I think one of the things that happens is
Speaker 5: if people freeze their eggs when they're young. If you've
Speaker 5: read how Old, can I ask how old you are?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like thirty three when I froze them.
Speaker 5: So you know, say you then have a partner, you'd
Speaker 5: sort of start you're thirty six for thirty seven and
Speaker 5: you are interested in having a kid. Most providers would
Speaker 5: tell you at that point you should start trying to
Speaker 5: have a baby in this X way and see what happens.
Speaker 5: And for a lot of people freeze their eggs, that
Speaker 5: ends up being the way that they that this works out.
Speaker 5: Because of course, the process of defrosting eggs and fertilizing
Speaker 5: them and implanting them is a full on IVF process,
Speaker 5: which is a much bigger deal medically than sex, and
Speaker 5: so people will try and then often that does work
Speaker 5: for them, and then they.
Speaker 4: Don't end up using the eggs.
Speaker 5: So I think there's a sort of like it's it's insurance,
Speaker 5: but it's not even if you had frozen eggs from
Speaker 5: when you were twenty six and you were thirty seven,
Speaker 5: they wouldn't tell you to start with the twenty six
Speaker 5: year old eggs.
Speaker 1: So this is anecdotal and not data supported.
Speaker 3: But I've had several friends who are five six years
Speaker 3: older than me. They froze their eggs around the same
Speaker 3: age I did, and then when they went to go
Speaker 3: dethaw them, none of them worked.
Speaker 1: And so I have this.
Speaker 3: Very complicated feeling around egg freezing right now, because I
Speaker 3: while I'm grateful that it exists, I'm not sure that
Speaker 3: the science has really like caught up with where providers
Speaker 3: are telling people it has.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's that's right.
Speaker 5: Like a lot of things in this space, we sort
Speaker 5: of tell people like, oh, it's insurance, and then you know,
Speaker 5: you'll just have it and when you need it.
Speaker 4: It'll be ready. And it's like, that's actually not necessarily true.
Speaker 1: And I just share that because I think people should know.
Speaker 5: Yes, I think people should know that, And I think
Speaker 5: part of what's hard is you don't exactly know what,
Speaker 5: like it could it could work.
Speaker 4: It certainly like it certainly has, and you don't want to.
Speaker 5: Tell people this will never work because that's not true,
Speaker 5: and how we don't have the data to give people
Speaker 5: really precise answers to what is a chance that you
Speaker 5: know you will get these idita will vary across people.
Speaker 2: So for those who are interested in attempting egg freezing,
Speaker 2: what does the research tell us about how we can
Speaker 2: maximize the results of the procedure. I know that you
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier that age is the number one determinant of
Speaker 2: fertility or infertility? Is that true with egg freezing too?
Speaker 2: What's the ideal age? The ideal age is an interesting question.
Speaker 2: So when people do like research on like what.
Speaker 5: Is the the most cost effective age of freezing eggs?
Speaker 4: Actually pretty old. It's like thirty six or thirty.
Speaker 5: Seven, because the idea is like you could freeze them
Speaker 5: at twenty two, but the chance you would need them
Speaker 5: is pretty small because there's a long time between twenty
Speaker 5: two and you know, when your natural fertility ends, there's
Speaker 5: like a long time to need somebody and try to
Speaker 5: get pregnant the sex way, So there's more push to
Speaker 5: kind of freeze eggs a little bit later when it's
Speaker 5: more likely that you would use them if there were
Speaker 5: sort of no constraints, and egg freezing wasn't a somewhat
Speaker 5: involved physical process. You would ideally freeze them when you
Speaker 5: were as young as possible, because the number of eggs
Speaker 5: that you will get for a stimulation cycle and the
Speaker 5: quality of the eggs is likely to be higher because
Speaker 5: the younger you are, the higher quality are the eggs.
Speaker 5: So I think there's this trade off, Like it's not
Speaker 5: just snapping your fingers. I mean, Danielle, you did this.
Speaker 5: It's not just like you wake up one morning and
Speaker 5: pee on a stick. Like it's freezing your eggs is
Speaker 5: an involved physical process, and like all medical procedures, comes
Speaker 5: with some risk and discomfort. And so that's why there
Speaker 5: is a trade off, and we don't just say we'll
Speaker 5: do everybody twenty two.
Speaker 3: There's also this like unexplainable element of it. I was
Speaker 3: thirty two when I thought I was going to do it.
Speaker 3: I did all the tests and I ended up waiting.
Speaker 3: But I had more viable eggs at thirty three than
Speaker 3: I did at thirty two, which is weird.
Speaker 5: Yes, and also basically impossible, and suggests that there is
Speaker 5: a like that's that's on.
Speaker 4: The way eggs are.
Speaker 5: Like, I think this is a good illustration of some
Speaker 5: of the noise in this process. So you had a test,
Speaker 5: presumably some kind of AMH or like AMA, some kind
Speaker 5: of hormone. You had an AMAH test, and the AMH
Speaker 5: tells you something about the number of eggs that you have,
Speaker 5: doesn't tell you anything about the quality of your eggs,
Speaker 5: tells you about the number, right, And it's noisy, and
Speaker 5: so that means you know, you're testing at thirty two
Speaker 5: and thirty three. You can't have more eggs at thirty
Speaker 5: three than at thirty two.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, Like it's they only go down over time.
Speaker 4: It's not like sperm. We're making sperm all the time.
Speaker 5: Eggs you only get the once and so it can't
Speaker 5: be that they went up. It just means, like the
Speaker 5: data is noisy or something else, that you did change
Speaker 5: this this hormone level for you.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's so good.
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of sperm, I'm curious about what the research
Speaker 3: says about fertility as it relates to sperm, because I've
Speaker 3: heard recently that a lot of women think that they're
Speaker 3: infertile and it's actually the sperm, and we're not testing
Speaker 3: that as often.
Speaker 5: Actually, something like thirty percent to half of couples with infertility.
Speaker 5: It is male factor in fertility, So there's something wrong
Speaker 5: on that side. I think part of why we don't
Speaker 5: hear as much about that is that it is actually
Speaker 5: more treatable. So it's part of why it's such an
Speaker 5: important thing to test. Because there are many things you
Speaker 5: can do to improve sperm quality different from what you
Speaker 5: do to improve egg quality. So your eggs are kind
Speaker 5: of what they are sperm. If you're like I don't
Speaker 5: have enough sperm, there's actually a bunch of lifestyle changes
Speaker 5: that people could make that will potentially have large impacts
Speaker 5: on sperm in a relatively short period of times. The
Speaker 5: sperm's made over like a two week cycle. So like
Speaker 5: if you wear very underwear, or you like bike a lot,
Speaker 5: like Mountain bike a lot, your testicles are hot.
Speaker 4: Sperm doesn't grow well.
Speaker 5: With hot testicles, so like, just stop making your testicles
Speaker 5: so hot is like a good piece of advice. And
Speaker 5: then people smoke, You smoke a lot of marijuana, you
Speaker 5: drink a lot. Actually those things will also like lower
Speaker 5: the quality of sperm and number of sperm matter. So
Speaker 5: you know, male factor in fertility definitely shows up, but
Speaker 5: there's a bunch of things we can do, and even
Speaker 5: if you don't have that many sperm, you can like
Speaker 5: take them out and spin them around and put them
Speaker 5: in closer to where they would find the egg, so
Speaker 5: that it's like it can be a more tractable problem.
Speaker 3: I heard on TikTok that this girl was saying, yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, oh God is right, but debunk this.
Speaker 1: I heard on TikTok that.
Speaker 3: Potentially how women feel in their first trimester has something
Speaker 3: to do with sperm.
Speaker 1: Is that true at all?
Speaker 5: No, there are actually some interesting things about the sort
Speaker 5: of interactions between like the parent and some pregnancy complications. Actually, Like,
Speaker 5: so pre clampsia is like less likely if you switch partners,
Speaker 5: but like if you were a pre clamcy at a
Speaker 5: first pregnancy and then you switch to a new partner,
Speaker 5: like the risk is lower. It seems like that has
Speaker 5: something to do with men. But I do not believe
Speaker 5: that it.
Speaker 2: Is the case that you're sorry, No, Well, I have
Speaker 2: several friends who are contemplating using a sperm donor, So
Speaker 2: what are some factors that they should consider before making
Speaker 2: their selection.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so this is an issue that comes up for
Speaker 5: both couples where there is a male partner but they
Speaker 5: are not able to produce sperm, or more commonly, when
Speaker 5: there is no male partner in the couple or there's
Speaker 5: no couple, and the choices here we have on parent
Speaker 5: data a number of really great pieces written about this choice.
Speaker 5: One piece of this choice is do you want to.
Speaker 4: Know the person or not?
Speaker 5: And that's actually not so much a data question but
Speaker 5: just a like basic question of like is that you
Speaker 5: know anonymous versus known donors are a different experience, and
Speaker 5: some people want to have a relationship with the donor
Speaker 5: and some some people do not.
Speaker 4: So that's kind of the first important decision, which also
Speaker 4: has a cost element. So sperm is expensive.
Speaker 5: It's like fifteen hundred dollars a vial, and you know
Speaker 5: that's not as expensive as IBF, but it is expensive,
Speaker 5: and a known donor will often give you their sperm
Speaker 5: for free, and you can get more bites at the
Speaker 5: apple with the donor. So the question is really like
Speaker 5: in some ways, it is somewhat easier in the moment
Speaker 5: to have a known donor because you can have this
Speaker 5: ferm right away self and Semite do it a few
Speaker 5: times in a month, increasing the chances of it happening
Speaker 5: you don't have to buy the sperm, but there are
Speaker 5: complications down the line depending on what kind of.
Speaker 4: Relationship you want to have with the person.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back with Emily Oster. And we're back
Speaker 3: with Emily Oster. One of the greatest articles I've read
Speaker 3: on parent data was about the impact stress has on fertility,
Speaker 3: and I think this is a really interesting connection. What
Speaker 3: does the data say about stress and infertility and is
Speaker 3: it at all a myth?
Speaker 5: So this is I would say, like one of the
Speaker 5: most common claims that things that you hear about stress
Speaker 5: and infertility, and I think it's it's also one of
Speaker 5: these like very frustrating things that people hear because it's
Speaker 5: like I'm struggling to get pregnant and then I'm stressed
Speaker 5: out about that, and then it's like, we'll just relax.
Speaker 5: Did she just relax? Like just relax, and it's like
Speaker 5: the stress is making it worse. It's like, well, but
Speaker 5: now I'm stressed and I'm stressed because that's making it.
Speaker 4: That's making it worse.
Speaker 5: So you know, it's a hard, hard question to answer
Speaker 5: in the data.
Speaker 4: We have a little bit.
Speaker 5: Of evidence from some meta analysis data that suggests that
Speaker 5: there's a small association between sort of stress and IBF outcome,
Speaker 5: which is the kind of simplest way to study this
Speaker 5: because you know, people are trying to get pregnant. But
Speaker 5: the effects in these studies are mixed in their size
Speaker 5: and generally on average very small. There are, of course,
Speaker 5: some like very extreme things when people are very extreme
Speaker 5: stressful situations in which they don't have enough to eat,
Speaker 5: or there's like you know, kind of like large scale
Speaker 5: physical stresses on the body that can impact fertility. But
Speaker 5: if we're talking about like being anxious, being stressed out
Speaker 5: about things in your life or about the fertility, at
Speaker 5: most those effects are very very minimal.
Speaker 1: That actually is really wonderful to hear.
Speaker 3: No, really, because when I was going through my egg
Speaker 3: freezing process, everybody was like, you need to do acupuncture
Speaker 3: and make sure you're not stressed. And it's like, it's
Speaker 3: so hard to be going through that or IVF and
Speaker 3: function in your life and then think, oh, I need
Speaker 3: my stress levels down.
Speaker 1: It makes you more stressed.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think what's really hard in this space is we
Speaker 5: want there to be things that people can do because
Speaker 5: there's so much loss of control, particularly in fertility treatments
Speaker 5: that you know you in some ways, you kind of
Speaker 5: wish you could say, well, if you only did these
Speaker 5: six things, you know, it would work better. But for
Speaker 5: the most part, there isn't a lot of data suggesting
Speaker 5: that those things are helpful.
Speaker 4: And I worry that when.
Speaker 5: We tell people about those things and then they're not
Speaker 5: doing them, then that stresses them out. And even if
Speaker 5: that doesn't impact fertility, to make your life worse. Yes,
Speaker 5: so it might almost be better to say you don't
Speaker 5: have that much control over this process, and you know
Speaker 5: the main things you can do, or pick a doctor
Speaker 5: that you're comfortable with, and then it's largely out of
Speaker 5: your control.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, in this vein, there was a question that was
Speaker 3: posed on parent data from a woman in her forties.
Speaker 3: She'd been trying to conceive for almost three years, and
Speaker 3: she asked what she could do to improve her egg quality.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that she could do?
Speaker 5: There is really nothing that we know of that can
Speaker 5: improve your egg quality. It is mostly your age. So
Speaker 5: eggs decline with age, they acquire chromosomal issues, which makes
Speaker 5: it more difficult to conceive. There are a lot of
Speaker 5: things people are told about their egg quality. Coenzon Q
Speaker 5: ten is like the one I hear the most about,
Speaker 5: and in some ways there's no reason to think that
Speaker 5: would be harmful, but the data on these is not
Speaker 5: very compelling and certainly does that suggest any sizeable or
Speaker 5: significant effects. And again that like, that's so frustrating as
Speaker 5: a message.
Speaker 2: Emily, you have this gift for making inaccessible information more accessible.
Speaker 2: You've created these guides for queer couples who are trying
Speaker 2: to build their family outside of traditional family structures. And
Speaker 2: I'm curious, what are the most common questions that you
Speaker 2: get from queer readers, like how do they hope to
Speaker 2: see themselves reflected in these topics?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think the set of questions that that
Speaker 5: queer readers are facing in the fertility space are I mean,
Speaker 5: actually many of them are the same, and then some
Speaker 5: of them are different. And I think making sure that
Speaker 5: people's experiences are seen is one of the things that
Speaker 5: we think a lot about at parent Data and something
Speaker 5: that I think a lot about because, you know, I
Speaker 5: because I want whatever is the information we're able to translate.
Speaker 5: I wanted to be out to as many people as possible.
Speaker 5: And Maria Goodman, who did a lot of the writing
Speaker 5: for us in this you know, they work with a
Speaker 5: lot of couples who are going through this, and so
Speaker 5: that was like very useful. They were an amazing resource
Speaker 5: for trying to figure out what people are, what people
Speaker 5: are asking. I think the big questions there are just
Speaker 5: in some ways that choice set is much larger at
Speaker 5: the top. So if there are two women in the couple,
Speaker 5: you have to figure out how to get sperm, but
Speaker 5: then one person could carry, the other person could carry.
Speaker 4: There are options for reciprocal.
Speaker 5: IVF if you go through IVF where it's somebody's eggs
Speaker 5: and somebody else is the carrier, So like the range
Speaker 5: of choices are much larger. If there are no uteruses
Speaker 5: in the relationship, then there is this question of adoption
Speaker 5: versus a gestational carrier, question of who's ferm to you
Speaker 5: is a question of where to get eggs. So there
Speaker 5: are a bunch of pieces of logistics, each of which
Speaker 5: are also surrounded by some emotional valance. And what those
Speaker 5: pieces in the parent data really try to do is
Speaker 5: talk people through here are the choices, Here are the
Speaker 5: things that you're going to face. Here are the things
Speaker 5: you're going to want to think about so you can
Speaker 5: make good decisions and here's some data that you might
Speaker 5: incorporate in your choices. But I think it almost is
Speaker 5: starting with like, where does one start with this set
Speaker 5: of questions?
Speaker 3: Emily, I want to do a little factor fertility myth
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 4: Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 3: True or fall Certain foods cause infertility? False, You shouldn't
Speaker 3: consume caffeine while trying to conceive.
Speaker 4: False.
Speaker 3: When trying to conceive, it's best to have intercourse every
Speaker 3: other day.
Speaker 6: It's very important to hit the day of ovulation or
Speaker 6: the day before because those are the highest chance of
Speaker 6: getting the sperm to be waiting for the egg when
Speaker 6: it arrives in the Philippian tube.
Speaker 4: Sometimes people will.
Speaker 5: Hear you don't do it every day because the sperm
Speaker 5: there's like less sperm, but that is not well supported
Speaker 5: by data.
Speaker 4: Sperm comes back within about twenty four hours.
Speaker 5: So if you want to do it every day, that's fine,
Speaker 5: But doing it every other day is also fine.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: Prolonged use of birth control can affect fertility.
Speaker 5: There is no evidence that prolonged use of birth control
Speaker 5: effects fertility.
Speaker 2: Like all these answers, how about timing of conception during ovulation?
Speaker 2: How does that potentially impact the gender?
Speaker 4: If at all, it does not impact the gender.
Speaker 5: So many people have the perception that male sperm is
Speaker 5: fast but dies soon and female sperm is longer lasting.
Speaker 5: And so if you want to have a girl, you
Speaker 5: should have sex further away from ovulation, because then only
Speaker 5: the girl sperm will be left. And if you want
Speaker 5: to have a boy, you want to have sex right
Speaker 5: at ovulation.
Speaker 4: This is a myth.
Speaker 5: It's called the Shuttle's method, and it does not work.
Speaker 5: It does not result in having more boys or more
Speaker 5: girls or anything like that does not work.
Speaker 4: So that's not a way to impact the gender of
Speaker 4: your child.
Speaker 2: Okay, setting all the data aside for a second, which
Speaker 2: I know you love to do, right, that's like your
Speaker 2: favorite thing is just ignoring the ignoring the data. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like totally ignoring the data. But if we were
Speaker 2: to do that for a second, I know that you
Speaker 2: encounter people who are experiencing the human side of this,
Speaker 2: the human toll of this, right, like the pain of
Speaker 2: month after month not being able to conceive and throwing
Speaker 2: their hands up and trying to understand why, why me,
Speaker 2: why is this happening or why is this not happening?
Speaker 2: What would you say to someone who is struggling to
Speaker 2: get pregnant and feels hopeless.
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry that you're going through this, and I
Speaker 5: hope that it resolves in a way that makes you happy.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't think there is very much. I
Speaker 5: think it's a very strong temptation in a setting like
Speaker 5: that to be like it's all going to be great,
Speaker 5: it's gonna like it's totally gonna work for you, and
Speaker 5: I hope that's so much for everybody. But I also
Speaker 5: think that when we are talking to people about what
Speaker 5: they're going through, particularly when there's a lot of grief involved,
Speaker 5: to just say like, I see that you're doing this,
Speaker 5: and I'm so sorry that this is happening for you,
Speaker 5: and I hope that better days are ahead.
Speaker 2: I love how Brene Brown talks about grief and not
Speaker 2: looking away from someone's pain, like look them directly in
Speaker 2: the eyes and sit in the pain with them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think that's like, that's true for
Speaker 5: so many kinds of grief. And I think that that
Speaker 5: we sometimes don't think about grief as much in this
Speaker 5: fertility space. But there is a real I mean, there
Speaker 5: is real grief, particularly and an infertility and it's the same,
Speaker 5: the same grief. That's the experience and loss, and you
Speaker 5: know the kind of same way. Telling people, oh that
Speaker 5: you know they're in a better place is not very helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 5: saying you know, I'm sure it's gonna all work out
Speaker 5: or worked out for my friend, you know, she did
Speaker 5: fourteen rounds of IV aff like that. That's not helpful
Speaker 5: to just say, you know, hey, like I see you
Speaker 5: and I am sorry.
Speaker 1: Emily.
Speaker 3: For those who want to learn more, you have this
Speaker 3: great weekly newsletter set up for anybody navigating fertility treatments
Speaker 3: or family planning. Where can they subscribe and how can
Speaker 3: they submit questions to parent Data?
Speaker 5: So if you go to parent data dot org, we
Speaker 5: have a section on trying to conceive and in that
Speaker 5: section we have all of the content for the next
Speaker 5: couple of months. It's all free, and there is a
Speaker 5: newsletter of Lane there where you can sign up to
Speaker 5: get the newsletter, and there's a question box where you
Speaker 5: can ask your questions.
Speaker 4: So Paradata dot org trying to conceive, that's your answer.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you guys. This is awesome.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you so much, Emily.
Speaker 2: Emily Austur is an award winning economist, Professor of economics
Speaker 2: at Brown University, and New York Times bestselling author. She's
Speaker 2: also the founder and CEO of parent Data, a data
Speaker 2: driven guide to pregnancy, parenting.
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