I always joke that if I do end up having kids from this, I can be like, ‘You know, I could have bought a Chanel bag but I decided to freeze you instead.’ — Jo Dhesi

    WHEN Jo Dhesi froze her eggs in early February she chose to avoid the typical fertility clinic. Instead, the newly single 29-year-old opted for a “boutique clinic” in midtown Manhattan called Extend Fertility, one of a growing number of medical companies that cater specifically to millennials and market the procedure as a way for women to take control over their lives. Dhesi considered freezing her eggs as a way to buy herself peace of mind. She felt empowered by her choice and didn’t want to be in a clinic designed for women who are, as she put it, “you know, having issues starting a family.”

    Extend, like Prelude Fertility and Progyny, is part of a new crop of start-ups marketing egg freezing to women under 35 and capitalizing on a very real biological conundrum: As more aspiring mothers delay childbirth to climb the career ladder or find the right partner, their fertility starts to wane in their 30s. In lieu of the typical medical experience, however, these companies offer sleek decors and top-notch customer service to help brand the procedure as a proactive choice. Just like Uber, Seamless, Spotify, and Tinder, they cater to the millennial desire for infinite options and a user experience that’s more stylish and efficient than the traditional clinic.

    Up until a few years ago, egg freezing wasn’t recommended for most women. The procedure was primarily offered to women undergoing cancer treatments and by clinics specializing in infertility. Success rates were low because eggs were frozen so slowly that ice would often form and damage the cells. But in 2012 the freezing technology had advanced enough that the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) announced the procedure was no longer “experimental.” Since then, it’s become more popular and doctors have begun recommending it to healthy, young women.

    Despite its increasing popularity, egg freezing still has low rates of success. According to the ASRM there’s a 2 to 12 percent chance that any single frozen egg will result in a baby — most fertility clinics will retrieve a minimum of one dozen eggs so that women have at least a 24 percent chance of motherhood. The available data is imperfect because it includes eggs frozen with both the old and new methods, but most medical studies put the success rate between 25 and 50 percent.

    In the last few years, “elective freezing” has become more popular among millennials. Tech companies such as Facebook and Apple now cover the procedure’s cost and by 2018, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) estimates that 76,000 women will freeze their eggs — more than 15 times the rate in 2013. Those numbers mean big business for medical companies that market prolonged fertility as freedom.

    And marketing for Extend, Prelude, and Progyny is critical to their message: Their websites feature animated fertility fact videos set to upbeat music and photos of smiling young women under chatty captions like “Best gift to self. Ever.” and “Hit the snooze button on your biological clock.”

    The companies also cater to young women’s budgets. Extend Fertility offers egg freezing for under US$5,000 — which, while not cheap, is less than half of what women pay at regular fertility clinics (fine print: Hormones and storage not included). However, once clients want to use their eggs, Extend patients will also have to pay at least another US$12,000 for IVF. Prelude offers a subscription-based pricing model that starts at US$199/month for egg freezing (and sperm freezing for couples) over the course of four years, with a down payment that ranges from US$3,000 to US$10,000 depending on whether the woman wants to pay upfront IVF.

    While egg freezing has been around for 30 years, it’s no spa treatment. The 8- to 12-day process requires daily injections of ovary-stimulating hormones, regular vaginal ultrasounds, and, finally, the insertion of a needle through the vaginal wall to extract the eggs.

    The main side effect is ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), which in its mildest form can include symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, bloating, and abdominal pain, and, in more severe cases, can lead to internal bleeding and kidney failure. Extreme OHSS only happens 1 percent of the time, but in a few instances has resulted in death.

    When the ASRM removed the “experimental” label from egg freezing back in 2012, its research contained the important caveat that there was “not yet sufficient data” to recommend egg freezing to healthy women who simply want to delay childbirth.

    There is still a lack of long-term studies on the effects of the procedure on mothers and their babies, but companies are clearly more concerned with targeting a whole new consumer base than being medically cautious.

    Dhesi decided to go through with the procedure after thinking about it for less than a week and says she has no regrets. The day after her eggs were frozen she felt “a little bloated” but described the side effects as “nothing crazy.” Though she hates needles, the ones she used to inject her stomach with hormones were so tiny they didn’t bother her. In fact, she feels so relieved to have her eggs on ice that she’s already convinced a few single friends to sign up for the process.

    “So many things that we buy are so meaningless — [but] this is something that is going to provide me a lot more internal happiness than a purse would,” she says. (SD-Agencies)