Egg Sharing with Co-Fertility with Lauren Makler

She woke up with pain in her side and went to the doctor expecting an explanation.  She walked out having been told she might have late-stage ovarian cancer.  What it turned out to be was a rare disease documented in only 154 people on the planet. 

The next question Lauren Makler asked her doctor was, "Can I freeze my eggs?" The answer was no. They didn't know what caused her disease, and they weren't willing to flood her abdomen with hormones to find out.

So her sister froze eggs for her. By some miracle, Lauren kept her ovaries. And the experience of staring down egg donation as her only path forward, she was horrified by what she found.  Her conviction that there must be a better way to grow her family became the seed for Cofertility.

Lauren is the co-founder and CEO of Cofertility, a human-first fertility ecosystem that lets women freeze their eggs for free when they donate half. Today she joins Dr. Susan Fox to talk about why the conventional egg donation model is broken and what egg sharing looks like when done at scale.

You'll learn how egg sharing differs from traditional egg donation and why cash compensation, which is tiered by heritage, education, race, and "pedigree" was the first thing that struck Lauren as wrong. 

We explain that anonymity is unfeasible with companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe. 

She explains how a single traditional donor's eggs can end up in 25 families and why Cofertility caps at 3 donor cycles.

We talk about secondary infertility.

And why women in medicine experience infertility at twice the rate of the general public.

Finally, we highlight that egg freezing is not an insurance policy but rather an assurance policy.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Health University, where as I often say, we're talking all things fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum, and the prep for perimenopause, because these are short steps for many of us across the bridge of reproductive health and life for women. Today we have a really interesting conversation and an important conversation that I cannot wait to introduce and learn from Lauren Macler. So Lauren is the co-founder and CEO of Co-Fertility, a human-first fertility ecosystem that helps women freeze their eggs for free when donating half, making egg donation less transactional and egg freezing more accessible. She founded Uber Health, leveraging Uber's vast driver network to improve healthcare outcomes through patient transportation and healthcare delivery. After receiving a rare disease diagnosis, and she's generously offered to let us talk about that a little bit, Lauren's personal fertility journey inspired her to create a more accessible, empowering path for those looking to freeze their eggs or find an egg donor. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their miracle babies, Eden and Jonah. So welcome, Lauren. This is I I this is portends to be such a heartfelt, tear-filled, you know, important, important story. And so thank you for your genius in in creating this. And did I miss anything in the in in the bio that you want to uh add to? No, that's that's me.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Um I feel very lucky that I I get to do this with my time, you know. It doesn't feel like work when you when you love it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

I understand. Yeah, when we're truly in service and it feels more legacy than than business, um, there's just a driving force that is beyond nine to five. And of course, none of us what's nine to five?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Anyway, you you generously uh agreed when I inquired uh off camera to share a little bit a little bit with us about this origin service origin story. So do you mind telling us going on?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, so it's interesting. While I was building Uber Health, actually, I became a patient myself. Um, I woke up one morning with a pain in my side, and I remember thinking, hmm, that that doesn't feel right. Like there's something about this that just doesn't feel like it's gonna go away. And sure enough, that was the case. And so um went to the doctor, they um followed up with an MRI, or sorry, followed up first with an ultrasound, then an MRI. Um, and I had masses growing everywhere throughout my abdomen and pelvis.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

And they first thought that I had just awful ovarian cancer. Um, and that's what it looked like from the outside. And I remember just not understanding what was happening, and I remember saying, But how will I have children someday? When in reality I should have been asking, will I live with this disease? And the doctor told me, Well, maybe you'll be a unicorn, which is never really what you want to hear, right? Like maybe you'll be a rare and mystical creature. Um, but although it's better than never. Exactly. That's true, that's very true. And so I remember I had a diagnostic surgery later that week to figure out what we were dealing with, and it was a miracle in that it was not awful ovarian cancer, but instead I am one of 154 people on the planet to ever get this incredibly rare disease. Um, it's debated in the literature whether it's considered benign or low-grade cancer, but it's called um multi cystic peritoneal mesothelioma.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

And so I had these oh, such a mouthful, right? Um, I had these masses growing throughout my abdomen and pelvis. And if left there and left untreated, they could potentially grow and cut off the functioning of my organs, which was obviously something we didn't want.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Um, and so given how rare it was, I flew all over the country to find experts in this disease. It was a time before AI where now I would, you know, easily find the information at the tip of my finger, at the tip of my fingers. Instead, I was, you know, buying medical journal articles and building a spreadsheet to find these doctors and map the outcomes and things like that. Um, and ultimately found my surgeon and knew that I'd have to have a number of surgeries to remove the disease. And I was told that I would very likely lose my ovaries in the process. And my first question was, okay, can I freeze my eggs? And of course, that's oftentimes what people will do ahead of treatment for, you know, different um diseases that could impact your reproductive organs. And um, given how rare my disease was, they said no. They said, you know what? We're not gonna inject your abdomen with hormones when we really don't know what causes this incredibly rare disease. They didn't want to, they didn't want to trigger it proliferation. Yeah. Exactly. And so um, they told me that if I lose my ovaries, egg donation might be my best bet. And I was not ready to have children at the time. I actually just started dating my now husband. And I'm but I'm a planner, and so I needed to know everything I possibly could about egg donation. And when I started looking at it, I was shocked by what I saw. I could not believe how outdated it was, how antiquated, and how just like broken it seemed, right? This idea that women are paid cash compensation to donate their eggs felt icky to me. Yeah. Um, but what was worse black market. Oh, yes. What was worse about it was that that cash compensation goes up and up and up depending on their background, their heritage, their education, their race, their religion. Uh like those Empire egg donation success rates, yeah. Their pedigree, yes, their success rates, they're how many times they've done it before. I just it's like we don't do this for organ donation, we don't do this for blood donation. Like, why is this okay for egg donation, right? I also thought it was crazy that these donors were billed as anonymous, right? But no donation can truly be anonymous if, you know, ancestry.com or 23andMe exists, right? Like, why are we pretending that anonymity is a thing, right? I also was blown away when I saw that there's no limit to the number of families a single donor can donate to.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Similar to the whole sperm donation conundrum. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Exactly. So what happens in traditional egg donation is that a single donor will do one retrieval. Say she gets 30 mature eggs, which is pretty common, you know, for a donor between the ages of 21 and 34, which is what the American Society of Reproductive Medicine says they should be within that age range. If she gets 30 eggs, they divide that into cohorts of six, right? So one retrieval could go to five families, and then they try to get every donor to do it at least a total of six times. Oh my goodness. And so her eggs could be going to 25 families.

unknown 7:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

And that to me, I was just like, wait, what?

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Like what reality all anonymously. So you don't know if your neighbor.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

And so I at the time really wanted nothing to do with egg donation. And so my sister decided that she would freeze her eggs and donate them to me ahead of my surgeries, which was wonderful of her. And so I went through these major surgeries, knowing that if I woke up without ovaries, I'd have those eggs waiting for me. By some miracle, I did not end up losing my ovaries, but I got to live my life with the gift of frozen eggs. Yeah. I got to move about my life without this like pressure of my biological clock in the same way, right? I could make decisions about my career and about my, you know, relationship without that pressure in the same way. And so years later, I went on to have my first child without using my sister's eggs unassisted. Um, and I remember holding her in my arms and just thinking, I don't want to do anything else with my time and help people have this feeling that I have right now. Like I have this miracle baby right here, and I just, this is what I want to do. And so my co-founder, Hallie Techo, who um, she actually just published an amazing book about transforming and disrupting healthcare, um, she had heard about this concept called egg sharing that is done in small pockets all over the world, right? This idea that you can freeze your eggs for free when you donate a portion of those eggs. And what she realized was that it's a brilliant concept, but no one had ever done it at scale enough to matter.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

And so she and I came together and we put this idea out into a survey asking women between the ages of 21 and 34. One, are you interested in egg freezing? Over 90% said yes. I hope it was 100%. Over 90% said yes. We asked, what was the barrier to not like why haven't you done it? Guess what? Cost. Over 90% said cost. And then 66% of women said they were interested in egg sharing.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Remarkable.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

I thought it was broken. Okay. I couldn't believe it. I was like, this is amazing, right? Like these women understand that like this is a a win-win, this opportunity to both do something for yourself in your own future and help someone else. Yeah, that is so much divine feminine, isn't it though? Right? Yeah, right. Yeah. And so that's from that day forward, we never turned back. And so that was about four years ago. And we now have a team of 30 employees, and we get to help intended parents and donors all day, every day.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Wow. That is a beautiful story. And I I I knew it was gonna have to be that heart gripping, yeah, wrenching, heart gripping in order to you know fulfill such an important charge that had never been done before. So, like to create the your own charge and then fulfill on it.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

This is amazing. And I've got a few questions here. So I'm gonna turn my head to the side for one question. So having gone through what what you went through and having the gift, truly the gift of your sister donating, you were able to perhaps bypass some of what people who are in the present system, the typical system, are going through. Totally. What don't they know that they should know as they enter the system? And what what kind of questions should they be asking before they even make that first call?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Yeah, so well, it depends on what side you're talking about, right? So I both let's say the donor side. Okay. So on the so we think about this as anyone who is interested in egg freezing, whether or not donation is something that you're interested in, I always say that the first thing you should be thinking about, which not enough people do, are what are your family building goals, right? How many children are you hoping to have? First question. And at what point are you hoping to have your first? And like, where do you want to go from there? Right. And I think, and I say this because I'm actually someone who experienced secondary infertility, which is a topic I don't think we speak about enough. And for those who don't know, secondary infertility is when maybe you had your first and had no trouble getting or staying pregnant, but when you went to have a subsequent child, a second or third or however many you want to have, it is harder. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

You're not getting pregnant or you're miscarrying in there.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Yeah. And it's such a mind-bender because you're thinking, how could I have had such success the first time and what's happening? And oftentimes, you know, this secondary uh infertility challenge it really does have some explanations. I see this every day, all day.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Well, the most common explanation is age. You and your partner are both getting older, right? And I think part of what I get so frustrated by is this like, because it happened to me. It's a false sense of security that you like aren't someone who deals with infertility, or like, oh, that just doesn't happen to me. It didn't happen with my first, and so I'll have no problem with a second. And that's just not the case. And so my biggest thing with women who are interested in learning about their fertility or their bodies or even thinking about their future is like get clear with yourself, even if you can't nail down your exact plan for your future, at least know am I someone who wants to have one child, or am I someone who wants to have two or more? And am I going like we know that women in medicine in particular experience infertility at twice the rate of the general public? And that's in part because of how much training and education comes with that, right? And so many of the women that we see who come in through healthcare are not planning to have their first child until after all that, right? So if you are planning and you know that you're not gonna have your first child until your late 30s, then consider where does that put you once your first year of postpartum is done, and then by the time you're ready to have a second. So if you think about that, can you do anything now to plan for that trajectory? And so we talk a lot about egg freezing as an option or embryo freezing if you're someone who knows who you're planning to have children with, um, or at least just getting your baseline number so you know what your ovarian reserve looks like today. Because for women, you will never be as fertile as you are today. And so understanding where you're starting from, so they can at least make decisions from an informed place with a simple blood test or an antropholic count, just to know what things are looking like.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

So that's what I'd say on the egg freezing side. I mean, it's it's it's it's a bit of a a thorn in my side that that you know we we we have standards for getting your first pap smear and and and yet we we allow us what which really is quite a simple series of tests to go to go unattended until this person says, Oh, I think I'm ready now. And you know, if only uh they had known their their lab values or had had uh you know a simple anthropological count 10 years prior, they could have done something different. And now with with co-fertility, there is there is another solution. So all hope is not lost, and yet, you know, if you want your own biological children and you know, the and you and you are open to considering egg freezing, this this is if in my opinion, a no-brainer. And and I know that you mentioned embryo freezing, and I recently attended the Pacific Coast Reproductive Society annual meeting where there was a- Oh, you were? Oh, we missed each other, we were just passing, um, where there was a a a lawyer talking about the you know the some of the cases that have come up. Um right. And so given this is my two cents, unsolicited my two cents, yeah. Um given how how uh advanced the the field has become, egg freezing is really not the uh the the the kind of secondary or more or more how having more potential for problems as it once was when they first started. It is so it is so good.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

The bitrification technology, so literally like how they freeze your eggs has gotten so good over the last even just two to three years. It's really amazing. And we see that, you know, as we thaw eggs from our frozen egg donation offering, um, we're really not seeing, you know, a ton of loss in the thaw. Yeah. And so um, sadly, on the intended parent side, we often see women who even say, I froze embryos years ago with someone I thought I was gonna want to have children with, and now I don't, and now I need an egg donor. Exactly. And so, unless I would say, unless you are 100% sure that this is who you want to have kids with, stick to eggs.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Yeah, and because because you make the embryos kind of on the spot. All you need is is uh you know a sperm donation, and then you can make those those embryos and do the transfer on the spot when you're exactly when when when timing is now, not sometime in the future. So um, thanks for letting me get on my little my little soapbox.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

We couldn't be in more agreement over that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

You we we talk about you know the the transactional nature of the traditional uh or conventional, I don't even know what to call it, uh, donor egg model. And and and then you talk about the why the motivation to be an egg donor matters. Can you go into that a little bit more?

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, I mean, I think that first and foremost, like removing the stigma around donation is really important. But part of it is our model inherently takes away the icky parts about donation that really bugged me from the start. And so what makes co-fertility different is already sort of making that change, right? So we talk about family limits, right? At co-fertility, we limit the number of families a single donor can donate to through co-fertility at three families, right? Because how can we expect anyone to potentially be in touch, whether it's with the intended parent or with the donor-conceived child that's ultimately born, if there are that many families out there, right? Three felt like a realistic and manageable number.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

So that's number one. Yeah. Two, we offer disclosed donation, where if you'd like to know the family or meet the intended parents as part of that process and know where your eggs are going to, you can do so.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Please connect with us for a fertility assessment call at the link below. We'd love to learn a bit about you and share our resources. And make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you never miss an episode.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

We also um obviously we remove cash compensation, right? And I think that oftentimes people feel with cash compensation that they're like selling their body, right? Or that one woman is worth more than someone else. And so by removing that entirely, um, I think we kind of take a lot of that ick factor out of it and can make it feel much more like I'm really proud to have the organ donor icon on my driver's license, right? And I think that's the same way a lot of our donors feel when they go through our program. It's like, wow, I'm doing something for someone else that I can feel really good about.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Yeah, that is beautiful. And and you're right. I mean, if if someone is wanting to donate their eggs so that they can get cash, that's a whole different, yeah, that's a whole different person than Yeah, and no judgment.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

That's good for some people, right? But I find that we're actually not competing with the other egg donation companies for their donors because we're growing the pie of women interested in donation.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Yeah, and and freezing for, you know, um exactly. It's like creating access, yeah. So so a person a person who's interested would would, you know, would uh apply, I presume. Yes. What what is the process? And I and I don't want to go down too too much of a rabbit hole, but I but I'm sure people listening going, what do I need to know?

SPEAKER_00 20:38

How do I so you do have to clinically qualify to donate eggs, right? And and that is not um the like the qualification criteria is not something co-fertility created, right? Objective. It's right, it's set forth by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. Um, and we follow those requirements. And so you must be between the ages of 21 and 34. Um, you must have both ovaries, you must not smoke cigarettes, things like that. Um, there are, of course, some sort of like family medical history requirements. And so on our website, we have a really like easy to use application process where at first we start with a pre-screener because we don't want you to spend you know a ton of time on the full application if there are some things up front that you might not um qualify, like automatically we would know. So we have you do that pre-screener and then you move to the full application. Um, and then if you qualify, you have a call with our team where you have the opportunity to ask questions and make sure you really understand what the process is like. It's like both for us to confirm you are who you say you are, but also for informed consent. Um, and then there's a psychological evaluation as part of this process, a background check. Um, and then we'll send you for um in-person screening as well, depending on your geography.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

And so um, I want to ask is about the geography. Are so is co-fertility uh sort of in uh partnership with most, if not all, of the IVF centers around the US? And and is it even beyond the US borders?

SPEAKER_00 22:20

So as of right now, we're only working with clinics in the US. We have worked with over 225 clinics across the US in the last three and a half years. That number is growing by the day. Um, and what's great is that sometimes we um are introduced to a clinic by an intended parent who finds us and is excited about a co-fertility donor. In other cases, we have a donor in a specific geography and we reach out to the clinic and we say, hi, we have a donor who wants to stay local for her cycle, and that's our way to get to know that clinic. And so in some cases, um, the don't the cycle happens local to the donor. In other cases, she may travel. Um, a lot of our donors are like excited about the opportunity to travel. Um, and we try to, you know, make sure it's somewhere fun and cool. Um, but um, you never know. So um we do serve intended parents from outside the US sometimes. Um, it just depends on um their geography and what their needs are, but all of the cycles happen in the US.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Everything happens in the US, okay. And so so this donor or the person who is who is freezing her eggs and donating, uh, she will go to the clinic itself for the STEM cycle and the retrieval, and the clinic will hold those eggs.

unknown 23:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

And those eggs are held as co-fertilities of so it depends whether she's doing a fresh donation cycle or a frozen donation cycle. Um, and that's something that, you know, depends on geography and a lot of other things. But um, in the cases of fresh, um the intended parents' half gets fertilized right away and her half gets sent to long-term storage. In the frozen cycle, um, they are held until we have a match. Um, but you've you've you've nailed it, yes. Yeah. Um, and I think the other really cool thing that you'll probably appreciate is that, you know, with traditional egg freezing, you know, go to your clinic, you have your eggs frozen, you put them away. You can't really know much about their quality because they aren't fertilized, right? We know how many are mature or not, and that's all we know. But what's super cool here is that half actually are getting fertilized. And so we're able to share back to the donor, hey, of the eggs you donated to the intended parents, here's how they did, yeah, right? Like your, you know, the blast rate was X, and this many were euploid, and it's real concrete information. Yeah, absolutely. Egg freezers otherwise aren't able to have because they're not fertile.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Exactly. They wait again, maybe the 10 years and then and then go, uh-oh. Yeah, none of that.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

And so exactly. So if her egg quality doesn't look great, we are we share that back, and we say, you know, of course, sperm quality could play a role, but you should know. And we're just we really believe in transparency, options, and choice.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

And then in terms of first of all, I I never hear of people having fresh transfers anymore. I is it is it fresh?

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Well, so no, it's it's not fresh transfers, it's a fresh donation cycle. Fresh oh, I see, gotcha. So basically, it means that the eggs are fertilized on the day of the retrieval, much like in a yes, typical IVF cycle. Um, but they are often frozen and then biopsy PGT. I know as soon as you said that, I was like, of course. It's it's confuse, it's you it happens a lot that people are like, wait a minute. Um the yeah, the to get back to your question of like what would I tell someone at the start of this process? We talked about it on egg freezing. On egg donation, the thing that I wish I could tell more intended parents or that they knew before they came to us, and this is less so for a same-sex male couple, or they've always known they needed an egg donor, but more for a woman who is about to go through the an egg donation IVF cycle, is that it is nearly one in three women over the age of 40 that are going through IVF using donor eggs. It is so much more common than we think. Yeah. And so look around the waiting room. You are likely not the only woman in that waiting room using donor eggs. It is, it's just we don't talk about it because we don't have to, right? When the baby's born, no one needs to know that you use donor eggs, and so often it's not disclosed. And so that makes egg donation truly, I think, fertility's last taboo. And so I wish I could just share that of like, yeah. You probably know friends that have used a donor, whether sperm or egg, and just haven't shared it with you. Yeah. And it's just much more common than people realize.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Yeah. I mean, it it it is, it is, it is tissue. It is not right. Um, it it it is tissue that has the potential to then become an embryo and then become a baby. So it's not as though it, yeah. It the I I I I likewise wish there was that I could just open up the crown of everyone's head and you know, kind of sweep out that that debris of of shame that just comes from that's the the that secrecy. There's just a little bit of, you know, we're holding too much silent, and then it feels isolating, and then it feels yeah shameful or or somehow uh somehow wrong or or different. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

And I just don't believe that any path to parenthood should have shame attached.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

I agree. I agree. Yeah. So so let's talk about that path to parenthood. So babies are born, and uh and so so you have ideas about um, you know, like sharing the the the the the how this baby came about and and the beauty of the donation. Yeah, tell maybe tell us either.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

So I actually this is an area where we really look to the donor-conceived community. So what's really cool about 2026 is that for the first time we have enough donor-conceived adults to tell us about what that experience is like, to grow up donor-conceived, and in some cases to learn they were donor-conceived later in life, right? Or, you know, to so many of these donor-conceived people are advocating for the rights of future donor-conceived people. So the way that I see this is like, let's look to them, get their perspective. There's tons of research out there now that tells us what is best for donor-conceived people. And now, those of us who are building or are, you know, part of this third-party reproduction space, that research is available to us. And so now we need to change, we need to do better, right? If you know better, do better. And so that's where this like family limits thing comes from, right? That's where disclosure comes from. That's where removing cash compensation comes from because they feel better about it. But also what you're saying around sharing with your child that they are donor-conceived when they are still in your arms, right? And that way, as they get older, it's never news to them. It's never a traumatic thing to find out because they can't remember a secret, right? They can't remember a single day where you sat them down and shared the news. Like it was just something they always knew. And so I think that's the thing that, and we we have a fertility um psychologist on our medical advisory board who really helps us to um develop resources and content that we can share with intended parents who work with co-fertility to support them through this.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

That was my next, my next question. Do you have, you know, sort of forums or is it or or is it more sort of FAQ, um, you know, like learn on learn at your own pace?

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Yeah, so every match or intended parent and donor is paired with a member advocate on my team who really acts as um that sort of partner to each of our members throughout the process, from before they make a match all the way through. I mean, we just got a photo of a of a 16-month-old yesterday, right? So we stay in touch over over time. Um, and the content sort of gets shared in different ways. So it's always available. We know that people are reading about this in the middle of the night sometimes, and so it is always available. Um, but we do like to find other ways to share it. And so that could be through um like webinar type experiences, or um we're talking about ways to introduce more of these families to one another. And now that we we have um, we actually just had our 70 second co-fertility baby. Oh, um, you know, those now and with so many more on the way, like we want them to be in touch with one another and and creating that community is something we're excited about.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

That's beautiful. I I see I see a few uh in-person summits in your in your future. Right? Exactly. Uh-huh. And you can't you can't see it here, but I have a bulletin board of all the baby photos. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. Um, a question about location and where the donors go. Yeah. Um if if if a person who's donating eggs and freezing eggs goes to a clinic in San Francisco, yeah, does does the co-fertility uh group or or admin, are they able to say, then therefore these, you know, the the next two families would be in, I don't know, Texas and Tennessee. So or or or does that not come into play? Geography?

SPEAKER_00 32:17

It really doesn't. Um, especially because we find that in this day and age, like it's very uncommon that anyone stays where they start, right? Like I grew up in Rhode Island and then I lived in Boston. And then I lived in San Francisco, and now I'm put roots down in in LA, right? Like now my parents live out here and my sister's family lives out here, but we're Rhode Islanders, right? Like it's just less of a common thing. And we felt that the one way to really make that a non-issue is to share with this child that they are donor-conceived, but also to limit the number of families a single donor can donate to, and to have disclosure, yeah, right. Um, and and now we actually even get photos of the donor meeting the child that was born, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:09

Or um how often does that happen where the donors get to meet the intended parents and get to meet the baby?

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Yeah. So um I think only, yeah, I think it's all choice, yeah, right. So we find that um about 90% of our donors are open to a disclosed match. Um, men some of them will say only want disclosed, but most are really open to honoring the intended parent preference. Right? They know that you know they're the ones who are raising this child, and this is they want to really honor how they feel about it. And so um it really just depends. And and I always say like something my grandmother used to say in a different context is that every pot has its cover. And so we find that here as well, where you know, if the disclosure preferences aren't aligned, then we'll find a different match. Exactly. Both sides, right? Like we want everyone to have what feels right for them and what feels aligned with their values.

SPEAKER_02 34:13

Beautiful, beautiful. So I've been I've been asking the questions that that that uh I I wanted to ask is did I miss anything? Are there any salient points that you want to say? Listen, you know, viewers and and uh and listeners. Um this this this is something I really want to share, you know, heart to heart with you.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

Yeah. I mean, I think that I so much has changed in terms of the way that we grow families. And I think so often we are stuck thinking about the way things were or should have been, quote unquote. And at the end of the day, we believe people should have options and they should have choice. And so for intended parents, I said this before, but like there is no shameful way to grow your family. But it's important not to just think about what is the fastest way to get a baby in my arms, but to be really thoughtful about the implications of that, right? And so making sure that you're making a decision for the long term, right? Am I working with the organization that feels aligned with my values? Am I setting my child up in a situation where they'll have access to information about their genetics should they want to, or where they can have access to learn and meet their donor if they want to or not? Um and am I sharing with the people in our orbit and in my life and within this child's life the their truth, right? Or am I setting my child up to keep my secrets that felt for no reason, right? Um and so I encourage that. And then on the egg freezing side and egg donation side, I think um just our bodies have so much information available to us, um, but we can't bury our heads in the sand, right? And sometimes it's easier to not know and figure it out later. But I just believe in getting as much information as you possibly can as early as possible.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

Yeah, I and I would actually uh challenge that it it it might feel easier to have your head in the sand now, but truly we really also know that it's not. That that question is just on the other side of our you know consciousness. If it's a question that is, you know, if if it's a question, you know, do I want to have a child? And if so, how many, you know, how many do I want to have in my family? Whether you're address we are addressing it with you know consciously or and presently, it's there. And so why not look at it? Ask, you know, ask the question of yourself and um and then you know, takes take some steps. Like you don't have to go straight from this conversation into you know uh egg freezing tomorrow, but just taking a couple of steps to get yourself more familiar with yes, okay, I I do have some agency over my body and my decisions. And as you said earlier, so perfectly, your your eggs will never be as young as they are right now. And that you know, that is one qualifier, right? We also want to make sure that um people are being healthy because you know, the quality can improve with our with our whole health improvement. So um also don't you know if you've just if you're just out of college and you've been having pizza and beer for the last three years and up all nine.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

We actually you know the data shows that egg freezing outcomes are better at 25 than at 22. Yeah, I'm not a bit surprised. I mean, this is my work, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:58

In holistic medicine genetic fertility, I'm not a bit surprised.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Um, and not to mention, like the protocol you follow to go through an egg freezing cycle is complicated. You're your own chemist, right? So to be able to really follow that, um, I think 25 is a great age. Yeah. Um, I will also tell you, we have a lot of women who come through our program who actually aren't even sure if they want to have kids. And that's part of why they decide to freeze eggs. It's like, I just want to buy myself a little more time and flexibility to make that decision.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

Right. It is, it is an it is not an insurance policy, but it is an insurance policy. You can feel more assured, just as you said at the very beginning. I've never heard that I really love that. I just I just made it up. Really? I mean, I may not have been the only person on the planet who have ever seen that.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

I have never heard it, and I get so upset when I see companies or clinics or whatever call egg freezing an insurance policy because it's not. It's absolutely not.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

But but but you can feel more assured, as you explained yourself. Yes, you got pregnant through natural conception, but you just having those frozen eggs accessible to you gave you assurance that you could have the family that you desired.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

So and I actually ended up doing IVF for my second because at that point we knew that I could go through the hormone changes, but you're absolutely right. Assurance.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

You may you may take it. You may take it. Yeah, you'll hear it.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Soon you'll see that on our website. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Beautiful. It's as it should be, it's it belongs there. Yeah. Well, Lauren, this has been an amazing conversation. I and viewers, listeners, thank you for your time. I'm sure you have taken away from this conversation a lot of thoughts and ideas and and possi hop hopefully impetus to look into this further. Lauren's uh co-fertility website will be in the um in the show notes. So you'll be able to access um her and her team, fill out the application, learn more about it. And um, and yeah, I mean, it's it uh I please, please, please do not from this conversation go put your head in the sand. It's just a conversation. Share it with your friends, share it with share it with three girlfriends, yeah, and you and you'll know that one of them is likely going to be be uh needing or utilizing this. And so uh then you could be the the star that helps this come to life. Oh, I mean thank you so much for having me. This was fun. My pleasure. Until until we meet again, and and listeners, viewers, I always close out Health University podcast with the phrase class dismissed until we meet again.