Should You Freeze Your Eggs? The Truth About Timing, Costs + Common Mistakes with Dr. Raelia Lew

What age should you seriously start thinking about freezing your eggs?

In this powerful and practical episode of Get Rich, Molly Benjamin sits down with fertility specialist Dr Raelia Lew to unpack everything you actually need to know about egg freezing — from the ideal age to consider it, to what the process involves, how much it costs, and the biggest mistake Raelia sees women make when it comes to their fertility.

They cover:

• Why any woman not planning kids before 30 should consider egg freezing
• What age egg quality starts to decline (and why 35 is a critical number)
• How the freezing process works, step by step
• What tests you need, and what your AMH results actually mean
• The truth about costs — including Medicare and PBS rebates
• And the emotional relief egg freezing can bring, especially if you're feeling pressure around your timeline

Raelia also debunks common myths (spoiler: it’s not surgery), shares her take on the “egg harvest,” and explains why freezing your eggs is the only real anti-ageing move for your fertility.

Whether you're in your 20s, 30s, or just egg-freeze curious — this episode is a must-listen for any woman who wants to understand her options and feel empowered about her future.

🎧 Tune in now and get informed, not overwhelmed.

CHAPTERS

00:00 – Welcome to Get Rich & Molly’s egg freezing journey
03:11 – Who should consider freezing their eggs?
04:30 – Why age matters: when egg quality starts to decline
04:51 – First steps: GP referral, tests & seeing a fertility specialist
06:22 – Understanding your egg reserve & AMH test
07:12 – How many eggs should you freeze? (It’s different for everyone)
08:06 – When do hormone injections start & how do they work?
09:24 – How many injections are needed and options to reduce them
11:22 – What happens during egg collection (“OPU” or egg pick-up)
12:56 – Recovery after egg freezing
13:31 – Ongoing storage costs & moving frozen eggs if you relocate
14:56 – How much does egg freezing cost? What does Medicare cover?
16:30 – Cost of medications & PBS rebates if medically eligible
17:57 – What a full cycle realistically costs
18:33 – The biggest mistake women make with egg freezing
19:58 – Why frozen eggs can give you a similar success rate to fresh eggs
20:56 – How the uterus ages (or doesn’t!)
21:11 – Where to find Dr Raelia Lew & more resources

LINKS AND RESOURCES FROM THE EPISODE

Women’s Health Melbourne - https://www.womenshealthmelbourne.com.au/
Melbourne IVF - https://www.mivf.com.au/
Knocked Up Podcast - https://www.womenshealthmelbourne.com.au/blog

CONNECT WITH DR RAELIE LEW

Website: https://www.womenshealthmelbourne.com.au/dr-raelia-lew
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-raelia-lew-883ba766/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womenshealthmelbourne/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/womenshealthmelbourne

CONNECT WITH LADIES FINANCE CLUB

Join our free Facebook group - Ladies Finance Club Money Chat
Website: https://www.ladiesfinanceclub.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ladiesfinanceclub/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ladies-finance-club/

TAKEAWAYS

• The first step in egg freezing is getting a referral to a fertility specialist.
• Understanding your egg reserve is crucial and involves tests like ultrasounds and AMH tests.
• Hormonal injections are necessary to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs.
• Egg extraction is a safe procedure that can be done under local anesthetic or conscious sedation.
• There are ongoing costs associated with storing frozen eggs, which need to be considered.
• Medicare does not cover elective egg freezing, leading to out-of-pocket expenses for patients.
• The cost of egg freezing can vary significantly based on individual circumstances and medical needs.
• Women often regret not freezing their eggs sooner, highlighting the importance of timely decision-making.
• Egg freezing technology has advanced, making it a reliable option for preserving fertility.
• The uterus does not age as quickly as egg quality, allowing for successful pregnancies later in life.

SOUND BITES

"The scary thing is the medicalization of it."
"It's worth having a chat with a fertility doctor."
"The uterus is a muscle lined with glands, right?"

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Molly: Welcome to Get Rich, the podcast that helps you do just that. Get rich and stay rich. Hey, I'm Molly Benjamin. I'm the founder of Ladies Finance Club, one of Australia's largest financial education platforms for women. But before I started helping thousands of women take control with their money, I was a hot financial mess when it came to my own finances and not the fun kind of hot, more like crying in a supermarket, wondering where all my money went kind of hot.

[00:00:29] But here's the thing, if I can go from financial mess to owning a share portfolio, investing in property, and building wealth. Then you can too. My mission is simple to make women rich because when we have financial freedom, we have choices, confidence, and control over our future. Every week on Get Rich, I sit down with some of the best experts in the industry to break down how we can all start investing, growing our money, and creating long-term financial security without the jargon, boring bits or overwhelm.

[00:01:02] Because when women get rich, we don't just change our lives, we change the world. So if you're ready to start making some smart money moves, hit that subscribe button and let's get rich together.

[00:01:20] Now, some of you might remember. Years ago, I went on my own egg freezing journey and I was very public about it because I feel like it's a topic that doesn't get enough airtime and it has such a big impact on our life. And I meet women in their forties who are like, no one ever had this conversation with me.

[00:01:36] We just didn't even talk about it. And for me, I wanted to freeze my eggs because it gave me control over the situation. I felt like I didn't have much control over. It gave me time. It gave me some breathing room to. Find the right partner without rushing into something just because of my biological clock.

[00:01:52] And then it also gave me freedoms to make decision about my future on my terms. And yeah, as I said, it's like one of the most empowering things I have done. I didn't realize how much the ticking biological clock had been quietly weighing on me and freezing my eggs. Felt like lifting a huge mental load I didn't even realize I was carrying.

[00:02:09] So in this episode, I'm joined by Dr. DeRay Liu, who is the medical director of Women's Health, Melbourne and Melbourne IVF, and we break down the process into simple, clear steps. Now I always think of freezing your eggs like an insurance policy, and with all insurances, we actually don't wanna use them only if we need to, but if we need to, we definitely wanna have it there.

[00:02:29] So I hope you enjoy this episode and please hit that subscribe button if you enjoy this episode. Awesome. Welcome to Get Rich, the podcast. Thank you for having me. So I froze my eggs a couple of years ago and it was such a empowering thing for me to do. So what I wanted to do in this conversation was just really break down the process.

[00:02:53] Who should be considering it and probably what are some of the mistakes you see as well as. Touching on the costs as well. 'cause I know that's something that holds a lot of people back, but actually it's quite affordable and there's options out there. So maybe we kick off with like, you know, who really should be considering freezing their eggs?

[00:03:11] Raelia: Look, any woman who's not having a baby before the age of 30 should be considering freezing her eggs. It's one of the facts that we know from science that if you plan your first child before the age of 27, you're more likely to be able to complete your family without. Any help from assisted reproduction, there'll always be some people who need help because of infertility related conditions like endometriosis, as an example.

[00:03:41] Yeah, of polycystic ovarian syndrome. So there are people out there who even at a young age might need help getting pregnant, but if there's not an underlying condition and you start your family. Around your mid twenties, most people have the ability to have the number of kids they ultimately want, and a lot of women, and particularly professional women, find that we're not starting our families at that age anymore.

[00:04:05] No. Often I'm seeing a lot of patients having babies in their thirties and even forties these days. Yeah. And the average age of first birth is actually 32 in Australia. And, you know, we all, we all know what a bell curve is and the average being in the middle of that bell curve. So it means that at least half of the women in Australia are having their first child at or beyond the age of 32.

[00:04:30] Molly: What? And so freezing eggs helps. As you mentioned before, step one would be that you need to get a referral to come and see someone like you, a fertility specialist. So I'd go to my gp, maybe do my STI screenings, and then they would write me a referral. So then I'm in your office. What happens next?

[00:04:51] Raelia: So I would be really just finding out more about you, talking about your reasons for wanting to freeze your eggs and working out a plan so that you could freeze your eggs.

[00:05:02] And so it would be basically explaining the process to you, taking all your medical information on board and personalizing a plan for you. Making sure you understood what was involved, and importantly, making sure you understood how many cycles it would take you based on your own egg count to get you a really great number of eggs that was gonna translate to a future, very high chance of having babies with those eggs.

[00:05:28] And so then comes the practical side of things. You know, documenting medical. Consent explaining everything that's likely to happen and also all the rare things that can sometimes go wrong so that you know. Exactly what you are signing up for with egg freezing. And then after that, it's a real education piece.

[00:05:49] So talking, you know, kind of potentially bringing on other team members, making sure you understand the costs, making sure that you understand the nitty gritty and that often involves a couple of appointments. Meeting with members of my nursing team also to help explain medications and schedules and, and then working out when would suit you to freeze your eggs?

[00:06:09] Molly: Okay, so let's say, I want to go ahead with it. You mentioned before about egg reserve, so is that, would that be one of the first steps you'd take to find out what is my egg reserve?

[00:06:22] Raelia: Like I was talking about back with the GP referral investigations that might be useful before egg freezing. How we investigate your egg reserve is by doing an ultrasound to check on your ovaries and look anatomically where they are and how big they are and how many follicles they have, and also test for the A MH test, which stands for anti malian hormone.

[00:06:45] That's an indirect marker of egg reserve. It's. Made by the follicles of the ovary. And so women who have big ovaries have high A MH. Women who have smaller ovaries, have low A MH. All of us have a certain level that declines with age as we use up our eggs. So looking at that in conjunction with other information about you.

[00:07:05] We'll be able to help me advise you on how many eggs you should freeze and how many cycles it'll take you to get there.

[00:07:12] Molly: And does it differ person to person? How many eggs or is it kind of like ten's a good number or 20 is a good number? Or again, is it like person. By person.

[00:07:21] Raelia: Person, yeah, exactly. Woman by woman.

[00:07:24] It depends on your context. It depends on your circumstances. Definitely depends on your age. Younger women are more likely to have a baby with fewer eggs than older women because the chance per egg is better. And so we take that into account. And then also, different women might have different medical concerns that mean they may need to freeze more eggs than the average person because their statistical chance of getting pregnant per egg might be lower, such as someone with endometriosis.

[00:07:53] Molly: Yes. Which I also had got. I got all the things. Okay, so just stepping out the process a little, if we go into a little bit more detail, when do the hormone injections come into play?

[00:08:06] Raelia: So how we freeze eggs is we first have to recruit them and get them on board, and we do that by starting some medications to ask your ovary to ripen multiple eggs at the same time.

[00:08:17] Some of those medications are injections, they don't all have to be injections, but follicle stimulating hormone, which does exactly what it says it does, it stimulates ovarian follicles, which are the structures that eggs live in. To grow that is a protein hormone. So you, at this point in time, it has to be delivered by injection.

[00:08:39] It can't be taken orally 'cause you just break it down in your gut. So that's a hormone that we give as injections. Now in my practice, I actually offer my egg freezing patients. Either a plan start or a random. Start kind of type of cycle or a day, one of the period start and my patients can choose. So you can do a plan start cycle at any time of the menstrual cycle for egg freezing.

[00:09:03] You're not trying to get the person pregnant, so it's not so important that the uterus is completely aligned with the ovary with egg freezing like it is for IVF. But a lot of people do start with a period 'cause they kind of know it's coming and your holman's a baseline then and you can plan to start.

[00:09:19] So sometimes what we do is we get someone ready for egg freezing and we say Call when you get your period. So.

[00:09:24] Molly: Yeah. And with those injections, how many injections and how long generally is it?

[00:09:30] Raelia: So look, follicle stimulating hormone comes in lots of different types. Some of them are long acting and last for a week, and others have to be given on a daily basis.

[00:09:39] And the regimen that I'll choose for my patient will be different person to person, depending on what their ovarian reserve is and other factors. So at worst. You might have to start a daily needle from the beginning of your cycle, and depending on whether you use a progesterone primed approach, which I do a lot for egg freezing, then you might use a tablet to prevent ovulation to reduce the number of needles that someone will need, or you can use them or classical IV F approach, which is using a medication at the brain level that's also an injection.

[00:10:14] To stop the person from ovulating and that would be an additional daily injection. Okay. So one of the reasons that I, I tend to prefer the oral medicine is it's just better for patients from a user experience perspective, not to have to give themselves so many needles. 'cause a lot of people are frightened of needles and I think pretty much everyone finds some unpleasant, even if you're not scared of them.

[00:10:36] Yeah, yeah. Oh yes. I know I had to get my si. It's definitely possible. Yeah.

[00:10:40] Molly: I had to get my sister to help me the first few times just 'cause I was so unused to injecting myself. But I, what I would say to people listening who are thinking about it, who feel quite scared about the injections are for me, they actually didn't hurt.

[00:10:54] I was shocked. I was like, oh, you can barely feel it. I thought it was gonna be this really painful thing. And I was like, oh, that was actually easier than I realized.

[00:11:03] Raelia: I think the scary thing is the medicalization of it. Yeah. Scary thing is the medical idea. 'cause it's not something you're used to doing.

[00:11:10] You're used to. In daily life, lots of discomfort, but giving yourself a needle is often something someone hasn't had to do unless they've had diabetes. It might be like a foreign concept. Yeah.

[00:11:22] Molly: I felt like a little nurse giving myself injections. I was like, ah, good times. But with the, so once the hormones are all in.

[00:11:31] The ovaries are looking, I called it ripe for the harvest. That is not the correct term, the harvest, but when they're ready for the, what you call them, the bringing them out, the extraction, the egg extraction.

[00:11:43] Raelia: Yeah. So look, the formal name for its open pickup, but you know that's the formal word, OPU, but.

[00:11:50] You know, it's an ultrasound, actually, it's not a surgery. So when we extract air, what we're actually doing in the operating clinic is we're using a, an ultrasound probe in the vagina to push the ovary against the edge of the vagina. And they're putting a tiny little needle under ultrasound vision into each of those are very in follicle.

[00:12:10] So the house the egg lives in to aspirate the fluid, suck it out, and hopefully find an egg inside. And so it's actually a very safe. Procedure done in experienced hands, it takes about 20 minutes. Not usually much longer than that. You can decide to do it under local anesthetic or what we call conscious sedation.

[00:12:30] It's not a general anesthetic, it's just a little bit of medicine to help you feel sleepy, a little bit woozy, little bit forgetful, and so you don't have any pain, but it's a very minor procedure, very well tolerated, very low risk.

[00:12:43] Molly: Yes. Again, I don't have the formal word for it, but the green whistle, if you watch Bondi Rescue guys, the thing they give people sometimes on the beach, and I was very happy very quickly, and yeah, I couldn't believe how quick it was.

[00:12:56] And then recovery, I. Obviously you have to get someone to drive you home. So my sister came in and drove me home, and then it was done and it was such a mental load off my plate. It was a mental load. I didn't realize I had on my mind being a female 35 and not have. And I wasn't with anyone at the time.

[00:13:17] After you've done the extraction, again, that wasn't the term, the harvest, what, are there ongoing like costs or I know that you'll have to have them stored somewhere. Do you guys store them? Like, do we have to find our own storage? How does that work?

[00:13:31] Raelia: Yeah, so look, there are ongoing costs of looking after frozen eggs.

[00:13:35] We do keep them very safe and stable in vitrification it's, yeah. Egg freezes the most amazing anti-aging maneuver. It's actually literally the only anti-aging maneuver that literally stops the aging process. We do have to keep them stable. We need to look after them, and that, you know, scientists are gonna be watching your eggs all the time.

[00:13:59] When they're in storage. They're gonna be monitored. They're gonna have their kind of liquid nitrogen topped up regularly. Um, so there's like maintenance cost for keeping eggs. In the freezer and generally the IVF unit, where the eggs were stored is what? Where the eggs will stay and be cared for. You can of course transport them.

[00:14:21] So if you move cities or if you move countries even, you can move eggs. They don't have to stay where they are. But, um, usually they'll stay and you should be informed by the IVF provider what the costs are for annual storage and they might be charged annually or they might be charged bi-annually depending on the provider.

[00:14:42] Molly: Okay, awesome. And just around the costings now, I know you are the doctor, so the nurses are probably do a lot of the fees, but could you just give us ball level or high level, like what would around cost and does Medicare cover anything?

[00:14:56] Raelia: Yeah, the cost that it will be for a patient out of pocket to freeze their eggs would be very different if Medicare does cover some of it or if it doesn't.

[00:15:06] Basically the way that you can think about it is if there's nothing medically wrong with you, you could have a baby tomorrow if you chose. And you wanna freeze eggs to have them in the future. The current status quo is that Medicare doesn't come on board. Okay. So women who freeze eggs electively, unfortunately, and I don't necessarily agree with this personally, but it is, what is the situation right now?

[00:15:33] They have to pay everything and the costs that are involved are the IBF unit. Costs at Melbourne IVF where I practice my IVF, it costs a woman about four and a half thousand dollars from the IVF unit to freeze their eggs electively. And that includes everything involved in the IVF unit, the nursing, the counseling, the scientists, the doctor, everything like that.

[00:15:58] But there are additional third party costs. Yeah. That patients also have. In front of them that are outside of that. So they have to pay for their drugs and they have to pay for their day surgery. And if they have their, so for the hospital admission, I mean, and they, if they have an anesthetic doctor helping them, there might be cost from their anesthetic doctor.

[00:16:20] And that would be above and beyond the costs from the laboratory and your own specialist.

[00:16:26] Molly: And with the drugs. Do you know how much generally that kind of comes to.

[00:16:30] Raelia: It can range quite significantly person to person. So because your doctor will prescribe specifically a regimen for you, um, it might cost anywhere between about $1,500 and about $3,000 to buy those drugs.

[00:16:44] And I guess it's really important to understand that for women go through IVF with a Medicare rebate or women freezing eggs. For medical reasons like endometriosis or premature ovarian insufficiency or egg blocked fallopian tubes, or maybe in reciprocal IVF where they're in a same sex relationship and wanting to have babies carried by their partner and things like that.

[00:17:08] When you get a Medicare rebate. You get a PBS rebate from the pharmaceutical benefit scheme as well. And so those drugs are subsidized by the government. So it's not that they are not required, it's just that they're paid for by somebody else. Yes. Very expensive drugs.

[00:17:24] Molly: Yes. And 'cause I had endometriosis, mine was.

[00:17:28] I got those rebates back from Medicare, which made it so much more affordable. I couldn't believe how affordable it was. But even when you say then for like that whole process, it's four and a half thousand. That still surprises me as a lot more affordable than some people think. 'cause there are the stories of it cost 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, but actually it's really worth if money has been holding you back, it's definitely worth having a chat with the fertility doctor and actually looking at what are those realistic costs.

[00:17:57] Raelia: Yeah. Well, I would say that for somebody who has zero Medicare, and when you take all of those other costs into account, like the hospital bed fee, the drugs, you know, keeping the storage fees, it's probably, it's more like $8,000 for one cycle. And I would say those patients who might have something like a $30,000 bill, maybe they've done three or four psych Yeah.

[00:18:18] Molly: Awesome. Okay. And just to finish up, and this has been so informative. Thank you so much. What is, I guess, the biggest, like you speak to women every day, you do this every day. What are the biggest mistakes you see women make? Is it waiting too late? I.

[00:18:33] Raelia: I never met a patient who comes to me and says, I wish I didn't freeze my eggs.

[00:18:37] The opposite happens all the time. So I think also even in relationships, to be honest, people put off having babies, and I sometimes see couples come and see me where I. They have struggled to get pregnant, but they've been together for 10 years and it just wasn't the time in their lives that they prioritized having a family.

[00:18:56] So I would say potentially as a society, maybe we put having babies off a bit too long. You know, that may be something that an individual can consider, but it's not something a doctor or clinic can really influence. But what I would say is egg freezing is unbelievable. I think it's underrated. It's an amazing technology.

[00:19:16] I think it's worth pointing out that we do as well in IVF at the other end of the egg freezing journey with frozen eggs as if we were using fresh eggs collected at the same age by the same person. So we actually are really good at making babies with frozen eggs. Yeah. Yes, there'll be some people who have horror stories.

[00:19:37] I froze my eggs and then they didn't work. But I can tell you that the majority of women that I treat with eggs, that I froze for them when they were young, particularly if they had nothing wrong with them at the time. And the only problem later is the aging process. Yeah, those women have babies from their eggs and it's unbelievable.

[00:19:58] Molly: Because I guess if you freeze your eggs at 33 and then you just have a baby at 40, your eggs are still 33 years old, not 40 years old. And the uterus is a pretty incredible itself too though, isn't it? It doesn't really age that much. The uterus.

[00:20:12] Raelia: Well, look, the uterus is a muscle lined with glands, right?

[00:20:14] It's. It's not like a maligned organ, but you know, the egg quality is really the main thing that stops people having babies at an older age. And not to say that pregnancy is not a bit more risky when you're older, of course it is because things like blood pressure problems and gestational diabetes and other issues with pregnancy are more common as we get older.

[00:20:36] But it's definitely possible, and there's no reason from a uterus perspective that a woman at 40 can't be as fertile as a woman at. 30. But there is from an egg perspective. So if you have a 40-year-old uterus and a 30-year-old egg, your chance of giving birth will be of your 30-year-old self. And it's an absolute miracle of modern medicine.

[00:20:56] Molly: It's incredible. Imagine technology is only getting better as well. Thank you so much. And if someone's listening to this and they're like, I'm in Melbourne, I wanna have a meeting with you, or like, talk about my egg freezing, like next steps, where can they find you earlier?

[00:21:11] Raelia: So you can find me at Women's Health Melbourne, which is my medical practice, or Melbourne IVF, which is my IVF practice.

[00:21:18] I wear two hats. I'm medical director of Melbourne IVF and of Women's Health Melbourne. And if you wanna hear more about egg freezing specifically or any topic about women's health and fertility, I also have a podcast called Knocked Up. We'll put

[00:21:32] Molly: the links in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time.

[00:21:35] You're very welcome. Thanks Molly.

KEYWORDS

egg freezing, fertility, reproductive health, hormonal injections, egg extraction, costs, egg reserve, women's health, fertility specialist, IVF