Being Neurotic about Fertility: Notes from the 2026 Reproductive Frontiers Conference

In light of AOC freezing her eggs at 36, someone on X commented: That might be so, but in absence of getting knocked up by the closest Chad ASAP, I figured I, like AOC, had no great options. Well, maybe AOC has more options than me: Anyway, I think the men hating on AOC are missing an obvious point when they imply women should just have babies sooner. No matter how much some of us want kids, the modern constraints of career and, more importantly, meeting the right person remain bottlenecks. Even though I'm only 26, it was something I thought about, having not met the right person yet myself. So in my own quest to be neurotic about fertility, I attended the Reproductive Frontiers conference earlier this year in June. I ended up learning a lot of things about fertility and embryo selection that felt personally relevant to my personal planning (mid-twenties, healthy, single). I hope this post can be helpful to you if embryo-selection is something you’ve also been considering! If you work in the field, please feel free to add nuance or corrections! Also, since science is always evolving, please consider this only up to date in mid-2026. Epistemic disclaimer: I am not a scientist and I don't work in the fertility tech industry. Acknowledgements/Disclosure:  Thanks to my friend Chase Deneke from Herasight for providing some relevant context/links.  I paid for the conference ticket myself, and am not financially affiliated with any reproductive tech company. Should I freeze my eggs? If having kids is a priority for you and you can afford to, yes.  Egg-freezing is often pitched to single women in their thirties as an dating insurance policy. As someone in my mid-twenties, I was in the wait-and-see camp before attending the conference. Why go through the not-so-pleasant process of egg-freezing if there was a chance I didn't need to? Attending the conference pushed me to the just-do-it camp for a couple reasons: Fertility is hard to predict before you start trying. Even if I am perfectly fertile, if my future partner’s sperm has issues, then the number of eggs would still be a bottleneck. This was the case for someone at the conference! There may be predictable genetic disorders between me and my partner that would push me to do IVF down the line anyway. Having frozen eggs/embryos increases the flexibility to have the number of kids I’d want to down the line. At some point, natural conception gets difficult, and I wouldn’t want that to be the bottleneck for not having more kids. The above reasons convinced me egg-freezing was probably worth doing even if I didn't necessarily have to do it for the typical fertility timeline reasons. And if I leaning towards freezing my eggs anyway, I should act sooner rather than later, since freezing eggs when I'm younger would yield more eggs, and eggs of a higher quality.[1] When should I have kids? Scientists at the conference kept emphasizing how much better it was to have kids earlier, and that the modern myth that “you’ll probably be fine fertility-wise until your mid-thirties” was misleading. A couple parents and prospective parents expressed regret that they didn’t have children earlier. Here are some reasons I found compelling: Fertility is difficult to predict before you start trying. The sooner you and your partner know you have issues, the more time you have to try different treatment options. Having kids earlier (both maternal and paternal ages matter) predicts good health outcomes. Trying earlier gives you more flexibiliy for having the number of kids you want. Having young kids when you have the energy to raise them is great. The earlier you have your kids, the more time your parents will have with them. I have updated my having-kids timelines to be closer to “as soon as I find the right partner” as opposed to “when the timing is perfect”. What is polygenic embryo scoring? Basic IVF screening includes screening for chromosomal abnormalities or single-gene mutations. If doctors find these abnormalities, the embryo almost certainly has the predicted trait. Polygenic embryo scoring is more predictive and statistical. It uses data and algorithms to give you an embryo’s predicted risk profile for a range of more complex traits, like lifetime susceptibility to certain diseases. It can also be used to predict complex traits like intelligence with some level of accuracy. What are some of the risks of the IVF process? Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome is a real risk, and it is worth looking into before you decide to do egg-freezing. The risk is higher if you are young, or have PCOS. Anecdotally, I’ve heard the recovery from egg-freezing ranges a lot—from very little downtime to two months of brain fog. As somone who is quite cautious about my health generally, I was wondering if there was any way to lower the risks of IVF. Someone at the conference mentioned that there are clinics that have a more hollistic and personalized appraoch if hormone sensitivity/health was