At one point during Lisa Xu’s second round of egg freezing last year, she thought to herself, How did I even get here? She had been preparing for the egg-retrieval procedure for weeks, first by taking estradiol (a form of estrogen), then taking birth-control pills to sync her hormones, and then giving herself injections every night for about two weeks to stimulate growth of the follicles in her ovaries, which each contain one egg. And that was on top of the blood draws and ultrasounds. Xu didn’t respond as well to the follicle-stimulating medication as other people do, so she had to take higher doses of it — two or three syringes each day — for a longer period of time than other patients might. Her medication regimen also costs more money than it would for someone who uses less of it, possibly thousands of dollars more. (She estimates she pays $5,000 for her medications per round of egg freezing, in addition to about $15,000 for the procedures through an insurance plan that guarantees a flat rate to retrieve a certain number of eggs, rather than paying per cycle.)

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