Predicting what the future holds for you — from the turns your career will take to the kind of money you’ll be making to the person you may end up with and beyond — is nearly impossible to do. Things get even trickier when you’re trying to plan your family or figuring out when you want to have children. Sure, you can’t schedule everything according to a preset timeline, but at least there’s some comfort in preparing ahead of time and making sure that when and if the time is right for you to have a child, you’re still able to make that happen.
And that brings us to the family-planning option of freezing your eggs or embryos (eggs that have already been fertilized). People have a plethora of reasons for choosing to freeze their eggs, but we don’t frequently hear much about what those reasons are — or even who has done it. On that note, let’s check out which celebs have frozen their eggs or embryos, whether it was for future planning or because of issues preventing them from conceiving naturally.
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Emma Slater
Dancing With the Stars’ Emma Slater — who is in the throes of a “difficult” divorce from Sasha Farber — announced she is freezing her eggs in Nov. 2023 in order to “take control of her future” and “preserve her options.”
“I’m very grateful that this process is available for people, whatever the individual reason may be,” she said on Instagram. “…I’m grateful to those who respect [my reasons]. It does take a lot of thought, courage and consideration but ultimately this is giving me peace of mind.”
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Kourtney Kardashian
Kourtney Kardashian shares three children with her ex Scott Disick, Mason, 13, Penelope, 10, and Reign, 8. At age 39, the TV personality was not sure if she wanted to have more children but “felt pressured” from her sisters Khloe and Kim to have her eggs frozen like they had. At age 43, she still isn’t sure if she wants to have more children with her now-husband Travis Barker, but she said freezing her eggs was like a “deep breath.”
“I think doing that … and having the control of my body just gave me a peace of mind,” she said on a 2021 epsiode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “I froze mine and hopefully they’re sitting there OK just for — you never know.”
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Rebel Wilson
Rebel Wilson gave fans an intimate look at her fertility journey when she opened up to PEOPLE soon after her baby girl was born via surrogate in Nov. 2022.
Three years earlier, her fertility journey started with a doctor who told her she would “do much better” harvesting and freezing her eggs if she lost weight. She had lost around 65 pounds and had three surgeries by the time she was filming The Almond and learned that none of her eggs had survived being thawed.
“It was devastating,” she continued. “…[but] I knew that my desire to become a mother was so strong, that I needed to keep trying.”
When she announced the birth of Royce Lillian, she said she is “forever grateful” to everyone who has been involved in her fertility journey.
“This has been years in the making…but particularly wanted to thank my gorgeous surrogate who carried her and birthed her with such grace and care,” Wilson wrote in her announcement. “Thank you for helping me start my own family, it’s an amazing gift. The BEST gift!!
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Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton has 20 frozen embryos with her husband Carter Reum. The couple had started thinking about starting a family before the COVID-19 pandemic. When the world was shut down and people were busy making sourdough bread, Hilton had other plans.
“I was like, ‘What do you think about us making embryos?’” Hilton told Glamour UK.
The couple welcomed a son via surrogate in Jan. 2023, and Hilton is continuing to undergo IVF treatments as she looks toward the future. The TV personaily said all 20 embryos are boys, and she is determined to have a daughter.
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Chrissy Teigen
Chrissy Teigen has always been willing to talk publicly about the things that others try to keep hush-hush. That includes the price of freezing eggs.
Back in 2017, when she was a mom of one, she tweeted about the bill she got to store her frozen embryos and tweeted, “Damn how’s my embryo gonna be in debt before it’s even born?”
The retrieval and storing process costs tens of thousands of dollars. On top of the physical cost, there is an emotional toll that the model — who is now a mom of three — has opened up about as well.
“Emotionally it can be really hard. When you have these high-highs and these low-lows,” she told Today.com. “You don’t want to get your hopes up, but of course, you do”
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Heather Rae Young
Heather Rae Young definitely did not want kids — that is, until she became Heather Rae Young El Moussa. When the TV personality met her now-husband Tarek El Moussa, everything changed.
She started freezing her eggs and was very open about her road to motherhood.
“I’m glad I decided to share my story on Instagram because struggling with infertility can feel very isolating,” she said.
“I also want to encourage women to think about their fertility in their 20s. So many of us are focused on our careers. We’re not thinking about babies. But any point in your life, things can change. Things can change at any moment, and you want to be prepared.”
The El Moussas gave birth to a baby boy in Jan. 2023.
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Khloe Kardashian
Khloe Kardashian wanted to give her daughter True, 4 a baby sibling. In a 2021 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres show, Kardashian said she had frozen her eggs once and done three rounds of IVF.
The TV personality wanted to make embryos with boyfriend Tristan Thompson. Sadly, when she defrosted her 12-14 eggs, none survived.
And so she, like so many others, started the process again. This time, it was much slower because of the pandemic.
“With COVID, finding this whole fertility process, if you do need assistance in fertility, it’s much more challenging during COVID. They say, ‘If you wanna make God laugh, tell him your plans.’ So the one time I’m actually really trying to plan, God is saying, ‘Uh uh, you can’t make your plans like this.'”
Kardashian welcomed her second child, a boy, in 2022.
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Mary Fitzgerald
Selling Sunset’s Mary Fitzgerald decided to freeze her eggs and embryos with co-star and husband Romain Bonnett while the two focused on their careers.
“I’m going to freeze my eggs just in case we want to start a family, but we are far too busy and focused on our careers to prioritize this at the moment,” Fitzgerald told The Sun in 2020 when she was 39 and Bonnett was 26.
Sadly, in June 2022, Fitzgerald shared that none of the eggs that were harvested and fertilized were healthy and viable.
“This was definitely not the news we were hoping to get and while it is super disappointing, we are just keeping our heads up,” she captioned an Instagram post. “PLEASE consider doing this at the youngest age possible if you know/think you want to have children!” she urges. “Sharing my experience in hopes of helping anyone who is interested in doing this process.”
As of Dec. 2022, the couple was continuing to try to get pregnant.
Fitzgerald became a single mom at age 16 to her son Austin Babbitt.
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Ariana Madix
In an episode of Vanderpump Rules, TV personality Ariana Madix revealed that she froze her eggs alongside her co-star Scheana Shay.
“This does not mean that I’m jumping on the baby train,” she continued. “It’s about having agency over my own body and my own future. It’s also kind of a nice fun f— you to anybody who questions my values or my choices.”
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Chrishell Stause
Selling Sunset star Chrishell Stause was in the process of freezing her eggs when she was approached by Dancing With The Stars.
“So for the first weeks of rehearsal, I was giving myself daily hormone shots while learning the tango, and the procedure was done a few days before the premiere of the show,” she told PEOPLE. “Maybe I could blame that on my less than stellar tango! Just kidding — I will always suck at the tango.”
Stause decided to freeze her eggs at age 39 following her divorce from actor Justin Hartley.
“I’m going to do everything I can to take that power in the situation, and hopefully, that will empower me going forward in the dating world, so there’s not so much pressure.”
Stause split from Justin Hartley last year. The This Is Us actor filed for divorce in November 2019, citing irreconcilable differences and listing his and Stause’s date of separation as months before, in July, even though they had made public appearances together after that date. -
Emma Roberts
It wasn’t until her late 20s that actor Emma Roberts found out she had been having symptoms of endometriosis since she was a teen.
Her doctors told her she should probably consider freezing her eggs, but she thought to herself, “I’m working right now. I don’t have time to freeze my eggs.”
“To be honest, I was also terrified,” she told Cosmopolitan. “Just the thought of going through that and finding out, perhaps, that I wouldn’t be able to have kids….I did freeze my eggs eventually, which was a difficult process.”
Roberts admitted to being stunned and feeling like she was to blame when she got her diagnosis.
“But I started opening up to other women, and all of a sudden, there was a new world of conversation about endometriosis, infertility, miscarriages, fear of having kids. I was so grateful to find out I was not alone in this. I hadn’t done anything ‘wrong’ after all.”
In Dec. 2020, Roberts gave birth to a son who she shares with husband Rhodes Robert Hedlund.
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Halsey
Halsey is an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights and who, at age 23, decided to freeze her eggs. After being diagnosed with endometriosis, having surgery to treat the condition, and suffering multiple miscarriages, the singer decided to make an “ovarian reserve” and “aggressively” protect her fertility.
“Reproductive illness is so frustrating because it can really make you feel like less of a woman,” she said. “…you don’t feel sexy, you don’t feel proud, and you don’t feel like there’s much hope, so taking these measures to make sure that hopefully I get to have a bright future and achieve the things I want to achieve by doing an ovarian reserve is so important.”
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Savannah Chrisley
Real estate TV personality Savannah Chrisley opened up about her endometriosis diagnosis in August of 2020. The condition affects the lining of the uterus and can cause infertility problems.
The then-23-year-old told PEOPLE she decided to freeze her eggs because “God meant [for her] to be a mother.”
“I have been blessed with such an amazing career and the financial means to do so,” Chrisley said. “I know I would be devastated if [I couldn’t become a mother]. I’ve had some doctors explain it to me like an insurance policy. I’m so fortunate to do so.”
“Just because you have to do things a little different than some other women doesn’t mean that it’s any less special,” she continued. “That’s how I look at it. It doesn’t matter how we get there, just as long as we get there.”
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Becca Kufrin
Former Bachelorette Becca Kufrin froze her eggs after her breakup with Bachelorette contestant Garret Yrigoyen.
“I think it’s so important as women we know about our bodies and our options,” Becca, 30, said in an Instagram story in Oct. 2020. “For me, I’m not old, but I’m not a spring chicken, and I want kids one day but not anytime soon so I figure why not do it now in quarantine.”
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Raven Symone & Miranda Pearman-Maday
Actor Raven Symone and wife Miranda Pearman-Maday dream of having a large family with four kids. The couple told Entertainment Tonight they each want to carry a child and then look into adoption.
“As Raven says, we’re not getting any younger,” Pearman-Maday said. “And freezing your eggs so you just know that they’re there and they’re safe is a wonderful thing. And I think that’s something that we will probably do.”
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Kelsea Ballerini
Singer Kelsea Ballerini dropped some major bombshells about her relationship with ex-husband singer Morgan Evans in a Feb. 2023 epsiode of the Call Her Daddy podcast.
Ballerini told host Alex Cooper that the topic of parenthood and freezing her eggs played a role in the couples divorce. It became clear that Evans, in his late 30s, and Ballerini, in her late 20s, were not on the same page.
“He was ready,” Ballerini said. “He was like, ‘I don’t want to be an old dad,’ is what he kept saying. And I was like, ‘I’m not there yet, and I can’t do that to save [this marriage] and give you something that I’m not ready for.'”
She visited her doctor on her own to learn more about freezing her eggs, and ahead of her 29th birthday, she told Evans she wanted to freeze her eggs for her 30th birthday
“It was not a good day,” she said. “And I think that was when I was like, there’s a fundamental difference here that has happened, that has shifted. And it’s no longer like, ‘I don’t see this person, I miss this person, I’m alone, I’m lonely.’ It’s like, ‘He wants something out of life…[and] I’m not there.'”
Ballerini’s divorce was finalized in Nov. 2022, and though she doesn’t know if or when she will want to be a mom, she told The Evening Standard she still plans to freeze her eggs before turning 30.
“Why not!” she said.
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Olivia Culpo & Christian McCaffrey
Olivia Culpo, 30 revealed in the season finale of The Culpo Sisters on TLC that she is going to freeze her eggs. The Sports Illustrated swimsuit model has been dating football player Christian McCaffrey, 26 since 2019. She said she had been putting pressure and a timeline on herself and her fertility, and she didn’t want to feel rushed anymore.
“I am going to freeze my eggs so that I can have babies when the time is right for Christian [and me],” she told her family. “It’s an insurance policy. It’s exciting.”
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Barbara Bush & Craig Coyne
Barbara Pierce Bush, daughter of president George W. Bush, froze her eggs before meeting her husband Craig Coyne, according to her twin sister, Jenna Bush Hager.
In an episode of Hoda Kotb’s podcast Making Space, Hager revealed that Barbara, 39, planned to become a single mom if necessary.
“Before my grandmother [First Lady Barbara Pierce Bush] died, [my sister] had a conversation with her [about having kids on her own],” Hager said. “My grandmother said, ‘I think that’s a really good idea.’ So Barbara froze her eggs and was planning, if she didn’t meet somebody, to go ahead and do it.”
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Whitney Cummings
Comedia Whitney Cummings found freezing 16 of her eggs to be an empowering, freeing experience.
“Before I froze my eggs, a guy that was kind of mediocre, I’d be like, ‘I can fix this,'” she said. “After [freezing my eggs], I would be like, ‘Bye, I have eggs on ice. I don’t need to do any of this.’ There was just this freedom to it, whether I use them or not, that made me feel like I got another 10 years back. It took weight off.”
Though she finds it to be a bit “elitist,” she talks about the experience frequently in the hopes that it will lead to better insurance coverage for the procedure.
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Francia Raisa
Actor Francia Raisa said she felt “relieved” when she went through the process of having 28 eggs frozen because it meant that she doesn’t have to “rush” with her “biological clock ticking.”
“I don’t want to settle,” the Secret Life of the American Teenager actor said. “I really want to wait for the right person. … I really want to be friends with someone first and really know you, because I don’t want to have to worry about that again ever.”
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Maria Menounos
In 2011, People magazine reported on Menounos’ announcement on Dr. Drew’s Lifechangers that she planned to freeze her eggs.
“I’m 33, and I decided that I know I have a couple of years of work I want to get to, and then do it,” she stated, continuing, “I figured this is kind of an insurance policy.”
After a more than 10-year-long long fertility journey, the couple announced in Feb. 2023 that they are expecting a child via surrogate.
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Olivia Munn
In 2016, Olivia Munn revealed to People magazine that she “froze a bunch of eggs,” explaining that when she “turned 35, then you’re high risk”. She continued, “I did, years ago, freeze a bunch of eggs. I went to the doctor and did the whole test and he said, ‘You know, you actually have a lot of eggs. You’re really lucky.'”
Munn now has a 1-year-old son, Malcom, with husband John Mulaney.
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Sofía Vergara
Vergara's embryos have been at the center of a legal battle in recent years, beginning when Vergara froze them in 2013. You can read the full details of the case at Slate, but for now, the embryos she froze while dating ex-boyfriend Nick Loeb remain frozen.
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Kaitlyn Bristowe
In 2017, Kaitlyn Bristowe explained in a Good Morning America interview why she chose to freeze her eggs: "I think a lot of women feel pressure to have kids, especially when you get engaged. And for me, I’m like, I don’t want that pressure on myself. This is kind of a backup plan for us and for us to feel comfortable. It’s kind of like insurance," she stated.
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Tinsley Mortimer
The frozen eggs of Real Housewives of New York star Tinsley Mortimer became part of her season 10 storyline, with the most notable discussion about her decision coming during a particularly memorable chat with her mother about the eggs while she was trying on wedding dresses.
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Joanna Krupa
In 2017, model and former Real Housewives of Miami star Joanna Krupa opened up about her choice to freeze her eggs. While chatting with Life & Style, Krupa explained, "Thank goodness I froze my eggs. I would honestly be freaking out right now if I didn’t. You don’t want to wake up one day and be like, ‘My god, what was I thinking?’ I decided a few years ago to freeze them so I would be safe."
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Rita Ora
In 2017, Ora revealed during an interview with Australian morning news program Sunrise (as reported on further by The Guardian) that she froze her eggs in her early 20s: "You’re healthiest now and I think it would be great, why don’t you put them away now and you’ll never have to worry about it again?"
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Céline Dion
While reporting on her second pregnancy in 2009, People magazine noted that Dion has frozen her eggs while attempting to conceive her first child, René-Charles, in 2001.
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Bridget Marquardt
In 2011, former Playboy model Bridget Marquardt opened up to Us Weekly about her decision to freeze her eggs.
"When I was 34 I went and had my eggs harvested," she explained, going on to describe the difficult process: "Looking back I was like, 'It was easy,' but it wasn't that easy. It's a lot of medication, a lot of hormones. You have to inject yourself in the stomach and I'm so terrified of needles! It was a difficult thing for me to do."
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