Jamie Chung just gave us a peek into her fertility and motherhood journey. On Thursday, the actor, 38, shared an Instagram post of herself with one of her newborn twin babies (whose face was covered with a digital sticker for privacy) and the caption “Every fertility journey is unique, it’s a tender topic. This would have not been possible without @drshahinghadir at @scrcivf. Thank you for taking such good care of us through our journey.”
The second photo in the post is of Chung holding a paper that says, “Embryo Creation.” It’s a throwback for fans—she posted the same photo in March 2019, sharing that she was starting the process to freeze her eggs. “Here I am over a week ago at my doctor’s office getting an orientation/lesson on how to inject myself with growth hormones. One of the first major steps for egg retrieval,” she shared at the time. “I’ve been stewing over the idea of freezing my eggs for a couple of years now, and decided to move forward with the process only just recently.”
In that 2019 post, Chung also discussed her reasons for undergoing the procedure. “I did my research on facilities and then it all boiled down to these deciding factors; I want options. I’m buying time. I’m unsure and scared and hopeful,” she explained. “I have the best life partner a person can ask for and I know I want to one day raise a child with Bryan. I’m just unsure when that will happen. And I realized that’s ok. It’s ok to be unsure when the time is right.”
When a person chooses to freeze their eggs, doctors first stimulate that person’s ovaries so that they produce more eggs than usual, and then monitor those eggs as they mature, as the Mayo Clinic explains. After the eggs have matured, 10 to 14 days into the process, a doctor retrieves the eggs while the patient is under sedation, using a needle placed in the vagina that has suction attached to collect the eggs. The doctor takes these eggs and puts them in a subzero freezer to preserve them. This process is different than embryo freezing, wherein the egg is fertilized with sperm before freezing. (It’s not clear whether Chung froze her eggs, as she discusses in her March 2019 caption, or froze embryos, as hinted by the “Embryo Creation” handout she was holding up.) Either way, when the time comes to try to conceive with frozen eggs or embryos, they are thawed and placed into the uterus. (In the case of frozen embryos, they’re combined with sperm before placement, the Mayo Clinic explains.)