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Paige DeSorbo has frozen her eggs and opened up about the process of her first egg retrieval, as well as her recovery, on her podcast.
After first announcing plans to freeze her eggs in January, weeks after her split from Southern Charm star Craig Conover, 36, the 32-year-old Summer House cast member revealed her doctor was able to retrieve 28 eggs on Friday, 13 of which were mature and ready to be made into embryos.
“That’s a really good amount of eggs,” Paige shared on the May 13 episode of Giggly Squad, via Newsweek.
Although Paige has 13 eggs on ice, only around half will successfully turn into embryos once fertilized. And, from there, that number could be cut down further if genetic abnormalities are found. So, rather than leave it at 13, Paige is considering undergoing a second egg retrieval this fall, depending on how her body recovers from round one.
Looking back on the process, Paige compared the egg retrieval, which was preceded by a number of daily injections, to a “trauma experience,” admitting she underestimated how difficult the recovery process would be.
“I’m very proud of myself for doing the whole process. The one thing I’ll say about it is it’s harder than you think it’s going to be and it’s also way easier than you think it’s going to be,” she explained, noting that she was feeling “very bloated.”
According to Paige, who underwent the egg retrieval as part of a 10-year plan, she sympathizes with women who endure multiple rounds of in vitro fertilization (IVF) due to the toll it takes on one’s body.
“I don’t know how the female body does it. Everything you feel is just so tender,” DeSorbo said. “The fact that women aren’t seen as these goddesses in society, I don’t understand it,” she stated.
Paige went on to say that motherhood pressures had been lifted since she froze her eggs. And, if she ultimately has just one child, she will be completely happy with that when the time comes.
As Summer House fans may recall, Paige’s decision to freeze her eggs came after she received mixed diagnoses of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which can make conceiving naturally difficult.
“Egg freezing can be a life-changing investment in protecting your chances to have children when you’re ready to be a mother,” Dr. Joshua Klein, who treated Paige at Extend Fertility, told Newsweek.
In other Paige DeSorbo news, she spoke to Us Weekly on May 7 about a past visit to her therapist, who informed her that she’d only dated men who pursued her — and had “never picked out” a man herself.
“It was literally [like] getting hit in the face with a brick,” she confessed. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t think the girls know this, that we’re not picking our boyfriends.’ She said that to me in my early 20s and I just always remembered it.”
But Paige doesn’t “want” to pick out her partner quite yet. Instead, she’s “excited” for a single summer.
“I haven’t been single for a summer in a while, but I’m also excited too because I’ve never been single in my 30s, and I feel like it is just drastically different than your 20s,” she said, noting that she “can’t go to a club until 1 a.m. [because] I’ll spontaneously combust.”
“Socializing single is very different in your 30s, but it’s very chic. It’s like, ‘Sorry, I have a business dinner. Can’t come on a date.’ I love saying that,” she admitted.
As for what she wants in a future boyfriend, Paige said she would like him to be low-key.
“I don’t care if he can go out and stay out and hang out with my friends. I’d actually prefer if he didn’t want to do that,” she said. “I’m just looking for someone that meshes easily with my life, and being a reality TV person isn’t the easiest thing.”
Paige also said she’d like her partner to be a “nice person” who loves his mother and “[calls] her occasionally.”
As for whether she’d date another reality star, she suggested that’s not what she needs.
Summer House season nine airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.
