Jennette McCurdy spoke candidly about the option of freezing her eggs during the latest episode of her popular Hard Feelings podcast.
Although she doesn’t currently see herself having kids ‘in any way shape or form,’ the iCarly alum, 31, acknowledges that her feelings may change in the future.
‘I cannot imagine a world in which someday I want kids,’ she said. ‘I am also open to my mind changing.’
McCurdy continued: ‘I have changed a lot as a person in my years so far and I hope to continue changing.
‘What I don’t want to happen is for me to turn 40 and realize, “F**k, I want kids now,” and I don’t have enough eggs to make it happen.’
Candid: Jennette McCurdy spoke candidly about the option of freezing her eggs during the latest episode of her popular Hard Feelings podcast; seen in 2022
According to John Hopkins Medicine, a woman’s egg supply declines ‘more rapidly around age 37’ and only decreases with age, with menopause kicking in between the ages of late 40s and early 50s on average.
Women who go through with freezing their eggs before the age of 40 have a higher success rate of pregnancy if they choose to fertilize the eggs in the future.
McCurdy revealed that she recently went to an appointment to learn more about the process and admitted that it left her ‘horrified.’
Eggs are retrieved via an ‘ultrasound-guided surgical procedure’ after the female has performed multiple hormone injections per day for 10–12 days, as per JHM.
Frequent bloodwork and pelvic exams are also conducted in the lead up to the retrieval.
Once extracted and deemed ‘mature,’ the eggs are then frozen and stored at below freezing temperatures, as explained by Rocky Mountain Fertility Center.
‘I’m hearing my body is going to look and feel like I’m pregnant. I am going to have difficulties and emotionality, mood swings, and hormonal charges twenty times that of a regular period,’ McCurdy recalled of the appointment.
‘No part of me feels motivated to freeze my eggs when I don’t think I want to be a mom, but what if someday I change my mind?’
‘I am trying to bet on my future self wanting a thing that my current self can’t imagine wanting, versus just not doing it and risking that someday I might want it and not be able to do it then – and the regret.
‘I am trying to weigh these options and it’s quite complex.’
McCurdy said she was ‘feeling confronted with aging and who I am now versus who I might be someday and how much I don’t know about my future self.
‘I was just confronted with all these life realities that, frankly, I didn’t feel prepared for – and I still don’t.’
McCurdy detailed her traumatic childhood in her best-selling memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died, which was released in August 2022.
The tell-all explores the star’s disturbing relationship with her domineering stage mother Debbie, who passed away in 2013 from cancer.
McCurdy celebrated the book’s — which dominated the New York Times Best Seller list for 52 weeks — one year anniversary by thanking those who’ve given her the opportunity to tell her story and deal with grief in her own way.
‘thank you all so much for making this book a NYT bestseller for one entire year. i honestly can’t believe it,’ she wrote.
Future: Although she doesn’t currently see herself having kids ‘in any way shape or form,’ the iCarly alum, 31, acknowledges that her feelings may change in the future; seen in 2022
‘What I don’t want to happen is for me to turn 40 and realize, “F**k, I want kids now,” and I don’t have enough eggs to make it happen,’ she said; seen in October 2023
‘i’m grateful every day for the crazy ride this last year has been and for the incredible opportunities that have come from it. it’s thanks to you all’
The 31-year-old rose to fame on the Nickelodeon shows iCarly and Sam And Cat, only to eventually quit acting as an adult in 2017.
Though McCurdy’s childhood trauma is mostly laid bare in the pages of I’m Glad My Mom Died, she did divulge more disturbing details about her mother during an episode of The Louis Theroux Podcast in August.
During the sit-down, the former child star recounted the way her mother ‘showered me till I was 17, 18,’ revealing she ‘would be in the shower with me, shampooing and conditioning my hair, washing my body.’
Jennette recalled: ‘She would give me breast and vaginal exams in the shower and said that she was checking for lumps – she was just checking for cancer.’
Debbie meanwhile ‘would be clothed,’ Jennette said, ‘but it was uncomfortable for me. I knew it felt violating for me, and I knew I didn’t want it.’
Jennette’s bid to put a stop to the practice failed, as ‘the one time I had attempted to even say: “Hey, do you think I could shower myself?” she flew into hysterics. and it just became clear to me: “Oh, I can’t ever try to shower myself again.”‘
Ultimately Jennette, who was raised Mormon, was only able to shower in private after her mother was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer.
Having begun a singing career in 2009, Jennette had to go on tour as a musician, while Debbie was confined to one city to undergo chemotherapy.
‘She physically could not be with me, and that was I think the only reason why I was able to finally start showering myself,’ Jennette said.
Looking back and attempting to analyze her mother’s behavior, Jennette theorized that the showers may have been the result of such factors as ‘no boundaries,’ ‘ownership,’ ‘the fear of me growing up’ and ‘body monitoring.’
Jennette was only 11 years old, already a child actress, when Debbie started her off on a stringent regimen of ‘calorie restriction.’
The process began after Jennette began developing breasts, which she regarded as a ‘horrifying’ development because it was a harbinger of adulthood.
‘And it had always been really clear to me that my mom did not want me to grow up, not just for acting, but it also felt like her worth was tied up in me being young,’ said Jennette. ‘With me being young, she had something to do. She felt good.’
In order to ‘stop the boobs from coming in,’ Jennette revealed, she and Debbie ‘partnered up to count our calories.’
Childhood trauma: McCurdy detailed her traumatic childhood in her best-selling memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died
One-year anniversary: McCurdy celebrated the book’s — which dominated the New York Times Best Seller list for 52 weeks — one year anniversary by thanking those who’ve given her the opportunity to tell her story and deal with grief in her own way
‘i’m grateful every day for the crazy ride this last year has been and for the incredible opportunities that have come from it. it’s thanks to you all’ she wrote to her fans
Though McCurdy’s childhood trauma is mostly laid bare in the pages of I’m Glad My Mom Died, she did divulge more disturbing details about her mother during an episode of The Louis Theroux Podcast in August; seen with her mother Debbie in 2009
Debbie, her daughter divulged, ‘weighed me daily and she measured my thighs with a measuring tape. She taught me what diuretics were and we read calorie books together and constantly were just in this kind of as partners in crime.’
Jennette confessed that their complicity ‘felt amazing. I’m aware now of how warped it was but at the time it really felt like, you know in The Parent Trap when the girls are like doing hand jives and dancing together.’
She told herself: ‘”Oh my goodness, Mom and me are in this thing together.”‘ And she also told me it was a secret. We shouldn’t tell anyone.’
Young Jennette ‘thought that was great because we’ve got kind of the secret code language. Nobody else knows what we’re doing. We can kind of wink and nod to each other and know that we’re in this together and nobody else is a part of this. So it felt amazing at the time, but it did lead to a really arduous relationship with food.’
Her tortured relationship with her body led to Jennette plunging into a bout of bulimia at the age of 21 after Debbie died of cancer.
‘The anorexia had switched to binge eating disorder, which it then switched to bulimia and just kind of ping-ponged from all the different eating disorders.’
She had ‘attempted’ bulimia ‘a few times before’ her mother died, but at that point she ‘hadn’t really been able to purge effectively.’
Once she lost Debbie, however, she found that she was ‘able’ to make herself vomit, which she considered the ‘best of both worlds’ between anorexia and binge eating.
‘I can actually eat stuff and I can just get rid of it afterward,’ Jennette marveled at the time. ‘Why didn’t I think of this sooner?’
Her entirely daily schedule began to be arranged around binging and purging, which she now describes as an ‘addiction. It was really what my world revolved around. Everything else was too overwhelming, you know, was too overwhelming to face.’
