WNBA veteran Sue Bird has opened up about her decision to freeze her eggs this summer while she missed the 2019 season with a left knee injury.

Fellow WNBA All-Star Breanna Stewart also took advantage of her time off with a recent Achilles injury by opting to freeze her eggs. Egg-freezing requires multiple doctor visits and about 10 days without training or competition while taking a daily hormone medication. Many women elect to freeze their eggs for medical reasons that could impact their fertility.

“I think being in a relationship changes your mind-set on it,” Bird said, per the Washington Post. Bird is in a relationship with U.S. women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe.

“It’s hard to picture (life with children) when you’re both professional athletes. But that’s when it became like: ‘Wait a minute. Shouldn’t we take the steps to have the option, if down the road we decided we do want kids?’ It’s so hard to imagine how that fits into our lives – we know what life is like now; we can’t even have a goldfish right now!”

Bird, who underwent offseason knee surgery and is slated to play in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, has long been a voice for WNBA players when it comes to compensation and mental health, and this is another area where she feels like awareness is necessary. She noted that career-focused women need to know their options. The WNBA’s health plan, similar to many companies, does not cover elective egg fertilizing 

“As an athlete, this is a big thing,” Bird said. “Straight, gay, doesn’t matter. Your career is your body, and you need to keep your options open, in terms of starting a family. Obviously, there’s a lot going on in the world of female sports and specifically in the WNBA. Just to be a pioneer in that category, it would be great for a women’s league to start talking about these things, to maybe have these options for athletes.”

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The 39-year-old Bird regretted not choosing to freeze her eggs earlier in her career, as most patients 35-and-under have better quality eggs retrieved and frozen. Stewart is 25.  

“Talking to the doctor at (the fertility clinic Seattle Reproductive Medicine), she was just like, ‘you’ll have perfect eggs right now because you’re so young and people don’t usually do this that young,'” Stewart said. “Now I have the options that I have these eggs further down the line, because I don’t plan on missing a significant amount of time.

“I was like, ‘all right, let me do something that looks toward my future.’ Now I don’t have to worry about playing year-round or going overseas, getting lost in my work.”

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