I visited the 'Equinox of egg freezing' in NYC, where you can drink green juice and Instagram your fertility experience - and it felt more like a fancy spa than a medical facility

Katie Warren

Nov 27, 2018, 01:05 IST

I visited the 'Equinox of egg freezing' in NYC, where you can drink green juice and Instagram your fertility experience - and it felt more like a fancy spa than a medical facility

Katie Warren/Business Insider

Trellis opened in November 2018 in New York City.

Trellis is a brand-new fertility studio in New York City that offers fertility assessments and services related to egg freezing.
The studio has called itself "the Equinox of egg freezing" in comparison to the $240 a month luxury gym chain.
"We wanted to create a modern-day experience for women doing egg freezing," Jennifer Huang, the chief marketing officer at Trellis, told Business Insider.
I took a tour of Trellis, and with its monogrammed Turkish cotton bath robes, green juices, and an Instagram corner, it felt more like a fancy spa than a medical clinic.

They call themselves the "Equinox of egg freezing."

It may seem odd to liken a fertility clinic to a luxury gym chain, but for Jennifer Huang, the chief marketing officer at Trellis, a brand-new boutique fertility studio in New York City, the comparison makes perfect sense.

"We wanted to create a modern-day experience for women doing egg freezing," Huang told Business Insider. "That's why when we think of Equinox, something that's inspirational but very high-touch, we've really kind of reinvented what the client experience is around egg freezing."

Trellis certainly seems like the kind of place someone who works out at Equinox would like. The airy, colorful space is decorated in warm peach and millennial pink tones with pops of navy and gold. In one corner created specifically for Instagram, a stencilled message on the wall reads, "It's up to each of us to invent our own future."

Trellis is a division of IntegraMed, the largest operator of fertility clinics in North America. This gives Trellis access to "amazing doctors, top-tier science, and cryostorage," Huang said. "These are the things that sometimes take a very long time to set up. Because we're part of IntegraMed, we already have all of the infrastructure set up."

I took a tour of Trellis, where a doctor told me - I'm 26 - that I was an "ideal young woman to come in here." Egg freezing "used to resonate primarily with women in their late 30s," Susan Herzberg, president of Prelude Fertility, a network of fertility clinics, told The New York Times. But Trellis - and other fertility centers - are now turning toward women in their 20s. And, as INSIDER'S Caroline Praderio previously reported, egg freezing is increasing in popularity, with many seeing it as a way to empower women.

I was offered a fertility consult, which Trellis was providing free of charge for those who came to the grand opening, and which are now advertised for $45 on Trellis' website.

Here's what it was like inside Trellis.

Trellis is a brand-new boutique fertility clinic in New York City, about a five minute walk from Union Square.

It's in the Flatiron District, which has lots of shops, restaurants, and cafes.

The entrance to the building where Trellis is located sits between a hair salon and a home décor store.

I took the elevator up to the ninth floor ...

... and stepped into a narrow hallway that still seemed to be under construction. Trellis opened in mid-November 2018.

The first thing that struck me was how bright, airy, and colorful the space was.

It didn't look like any doctor's office or medical clinic I've ever been to.

The space is decorated with warm peach tones, metallic accents, and pops of navy and what some might call millennial pink.

Large windows line the wall facing the street, and sheer curtains let in plenty of light.

Fresh flowers, bite-sized healthy snacks, and pitchers of water were set out on golden coffee tables.

The metallic, patterned wallpaper seemed like it was chosen to appeal to millennials.

One corner was even created specifically for Instagram with a quote that read, "It's up to each of us to invent our own future." But in fact, the whole place was very Instagrammable.

Patients at Trellis can grab a bottled juice from the juice bar in the waiting area, which I unfortunately missed out on when I was there.

As I looked around, it occurred to me that nothing about the reception area indicated that it was a medical facility. In fact, if I didn't know it was one, I never would have guessed it.

"We're not a scary fertility clinic," Jennifer Huang, the chief marketing officer of Trellis, told me. "We've built our place to be very inspiring, authentic, and transparent. We have phone chargers everywhere, we've got special juices, places where people can film content. But it's really about the education."

A few minutes after I arrived, I sat down with Huang, who has gone through the egg-freezing process ...

... and one of the clinic's doctors, Dr. Cary Dicken, to talk about what makes Trellis unique.

Huang embraces Trellis being compared to Equinox. "We wanted to create a modern-day experience for women doing egg freezing," she told me. According to their website, a 60-minute fertility assessment costs $350 and will get you an ultrasound and a fertility plan; a two-hour fertility wellness exam costs $299 and includes a customized meal plan.

Trellis sets itself apart by providing each patient with a fertility coach who acts as their point person throughout the whole process, offering meal planning, and being transparent about their pricing and the whole egg-freezing process.

Patients can opt for meal plans from Trellis nutritionist Carlyn Rosenblum, RD, who says she works with women to "boost fertility health" by removing factors that hinder fertility, such as smoking, excessive alcohol, caffeine, processed foods, added sugar, conventional meat/dairy, environmental toxins, and stress.

One recipe Rosenblum recommends is a "Sweet Winter Kale Salad," which includes butternut squash, pomegranate seeds, hemp seeds, avocado oil, olive oil, micro-greens, and raw honey.

For their grand opening, Trellis was providing fertility consults free of charge, an offer I took them up on. The consult includes a one-on-one session with a fertility coach, a blood test, and a vaginal ultrasound.

I stepped into the exam room and realized this was the only part of the space that felt even remotely like a doctor's office — although it had a skylight, which not many other NYC clinics have.

And unlike a typical doctor's office, there were peach-colored Turkish cotton bathrobes instead of paper gowns.

They monogrammed my name onto my robe and let me take it home. It was by far the most comfortable gown I've ever worn in a medical setting.

I got my blood taken and then got the vaginal ultrasound, which I found to be quicker and easier than a typical pap smear. It took about five minutes, including the time Dr. Dicken spent pointing out my ovarian follicles and explaining what I was looking at on the screen.

I had no idea what ovarian follicles were before this moment, but from what I understand, they are tiny sacs in the ovary that contain immature eggs, or oocytes.

If someone wanted to proceed with egg freezing after this consult, they would take 10 to 12 days worth of medication to stimulate the ovaries, in the form of self-injections. Dr. Dicken describes them as "tiny little needles, almost like a diabetic giving themselves insulin."

After the 10-12 days of injections, which include several quick visits to Trellis to monitor, they go to the SIRM-NY clinic in Midtown Manhattan for the egg retrieval procedure, the only part of the process that doesn't happen at Trellis. The retrieval process takes 20 or 30 minutes.

The eggs are frozen with through vitrification — a process that reduces the risk of ice crystals forming on eggs through speed-freezing with liquid nitrogen — and stored at the same facility.

Egg freezing "used to resonate primarily with women in their late 30s," Susan Herzberg, president of Prelude Fertility, a network of fertility clinics, told The New York Times. But Trellis — and other fertility centers — are now turning toward women in their 20s.

"You are the ideal young woman to come in here," Dr. Dicken told me. She said that in an ideal world, women would freeze their eggs in their mid to late 20s, but certainly by their early 30s. For reference, I am 26.

Dr. Dicken said there is less than a 1% risk of any complications related to egg freezing. "I think for almost all women, if they have the time and the means to do this, I see no downside in it," she said.

It is likely the question of "the means" that keeps many people away from egg freezing. Trellis says they aim to be transparent about their pricing so there are no surprises. Still, costs can climb upwards of $15,000 for a single cycle and a year of storage.

When clients come to Trellis, the first person they see is the fertility coach, Danielle DeSimone. I sat down with her in a small room that, again, did not remotely resemble a medical facility. "I'm like the client concierge, so I take women through the whole process," DeSimone told me.

After I met DeSimone, my visit to Trellis was coming to an end. I was impressed with the comfortable and hip facilities, which felt like a place I would like to hang out — not a thought I've ever had about any doctor's office or hospital.

I left thinking that, sure, it would be nice for young women who want to put off having kids to be able to freeze eggs as an "insurance policy," as Dr. Dicken put it. But although I'm their "ideal candidate," there's no way I could afford to have my eggs frozen at this point in my life.

Some companies, including Apple, Facebook, and Google, have offered to cover the costs of egg freezing as an employee benefit. But until egg freezing is covered by insurance, it unfortunately won't be an option for many.

But when it came to the design and the concept of education and transparency, Trellis hooked me. At the very least, it's certainly a place I'd like to hang out, lounging in my Turkish cotton bathrobe and sipping a green juice.

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