Fett opens by making the case that egg quality — not egg quantity, and often not even the specific diagnosis a woman has been given — is the dominant factor behind fertility struggles, recurrent miscarriage, and IVF failure, especially as women get older.

Why she centers egg quality specifically:

• Poor egg quality is strongly linked to chromosomal abnormalities, which are a leading cause of both failed IVF cycles and early miscarriage
• Many fertility treatments focus heavily on egg quantity (stimulating more eggs) while offering little guidance on quality, leaving a real gap that motivated Fett's research
• Unlike quantity, which is largely fixed by age, Fett argues quality is meaningfully influenced by controllable factors — setting up the book's practical, actionable focus

This reframing shifts the reader's attention from "how many eggs are left" to "how healthy are the eggs available," which changes what interventions actually make sense.