# at 20 weeks gestation the fetus will hold the most eggs she will ever have > I said a moment ago that my daughter had all her eggs in midfetushood. In fact she was goosed up way beyond capacity, a fatly subsidized poultry farm. She had all her eggs and many more, and she will lose the great majority of those glittering germ cells before she begins to menstruate. At twenty weeks' gestation, the peak of a female's oogonial load, the fetus holds 6 to 7 million eggs.[[Woman by Natalie Angier#^-adse]] > By the fifth month of prenatal development, the size of ovarian follicle pool is estimate at 7 million oogonia ([Sadler, 2011](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8769179/#r101))[[(Moghadam et al., 2022)#^z6jo1]]