EGG FREEZING

The Basics:

Many women are delaying starting a family. Their reasons vary from not having found the right partner, economic, personal and social. Egg freezing has become a new viable option for women to preserve their fertility. Egg freezing is the ability for a woman to suspend her fertility in time preventing the natural decline in quality and quantity that naturally occurs with age.

Egg freezing is not a new and has been used as a medical practice for women with medical conditions such as cancer since the 1980’s. However, since a more advanced freezing method called vitrification was introduced, it has become increasingly popular for women seeking to delay motherhood.

What is the biological clock?

A woman is born with two ovaries, each containing resting eggs or follicles. At 20 weeks gestation, she will have about 6 million eggs, which is the largest amount of eggs she will ever have in her lifetime. At birth, she will lose approximately half of her eggs, and by the time she reaches puberty, she will only have about 200,000 eggs left. As a woman begins to age, her egg quantity will continue to decrease, and the quality will as well. The diminished egg quality and quantity can significantly impact her ability to conceive.

In your early 20s, fertility begins to decline, but conception rates remain high into the 30s. By your mid-30s, this decline accelerates and reaching a pregnancy is at it’s minimum. In addition, women in their late 30s and early 40s have an increased risk of age-dependent changes in egg quality, sometimes resulting in miscarriage and/or genetic abnormalities in their children

What is vitrification?

Vitrification is an effective flash freeze method that has shown strong survival, fertilization, and embryonic development rates after a woman’s frozen eggs have been thawed. By applying this newer technology, many clinics have seen a sharp increase in survival rates of the eggs after thaw. Pregnancy rates have also been reassuring. This technology is helping women freeze enough mature eggs now, so that when they are ready to use them, they will have multiple opportunities to become pregnant.

When is the ideal time to freeze?

It is ideal for a woman to freeze in her mid-twenties to mid-thirties. However, many of the clinics we work with will freeze eggs for women in their late thirties and early forties.

Will Egg Freezing Enable Me to Have a Baby?

Many factors go into making a successful pregnancy. There are no absolute guarantees. Your chances of ultimately having a baby following egg freezing are greater when the oocytes are both younger and greater in number.

Who is the ideal candidate for egg freezing?

Age Related Freezing: Women who want a family and are advancing in age are ideal candidates. Egg freezing allows women to preserve their fertility at a younger age giving them flexibility for family planning.

Medical Related Conditions:
Women who will be exposed to chemotherapy and radiation.
Women with conditions such as Lupus or Rheumatoid Arthritis
Women with Genetic conditions such as Fragile X syndrome

Religious and Ethical Reasons:
Egg freezing allows a couple to choose the number of eggs they want fertilized without discarding any extra eggs. In this way, patients can still benefit from IVF without having frozen,
left over embryos.

Embryo Freezing:

Who is the ideal candidate?

Couples who want children, but the time is not optimal.
Couples who will need a surrogate to carry the pregnancy.
Single women who would like to pursue a family though a sperm donor.
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