A woman who is not ready to have a child can choose to freeze eggs to try to preserve her ability to have a child later.
Freezing eggs is not a guarantee of being able to have a child later.
Not everyone is a candidate for egg freezing.
Egg freezing typically works best for those in their 20s to early 30s, and is not usually recommended for women over 38 years.
Why would I want to freeze my eggs?
As women get older, they may encounter difficulty getting pregnant (conceiving) with a healthy baby.
Women are born with about 1-2 million eggs. Most of the eggs die off naturally (just like the way we lose skin and hair cells every day). By the time a girl reaches puberty, she is left with about half a million eggs.
As she gets older, especially as women enter their mid- to late-30s and 40s, the eggs disappear more quickly.
Also, the eggs that remain might be less able to lead to a healthy pregnancy because of the normal age effects on egg quality
Biologically, it is easier to get pregant before age 30. However, due to professional, social, or health reasons, a woman might not be ready to get pregnant at that time and she might want to defer having a child until the time is right for her. Understanding the normal age effect on future fertility, these women may seek out treatments to remove and freeze eggs to be saved for potential use in the future.
What does egg freezing involve
?
The actual treatment process is similar to the first part of the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process used to treat some patients with infertility.
Briefly, a woman would have 10-12 days of daily injections to cause a group of her eggs to mature and develop. During this time, blood levels and ultrasounds will be done to track her response to the medicines. To remove the matured eggs, the woman would then undergo a brief (15-30 minute, typically) outpatient procedure usually under light anesthesia to harvest the eggs. Once removed and inspected by a trained scientist–an embryologist— the usable eggs can be frozen indefinitely.
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