Preserve your dream of motherhood with Egg Freezing

Human oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing) is a novel technology in which a woman’s eggs (oocytes) are extracted, frozen and stored. Later, when she is ready to become pregnant, the eggs can be thawed, fertilized, and transferred to the uterus as embryos. One of the newest advances in fertility treatment — retrieving and freezing eggs — can give a woman better odds for starting a family later in life. That’s because life doesn’t always cooperate with a woman’s plans for motherhood. It is a well known fact that fertility in women begins to decline early 30s and drops rapidly in the late 30s and 40s. The risks for miscarriage and birth defects both rise with age as well.

The biological clock of women generally stops ticking in late 30's or early 40's. To preserve the fertility for later stage in the life egg fertility is one of the option for females. As more women are waiting longer to have children, egg freezing is becoming more relevant and in demand as many women are facing the real challenge of having successful, healthy pregnancies later in life. Our opportunities are endless, but our egg supply and egg quality are not, that is why more women are seeking egg freezing services. Egg Freezing offers women planning to have children after the age of 35, when the biological clock to effectively slow down.

Women should be made aware about the limited lifespan of the ovaries and how truly hard it may be to get pregnant when they actually want to get pregnant. With the fast-paced lifestyles and time-consuming jobs that many women are committed to these days, it seems that more and more women are trying to have children only to find out that it is "too late." Cryo preservation of eggs or ooctyes allows women the potential opportunity to delay their pregnancy until a more opportune time (“the right time”). The "right time" may mean the right partner, the right place in the right career that allows for the investment of more time to a family, or even the right state of health. When the “right time” comes, regardless of the intense desire to have a baby, there is unfortunately no guarantee that a woman will be able to have a genetic child.

Egg freezing enables a woman to bank her eggs when she is young in order to have the same high fertility potential when she is ready to conceive later in life. Oocyte cryopreservation is aimed at three particular groups of women: those diagnosed with cancer who have not yet begun chemotherapy or radiotherapy; those undergoing treatment with assisted reproductive technologies who do not consider embryo freezing an option; and those who would like to preserve their future ability to have children, either because they do not yet have a partner, or for other personal or medical reasons.

Egg freezing can be beneficial for a number of reasons for women wishing to preserve their fertility for the future including:

1) Women who want or need to delay childbearing in order to pursue educational, career or other personal goals. Because fertility is known to decline with age, freezing eggs at an early reproductive age will best insure the chance for a future pregnancy. Unlike the ovary and oocytes (eggs), the uterus does not age and can carry a pregnancy well in to the 40s and 50s. Frozen (cryopreserved) eggs are stored at -196 degrees, so there is no deterioration in eqq quality with time.

2) Women diagnosed with cancer. Egg freezing offers a chance to preserve eggs prior to chemotherapy, surgery or radiation. Most of these treatments destroy the eggs and lead to infertility. In some cases, viable eggs may be present after cancer treatment. Fertility preserving options vary depending on age, type of cancer, and cancer-treatment plan.

3) Women with objections to storing frozen embryos for religious and/or moral reasons. Following a standard IVF process, many individuals or couples have excess embryos. The decision to freeze these unused embryos may be difficult because the options for embryo disposition - how, when or if they will ever be used - can be an ethically and religiously complex choice for many. The decision to fertilize only needed eggs in the IVF process and freezing the remaining un-fertilized eggs may offer a positive solution for those with concerns about freezing embryos.

4) Women with a family history of early menopause. Some forms of early menopause (premature ovarian failure) are genetically-linked. Egg freezing offers a chance to preserve eggs before they are all depleted.

Thus putting fertility on hold is normally done for two reasons- Medical and social reason.

The egg retrieval process for oocyte cryopreservation is the same as that for in vitro fertilization. This includes one to several weeks of hormone injections that stimulate ovaries to ripen multiple eggs. When the eggs are mature, a medication to trigger ovulation is given and the eggs are removed from the body using an ultrasound-guided needle through the vagina. The procedure is usually conducted under sedation. The eggs are immediately frozen. Retrieved eggs are frozen and stored indefinitely. When the woman is ready, the eggs are thawed, fertilized with her partner’s or a donor’s sperm, then 1 or 2  embryos (fertilized eggs) are placed in her uterus using a small flexible tube through the cervix.

Vitrification of eggs and embryos is a technique of storing eggs which cools at a very fast rate, such that the tissue is preserved in a glass-like state (hence 'vitrified') without the formation of damaging ice crystals. Vitrification is associated with better survival rates for eggs than previous slow-cooling.

The Blossom Fertility and IVF Centre aims to reduce the stress and hassle associated with infertility investigations and treatment, by offering a one-stop diagnostic and treatment service for infertile couples. Their expertise in infertility treatment and cutting edge IVF technology has helped majority of our patients to achieve pregnancy.

Blossom Fertility and IVF Centre's egg freezing services give women the unprecedented chance to store their eggs during their reproductive period for use when they wish to start or expand their families in the future. There egg freezing program is available for all women who want to preserve their fertility for the later use. They create awareness among the people about the benefits of cryopreservation of eggs so that womens who wants to start their family later in the life due to social or medical reasons have the opportunity of having motherhood in their later years. At Blossom recommended age for elective egg freezing is between 21 and 43 years old for those who are not in a situation conducive to childbearing at present. According to them freezing between the ages of 30 and 38 is most ideal and between 39 to 41 years reasonable in most cases.

If you are interested in or need more preliminary information about egg freezing, cryopreservation of eggs, vitrification of eggs or want to learn more about how to get started with egg freezing, they will be very happy to answer all your questions.