Should I freeze my eggs ?
I just completed a consultation with a single 38-year-old banker who wanted to freeze her eggs. She said, " Doctor , I
have still not been able to find the right guy to marry , and I am not getting
any younger . If at some point I do want to have babies, I want to freeze my
eggs now so that I don't have to worry about the increased risk of birth
defects or reduced fertility as I get older ".
I explained to her that we could
freeze her eggs, but my concern was that she may have already missed the boat !
The right time to freeze eggs is when they are of good quality, and there are
lots of them. From a biological perspective, this should be done when a woman
is young - preferably at the age of 25 !
I understand it's unrealistic to
expect 25 year old women to freeze their eggs . When you are young, and you
have your whole life ahead of you, the probability of being able to find the
right person , and then settling down and have a baby in the bedroom is
extremely high ! However, if you postpone this decision until you cross 35 , even
though egg freezing still remains a viable option , the reality is that the
success rate of having a baby with these frozen eggs does drops dramatically if
the freezing is done after the age of 38.
This is because ovarian reserve declines
with age, and while the decline varies from
patient to patient, it does mean that the success rate with egg freezing goes
down . So what advice should a specialist give to a woman who wants to consider
free...
Source: The Patient's Doctor - Category: Obstetricians and Gynecologists Source Type: blogs
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