The twenty-first century mom is the quintessence of balance. A laptop balanced on one hip and a tiny tot on another, her world is a fitting mix of work meetings and playdates. And unlike decades gone by, where women would manoeuvre their careers around their biological clock, millennial mommas have it figured the other way around.
How? A revolutionary technology known as Egg Freezing, where a woman’s eggs are removed, frozen and preserved to be used later.
Freezing your eggs can play a big role in the way you plan your life, and it’s worth considering if you’re planning to postpone parenthood for a later phase.
It’s exactly what it sounds like, really. Egg freezing, or oocyte cryopreservation, as it is scientifically known, is the process of extracting eggs from a woman’s ovaries and then freezing them immediately. The process is usually preceded by several weeks of hormone injections that work to ripen the eggs housed in the ovaries. When the eggs are at their ripest, they are extracted via the vagina, through a process known as transvaginal oocyte retrieval, and frozen right away.
Once an egg is removed from the body, it can be frozen using two methods. Traditionally, egg freezing has been associated with a slow-cooling method. In recent years, however, cryopreservation is being increasingly performed through a flash-freezing technique called vitrification. Vitrification is faster, and locks the egg in a glass-like vault.
When an egg is frozen, the ice crystals that are formed can impair its quality. In both methods of cryopreservation, cryoprotectants are used to substitute the water composition of the egg, and to arrest the formation of ice crystals. Also, if you were wondering whether the quality of eggs is hampered by cryopreservation – it isn’t. Research has shown that babies born through cryopreservation do not face an increased risk of birth defects or chromosomal abnormalities.
Oh, so many reasons! Freezing your eggs can help save a little part of you for later. But primarily, there are three possibilities why a woman would choose to freeze her eggs:
It does, doesn’t it?
Saving your eggs can change the way you plan your life. It’s like storing your fertility in a time capsule. Become a mom when you’re ready. Your eggs, of course, will be waiting.
Freezing the eggs enables you to plan for pregnancy in the future. A female’s fertility starts declining once she reaches the age of 32 – 35. Freezing eggs enables you to get pregnant despite advanced age or other medical issues and treatments undertaken. It does not negatively impact your fertility.
A female is born with a fixed number of eggs. Freezing eggs does not change this quantity in any way. Your body’s ability to conceive naturally does not change due to this procedure. However, if you want to delay conception or plan to undergo some medical treatment, freezing the eggs can help preserve fertility.
Yes, you can still conceive naturally after freezing your eggs. The procedure will only extract a few eggs, leaving you with the remaining ones. Your egg reserve depends on your age. For older women, natural conception can be challenging but is still possible until they attain menopause.
The egg extraction and freezing procedure will not cause any menstrual period. However, the procedure does not interfere with your normal menstrual cycle, so you will get your period like you always do. The use of hormones to stimulate the ovaries can delay your period temporarily, but won’t cause any long-term changes.
