Nowadays, it is possible to freeze your eggs to delay pregnancy as there are several individuals who choose this technique, whether it is because of a desire to pursue a career, handle health concerns or find a partner, etc. Hence, until you are ready to conceive, choosing to freeze your eggs gives you a great opportunity to manage the other aspects of life.
However, there is one issue not everyone is aware of: the full process involved in egg freezing is not extended to a foreign concept. Thus, to make an informed decision, understanding what to expect, their associated costs, and how egg freezing can preserve fertility are critical components.
Knowing About The Egg Freezing
Egg freezing is one form of assisted reproductive technology (ART) that is also known as oocyte cryopreservation. During the procedure, medications are used to help harvest those eggs from the ovaries and then freeze them for storage to stimulate the eggs to grow. At a later date, the eggs can be liquefied and incorporated with sperm to create an embryo. Thus, during an embryo transfer life cycle, the embryo can then be infiltrated into the uterus. Egg freezing is also associated with egg contribution when a donor gives eggs for somebody else to use during the fertility treatments.
At the same time, some individuals may also opt to freeze their eggs for usage at a subsequent date. However, the overall goal is the same regardless of the reason for freezing the eggs, as storing eggs allows the harvesting of eggs at a younger age while preserving the fertility that can be used at a later date. However, it can only improve the chances of successfully conceiving later in life as this won’t guarantee the pregnancy.
Timeline And Process Of Egg Freezing
You can expect the entire egg-freezing process to take between 2 to 3 weeks to complete. While timelines might vary slightly, most cycles are also done in less than 2 weeks. Hence, to ensure optimal results, encouraging the ovaries to assemble eggs is timed with your menstrual cycles during the procedure. Then, using the ultrasounds, the ovaries are monitored carefully, and blood work is done to check hormone levels.
Medical checkup
Firstly, to discuss your desire to freeze your eggs, you will be required to meet with a fertility doctor from Sofat Infertility, who will help to schedule an exam to understand your complete medical history with blood work and hormone testing completed. Additionally, to perform an antral follicle count (AFC), you can anticipate undergoing a transvaginal ultrasound, which is a way to evaluate your ovarian reserve or the number of eggs staying in your ovaries.
During this time, to ensure that the greatest number of eggs can be safely recovered without placing you at risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), your fertility doctor will outline the suggested stimulation protocol.
Stimulating And Monitoring The Ovarian
Depending on your physician’s recommendations, you might start this procedure by taking birth control pills or other medicines and where you are in your current menstrual cycle, such as oestrogen, lupron, or Aygestin to help synchronise your follicles so that they react similarly to the incitement medications that you’ll take later.
Thus, during the stimulation stage, you will usually have 3 to 5 monitoring visits to estimate the improvement of your follicles. Therefore, you’ll receive a trigger shot once the follicles reach a good size, which is an injectable pharmaceutical, usually either human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), lupron, or an assortment of the two.
Retrieving The Egg
It is also known as egg harvesting, which is the process of removing eggs from your ovaries. During this process, you can arrive at our centre, where an IV will be administered. This will allow them to provide general anaesthesia for the procedure since you’ll be asleep during the process. Thus, the number of eggs retrieved depends on several variables, such as age and ovarian reserve. In general, people who are 40 and older have rarer eggs retrieved compared to individuals who are younger or under the age of 35.
Egg Freezing And Recovery
Finally, the mature eggs that were successfully collected within a few hours of egg retrieval will be frozen through an approach known as vitrification. Therefore, this process depends on the immediate freezing to undervalue the chance of frost crystals forming on the eggs through the help of fluid nitrogen, which helps to strive to enhance survival rates.
At Sofat Infertility centre, we are considered one of the most experienced test tube baby centres and fertility clinics throughout the nation exclusively because of the comparatively increased conquest rate of fertility amongst both men and women.
