Oocyte Cryopreservation – Freezing Eggs For A Future Pregnancy

Watching little girls playing with, talking to, cajoling, and pretend-scolding their dolls, is no doubt a heartwarming and delightful sight. It is no surprise that many women have dreamed of having children when they grow up since they were young girls.

However, life’s circumstances can occasionally interfere with your plans to have children while you are still young and fertile. Delays in starting a family might be caused by medical issues, work responsibilities, or simply not finding a suitable partner. Meanwhile, your biological clock that continues to tick only amplifies the stress these circumstances cause.

But please do not lose hope. We are here to help you retain and preserve your fertility.

If you are planning to delay starting a family, please visit Babies & Us Fertility, a state-of-the-art IVF Centre in Mumbai to explore the option of egg freezing.

What is egg freezing?

‌Egg freezing is a process by which a woman’s eggs are frozen in order to preserve her fertility. The eggs can be stored for a long period of time and then thawed and used to conceive a child at a later date.

Many women interested in delaying pregnancy due to health reasons or personal preferences are now interested in storing their eggs or embryos.

Dr. Hrishikesh Pai, a well-known IVF doctor in Mumbai, says that when becoming pregnant is not desired or feasible at the time, egg freezing can offer you an option to maintain your fertility and ensure your chances of becoming a mother when you are ready.

How does egg freezing work?

Mature oocyte cryopreservation or egg freezing is a technique used to preserve women’s future fertility. This technique involves freezing the oocytes (eggs) directly without first being fertilized in-vitro (IVF dish).

The first step in egg freezing is ovulation, the process of inducing egg production in your ovaries. In this fertility treatment, hormone injections are used to stimulate your ovaries to release more oocytes (eggs) than they would in a typical cycle. The eggs will be retrieved from your ovaries by the reproductive endocrinologist to be frozen for future use. 

There are 2 methods to freeze eggs:

Slow freezing method: The eggs’ temperature is gradually lowered over many hours using the slow freezing technique till it attains the storage temperature of-320ºF (-196ºC), at which point all cell activities are stopped.

Vitrification method: Vitrification or flash freezing is a pretty recent technique that involves immersing the retrieved eggsin LN2(liquid nitrogen) quickly to freeze them instantly. This process requires several minutes.

The highly-experienced IVF specialist, Dr. Hrishikesh Pai, adds that vitrification is an ultra-rapid freezing technique that outperforms earlier techniques in terms of preservation, fertilization, and embryonic growth.

Is egg freezing right for you?

Many women today choose to extend their natural fertility window by freezing their eggs. Here are some factors to consider when making the decision to freeze your eggs:

The health of eggs: Egg quality declines as a woman gets older. The best time to freeze eggs is when they are still young and healthy. You can use an at-home fertility testing kit like ovulation predictor kits (OPK) to predict your fertile time of the month.

Family history: If women in your family have a history of early menopause, you may consider freezing eggs sooner.

Lifestyle: If you have an intense career, then freezing eggs may be a great option for you, and your peace of mind knowing you have “back-up” eggs.

Not ready for motherhood: You may simply not feel ready for motherhood yet, and that is okay. Egg freezing gives you the option to have kids later in life, on your own schedule.

Waiting for the right partner: Egg freezing can buy you time to find the right partner with whom you want to start a family.

Failed IVF cycle: If you have tried IVF and it failed, you may still have healthy eggs. So it is a great idea to freeze the leftover eggs if you go through an IVF cycle. Egg freezing gives you another chance to conceive without having to repeat the ovulation and egg retrieval cycle.

A medical condition: If you have a medical condition that makes fertility treatments unsafe, egg freezing may be your only option to have children.

Finances:An important aspect to also consider is whether it is financially feasible for you to go for egg freezing as the procedure can be expensive.

If you would like to explore the option of egg freezing in Mumbai and find out if it is right for you, please do not hesitate to speak with our IVF specialists at Babies & Us Fertility IVF & ICSI Centre.

Can a woman freeze her eggs at any age?

More and more women today choose egg-freezing methods if they intend to have a baby in the future. The pregnancy rates often begin to decline after the age of 35. Women are therefore recommended to start their treatments sooner so that they can be utilized in the future.

If you want to postpone having a baby and wait past the age of 40, then using donated eggs from a young, healthy donor may be the only way to conceive.

Infertility specialist, Dr. Hrishikesh Pai, adds that couples wanting to delay pregnancy can also go for embryo freezing.

In this procedure, the eggs are first fertilized by sperm to form an embryo, after which the embryo is frozen to be utilized for a frozen embryo transfer (FET) procedure in the future.

Conclusion

Egg freezing is a promising fertility treatment for women who wish to delay their pregnancy. It involves retrieving eggs from the ovaries and then freezing them.

There are several reasons why a woman might choose to freeze her eggs.

Some women do it because they are not ready to have children yet, their busy career life may be preventing them, they may not have met the right partner yet, but want to preserve their fertility. Others do it because they have a medical condition that could impact their fertility, such as cancer.

If you are considering freezing your eggs, please do not delay. Remember, the younger your eggs, the better the chances of you having a successful pregnancy when you are ready.

Please get in touch with Dr. Hrishikesh Pai, among the preferred IVF specialists for people seeking egg freezing in Mumbai.