There should be no pressure on women to have children; they should conceive and give birth when they are fully prepared.
Women in India, particularly in Mumbai, now have more academic, technological, and social opportunities. Egg freezing can help such women extend their fertility for years because many women focus on growth and career development and want to bring their children into the world later in life.
In India, biology has not kept up with modern life, even though women are most fertile in their early twenties. Thanks to egg freezing, your genetics will now complement your lifestyle.
Thanks to modern techniques, egg freezing in Mumbai is now more accessible and efficient. It enables women to extend their reproductive lives while alleviating the stress of the “biological clock.” Egg freezing is becoming more popular, and the technique is becoming more advanced.
Budget Fertility Clinic, a reputed and reliable IVF centre in Mumbai, offers egg freezing, sperm freezing, and embryo freezing services that are both safe and cost-effective.
We will answer the top ten questions about egg freezing in this article, which will help you decide whether or not to freeze your eggs.
1. What exactly is egg freezing?
Egg freezing is the process of collecting and freezing a female’s eggs to halt her biological clock and preserve her reproductive potential for when she is ready. It enables women to keep their healthiest and strongest eggs for fertility treatments such as IUI or IVF while extending their fertility into their late 30s and 40s.
Storing eggs for long periods is no harm; freezing your eggs in your mid-to-late twenties will give you the best results. If you want to freeze your eggs, don’t put them off any longer; younger eggs are healthier and more likely to survive the freezing process.
2. Who should think about freezing their eggs?
Egg freezing can be helpful for women who want to retain their fertility in the upcoming years for various reasons, such as:
- Women can delay having children to focus on their education, careers, or other personal goals.
- Women diagnosed with cancer.
- Women can freeze their eggs for moral, religious, or other medical reasons.
3. When should I opt for egg freezing?
A woman may be comfortable with her current family-building routine during her peak reproductive years. So, women should freeze their eggs in their early twenties.
Sadly, not every woman’s path to conception is easy, and some may wonder how long they should wait before exploring egg freezing options.
4. What is the method of egg freezing?
- To retrieve eggs for freezing, a patient receives the same hormone injections as IVF. The only difference is that the eggs are frozen after egg retrieval before being thawed, fertilized, and implanted into the uterus as embryos.
- The egg-freezing cycle takes about three weeks to complete and is similar to the first stages of IVF, which include taking birth control pills for 1-2 weeks to turn off natural hormones temporarily.
- Hormone injections are given to stimulate the ovaries and release multiple eggs.
- Once the eggs have matured enough, they are removed with a needle inserted through the vaginal wall under ultrasound guidance. It is a painless procedure done under intravenous sedation. The eggs are then immediately frozen.
- Although it is possible to freeze sperm and embryos, the egg is the largest cell in the human body and contains a significant amount of water. When a cell freezes, ice crystals form, which can kill it.
- To avoid ice crystal formation, the technician dehydrates the egg and replaces the water with an “anti-freeze” before freezing.
- Vitrification, a flash-freezing technique, is used to freeze eggs. We have expertise in vitrification and use it at Budget Fertility IVF Clinic in Mumbai.
- The eggs are thawed, fertilized with a single sperm, and transferred to the uterus as embryos when the patient is ready to try for a baby.
5. How long can we freeze the eggs?
Some studies reveal that eggs that had been frozen for over ten years have been successfully fertilized. Others have succeeded in creating embryos from eggs that have been frozen for ten years. This proves that the number of years you wait has no bearing on your chances of getting pregnant with frozen eggs is enough for other women.
6. How many eggs should I store to conceive?
According to preliminary data, egg thawing rates of 75% and fertilization rates of 75% are expected in women up to 38 years old. So, if ten eggs are frozen, seven should survive the thaw, and five to six should fertilize and become embryos.
In women up to the age of 38, 3-4 embryos are usually transferred. As a result, IVF specialists often recommend storing ten eggs for each pregnancy attempt. The average woman under the age of 38 can expect to harvest 10-20 eggs per cycle.
7. Is it safe to freeze eggs?
Thousands of babies have been born from frozen eggs to this point. Compared to the general population, a study of over 900 babies born from frozen eggs found no increased rate of congenital disabilities. Furthermore, a study showed that embryos derived from frozen eggs had no chromosomal abnormalities than those from fresh eggs.
A new study published in 2014 found that egg freezing did not increase the risk of pregnancy complications. Over 300,000 children have been born from frozen embryos worldwide using slow-freeze cryopreservation techniques, with no increase in birth defects.
Although these findings are encouraging, it will take many years of follow-up to ensure that babies conceived using egg freezing technology do not have higher rates of birth defects than those conceived using other methods.
8. What if I am over the age of 36?
Pregnancy rates from frozen eggs are expected to be affected by the woman’s age when she freezes her eggs but not by her age when she returns to use them. As a result, future pregnancy rates in women over the age of 38 at the time of freezing are likely lower than in younger women.
There have been few reports of frozen egg pregnancies in women over the age of 38. This is primarily due to egg freezing studies’ lower age cut-offs and the relatively small number of women who have returned to use their frozen eggs thus far.
Continual pregnancies have been achieved in women 40 and older who froze their eggs. Furthermore, fresh embryos are routinely used to achieve pregnancies in women as young as 43. We may be able to mimic these rates with more egg freezing research; however, we don’t know if eggs from women over 40 will respond to freezing in the same way as eggs from women under 40 years of age.
9. What are the chances of having a baby with frozen eggs?
After determining how many eggs you will likely freeze in a single cycle, you will need to determine what that means. Your chances of having one (or more) babies with frozen eggs are determined by your age at the time of freezing, and the number of eggs you freeze, and your doctor should be able to give you a realistic, evidence-based estimate of your chances of becoming pregnant using your frozen eggs later.
10. Will I have to go through the process again?
While it is essential to discuss it with your doctor, the final decision will be up to you and your goals. Once you know how many eggs to freeze in total and what your likely results will be in one cycle, you will need to consider the following:
- Is this process “valuable” for you because of the possibility of becoming a mother, or are you simply trying to avoid future regrets?
- And, of course, how much time and money are you prepared to invest in egg freezing?
These discussion points will assist you, and your doctor in determining whether one cycle is sufficient for you or whether two or more are required.
Budget Fertility Centre offers cost-effective pricing for additional cycles of egg freezing in Mumbai to make it a little easier to reach your goals. Starting a family is one of the greatest joys for any woman.
We will assist you in completing the task on time and on schedule. As a result, freezing your eggs is an effective and uncomplicated way to ensure future fertility and healthy pregnancy.
