News

Understanding the Egg Freezing Process

Posted on October 5, 2016 by MD

Egg freezing is the process of preserving a woman’s eggs until she is ready to go through an IUI or IVF procedure to get pregnant. A woman’s egg supply when she is born is all she will ever have. It might be a million when she is born, but by the time she reaches an age where she is sexually active, there could only be 300,000 left. A woman’s egg supply keeps reducing every month, which diminishes a woman’s chances of conceiving naturally. There is where egg freezing can be beneficial. Here are some things to know about egg freezing, the procedure, and why it is performed.

Why Egg Freezing is Done

There are many reasons why a woman might want to freeze her eggs. One reason is because she is struggling with infertility and wants to freeze her eggs until she is ready to go through an infertility procedure. It is also common for women who don’t want a baby yet, but do in the future, to have her eggs frozen until she is ready. Some other reasons include if she has a disease that risks damage to the ovaries, is at risk of ovarian failure, or is about to go through chemotherapy for cancer

The Preparation Steps Required

Egg freezing at New York Fertility Clinics is a simple, straightforward process. It begins with preparing your body for the procedure, starting with taking birth control pills. Following the pills, you will then stimulate your ovaries with injections for approximately 10 days, which allows your body to produce as many eggs as possible.

How the Procedure is Performed

Once you have finished with the course of medications, you return to the fertility clinic for the egg retrieval. You get a minimal amount of anesthesia so you don’t experience pain during the procedure. The doctor will insert a needle at the pelvis area in order to reach the follicles and ovaries. The eggs detach from the follicle wall and are sucked out of the ovary and into the needle. The eggs are then put in an incubator and frozen. Your fertility clinic NYC can freeze the eggs and maintain their quality for about 10 years through Oocyte Cryopreservation Vitrification (OCV), or flash freezing, though there is no guarantee in quality of the frozen eggs after this point. With advance and improved fertility technologies, women choosing to freeze their eggs have become an effective and popular option for preserving fertility. Contact New York Reproductive Wellness, your New York fertility clinic, to learn more about egg freezing and preserving your fertility.

Categories

Tags

American Society for Reproductive Medicine
College of American Pathologists
Fertile Hope
Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology
Logos Mobile