Are You an Aunt Who Wants to Be a Mom?
By Robin McCarthy
If you haven’t yet found Mr. Right, you are not alone. Many of us are not having babies in our 20s and early 30s, which unfortunately are our most fertile years. There are more women now having their first child after 40 than ever before, but this number represents only half of the women who would have liked to have been Moms.
You’re likely familiar with IVF or in vitro fertilization. It’s a procedure whereby a fertility doctor helps to harvest a supply of eggs and extract those eggs (painlessly through a vaginally inserted tube). Those eggs are then fertilized outside of the woman with her partner’s or donor’s sperm, and then transferred back into the woman. Many couples find themselves turning to IVF as a way to build their family when trying naturally isn’t working. One-in-six couples have trouble conceiving, and one in three women over 35 have trouble conceiving naturally.
Egg Freezing or fertility preservation is a revolutionary procedure now allowing women to extend their biological clock and increase their odds of a healthy pregnancy. By freezing our younger, healthier eggs we maximize our pregnancy success rate with IVF while minimizing chromosomal abnormalities and miscarriage.
The egg freezing procedure takes place at a fertility clinic. Resolve.org and Eggbanxx.com are organizations working to help connect women with top doctors near them and provide insight on pricing and financing. There are also informational events such as the Eggbanxx NYC taking place in September that connects women with local fertility doctors, offering empowering advice.
Most women start the egg freezing process by taking birth control for up to three weeks to regulate their cycle. Fertility drugs are then prescribed, with daily injections accompanied with monitoring by your doctor. When your eggs are mature, the doctor will retrieve them while you are under light anesthesia. The eggs will then be frozen with a process called vitrification, a fast freeze technology that preserves the integrity of the eggs. These eggs have no shelf life and can remain frozen for years – even a decade – before thawing for fertilization.
Some women, typically if they’re of an advanced age or diagnosed with low ovarian reserve, will undergo more than one egg freezing cycle in order to have 10 to 15 eggs to freeze. This is the recommended number of eggs to preserve per desired child. It’s important to know that Egg Freezing isn’t a guarantee, but it does offer us options.
EggBanxx is part of the FertilityAuthority family of websites including FertilityAuthority.com, FertileThoughts.com, IVFAdvantage.com, EggFreezingCosts.com, EggBanxx.com, GenderSelectionAuthority.com. With more than 1 million visitors monthly, FertilityAuthority is the world’s largest online destination for finding and managing fertility issues. FertilityAuthority’s marketing platform enables patients to connect with doctors in a reliable and convenient way while simplifying the search for trusted fertility doctors or fertility clinics. Through its patient matching platform, tools and comprehensive, interactive resources, FertilityAuthority assists patients in making more educated decisions when establishing the important connection between patients and the physicians who can assist them in their family-building efforts.
Published: August 13, 2014