How Does Egg Freezing Work?
Egg freezing is a high-tech, yet natural, option to extend fertility. Also called OCV (oocyte cryopreservation vitrification), the procedure allows women to have children at an older age, using the highest quality eggs produced during their younger, most-fertile years. By preserving eggs produced in a woman’s twenties or thirties, egg freezing lets women enlarge their family at a time of their choosing. The egg vitrification process greatly increases the chance of a successful pregnancy and producing a healthy newborn.
How to Stop the Ticking Clock of Fertility with Egg Freezing
Women produce healthier ova (eggs) in their earlier years, in their twenties or thirties, but this is not always the best time to bring a child into your life. Yet waiting to conceive becomes riskier the older a woman gets. Egg quality and quantity decrease after age 30. Women over age 40, for example, are more likely to produce eggs with chromosomal anomalies, such as Down’s Syndrome. In today’s world, however, our fertility clinic offers women options.
OCV helps ensure that you use the healthiest genetic material, no matter when you want to add to your family. OCV preserves frozen eggs, to produce healthy children at the best time, when a parent is most able to comfortably provide care. This allows children and well-prepared parent(s) to enjoy each other, while children grow up healthy and strong, both physically and emotionally.
Naturally Produced Eggs Meet High Tech Cryopreservation to Produce Healthy Children
The egg freezing process involves freezing, and later thawing, a woman’s eggs using a state-of-the-art preservation process. Eggs are harvested after the medication is given to produce multiple eggs (ovarian stimulation). Mature eggs are retrieved using transvaginal ultrasound aspiration–where a thin, ultrasound-guided needle is inserted into the follicles to remove the eggs. This is an outpatient procedure done under sedation. Our embryologist will rinse and prepare the mature eggs for freezing. (Generally, about 80 percent of eggs are considered mature.)
Since eggs contain a significant amount of water, freezing and thawing must occur in a specialized manner. Prior to freezing, our fertility clinic removes the water and replaces it with fluid that prevents the formation of egg-damaging ice crystals. Eggs are then cryogenically preserved, flash-frozen (vitrified), and stored for up to a decade. When patients choose to go through with conception, your fertility clinic carefully thaws the preserved eggs and injects them with sperm. This fertilization process creates embryos that can later be implanted in the uterus.
When you are seeking to preserve your fertility options for the future, the earlier you undergo egg freezing, the better. Find out if egg cryopreservation is a good solution for you. Contact our expert fertility doctor in Jericho, NY. Call New York Reproductive Wellness at 516-612-8466, today.
