Pausing time... with egg freezing.

It is known that in recent years there has been direct information from the media and especially the internet regarding women's fertility and what is the best age for childbearing. As is known, women are born with a certain number of eggs that gradually decline. 

The modern woman prioritizes studying and pursuing a career, while usually deciding to start a family only at an older age and only when she finds the right partner!

Choosing a partner is perhaps the most important chapter in every woman's life and we would rightly say that there is often indecision. However, after the age of 35, only 101% of her eggs remain, resulting in reduced fertility after the age of 36-38.

Treatment approaches for serious diseases such as cancer, at any age, also affect a woman's fertility. For these women, there is the option of freezing their eggs before undergoing surgery or chemotherapy.

In these cases, it would be a good idea to choose egg freezing, or cryopreservation.

During the egg freezing process, the woman's ovaries are stimulated with medication to produce eggs. Under mild anesthesia, oocyte retrieval is performed, that is, the eggs are collected and frozen using the vitrification method for cryopreservation.

When a woman decides to have children, the eggs are thawed, fertilized with her partner's sperm, and placed in her uterus. The procedure has a very high success rate even if the woman is biologically in menopause. 

The younger the woman's age when she froze her eggs, the higher the rate of successful pregnancy.

On the other hand, we would say that abroad things are completely different than in our country. For example, in the USA, egg freezing is a gift from a father for his daughter's entry into university. Also, more and more companies abroad offer their employees "egg freezing benefits", that is, egg cryopreservation. This is because women, and especially senior executives, eliminate the stress of fertility and the company has truly dedicated employees with a high efficiency rate.

In Greece, unfortunately, the opposite happens. That is, when women have been around for several years and feel that they have reached a fairly advanced age, they choose the freezing process. However, due to the age limit, the number of eggs that can be frozen is small and the success rate when thawing is reduced. 

At Womanclinic Kalogerou, we advise women after the age of 30 to think about it seriously. Important tests that help are the ultrasound of the genital organs to see the number and quality of the eggs, but also a hormonal profile with the most important test being the AMH (Antimullerian). 

At the beginning of the cycle, hormones are administered in order to produce multiple eggs, and then, after regular ultrasound monitoring, oocyte retrieval and freezing of the eggs.

The number of eggs we will retrieve varies from woman to woman, but certainly more than ten is a satisfactory number.

Many times, even if the woman does not want to use medication, she can perform the procedure by retrieving the one egg she produces each month, i.e., an in vitro natural cycle. In this case, however, because the egg is only one and in rarer cases two at most, she must repeat the procedure several times to have sufficient egg reserves.

As for the cost, it is about the same as an IVF, except that the woman herself procures the medications (although recently there has been a thought of covering them by the funds), it is mainly done in private centers, and there is, so to speak, an annual rent for the freezer.

However, the process is innovative and has freed thousands of women from the anxiety of age... so that they can now say with dignity, just like men, that they don't grow up, they just mature!