Freezing Time?
- Posted on: Apr 25 2018
Submitted by Barbara Faber, MDÂ
It’s great that we are living longer and healthier lives. Forty may be the new thirty, and fifty the new forty but it doesn’t work that way with female reproduction. Women are still “programmed” to start having children in their late teens/early twenties and by the early to middle thirties, the chances of conceiving each month start a slow decline just based on a women’s age.
Many people don’t know that the chances of conceiving each month in a normally fertile couple before the age of 32 is about 20%. By age 38, that chance has dropped to 10% and by 42, that chance is now 5%.
In the past, there wasn’t much you could do to circumvent this situation. But now, there is egg freezing. Ten years ago, egg freezing was not a good option for women but things have really improved and it is now not unusual for a women, as she approaches the time when egg quality is starting to go down, to freeze her eggs literally in time for use later when she is ready to start a family. It’s a wonderful option for some women. It’s like having an insurance policy on your fertility or at least on one component of it. You may not need the frozen eggs but they are there if you do.
At Camelback Women’s Health, we don’t offer this service (egg freezing), but what we can do is a test called an Ovarian Assessment Report and a pelvic ultrasound to check a women’s egg supply and see if she a good candidate for egg freezing.
Many women worry about getting older and running out of time to start a family. Mr. Wonderful just hasn’t shown up yet. That’s not an uncommon story these days. Now, with the availability of egg freezing, there is a step women can take to increases their chances of success down the road when he does show up.
Posted in: Gynecology, Infertility