Dubai: Many couples nowadays are not ready to start a family soon after getting married due to personal and professional goals. Unfortunately, our biological clocks do not always follow our life plans, as many aspirant mothers have found out. The truth is that women over the age of 35 years struggle with infertility since their quality of eggs declines and the number begins to deplete, causing complications. This, along with various ailments and medical treatments that can potentially endanger fertility, makes having a baby a distant dream for some.
With egg freezing, however, women – or in this case, motherhood – has found a new lease on life. Although not a new concept, the procedure is not talked about enough in the UAE and shrouded in misapprehensions as well as misconceptions, and confused with embryo freezing.
Basically, egg freezing is a method to store a women’s unfertilised eggs. The process involves 10-12 days of hormone injections intended to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs. Once the eggs are mature, they are retrieved through a procedure called egg collection, which happens under sedation. The eggs collected are immediately cryopreserved using vitrification (a flash freezing technique) by experienced embryologists, and then safely stored at a facility until they are ready to be used. So if a woman freezes her eggs in her late 20s, and decides to start a family in late 30s, she will have the advantage of using eggs that are 10 years younger and far healthier. UAE law allows maximum five year term period to freeze eggs.
Ideally, women in their mid- to late-20s should opt for preserving their eggs. This is the time when the egg quality is at its optimum, and just before it begins to decline. The procedure is also essential for women who fear losing fertility due to cancer treatment, or are at risk of premature ovarian failure due to chromosomal abnormalities, early menopause, ovarian disease or genetic mutation.
Often regarded as ‘insurance without regret’ egg freezing gives women a practical and relatively successful chance to ensure motherhood, while pursuing life’s ambitions minus the guilt factor. Concerns regarding abnormalities in babies born out of frozen eggs have also quieted down, and studies show no increased rates of chromosomal defects between embryos derived from frozen eggs compared to those from fresh eggs.
- The writer is Group Medical Director, Bourn Hall Fertility Centre
