Why are eggs precious?
The egg is the female reproductive cell that carries out the role of human reproduction. Each month, one egg is produced by one side of the ovary and must mature before it can be expelled from the ovary. As the largest cell in the human body, a mature egg can be 18-20 mm in diameter and can survive for 12-24 hours after discharge from the ovary, where it waits to meet and unite with a sperm. If the egg fails to meet the sperm to form a fertilized egg, it will die naturally after 48-72 hours and a new egg will be discharged the next month and so on. A woman will have about 400-500 eggs in her lifetime.
When is the best age for a woman to have a baby in the face of relentless ageing?
Between the ages of 23 and 30 years, a woman’s whole body is fully developed, her eggs are of high quality, her fetus grows and develops well, and the incidence of various obstetric complications is minimal. Women’s fertility ends earlier than men’s, and the best time to have children is just a few years away, and the quality and quantity of eggs usually plummet after the age of 35. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, and women who are busy with their careers or who miss out on their optimal fertility for various reasons regret the decline in ovarian function and fertility year after year.
What is egg freezing?
As the name implies, eggs are frozen when they are in good fertility to prevent them from aging with the body, and then the frozen eggs are retrieved and revived when the woman wants to have children, fertilized and cultured into embryos by in vitro fertilization, and finally implanted into the mother’s uterus for growth and development.
Egg freezing technology?
The first egg freezing was successfully performed in Australia in 1986, but since then the development of this technique has been slow due to low recovery rates. The oocyte has a special structure with a zona pellucida structure and contains a large amount of water, is much larger than sperm, has a significantly smaller surface area to volume ratio, is more fragile than sperm, is not resistant to freezing and requires strict freezing conditions. Compared with embryos, some special structures of oocytes are also susceptible to freezing damage, which affects the physiological functions of oocytes. Egg freezing technology is gradually developing, initially programmed slow freezing, but nowadays rapid vitrification freezing is used, so that the cryoprotective solution plummets to -196°C in a glassy state, avoiding damage to the ice crystals of the oocytes during freezing, but the cryoprotective agent added may also have a toxic effect on the eggs.
How long can frozen eggs be kept?
Theoretically, they can be stored for a long time. In the -196°C liquid nitrogen environment, all metabolism and molecular movements within the egg are at rest. In practice, they can usually be kept for 5 years and more, after which I am notified to discuss the further “fate” of the eggs.
How does the egg freezing process work?
In order to achieve the desired fertility insurance goal, it is not possible to freeze only 1 or 2 eggs, but preferably 8 or more eggs, which involves the use of ovulation drugs. Unlike sperm retrieval, sperm retrieval for men, which does not require medication, is not harmful to health, usually thousands of sperm can be obtained in a single ovulation, and can be repeatedly retrieved and frozen within a certain period of time. Pre-freezing ovulation is the use of medication to induce the development and maturation of multiple follicles within a controlled range, using puncture techniques to obtain the desired number of eggs at one time, ensuring the effectiveness of fertility assurance with frozen eggs.
Is freezing and resuscitation harmful to the eggs?
Although egg freezing technology is becoming more and more mature, there is still a gap compared to embryo freezing technology, where the recovery rate of embryo freezing can reach over 95%, while the recovery rate of frozen eggs is only 70~80%. Failure to completely exclude frozen and recovered eggs can be detrimental to egg quality. As of 2012 there are over 200 babies born with frozen eggs in the world and there is a lack of information on long term observations.
Can you freeze eggs in China for a small fee?
There are strict restrictions on egg freezing in China and unmarried single women are prohibited from having their eggs frozen in China. The National Health Planning Commission states that in China, egg freezing technology belongs to the category of assisted human reproduction, which is still in the clinical research stage, and under current Chinese law single, unmarried women are prohibited from undergoing the freezing procedure in China. They do not advocate that healthy women should have their eggs frozen in advance for future fertility.
What kind of people can freeze their eggs in China?
The egg freezing techniques currently carried out in China are for special groups of people such as infertility patients undergoing IVF assisted conception and patients with malignant tumors. The first is that patients undergoing IVF assisted conception must have a marriage certificate, fertility certificate and ID card, otherwise the fertility center is not allowed to use IVF assisted conception techniques. The second is for women with malignant tumors, whose eggs or ovarian tissues can be frozen to preserve their fertility before a large dose of radiotherapy is administered to the whole body.
Is egg freezing really a magical “regret pill” that allows you to “rest easy” from now on?
Although egg freezing technology allows women who do not want to have children for the time being to preserve their young eggs with high fertilization capacity and prevent them from aging with age, thus preserving their good fertility and achieving the goal of fertility insurance, the egg freezing programs currently carried out by fertility centers in China with egg freezing technology are mainly to solve the problems related to infertility in IVF patients, and are not promoted on a large scale. Not every fertility center is equipped to carry out egg freezing technology either. Egg freezing for fertility insurance purposes for healthy women is not widely available worldwide. Ovulation treatment prior to egg freezing carries certain risks, including the possibility of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and, although egg retrieval is a minimally invasive procedure, complications such as infection and bleeding can occur. Eggs can be frozen for 5 or 10 years, but your physical condition and uterine microenvironment can’t wait either. Without blindly following trends, egg freezing is not the first choice for everyone. Having children at the right time is the first choice and we advocate having, educating and nurturing offspring at the optimal time of fertility.