Egg freezing
Women can have their eggs frozen and stored at CARE in attempt to preserve their fertility. Fertility is scientifically proven to be age dependant and since it is the age of a woman's eggs which determines her fertility, the eggs of a 30 year old woman are much more likely to lead to successful conception than those of a 40 year old. Freezing your eggs at an early reproductive age can help to preserve your fertility and maximise your chances of a future pregnancy if you should experience fertility problems in the future.
As the risks of miscarriage and certain abnormalities, such as Down's syndrome, increase with age, women may chose to freeze their eggs to help reduce this risk by storing eggs for later fertility treatment, should they require it. Today, the chances of freezing your eggs successfully are dramatically improved because of the rapid advances which have taken place in the science of Cryobiology and its related fields. Hundreds of babies have now been born worldwide using previously frozen, thawed mature eggs and CARE is licensed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to store eggs. We are also one of the first clinics in the UK to have introduced a new, super cooling technique for egg freezing called Vitrification, which substantially improves egg freezing and thawing survival rates.
Paddling to 2012 – Helen Barnes, a British canoeist and 2012 Olympic hopeful, is freezing her eggs with CARE
Helen, who lives in Nottingham, has chosen to freeze her eggs not only because she is currently single but to enable her to concentrate on competing at the London Olympics in 2012.
‘I just missed out on qualifying for Beijing but I haven't finished yet… I feel good enough and fit enough to qualify for the Olympics when I will be 39. I was shocked to learn how dramatically fertility drops after 35. I want to have a baby one day but also want to carry on paddling, so egg freezing seemed the best option’
Helen's website is at www.helsbarnes.co.uk
Helen's websiteWhy freeze your eggs?
There are many reasons, both medical and social, why you may want to freeze your eggs. It could be that for career, or other reasons, it simply isn't appropriate or possible to have babies at the time when you are most fertile. And certainly the risks of miscarriage or of certain abnormalities such as Down's Syndrome increase with age.
There are a wide number of medical reasons for taking the precaution of freezing eggs, ranging from impaired ovarian function, to pre-empting chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatment for cancer.
