Egg freezing has of late jumped from an expensive and rarified medical procedure to a recognized fill-in plan for woman push up against the biologic crosscut for innovation . But what exactly are you signing up for ?
As a career perquisite , putting baby - making cells on ice isstirring up controversy(and plenty of 30 - year - quondam women would not be happy to receive an testicle freezing credit wrapped up in a prow ) . A fertility doc latterly endure so far as proclaiming oocyte preservation as the“perfect thirtieth birthday gift”for women , and Facebook , NASA , and Apple arenow offeringto cover orchis freezing as part of distaff employee ’ insurance .
As a medical process , it remain too new and hazardous to truly be a backup architectural plan . However , in ideal circumstances , it can be a remarkable , futuristic way to reschedule the deadlines set by our eubstance .
The path to motherhood is paved with hormone needles
For a woman to conceive with frozen eggs , first she needsto make a bunch of extra ones . This signify taking a cycle of follicle - have hormones to accelerate how many egg her body get ready .
After the endocrine / PMS - symptom / needle / incubus saga , Dr. in the main take out the eggs around 36 hour after the last injectant . They knock you out and apply a needle attach to the ultrasound probe that makes the hormone needles calculate like little sharp toys to achieve the follicles within the ovaries . The process pull in the fluid within the follicle . The ballock are in the fluid .
In - vitro concept nontextual matter . range : Sukharevskyy Dmytro ( nevodka)via Shutterstock
After that , there ’s not much more for the woman to do but hold off for the right time to procreate ( and shell out for regular maintenance fees to save the eggs ) . The doctor , however , are far from complete . They need to isolate and freeze the testicle within a light windowpane of prison term , before they ’re no longer workable .
A long day’s journey into the liquid nitrogen
This windowpane is very narrow . But while the appendage for producing the eggs has been largely the same since in - vitro dressing start years ago , the process for keeping them cold has dramatically ameliorate in recent years .
Dr. originally had trouble freezing eggs without harming them because the water inside the ballock would form ice quartz as they froze .
“ An bollock is made mostly of piddle , so it ’s the largest cellular phone in the body , and when you freeze an bollock , the goal is to dehydrate it , to take all the water out of it so that it shrivel , and then we put it in liquid nitrogen , ” Dr. Jane Frederick , afertility doctorin Newport , California , told me .
“ The forged affair that can happen is the establishment of something called ice crystals , ” she continued . “ you could imagine a balloon filled with piddle . The ice crystals are like sharp pinpricks that can damage the tissue layer , so when you endeavor to rehydrate the ball , when you require to unfreeze it , the membranes will get damage and the cell will no longer be executable . ”
Over the retiring 8 to 10 year a process cropped up that offered a better solution to the jabbing ice crystal quandary . It ’s called vitrification , and it ’s much quicker than the slow - freeze outgrowth . Instead , doctors channel the eggs into a container where they are cool off quickly by liquid nitrogen , so quickly that there ’s no time for the quartz glass to forge . ” So now we ’re seeing about 80 percent survival on the eggs that are being dissolve , ” Frederick say .
Oocyte and conceptus vitrification . ikon : Pacific Fertility Center
The cryoprotectant is a character of antifreeze , so the MD essentially give eggs a bath in a solution that ’s kind of like whatever it is Jabba the Hutt dip Han Solo in in The Empire Strikes Back . They ’re at once frozen , there are no killer ice crystals , and like Han , it ’s possible to revive them at a later date .
Since the antifreeze cools at such a speedy f number — up to 70,000 fourth dimension fasterthan the slow - freeze process — the bath stage often has two parts , with the eggs first being target in a solution with a lower concentration of antifreeze and then in the higher tightness .
Fertility clinic and hospital typically store the eggs on - site . To keep them cold , they ’re encase in liquid nitrogen , whichis cooledto around -320.8 level Fahrenheit ( -196 degree Celsius ) which is so cold I just shiver thinking about it .
The liquid atomic number 7 tanks are go to daily by staff , which is one of the reasonableness maintain the freezing service costs money each yr . The ball trays look like straw , and each facility has slightly different ways of arranging them , but keep them at the -320.8 degrees is crucial .
To freeze or not to freeze
As multitude like Dr. Frederick continue to streamline and amend the ball freeze process , the likeliness of safely extending the years you could begin motherhood goes up .
USCestimatesthat around 2,000 babies have been born from frozen orchis , and while the study that have been deport show no evidence that there ’s an increased risk of exposure of nativity defects , the proportional newness of the subroutine means there ’s so much we do n’t make out . If gift birth from a frozen ball goes mainstream , physician will have more opportunities to improve the process further .
Doctors in Italy pioneered vitrification for eggs because fertilized egg freeze is not allow there , so egg freeze is more vulgar than other part of the man . The method acting represents a huge jump from the slow freezing , and it shows the sort of aesculapian leaps that can pass when doctor prioritize the routine . technical progression in fertility saving is needs linked to a ethnic acceptance of the option as a consistent alternative to getting meaning at a young long time . However until that find , egg freezing remains complicated , risky , and expensive … and far from a guaranteed shot at motherhood .
A round of egg freeze costsaround $ 10,000 , plus there are annual maintenance fees to keep the orchis frozen . Keep those puppies on ice for a decade and you ’re looking at upward of $ 20,000 for the whole process , if not a lot more . That ’s a crowing chunk ( or all ! ) of your future youngster ’s college Education Department right there . And if you demand to do a second round of golf , well , your bank report may start bleeding from the eyes .
There ’s no circle “ good number ” ofeggs to immobilise ; most women go for between 12 to 30 . Each time eggsare collected , doc average somewhere between 8 - 14 testicle , so hoi polloi who desire to stockpile will require more than one round .
Vitrification ware for oocytes , zygotes , embryos . Image : Kitazato / Dibimed
If employers do start subsidizing the procedure , ballock repositing as a backup programme could become as common as pop a daily dose of hormonal birth control . fertility rate doctors have beenreporting an uptickin women want more selective information on freezing their eggs for non - medical reasons in the retiring class . After all , if money is n’t the issue , why not ? It ’s a safety net for any cleaning woman concern her torso ’s fertility peaks wo n’t coincide with any of the other stuff you need when you ’re move to have a child , like savings or a life cooperator .
On the other bridge player , the operation is not unfailing . Freezing eggs out of necessary — like before surgery or a harsh circle of chemotherapy — can conserve a person ’s ability to have biological children . But neither the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists nor the American Society for Reproductive Medicine approve of testis freeze as a wayto defer childbearing . The ASRM did take the ‘ data-based ’ label off egg freeze , but only for woman doing it for aesculapian reasonableness , andit founda “ deficiency of data on base hit , efficacy , cost - effectiveness , and potential excited risks . ”
None of us have control over our body . We endeavor to stave off their declension with jog and smoothie and optimism . Most of them get fat and flabbier than we ’d like . They let out unenviable noises and smells , they age , they get soft and brickly at the same fourth dimension .
For women , controlling the body ’s reproductive itinerary can vary and save lives . Contraceptives have done just that , and now egg freeze is becoming something that mediocre women are starting to moot . The aesculapian risks of jacking yourself up with endocrine remain gamy enough to represent as an understandable deterrent . But in the correct circumstances , a successful , affordable summons can feel like a miracle , a sort of stopwatch for the biological clock . A way to play a trick on time .
pic on the left courtesy of HRC Fertility Clinic/ Header art by Jim Cooke
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