Sarah Elizabeth Richards is an award-winning, New York City-based journalist, and the author of ‘Motherhood Rescheduled’. She has also written many articles about Social Egg Freezing and the preservation of fertility.
In this insightful article posted on The Wall Street Journal, Sarah shares about this “baby insurance” in the form of egg freezing she underwent between the age of 36 to 38.
In the article, she explores some of the benefits of egg freezing:
1) Removes the “punishing pressure to seek a new mate and helped [her] find love again at age 42″
2) Avoids ‘buzz kill on dates when you feel compelled to ask the guy sitting across from you, clutching his craft beer, “So do you think you might want kids someday?” ‘
3) Offers peace of mind that “babies born from frozen eggs… had no more risk of birth defects than those conceived naturally”
4) Rather than causing women to put baby and dating plans on hold, egg freezing involves an investment of “time, energy and money… The combination puts the issue front and center and makes you commit to your goals”.
5) Allows one to be “more relaxed” in a relationship instead of being pressured by a ticking biological clock.
6) Makes women more open to using science to explore alternate routes to creating their families. One woman decided to stop waiting for the right man at the right moment and explored using donor sperm to have a baby on her own, using her frozen eggs. Some other women began the egg-freezing process because they were opposed to using donor eggs. However when their own eggs failed, they turned to donor eggs as a last resort.
7) Gives career women “options for fitting a family into their work lives”
And over at Eggsurance.com, women share about their egg freezing journeys. For one, Wendy froze her eggs at age 42 and here is her advice to women who are considering egg freezing:
“I still have no regrets. I know younger is better. But, I achieved amazing results and I only have one ovary. They told me going into this I would likely get no more than 5 eggs. I ended up getting 16 eggs, 15 were viable for freezing! I would encourage women to freeze their eggs at a younger age than I did. Age will have an impact on the quality of your eggs and your overall success rate. I had one fertility clinic even turn me down, because of my age. They didn’t even examine me. They said that they did not accept patients over 40.
Egg Freezing is the best thing I have every done. I know that there are no guarantees, but I’m so thankful to be able to empower myself and ultimately not give up on my ability to choose to start a family with a partner.”
Other related articles:
1) On the Huffington Post is an article about how IVF pregnancy rates using frozen eggs are comparable to IVF using fresh eggs. The article also notes that if you are in your 20s, you have a high chance of getting pregnant naturally, and do not need to freeze your eggs.
2) CNN interviews Dr Jeffrey Steinberg on egg freezing HERE.
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Consider egg freezing if you are in your 30s or early 40s, have not met Mr Right yet or want to focus on your career first, but you know you want to have kids in future. I have also put together another blogpost about 5 Things You Need To Know About Social Egg Freezing.
Should you have any questions, you may like to contact fertility specialist, Dr. Charles M P Lim, at dr.charles.mpl@gmail.com.
