In an elaborate conversation with medical fertility and IVF specialists Dr Goral Gandhi, and Dr Steiner

With today’s fast-paced life come the problems of infertility and the need for better family planning. Therefore, the need to extend a woman’s childbearing window has become a requirement. We all know that nature doesn’t work that way, however with medical advances, doctors have been able to provide women with the boon of becoming mothers when they are ready.

The elective process of egg freezing is slowly becoming mainstream. From a medical standpoint, it is no longer considered experimental. Companies are starting to add it as a part of the employee insurance, and cryopreservation banks provide the woman with a safe environment for fertility preservation.

Egg freezing is the process of removing young, healthy eggs from the ovaries and freezing them in a lab. Medically, this process is referred to as oocyte cryopreservation.

“It is essential for women who want to freeze their eggs to remember that the age of your eggs will affect your chances of actually having a baby if you wish to opt for egg freezing. If a woman freezes her eggs in her early 30s, the chances of conceiving increase considerably. For women in their early 40s who want to opt for cryopreservation, the chances of pregnancy might be lower, as the quality of eggs declines with age. Therefore, it is better to ensure egg freezing at an early age,” says Goral Gandhi IVF consultant. When senior embryologist Goral Gandhi has this conversation with women at the Indo-Nippon fertility clinic, she informs them about the optimal timing for elective egg freezing and the fertility decline that comes naturally with ageing.

“There is this benefit over not freezing even at 37, 38, 39, albeit then your chances of getting a baby out of that are much less than if you had frozen at a younger age. While it is not fail-safe, it is at least reassuring that women over 35 who are thinking about egg freezing are not too late,” says Dr Steiner, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the UNC School of Medicine.

Although the process of egg freezing saw substantial pregnancy success rates using eggs that were frozen, which was great news for, say, women who were either planning pregnancy for later or undergoing certain aggressive treatments that might destroy their eggs. Dr Steiner adds, “Our goal is to help the woman decide by asking herself, ‘do I want to spend this money understanding this is my probability if I do this or if I don’t do this.”