Baby Hope with Frozen Egg and Sperm

Pregnancy rate depends of the age of woman

The widespread use of effective and reliable methods of contraception worldwide over the past 30 years has also increased the effect of couples on their fertility potential. In economically developed societies, career and working life of women prevented their wish to have a baby. However, as women get older, the chance of pregnancy decreases. Especially after the age of 35, the number of eggs and the quality of the egg decreases and this situation reduces the chance of pregnancy both naturally and by the IVF method.

The egg reserve decreases over time

Each baby girl is born with around 2 million egg cells in her ovaries. This number of eggs starts to decline with young adolescence and the number decreases to 400 thousand. This decline does not stop in years and continues until menopause (average age 48). Yhis decrease happens much faster in some women. Egg cells can almost reach to running out level even at a very early age. This situation can be seen even in women between the ages of 18-20. Early depletion of ovarian capacity may sometimes not produce any symptoms in women who have periods regularly. Sometimes this show up with changes in the frequency and duration of menstrual bleeding. Ovarian reserve is detected by some blood tests and ultrasonography.

Successful pregnancy with frozen embryos

Today, thanks to the developing technology and laboratory facilities, embryos constitued in both female and male fertility cells and laboratory environment and are frozen, stored and used in the future. In the egg freezing process, the egg collected from the ovaries by ultrasonography is interacted with preservatives called 'cryoprotectant' in the laboratory environment and stored at -196 degrees. The success of the freezing process for sperm cells, which is approximately 500 times smaller than the egg cell, is relatively higher. In the procedure of thawing the sperm, the cryoprotectant is taken out of the cell and the water is taken back into the cell. The same technique is applied at high speed in the freezing procedure for the embryo. In embryos, freezing can be done in the development stages from the 1st to the 6th day. In the researches, it was determined that the babies born as a result of pregnancy provided by the frozen embryo are healthier in every respect.

Which case should the freezing procedure be done?

•  Chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment, especially damaging the fertility cells, reduces the fertility potential. For this, women with cancer are recommended to freeze their eggs so that they can be mothers after treatment.
•  Some surgeries reduce fertility potential. Sperm and eggs are frozen before these surgeries. After the treatment process is over, these frozen sperm and eggs can be used.
•  Egg cells of single women with an early risk of menopause are also frozen and used for pregnancy after marriage. In this respect it is important to identify women with a family history of early menopause.
•  It is a precaution that should be taken Against the risk of losing fertility abilities of future parents who delayed having babies for some socioeconomic reasons. Especially, collected and frozen eggs before women gets older  will enable them to have children in the future.