If a woman freezes her eggs, will her future babies be healthy?
‘The data we have is quite reassuring’
Adapted from a story by Erin Blakemore for The Washington Post.
In 2012, egg freezing was no longer labeled as “experimental.” Ever since, the procedure has grown in popularity.
Egg freezing— or oocyte preservation — has been around since the 1980s. As more women delay parenthood, it serves as a form of fertility insurance for those who aren’t ready to have kids.
Some companies — including Google, Facebook and Apple — even offer coverage for egg freezing in their health insurance.
But as the procedure moves into the mainstream, is it really producing healthy kids?
Absolutely, says Kate Devine, a reproductive endocrinologist and co-director of research at Shady Grove Fertility, the nation’s largest fertility center.
“The data we have is quite reassuring” about babies produced through egg freezing, Devine says, “particularly for women for whom the alternative might be not to have a child from their own eggs.”
However, because the technology is so new, there isn’t a lot of data on how healthy babies produced with frozen eggs are. There’s no registry of births achieved using frozen eggs, and very few studies have focused on outcomes beyond pregnancy.
One 2009 study that tracked 900 babies born using frozen eggs found no difference in the rate of birth abnormalities compared with the rate for babies born with fresh eggs. Most other studies have been much smaller, tracking just a handful of babies; they show outcomes similar to babies born using traditional IVF. Tracking usually ends in infancy.
When should I freeze my eggs?
According to Devine, it’s best for a woman to freeze her eggs by the time she’s 35 years old to ensure the highest rate of success.
How does it work?
- A woman’s ovaries are stimulated using hormones.
- Eggs are harvested from the ovaries. (If that sounds similar to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, which is used when a couple has had trouble conceiving, it is.)
- The extracted eggs are preserved in specialized vials either through a slow-freeze or a flash-freeze process.
- The eggs are then stored in a cryopreservation facility, or egg bank.
- Once it’s time to use them, they are thawed and fertilized as in the IVF process, and then inserted into the woman’s womb.
Am I going to have a baby from my eggs if I freeze them?
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine estimates that between 2 and 12 percent of frozen eggs yield a baby.
