Tag: egg freezing

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Chance To Pause Biological Clock With Ovarian Transplant Stirs Debate

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When Sarah Gardner was 34, she started getting really worried about whether she’d ever have kids.

“I bought this kit online that said that they could tell you your ovarian reserve,” Gardner, now 40, says. These kits claim they can tell women how long their ovaries will continue producing eggs and how much time they have left to get pregnant.

“Well, mine said, ‘we advise really you have a baby now.’ Well, sadly that letter arrived three weeks after I just split up with my long-term partner. So, yeah, it opened a massive can of worms really,” she says.

That can of worms eventually led Gardner to Sherman Silber, a surgeon at the Infertility Center of St. Louis. Silber offers women a procedure that he claims will basically put their biological clocks on ice.

“It stops the clock, which is an incredible power to have,” Gardner says. “You know, the biological clock is every woman’s demon, really.”

What Silber offers is a surgical procedure that removes part or all of an ovary so it can be frozen and then transplanted back when a woman is ready to try to have children. Read full article.

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Egg Freezing No Longer Experimental

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Egg freezing is no longer considered “experimental” by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).

Last week the ASRM lifted the “experimental” designation on egg freezing. This decision was based on published studies indicating that frozen eggs worked as well as fresh eggs in young women. Safety data was also reassuring.

While it is promising to see the “experimental” designation lifted, the ASRM still maintains that egg freezing should not be used to counteract reproductive aging – in other words, those women over the age of 35 seeking fertility preservation. The reason for this stance continues to be a lack of published data on birth rates and safety in this group of women.

In 2009 I was invited by the ASRM to participate in a national debate on the “experimental” designation of egg freezing. My conclusions at that time still hold true:  women who wish to counteract reproductive aging  should be given the opportunity to make an informed decision on egg freezing after being counseled on the appropriate risks and alternatives and should seek advice and treatment from an experienced physician who has demonstrated births from eggs of women frozen while in their 30’s.

You can read the in-depth report released by the the ASRM about oocyte cryopreservation here.

by Dr. John Jain

 

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We Need to Talk About Our Eggs

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WHEN I recently mentioned to a pregnant acquaintance that I was writing a book about egg freezing (and had frozen my own eggs in hopes of preserving my ability to have children well into my 40s), she replied, “You’re so lucky. I wish I had known to freeze my eggs.”

She was 40 years old and wanted two children, so she and her husband were planning to start trying to conceive a second child shortly after the birth of their first. “Now everything is a rush,” she said. Married at 38, she didn’t think to talk to her obstetrician-gynecologist about fertility before then. If her doctor had brought up the subject, she said, she might have put away some eggs when she was younger. Read full article.

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New Report on Egg Freezing; ASRM Lifts Experimental Label from Technique

ASRM News and Research

The Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) issued a new report today stating that in young patients egg freezing techniques have been shown to produce pregnancy rates, leading to the birth of healthy babies, comparable to IVF cycles using fresh eggs.

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Freezing Eggs For Fertility Works, Caution Urged

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Freezing human eggs can be successful in treating infertility — but guidelines issued Friday still urge caution for women hoping to pause a ticking biological clock.

Egg freezing had long been labeled experimental, but the American Society for Reproductive Medicine declared that’s no longer the case. The group cited studies that found younger women are about as likely to get pregnant if they used frozen-and-thawed eggs for their infertility treatment as if they used fresh ones.

The move is expected to help cancer patients preserve their fertility, by pushing more insurers to pay for their procedure, and to boost banking of donated eggs, similar to sperm banking. Read full article.

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Freezing Eggs To Make Babies Later Moves Toward Mainstream

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Doctors who specialize in treating infertility are making a big change in their position on a controversial practice. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) has concluded that freezing women’s eggs to treat infertility should no longer be considered “experimental.”

The group plans to officially announce the change on Monday.

More and more women are using frozen eggs to try to have babies. Some older women use frozen eggs donated by younger women. Some younger women freeze their own eggs while they finish school, focus on their jobs or keep looking for the right guy.

That’s why Jennifer Anderson did it last year.

“I really wanted to have the traditional experience of falling in love and getting married, and then having children. But I know every person’s life path is different, and it hadn’t worked out for me yet to fall in love and get married,” says Anderson, 40, a consultant who lives in Arlington, Va.

So Anderson went to the Shady Grove Fertility clinic in Rockville, Md., to freeze some of her eggs. Read full article.

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Rabbis Urge Single, Orthodox Women to Freeze Eggs at 38

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Rebecca, an Orthodox Jew from California, was two weeks away from her marriage to the son of a respected rabbi when medication she was taking for migraines triggered a debilitating stroke.

She fell to the floor of the emergency room where she was working as a manager and broke her neck, suffering both spinal cord and brain injuries. When her fiance saw the extent of her disability, he called off the wedding.

“We did everything the Orthodox way,” she said of their three-month engagement after being matched by family members. “I was in the hospital on my wedding day and they got out the wheelchair, and he was so frightened he backed off.” Read full article.

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Khloe Kardashian Shares Infertility Struggles, Kim Wants to Freeze Her Eggs

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More Kardashian babies on the way?

On Sunday’s episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, sisters Kim, Kourtney and Khloe all had babies on the brain. Kourtney, who was still pregnant with daughter Penelope at the time, was already talking to boyfriend Scott Disick about having more children.

“I need to see what it’s like when I have two, but [having kids] is what life is about,” Kourtney, 33, explained. “I’m not going on the pill [after giving birth to Penelope]. I don’t believe in it anymore!” Read full article.

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How Millennial Women and Their Eggs Can Have It All

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I’m sitting across the desk from my neurologist, Dr. Gayatri Devi, the Director of the New York Memory Services, a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University School of Medicine, President of the National Council on Women’s Health and author of The Calm Brain.

Me: Twenty years ago I was diagnosed as being infertile and underwent five years of infertility treatment. It was a physical and emotional roller coaster. Daily doctor visits. Blood tests and hormones that I never knew existed were injected into my body. Every month I would pray and hope to hear, “You’re pregnant.” Every month I spent thousands of dollars to get a ticket for this ride (insurance didn’t cover infertility treatment). I look back and realize it was like I was possessed. Or maybe it was more like I was in infertility jail – I couldn’t get out, not even for good behavior. My mantra was, “Just one more month.” I thought it was like other things in life that worked for me – try harder and I’ll succeed.
Dr. Devi: How old were you?

Me: 34-39 years old.

Dr. Devi: Were you ever pregnant?

Me: Yes, when I was in my 20s. I had a miscarriage.

Dr. Devi: You are not infertile. In your mid to late 30s, you were trying to get pregnant at a less than optimal time in a women’s reproductive cycle. The reality is that you could have been very fertile in your 20s. You could have had babies every year in your 20s. But in your mid to late 30s, you were trying to conceive when timing wasn’t on your side.

Then Dr. Devi said something that made me really think: “We use technology for everything else in life, why not embrace technology to give women child-bearing strategies and choices?” 

What does she mean by that? Freezing eggs when women are most fertile – in their 20s, not their 30s. According to the Reproductive Biology Associates: “Fertility in women is greatest when they are between 20 and 28 years of age. By the age of 35, a woman’s chance of conceiving per month is decreased by half. By age 45, the natural fertility rate per month is reduced to only 1%.”

Read full article.

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Egg freezing technique could be ‘game changer’ for would-be parents

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Commerce Township — Soon after Julie and Bill VanDerworp got married in 1993, they started trying to have a baby. Although she was 27 and he was 30, the young couple was unable to conceive a child.

Eventually they tried fertility drugs and procedures. Still, no baby.

As the years passed, they tried conceiving with an egg donor. But it wasn’t until they turned to a donor whose eggs had been frozen with new technology that she finally got pregnant. Late last year, after spending nearly $200,000 and trying for more than a decade, the VanDerworps gave birth to a son they named Kent.

“It’s been such a long journey, such a long road,” Julie VanDerworp said. “But I still can’t believe my luck. (Having Kent) is everything I thought it would be. It’s so rewarding.”

The VanDerworps got the frozen egg from a donor in Michigan’s first “egg bank” — made possible by a reproductive technology that allows women to freeze their eggs so they can bear children later in life or after a cancer treatment, which typically leaves women infertile. The egg bank also can be used by women who are either infertile, like VanDerworp, or struggle with genetic issues they don’t want their children to inherit by using an egg that’s been donated by another woman.

Read full article.