June 14, 2011
Statistics show a woman’s chance of getting pregnant starts to decrease in her 30s, and drops significantly after the age of 40. Younger women have a better chance at becoming pregnant as a result of relatively greater number of eggs in their ovaries.
Fertility doctors have been freezing eggs for years, but the pregnancy success rate has been poor until the past few years.
A freezing process called vitrification, or flash-freezing, has changed the outcome.
“These days we’ve sort of cracked the code on egg freezing and the pregnancy rates really are essentially the same as with fresh eggs now,” Dr. William Schoolcraft with the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine said.
Jennifer Hayes decided to research this new freezing technique after a friend who was struggling with infertility encouraged her to do what she could to preserve her fertility. As a restaurant owner in Telluride and Snowmass,
Hayes has found professional success, but knew she wanted to have a family.
“All of a sudden so many years had passed by so quickly and I was shocked because physically I felt like I was 25, and when I started to do research it doesn’t matter how healthy and young you feel, you cannot dispute that your eggs are still the age that you are,” she said.
Hayes decided to make the investment in freezing her eggs, in order to give herself time to find the right relationship without feeling the pressure of her biological clock.
“For me, I would rather find the right relationship and then have children versus have children in the wrong relationship,” Hayes said.
“This doesn’t commit to having a baby with invitro. When you get married, you can still try the old fashioned way. This is just a backup plan,” Schoolcraft said. “It avoids compromise is what I say. If you don’t do this, some women feel so pressured that they say, ‘Well I’m just going to stop and have a baby with donor sperm.’ But it’s not their first choice and they fear never having a child, so they’re going to go on as a single woman and have a baby.”
The process is expensive, costing anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000, but the improved success rates helped with her decision.
“When I saw a 70 to 80 percent success rate that was worth going through the process and the money it cost to do it,” Hayes said. “So I have 16 little eggs in the freezer.”
For more information, visit www.colodrm.com.
Source: Channel 9 News
Author: Kim Christiansen
Kim Christiansen
Channel 9 News