Whoops, I forgot to have kids

February 29, 2008 6:35 PM

I am turning 40 this month and the only thing that I have been certain of all my life is my desire to have a child. For a bunch of reasons,mainly poor planning, I have no way to make this dream happen any time soon (financial reasons, no partner, etc.). I'd like to look into freezing my eggs so that a couple of years from now I might still be able to make my dreams come true. Does anyone have experience with this? What is the cost? Is it a complicated procedure? Whatever information you might share would be very much appreciated!
posted by anonymous to human relations (5 comments total)

I looked into donating my eggs awhile back and the procedure amounts to the same thing. You will need to undergo hormone injections to stimulate the release of your eggs at which point they will be surgically removed from your body and cryopreserved. I chose not to undergo the process because it can be emotionally and physically difficult as a result of the fluctuating hormone levels and the surgery is invasive.
posted by oreonax at 7:09 PM on February 29

I can tell you about the egg "harvesting" procedure-(if you're a guy and are squeamish about lady parts, stop reading now)-but I didn't freeze my eggs. The last I read, and this was a few years ago, egg freezing was still not widely done and the expectations for viability after thaw were low. That may have changed. However, as to the HOW:

You will be given high dosages of follicular stimulating hormones by injection. This could be anywhere from 1-3 shots a day, that you will either administer yourself or have someone else help you. It's not horrible, but it's not the highlight of your day either. Depending on your dr and his particular protocol, you may have bloodwork and will almost certainly have vaginal ultrasounds every other day to monitor your progress.

Whenever it's determined that the optimum time is to harvest the eggs, the most common way to retrieve them is by using vaginal ultrasound. The probe is inserted and then a needle is inserted in a sheath on the probe. Guiding by us, the dr will go through the roof of the vagina and puncture each follicle and "suck out" the egg. Usually you're asleep during the procedure-at the very least you'll be sedated and won't really care what's going on down there. There will be some minimal spotting afterwards for a few hours but other than that, you're good to go within a day.

Good luck!
posted by hollygoheavy at 8:05 PM on February 29

Risk vs. Reward ratio is WAY too high. People like you who consider doing this put all their eggs (really, no pun intended) and hopes in one basket. Most likely your first few attempts may not be successful, it may take years to do, your life will revolve around this and it would be very very financially heavy.

I sympathize with your situation; I really do. But just in case you end up not having a kid, its not the end of the world. Figure out something that may be the NEXT closest rewarding thing...and devote yourself to that. Don't wait for it...start now.

Good luck.
posted by hal_c_on at 11:04 PM on February 29

The challenge is that you're already of, shall we say, advanced maternal age, and that means the quality of your eggs has likely declined. If you did regular IVF (which you'd need to do with frozen eggs), at age 40 you'd have about about a 20 percent chance of having a live birth (see http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/ART2005/nation05.asp). The success rate drops to 10 percent in the next couple of years.

And that's with fresh eggs. Egg freezing is a new field, but it stands to reason that the quality of defrosted eggs will be inferior to that of fresh ones. And the cost of having your eggs frozen is probably close to that of IVF (about $12K per try -- meaning you can pay $12,000 for an 80 percent chance of failure). If you don't have the money to raise a child now, I'm not sure you'll want to fork out the bucks for the expensive and uncertain field of egg freezing.

I haven't had my eggs frozen, but I had gone through IVF. It involved weeks of daily shots, then a surgical procedure to remove eggs. I imagine the process for egg freezing, up to that point, is the same. After that, embryos are transferred to the uterus, which is not complicated. The main part is the daily shots of expensive, injectible medications, and then of course the egg-removal procedure.

I'm sorry if this seems pessimistic, but I figure you want truth. Best of luck.
posted by stonefruit at 10:13 AM on March 2

If your main reasons for not having the kids now are financial, then I doubt freezing your eggs is a viable (no pun intended) option for you. As stonefruit indicated, the complete process - ovarian stimulation, retrieval, freezing, IVF - is extremely expensive.

Having said that, the actual process is not horrible. We've done IVF twice now - the first time we used my eggs, put 2 fertilized eggs in and got twins, and the second time we used my wife's eggs, put 1 fertilized egg in and got 1 (due in a few weeks). My wife is 42 and we had no problems using her eggs.

We are well aware that we are the lucky ones - not only was everything covered by insurance, but we have a 100% implantation rate (which is very rare!) - but I wanted to offer it as a counterpoint to the negative statistics. I guess my advice would be to not go into debt trying to freeze now, but to stay positive and hope your financial and relationship situations change. It could very well be you being successful in a couple of years.
posted by widdershins at 12:51 PM on March 3