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Having children is a goal for many women. Yet that biological clock ticking may push some women to make choices before they feel fully prepared.
With advances in oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing), however, women can delay motherhood until they feel ready and prepared. At CARE Fertility in Bedford and Fort Worth, Texas, our reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialists offer egg freezing for women who want to preserve their fertility at our state-of-the-art embryology lab.
Here, we share some of the ways you can prepare for egg freezing.
1. Meet with a fertility doctor
Making the decision to freeze your eggs is huge, and it involves medical treatments and procedures that may not work for everyone. Schedule an appointment with a fertility doctor to learn more about egg freezing so you understand what to expect and you can decide if it’s an option for you.
During an initial consultation, we ask detailed questions about your reproductive health and fertility concerns. We also ask why you want to freeze your eggs.
Egg freezing is an option for women who want to preserve their future fertility because they’re undergoing medical treatment that affects fertility or they want to accomplish life or career goals before starting a family.
2. Get tested
Before moving ahead with freezing your eggs, we need to check your ovarian egg reserve and have you undergo diagnostic testing. This gives us an idea of how many eggs you have and how many we can collect during an egg retrieval cycle for freezing.
Testing involves bloodwork to check hormone levels and ultrasound imaging to count ovarian follicles.
3. Educate yourself about egg freezing
The process we use to retrieve eggs for freezing is the same process we use for in vitro fertilization (IVF). It’s important to educate yourself about IVF and egg freezing to fully understand what’s involved.
In order to collect as many eggs as possible, you need to give yourself daily hormone injections so you produce more egg-containing follicles during your menstrual cycle. During this time, we do ultrasounds and blood tests to monitor the development of the follicles, and we retrieve them once they mature.
Egg retrieval is a minor surgical procedure during which we use a thin needle and ultrasound imaging to extract eggs from the ovaries. These are the eggs we freeze.
4. Adopt a healthy lifestyle
Your health affects your fertility, and you want to take steps to improve your general health before freezing your eggs. A few changes to your lifestyle can make a significant difference.
We recommend eating more fruits and vegetables, exercising regularly, and prioritizing sleep. You also want to avoid smoking, using illicit drugs, and drinking alcohol.
5. Prepare financially
Freezing your eggs isn’t covered by insurance, and it may require out-of-pocket costs to cover fertility treatments and egg storage.
Our financial advisers can talk to you about the costs of freezing your eggs so you know what to expect. You should also contact your health insurance to find out if they cover any of the fertility treatments.
Starting an egg freezing savings account now can help you manage these expenses.
Planning for your future
Freezing your eggs relieves some of the pressure you may feel about having children when you’re not really ready. Getting prepared for the process is a great way to make sure everything goes as planned.
Do you want to freeze your eggs? Call or request an appointment online at the CARE Fertility office near you today to schedule a consultation with one of our fertility experts.