Should you freeze your Eggs? – Lilly A.

As I am reading the book Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank, I am learning about the tools and technology that the doctors had a long time ago and comparing them to what we have in the present. One thing that we have now is the ability to freeze your embryos. To me, this topic is very cool, because you can take your eggs out and freeze them for later use, say if you aren’t ready to have kids yet but you want to in the future, but you don’t know when that will be or how old you will be. You could have your younger eggs ready to go.

The process of freezing your eggs is quite interesting actually. Before you can actually freeze your eggs you have to take a series of hormone injections, to help make your body fertile and ensure that you will have embryos to freeze. After you do your hormone injections you go to the doctor’s office to actually take the eggs out and freeze them. The way that your doctor takes the egg out through the process called Transvaginal Egg Retrieval. This is where the doctor uses a needle to go into your body and that needle releases a fluid that makes the eggs detach from the follicle and then vacuums the eggs out.

There are definitely some pros and cons of freezing your eggs. Some pros are that you can freeze your eggs and have children later, and you can also freeze your eggs and let someone who isn’t able to have children have them, if you are open to something like that. Another pro is that you do not have to rush into having a baby if you are not stable or you want to focus on your career before you commit to having a child. Some cons are that it might not work. I read a little article  that states that the egg can form ice crystals around it since, it is being frozen and that can destroy the cell. Over the years scientists have learned that they need to replace the water they used to freeze it with antifreeze.

In the end I think that if I ever needed to I would definitely freeze my eggs. Even though there is a chance it might not work it is better than no chance at having children at all.