Dr. Paul Brezina joins a panel of experts to help women understand egg freezing and donor egg IVF options
The Creating a Family radio show recently invited our Memphis fertility specialist, Dr. Paul Brezina, to talk about egg freezing with listeners. The hour-long radio show and podcast focused on how the process works, what to expect with egg freezing and who makes a good candidate.
Dr. Brezina and other invited experts fielded questions from listeners, including one who woman who expressed concerns about fertility drugs that stimulate the ovaries. This young woman has regular periods and is most likely fertile.
So why can’t she just freeze the eggs her body normally ovulates in that particular month?
Medications that stimulate the ovaries ensure that a woman produces enough eggs to freeze, thaw and eventually meet with sperm to form viable embryos when she is ready to get pregnant.
The first stage of egg freezing: Let the gladiator games begin
“You have a resting pool of 200,000-300,000 eggs around the time of puberty,” says Dr. Brezina. “Every month, the body pulls out a certain number of these and makes them active. Of the eggs that are pulled out—and in the average woman, it may be 25 or 30—the brain tells them to compete, almost like gladiators. One emerges victorious. Under a natural cycle, you are only going to have one [winner].”
Dr. Brezina further explained to listeners that IVF medications tell the brain to shut down its natural responses so that all of the “gladiators,” or baby-making candidates, do not fight each other. Instead, all 25 eggs develop.
When you thaw eggs one day, even mature, young and healthy eggs will only give you a pregnancy rate between 5-10% per egg. Having only one egg doesn’t give you the same level of assurance in egg freezing as having 25-30.
Fertility Associates of Memphis partners with the Donor Egg Bank USA
Fertility Associates of Memphis joins twenty other fertility centers as a member of Donor Egg Bank USA to provide our patients with more choices of egg donors at a reduced cost and with two levels of guarantee. Level one guarantees that a high quality embryo will be available for transfer and the second level of guarantee provides a full refund if a couple does not have a live born child. See full details on our web site. If you would like to know more about the egg freezing process, get more information from our web site, contact us and listen to the complete show, “Egg Freezing. Should you? When? How?”
https://creatingafamily.org/radio-show/egg-freezing-should-you-when-how/
The team at Fertility Associates of Memphis thanks Dawn Davenport, executive director of Creating a Family, the national infertility & adoption education and support nonprofit, for her invitation to raise awareness for this option and the importance of knowing the pros and cons of waiting to get pregnant.
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