This App Will Tell You if and When to Freeze Your Eggs
When a woman is 44, her chances of having a baby jump from 21.9 per cent for natural conception to 51.6 per cent if she uses eggs that she froze when she was 37.
When you’re a fetus, you have six to seven million eggs. This number drops to roughly 400,000 by the time you hit puberty and continues to decrease until around age 35, when the quality and number of eggs begin to decline more rapidly. For women in their 20s, about 70 per cent of their embryos will be genetically normal. Fifty per cent of embryos from women who are 35 to 37 are abnormal, as are 70 per cent from women 38 to 39 and 80 to 90 per cent from women over 40. If an embryo is abnormal, there’s a greater chance of miscarriage or birth defects.
In 2015, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill published a report in the journal Fertility and Sterility that analyzed the best time for a woman to freeze her eggs if she was planning to get pregnant in the next three, five or seven years. They found that when a woman is 44, her chances of having a baby jump from 21.9 per cent for natural conception to 51.6 per cent if she uses eggs that she froze when she was 37. So, not only will egg freezing increase your chances of conception, it can also help your chances of having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. No wonder the number of women who chose to freeze their eggs in the United States grew by more than eight times between 2009 and 2013.
In response to this trend and a tenfold increase in requests about egg freezing services, the Create Fertility Centre in Toronto created an app, FrzMyEggs, that is available on iPhone and Android . It estimates how many eggs you may have based on your age. If you’ve already had tests to find out your antral follicle count and anti-Müllerian hormone level, which help evaluate your ovarian reserve, this information is entered into the app and used to measure whether you’re a good candidate for egg freezing. The app also includes information on how the process works as well as a decision-making aid.
For more information on the process of freezing your eggs and the cost, click here.
