Elective fertility - Facts and figures
Important background information about social egg freezing.
Important background information about social egg freezing.
At birth, a woman has about one million eggs on average. Unlike skin or blood cells, which always regenerate, our bodies are not able to produce any new egg cells. On the contrary – the egg reserve continues to decrease with every month that passes. Around 350,000 eggs remain by the beginning of puberty and, with each cycle, that number continues to fall by another 1,000 or so per month. Our egg reserve is a kind of ‘bank’ that does not take deposits. Once the eggs are used up, the menopause kicks in. Individual egg counts can be determined by means of three tests: FSH, AMH (blood parameters) and AFC (ultrasound examination).
Between the ages of 25 and 35, your eggs are in top condition, and you also still have a large number of them. If you are within this age range and are considering egg freezing, now would be a good time to consider the issue more closely.
As this chart illustrates, the success of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) depends primarily on the age of the egg used, halving between the ages of 35 and 40 alone and then dropping rapidly towards zero. Donated eggs from younger women (blue), on the other hand, retain a high potential. The best option for maintaining fertility is therefore to freeze your young healthy egg cells to preserve their quality, and to be your own egg donor later on.
How many eggs to freeze is a highly individual decision, and depends on your age and how many children you want in the future. Not every egg will result in a baby, no matter how young you are. But the more eggs you preserve and the younger you are when you do so, the higher the probability of a future pregnancy. A woman with six to seven frozen eggs at the age of 34 has about a 50% chance of having a baby with these eggs, while the same number of eggs at the age of 39 gives only about a 26% chance.
Arranging an appointment for a personal consultation at the 360° Kinderwunsch Zentrum can help you decide. Our calculation tools allow for much more individual calculations and advice than the former one-size-fits-all advice to ‘try freezing 10 to 12 eggs’.
Are you interested in cryopreservation of your eggs? Arrange a personal consultation at the 360° Kinderwunsch Zentrum Zürich in Switzerland.