Kate, a 38 years old Hispanic female who just failed a frozen embryo transfer came to
my office. She told me that she had frozen her eggs a few years ago but only had one
embryo after her embryologist unfroze her eggs last month for fertilization. The
pregnancy had not taken place after transfer.
Egg freezing is becoming a popular option for women who plan to start a family later in
life. Many reasons exist for considering egg freezing or oocyte vitrification: life
trajectories driven by careers, lack of a partner, financial issues, disease, etc. Once the
decision has been made to “freeze” eggs, women sometimes feel compelled to do the
procedure as soon as possible due to fears of aging eggs. It is called one of the
greatest “regret medicine” in the world. However, this rush might result in a less-than-
desired outcome–that’s what I believe happened to Kate.
I’ve seen many other similar cases in which women were in a hurry to deposit eggs
without any preparation. They did it while they were under a lot of stress, while they
were living unhealthy lifestyles. If our body not healthy, our cells aren’t healthy–and
neither are our eggs. Preparing our bodies before we deposit our eggs is extremely
important.
Kate listened to me and changed her lifestyle, took herbal supplements to improve
circulation and balance hormones. , were adopted, which helped her become less
stressed and healthier–which in turn improved her egg quality before she started
another round of IVF.
On the third month of our treatment plan, she became pregnant naturally. Nine months
later, she got a healthy baby girl.
Kate’s story told us that preparing the body for egg banking is very important. Some
women might end up not using deposited eggs for many years while they’re waiting for
the right time to have a child. By that time, their ovarian reserve and egg quality may be
already very low. They could lose the chance to have their own baby if the quality of
their frozen eggs are not good enough for them to conceive. In that case, it is not only a
financial loss but a loss of biological time.