Fertility preservation - planning for your future
Deciding when to become a parent is deeply personal, and there's no universally 'right' time. Fertility preservation offers a way to align your family planning with your life's timeline. It provides the opportunity to 'pause' your biological clock, granting you the flexibility to embrace parenthood at your own pace, without diminishing your chances of having biological children. This section explores how fertility preservation works, its benefits, and how it can be a strategic part of planning your future, ensuring you make the best decision for you.
Fertility preservation refers to the process of safeguarding eggs or sperm to enable future conception. It allows individuals to secure their reproductive potential, often in face of factors such as age, medical conditions, or personal circumstances.
At Crestcare Fertility, we offer two main types of fertility preservation - sperm preservation and egg preservation.
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Sperm Preservation: This process involves the freezing and storage of sperm, safeguarding the male reproductive potential. The quality of sperm can decline with age, and freezing younger, healthier sperm can enhance the prospects of future conception.
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Egg Preservation: Also known as oocyte cryopreservation, this method involves retrieving, freezing, and storing a woman's eggs during her peak reproductive years. These preserved eggs can be used at a later time when she is ready to start a family, mitigating age-related fertility decline.
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Fertility preservation offers a host of benefits. It allows you to proactively plan your family's future, without the worry of a ticking biological clock.
It's particularly beneficial for women who wish to delay childbearing due to career pursuits, lifestyle considerations, medical reasons, or simply not having met the right partner yet.
For men, it allows the preservation of current fertility levels, which could contribute to healthier offspring in the future.
Fertility preservation can be an empowering choice, allowing you to align your reproductive decisions with your life's timeline. It helps alleviate the stress of age-related fertility concerns, offering a sense of control and hope for future family plans.
Egg freezing, or oocyte cryopreservation, is a procedure that preserves a woman's eggs for future use, helping maintain fertility. The process involves stimulating the ovaries with hormones to mature multiple eggs. These eggs are monitored through ultrasounds and blood tests. Once matured, they are retrieved via a minor surgical procedure. The eggs are then rapidly frozen, a process called vitrification, and stored for potential future use. When ready for use, the eggs are thawed, fertilised with sperm in a lab, and implanted into the uterus as an embryo.
Sperm freezing, or sperm cryopreservation, is a process that allows men to store their sperm for future use. It involves collecting a sperm sample, typically through ejaculation. The sample is then analysed for various health factors. The healthy sperm are mixed with a protective solution and frozen in a process called cryopreservation, and then stored securely. When ready for use, the sperm are thawed and can be used in various fertility treatments like Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) or In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF).
What it is, how does it work, and who can it help?
A Step-by-Step Guide to Egg Freezing, or Oocyte Cryopreservation
Step 1: Ovarian Stimulation
Similar to the initial phase of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), the process starts with the administration of hormonal injections for approximately 8-12 days. These hormones stimulate the ovaries to mature multiple eggs at once.
Step 2: Monitoring
Regular ultrasounds and blood tests are carried out to monitor the development of the eggs in the ovaries.
Step 3: Egg Retrieval
Once the eggs have matured, a minor surgical procedure is performed under sedation to retrieve the eggs from the ovaries. This involves using a needle that's guided through the vagina with ultrasound.
Step 4: Egg Freezing
The retrieved eggs are then rapidly frozen, a process known as vitrification, and stored in a special freezer for potential future use. The eggs can remain viable for many years while frozen.
A Step-by-Step Guide Sperm Freezing or Sperm Cryopreservation
Step 1: Sperm Collection
The man provides a sperm sample, typically through ejaculation. This is usually done at a clinic through masturbation, although alternative methods may be available for those who can't produce a sample this way.
Step 2: Analysis
The sample is then analysed in a lab to evaluate factors like sperm count, motility, and morphology.
Step 3: Freezing
The sperm are mixed with a special protective solution and then slowly cooled to a very low temperature to be frozen. This process, known as cryopreservation, helps to protect the sperm from damage.
Step 4: Storage
The frozen sperm are stored in secure, monitored liquid nitrogen tanks until they're needed.
Ready to take the first step?
Schedule a fertility consultation with one of our specialist fertility gynaecologists.
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Your specialist will do a thorough evaluation and provide you with a fertility treatment diagnosis.