Should I freeze my eggs?

Posted on 26 January 2016

A woman’s chances of having a baby decrease dramatically after 35. To extend their fertility lifespan, some women are freezing their eggs. But why do they do it… and does it really work?

Across the modern world, women are made to choose between career and family – and the more time they invest in their career, the more their chances of having a family slip away. ‘The age of 35 is the turning point for women,’ says Lizanne van Waart, psychologist at the Wijnland Fertility Clinic in Stellenbosch. ‘After the age of 35, the quality of eggs reduces by 10% per year. So if you get to the age of 40, it means that 70% of your eggs are abnormal. You’d still have maybe 10 eggs, but seven of those 10 will be abnormal.’

Abnormal eggs mean a radically reduced chance of a viable and healthy pregnancy. Fortunately, though, technology now allows women to preserve their fertility potential by freezing and storing their eggs.

There are two reasons why a woman might choose to freeze her eggs. On one hand there are health reasons: for example, women who are about to undergo cancer treatment, and who want to preserve their hope of having children afterwards. On the other hand you have what’s called ‘social freezing’: this is where a woman freezes her eggs for personal, or social reasons, because their hopes of starting a family are delayed due to social reasons.

‘This gives women a chance to build their own career and wait longer to get married,’ explains Lizanne. ‘It means that after the age of 35 they can fall pregnant with the eggs of, say, a 30-year-old woman.’ The important part is, that 30-year-old woman is yourself.

Lizanne won’t say whether social freezing is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. That call is, of course, up to each individual. But through her work at the Wijnland Fertility Clinic, she understands the reasons why a woman would choose to freeze her eggs. ‘They come to the age of 30 or 32, and they’re not in a relationship, but they desperately want children,’ she says. ‘In the old days, some women would use donors, but now they have the opportunity to freeze their own eggs – and when they do get married, it means they can fertilise their own eggs with the person they love.’

So… does it work? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is yes, sometimes, but it’s still too early to tell what the exact success rate is. ‘Social freezing is very much in the experimental phase,’ Lizanne points out. ‘But we have had live births from egg freezing in our laboratory.’