Declining Egg Number
Most women are born with about 2 million eggs in their ovaries. By the time they reach puberty, almost 90% of these eggs have died and by the time she reaches twenty, only about 50,000 of the original 2 million eggs remain. This decline usually continues steadily until around the age of 35, at which point the rate of loss speeds up dramatically. This means that there are increasingly fewer eggs available for fertilization as the average woman ages beyond 35.
Declining egg quality
During a woman's normal cycle, the body selects the 'best' eggs to ripen for fertilization. So, each month at least one healthy egg is passed during menstruation (the monthly period). So gradually, unless a woman conceives, the 'best' eggs are discarded by the body. Those that remain have grown older, and are possibly lower quality, making them less likely to become fertilized and develop into a healthy baby.
Although an older egg can sometimes become fertilized, there is a greater risk of miscarriage or birth abnormalities due to chromosomal defects. It may be that the reduced fertility seen with aging is therefore part of the body's natural 'safety mechanism'.
So far, the remainder of my questions are as follows:
1. How many eggs were frozen using vitrification and how man were frozen using the slow freezing method?
2. How many eggs were spindle positive?
3. Does NYU use a vitrification system with closed containers so as to exclude viruses?
4. Is there any genetic testing for chromosomal abnormalities with the eggs after freezing them/ during or after the thaw? Ask about Reprocure?
5. Can I have a picture of the egg(s)?
6. Has there been anyone over 37 at NYU that used their thawed eggs yet?
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5 comments:
Thank you for sharing your experience. I will start the egg freezing journey this week. My FSH was 6.5, so I can start the Lupron. I am a bit nervous and excited as well.
Good luck. Let me know how it goes! if you have any questions, feel free to ask!
Thank you for blogging on your experience. Did you receive answers to the questions you listed in this post? Are you planning a follow-up post on that? Btw, I thought NYU used slow-freezing, not vitrification.
Yes but I wrote them down and cannot seem to locate them so I requested them last week and will post them here as soon as I receive them.
NYU uses both slow freezing and vitrification. They split the eggs they retrieve and do half and half when they freeze.
I still have not received answers to my questions from my RE so I will email her or write her again. I know many of you have requested my results and I am curious too.
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