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I know it's pretty costly but if you're young enough to still have healthy eggs but old enough to know you'd be better off as a single parent or think it might take too long till you find the right person, would you freeze your eggs? Adoption is another option but might be harder if trying to do it as a single parent.
I would not. Invasive, costly procedure with no guarantee of success. Also, the hormone shots you have to go through to produce a batch for harvesting are hell, I hear, and cannot be any good for your body.
Better, I think, to just go ahead and have a kid on your own in your late 30s if you haven't found a mate by then.
When I woke up this morning, before I had had coffee, my flu addled brain thought, Freeze eggs? Why would anyone do that? They last so long in the fridge. I mean, I have heard of freezing whites for later use when you just need the yolks.
I know this is thread jack. And I am sorry. I don't mean to devalue your thread. It just struck me funny. If I were in that position, at the time I wanted to become a single mom, I just would. But that would just be me.
I actually wonder what would be the thought process behind it.
Egg stim and retrieval is EXPENSIVE and takes a lot out of you. Its a 6 week process (or it used to be) of shots, hormones, blood tests, frequent doctors appointments. The hormones essentially take you through the worst hormonal times in ones life, including inducing menopause for a time with all the fun side effects of that. In my experience, it was hard to nearly impossible to live even a slightly normal life during those times. But I am sensitive to hormones.
Then storing the eggs costs yearly, and its not cheep at all. I guess it depends but we stored embryos and it was over 1k a year for each vial.
When do you decide? When you are 25 and have a 10 year plan? Plans change. When you are 34 and worried about your potential fertility in the future (note the video I posted above)?
And then the science behind ART is changing fairly rapidly, I would wonder about that.
I guess I just wonder how someone is so sure they want to freeze their eggs with the pain, cost and disruption to their lives. I am sure some people do know, choose to do it and are happy with their decision. I just cant come close to applying it to my own life where it would make sense for me.
I've thought about it, since I'm now 41 and single - no burning desire for children (or marriage) as of yet, but occasionally I get that "what if I regret not having biological children" moment! But I'm probably too old already for this procedure, can't afford it, and don't want to put my body through the hormone treatments. So I guess if I do decide having bio kids is super important, I'll just have to go ahead and do it in the next few years. And if that doesn't happen, adoption and/or step-parenting (or no kids at all) are fine with me too.
I think that it something that should be routinely offered to younger women who need to undergo cancer treatment, the same way young men might be advised to store sperm.
I also think that it should be an option for other women who want to keep their options open if they aren't ready to try to conceive at an earlier age with more optimal fertility. Nothing is a guarantee, of course, but 25 year old eggs are a whole lot more likely to work than that same woman's eggs at 45 or even 35.
It's no more invasive that doing IVF, but if a woman is proactive and does it at an earlier age, she's more likely to have success. And it also provides an option for women who haven't met a man they want to have children with yet.
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