Our founder’s recent interview on the Podcast “Technophobia” got us thinking about common misconceptions about egg freezing that we hear in our Ovally consults:
1. I’ll wait until my mid/late 30s to freeze my eggs:
Tag: Egg freezing
Does drinking coffee or tea affect fertility?
“Can I have caffeine before and during my treatment?” is a great question we’ve gotten from our egg freezing and IVF Ovally customers. As is so often the case, the research on this question isn’t as clean and clear-cut as we’d like: It’s hard to separate out variables besides caffeine that can affect fertility outcomes, and many studies rely on retrospective self-reports of consumption, which can be unreliable. However, high-quality studies looking at a relationship between caffeine consumption and the ability to conceive during IVF treatment suggest that 1-2 cups of coffee per day don’t significantly affect the ability to conceive. Surprisingly, however, 1-2 cups of coffee a day (or the equivalent level of caffeine in another drink) have been found to double the risk of miscarriage during pregnancy.
Do I use up precious eggs if I freeze them?
We hear this concern frequently on our Welcome Consults for Ovally: If I freeze my eggs, don’t I decrease the number of eggs I have available? Does freezing my eggs therefore lower my chances of conceiving naturally after freezing them, because I have fewer eggs? Luckily, the answer is no – egg freezing takes advantage of eggs that would’ve otherwise disintegrated, and the number of eggs you freeze in a typical cycle is really tiny compared to the number of eggs you have available.
10 reasons to freeze your eggs in your 20s
You’ll take advantage of…
1. More eggs to collect: Your number of eggs declines with age
2. Better egg quality: Also declines with age
3. Lower treatment cost: Given 1. and 2., you’ll likely only need one egg freezing cycle to collect a good number of high-quality eggs
Putting my fertility on ice allowed me to become a Mom
This week, we have a guest post from an Ovally contributor about her very personal journey from freezing her eggs to becoming a Mom of twins. We’re really grateful for her story and thankful to her for sharing it:
Embryo freezing & IVF: What happens after the retrieval? A personal account (3/3).
This is part 3 of Ovally founder Kathy’s personal daily account of her embryo freezing journey to Spain. Read the previous two posts on the stimulation period and egg retrieval. This set of posts takes you from the egg fertilization through embryo development, genetic testing, and freezing. It doesn’t include the last IVF step of embryo transfer.
Egg/embryo freezing & IVF: What are the trigger shot and retrieval like? A personal account (2/3).
What does the trigger shot feel like, and how is the retrieval under anesthesia? Here’s Ovally founder Kathy’s personal account starting 36 hours before her egg retrieval until a few hours after the procedure. If you’re interested in the hormone stimulation period leading up to the egg retrieval, check out the previous blog post.
Egg/embryo freezing & IVF: What’s the stimulation period like? A personal account (1/3).
It’s one thing to read a summary of what happens during egg freezing or IVF, but we’ve found it’s often more helpful to read an honest, personal account of what every day of a treatment actually feels like. When Ovally founder Kathy froze embryos in Spain, she blogged about it every day – below is an unedited version of what the “stimulation period” was like for her, when she was giving herself daily injections of follicle-stimulating hormones. Even though everyone’s experience is slightly different, we hope that this will make the procedure more tangible:
Which fertility add-on treatments are effective and worth the investment?
The Human Fertilization & Embryology Authority (HFEA) in the UK has released a report testing various popular “add-on” fertility treatments from embryo glue to pre-implantation screening and endometrial scratching. These add-ons are fertility treatments that are typically offered at an additional cost. Six of the techniques the HFEA examined are still relatively new or have conflicting evidence. Another six techniques have been around for a while without evidence of their effectiveness. We’re hoping this evaluation of add-on treatments will be helpful for our Ovally customers, as well as anyone else undergoing fertility treatments.
What happens to surplus embryos from IVF or embryo freezing?
We’ve at times talked about eggs and embryos in a somewhat utilitarian way on this blog. However, thinking about the fate of human embryos and eggs is a complex and deeply personal matter. The complexity of how people feel and think about frozen eggs or embryos is reflected in different countries’ legislations about what you are and aren’t allowed to do with any surplus eggs or embryos. As assisted reproductive technologies that can create this kind of surplus haven’t been around for very long, some laws are still in flux or being updated.
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