Freeze the Fertility Clock

By Jesse C Warner

The belief that you will someday have a baby and become a parent is a common dream shared by a lot of people. The question for most is not usually if they will have a child but rather when it will happen. This can happen naturally for many, but for others, personal circumstances or medical conditions can become barriers to ever achieving parenthood. Anyone who is interested in continuing their education, wanting to travel, maybe still looking for their life partner, military deployment or cancer diagnosis are now able to freeze their fertility clock and start a family when they are ready. By making the choice to freeze eggs or sperm today, a person can lock in their fertility potential for future use when the circumstances and timing are right for them.

For men this is a great option if they are in the military, wanting to travel, continuing education or have been diagnosed with cancer and are going to have chemotherapy treatment. The steps are simple. It includes a discussion with their physician and a referral to a fertility clinic that is able to cryopreserve sperm. It will be stored in a cryopreservation bank for as long as requested. Some insurances companies have included this as a covered service and, if not, the process is still affordable.

A woman’s fertility is largely dependent on the quality of her eggs. As a woman ages her fertility potential or egg quality decreases as does the chances of conception. Additionally, some medical conditions such as premature menopause accelerate the aging of eggs while other conditions, cancer or lupus for example require treatments that often have an adverse effect on fertility. Whatever the cause, diminished egg quality significantly impacts one's ability to conceive. For women the process requires more involvement but can be completed in a few weeks. Whether a women wants to freeze her eggs for person reasons or before chemotherapy treatment begins she would need an appointment with a fertility treatment center. At that appointment the process of how eggs are retrieved is explained from start to finish.

Jesse C Warner is the Clinic & Egg Donor Coordinator and Marketing Director at Overlake Reproductive Heath