Egg Freezing: Preserving Your Future Path to Parenthood
For many young women today, the timeline for starting a family is shifting. Whether you are focused on advancing your career, pursuing higher education, or simply waiting for the right partner, the pressure of the "biological clock" can be a source of significant stress.
Egg freezing, medically known as oocyte cryopreservation, is a proactive method used to save a woman's ability to get pregnant in the future. At the Center for Advanced Reproductive Medicine and Infertility (CARMI) at St. Luke’s Medical Center-Global City, this technology offers a bridge between your current life goals and your future dreams of motherhood.
Why Women Choose to Freeze Their Eggs
The decision to freeze eggs is deeply personal and often driven by a desire for flexibility and peace of mind. Common reasons include:
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Career and Education: Many women in their 20s and early 30s choose to prioritize professional milestones or advanced degrees, wanting to ensure their fertility is "locked in" at its healthiest state.
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Personal Circumstances: You may not have found a partner with whom you wish to have children yet, or you may simply not feel ready for the responsibilities of parenthood.
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Medical Necessities: Certain medical treatments, such as chemotherapy for cancer or surgery for severe endometriosis, can impact ovarian function. CARMI helps patients preserve their options before undergoing such treatments.
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Family History: Women with a family history of early menopause may choose to freeze eggs early to safeguard against premature fertility decline.
The Advantages of Thinking Ahead
The primary advantage of egg freezing is biological time. A woman is born with a finite number of eggs, and both the quantity and quality of those eggs decline as she ages—particularly after age 35.
By freezing eggs while you are younger, you are essentially "freezing" the health and genetic integrity of those eggs. If you choose to use them years later, your chances of a successful pregnancy are based on your age at the time of freezing, not your age at the time of implantation. This significantly reduces the risks of age-related chromosomal abnormalities and miscarriage.
What to Expect: The Procedure
The process at St. Luke’s CARMI is a comprehensive, multi-step journey designed with patient safety and comfort in mind:
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Initial Consultation and Testing: Specialists use tests to check for egg reserve, such as Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH) testing, to assess your ovarian reserve and customize your treatment plan.
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Ovarian Stimulation: For about 8 to 12 days, you will self-administer hormone injections to stimulate your ovaries to produce multiple eggs instead of the single egg typically released each month.
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Monitoring: You will visit CARMI regularly for ultrasounds and blood work to track the growth of the follicles (the fluid-filled sacs that contain the eggs).
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Egg Retrieval: Once the eggs are mature, they are harvested during a minor, 20-minute surgical procedure. This is performed under light sedation, meaning you will be asleep and feel no pain. A thin needle, guided by ultrasound, is used to gently aspirate the eggs from the ovaries.
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Vitrification: This is the "flash-freezing" technology used at CARMI. It prevents the formation of ice crystals that could damage the egg's structure, ensuring high survival rates when the eggs are eventually thawed.
What Happens to Your Eggs?
Once frozen, your eggs are stored in a secure, state-of-the-art cryogenic laboratory at CARMI. They can remain stored long-term in this cryopreserved state without losing their biological quality.
When you are ready to use them, the eggs are thawed and fertilized with sperm from your partner in the lab to create embryos. The most viable embryo is then transferred to your uterus—a process similar to standard In Vitro Fertilization (IVF).
Take the Next Step
As the first hospital-based IVF center in the Philippines, CARMI combines world-class clinical success rates with compassionate, patient-centered care. Its highly-trained and experienced reproductive medicine and infertility specialists, scientists, and compassionate nurses provide the guidance needed by patients in their parenthood journey.
Empowering yourself with information is the first step toward reproductive autonomy. Whether you are ready to start the process or simply want to understand your options, the experts at St. Luke’s CARMI are here to guide you.
To learn more about egg freezing packages, contact:
Center for Advanced Reproductive Medicine and Infertility (CARMI)
Ground Floor, Medical Arts Building
St. Luke’s Medical Center-Global City
Landline: (+63 2) 8789-7700 ext. 2111
Email: carmi.bgc@stlukes.com.ph
