Women urged to freeze their eggs – Donor sperm also available for those who can’t find partners
DIRECTOR of the Hugh Wynter Fertility Management Unit at The University of the West Indies, Dr Vernon DaCosta, is imploring women to have some of their eggs, or fertilised embryos, stored until they are ready to have children.
“They say that the best time for a woman to get pregnant is between 24 and 28, but many of those who come to us now are in their 40s, which is way too late,” Dr DaCosta lamented, noting that infertility is on the rise globally in both men and women.
“Overall when you look at sperm quality and quantity for, say, over the last 50 years, there has been a significant decline right across the globe. This has a lot to do with food and lifestyle choices. There is also the fact that women are delaying childbirth. Many women now are waiting until they have completed university, start their jobs, and then by the time they realise, they’re in their 40s.”
He maintained that age is the most important factor in infertility.
“Your fertility potential as a woman starts to decline after 28 years old,” he said. “If you are going to delay having children, come in your 20s or early 30s and let us collect your eggs, freeze them, and then when you’re ready, you come back for them.”
Dr DaCosta explained that as a precautionary measure, women can come in to the unit and “count their eggs before they hatch”.
“There is now a test that we can offer — it’s called the Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), which we can do for women as a screening test,” he explained. “Just like you would screen for diabetes or hypertension you can screen for your ovarian reserve [egg count] where you do this blood test, and if it shows that your ovarian reserve is very low, then we’d advise you that you need to get pregnant now. If you don’t plan on getting pregnant then we’d collect your eggs, freeze them, and then you can come back whenever you find your partner.”
He added: “Once we thaw it out, we fertilise it through a process we call ICSI [Intracytoplasmic sperm injection], where we get the sperm and inject it into the egg, and then once it starts to develop then we put it back inside the uterus.”
He cautioned, however, that embryos (eggs that have already been fertilised by sperm) have a higher chance of surviving the freezing and thawing process than unfertilised eggs.
“Actually, the fertilised embryos are easier to freeze than the eggs. We have been freezing embryos for a very long time. We just got around in the last ten years or so how to really freeze eggs,” he admitted. “Embryos survive better and freeze better.”
But still, he warned that it is not wise to freeze all your eggs in one basket.
“For example, if you had fertilised all of your eggs before you froze them, and you are going through a divorce, then you’re going to have a problem,” Dr DaCosta said.
“He might say that he doesn’t want you to get pregnant with his sperm anymore, and you can’t cut it in half, because that is going to kill it.”
Donor sperm, he said, is available for women who can’t find, or who choose not to have a baby with a partner when they are ready to have children. Most of this sperm is imported because the Jamaican population is too small to risk familial ties.
