What is egg freezing and why are famous women doing it?
Kourtney Kardashian froze her eggs when she was 39, and some of her sisters have done the same. Why are all these famous women suddenly putting their eggs on ice?
Egg freezing is the new fertility fashion
While it’s been possible to freeze your eggs for years, famous women have just started talking about it as if it’s a new beauty treatment or the latest handbag. What makes egg freezing the hottest new luxury trend?
Because many women don’t want to settle down and have a family immediately, they worry that they might miss the window of opportunity to have children. Fertility starts to decline after your 30’s, and it gets a lot harder to get pregnant after 40. Freezing your eggs ensures that you still have a chance to have a child of your own when you get older.
Egg freezing is better when you are younger
Women are born with eggs all ready to make babies! They mature when you get older, and they are released one by one into the uterus, where they may be fertilised.
Egg quality starts to deteriorate when you get older – so the eggs already made in your body can start to degrade. Any new ones that your body makes can make may also be flawed. The eggs of a 20-year-old are statistically more likely to be of good quality than those of a 40-year-old.
What does it mean to have good quality eggs?
Good quality eggs have enough intact & high-quality genetic material to survive the process of fertilisation and implantation. They have matured properly, and they are able to divide and grow well.
Poorer quality eggs tend not to grow as well, and some do not survive the process. Egg quality tends to go right down after 40, so Kourtney has managed to freeze her eggs at a good time.
How do frozen eggs get turned into babies?
IVF or In-Vitro Fertilisation is the process of fertilized human eggs with sperm in a lab, and then implanting them into a uterus, where it can grow into a full-term baby. The egg is thawed and then mixed with the sperm until it turns into an embryo. After a couple of days, it is implanted.
Kourtney could choose to carry her own baby – but it’s more likely after the age of 40, and because of her family’s history of using surrogates, that she would want a surrogate to gestate the baby for her.
How long can eggs stay frozen?
The normal amount of time is 10 years. This means that Kourtney has until she is 49 to choose whether she wants to have another child.
What happens if the eggs don’t get used?
If they are not used, then they can be donated to another person who can’t produce high-quality eggs of their own. They can also be thawed out and disposed of. As they are unfertilised, they are not considered “alive” by either science or religion.