A new method for preserving women's eggs is helping increase the chances of pregnancy for those who choose or are forced to delay motherhood.
Doctors at the McGill Reproductive Centre are freezing women's eggs using what they call the fast- freeze method.
With previous, slow-freezing methods, only 50 to 60 per cent of eggs would survive. With the fast-freeze method, a chemical is applied to the eggs to prevent freezing damage. The eggs are then dipped into a vat of liquid nitrogen. They are then stored until they are ready for use.
"This chemical can be used to reduce or prevent ice crystal formation in the solution. That's why we are using this, not only for eggs, even for other type of cells," Dr. Seang Lin Tan, the medical director at the McGill Centre explained to Canada AM.
The rapid freezing technique improves the survival rate to 85 per cent, on average.
"So far, in our program, we've had 20 babies born from egg freezing, all of whom are healthy," says Tan.
Mamta Shah, who lives in New York, travelled to the clinic in Montreal to have some of her eggs frozen two years ago, when she realized she had not yet found a life partner and was worrying that her biological clock was ticking.
"I'm 38 years old and at 36, I realized I wanted to make sure that I had high-quality eggs and enough eggs by the time I found a partner. So I wanted to deal with ... the stress by doing something proactive, like preserving my fertility," she explained.
"I've always wanted to have a family, but I also want to make sure I have the right partner. I didn't want to do it alone. I wanted to wait to find that right person and timing wasn't working out the way biology would like it to be."
Ottawa resident Stacey Bolton also had her eggs frozen at the centre, but for much different reasons.
In 2006, when she was 32, Bolton was diagnosed with breast cancer, and was at risk of losing her fertility from the cancer treatments she would have to undergo. She says she decided almost immediately that freezing her eggs would be a good idea.
"While I was sitting being diagnosed, as soon as I heard the word 'chemotherapy,' I thought: what about babies?"
"I was pretty much told not to really worry about my future with babies, I needed to worry about my future for myself and my own life. But my surgeon told me that there were things being done, and that I could look into it. I did and found Dr. Tan and everything worked out perfectly."
Bolton decided to delay her chemotherapy treatments for three weeks so that she could undergo the egg freezing procedure. Doctors matured her eggs using in vitro maturation, fertilized them with her husband's sperm and then froze the embryos in cryopreservation tanks.
"For me, it was like guaranteeing my future. And psychologically, when you do something this huge, it's like you're guaranteeing to yourself that you're going to live and you're going to have a family."
Shah says she, too, couldn't be happier that she had her eggs frozen.
"For me, removing the stress has been priceless. I feel great that I bought what I call 'motherhood insurance.' It's a policy that hopefully, maybe I'll never need to use, but it's a kind of policy that has really relieved a lot of stress in my life."
