I'm freezing my eggs

I am freezing my eggs. Why? I am 32 (coming up on 33), single, with no romantic prospects currently on the horizon and I am 100% certain that I want to have children. I never wanted to put off marriage and childbearing, I haven’t been postponing children for the sake of my career--it is simply a problem of not having found Mr. Right yet.  

In the best-case scenario, I meet my future husband tomorrow, we date for a year, get engaged, get married a few months later, and start trying for kids soon after that. That would bring me to about age 34. But I am not holding my breath for the best-case scenario to happen. As I mentioned above, I have not been trying to put off marriage--it just hasn’t happened yet. So what are the chances that I’ll meet Mr. Right almost immediately, just in time to have kids before my fertility takes a nosedive around age 35? I have to be realistic and realize that it may take longer to meet the right husband, and I could be well on my way to losing my fertility by the time it happens.

Thirty-two might sound young to be freezing eggs, but in fact it is probably a little later than ideal. A woman’s fertility starts to decline around age 27. The decline speeds up as time goes along, really speeding up around age 35 (see Dunson et al, “Changes with age in the level and duration of fertility in the menstrual cycle” and The American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s “Age-related fertility decline: a committee opinion”). So in fact the absolute best time to freeze eggs would probably be a bit earlier, more like the late 20s. Thirty-two is not bad, and many egg freezers are in their late 30s (see Aylin and Emre, “Current trends and progress in clinical applications of oocyte cryopreservation”). But the younger you are, the better the results are likely to be, so there is no point in me putting it off.

I’m writing this blog to document my egg freezing journey, so that other women who are considering egg freezing can learn more about what it’s like to go through the process.