Many times in our Fertility Wellness workshops, women mention to us that, when they want to look for a child, they find out that their ovarian reserve is low. They express that they did not know that the quality and quantity of ovules deteriorated so much after the age of 35, and that perhaps if they had known, they would have made other decisions. Many refer to indignation at the thought that they went to their gynecologists since they were teenagers and that they were never explained how fertility worked, and yet they were always told what contraceptive methods to use to avoid pregnancy.
When we find these comments, we strengthen our conviction about the importance of making visible the issue of fertility preservation.
Women, since we have our first menstruation, we begin to receive information on how to avoid getting pregnant. They advise us on the variety of contraceptive methods that we can use, instruct us on the most fertile days to avoid and explain that we should have annual gynecological check-ups.
But when the time comes to want to look for a child, we enter an unknown world. There they inform us that there are hormonal blood tests, we find out that there are ultrasound scans that count the follicles that, together with the hormonal tests, guide us on the fertility status of that woman. The problem is that many times the time to do all these studies begins to yield results that worry us or are not as we expected.
The question that arises is: if we had carried out these studies before, would it have helped us at all? It depends on each person: many times not, because many women would not have done anything differently, since the desire was not there before or the personal conditions they considered necessary were not there either. But many women admit that, had they known that this option existed, they would have cryopreserved their eggs at an earlier age. This technique allows the woman to preserve her eggs for future use.
Cryopreservation has advantages:
- It allows to reserve eggs of better quality and greater quantity when done at fertile age.
- It allows postponing maternity until it is considered the right time.
- Decreases the pressure that women feel because of “the biological clock”
- It allows you to make decisions about motherhood more consciously and not impulsively or due to time constraints.
But it is important to take into account other aspects of cryopreservation:
- It consists of injecting hormones
- Sedation is performed in the operating room to extract the oocytes.
- At the time of deciding to use them, a fertility treatment must be carried out that allows the ovules to be united with the spermatozoa.
- It implies a high economic cost.
Our message is that they can talk to their gynecologists[email protected] and consult about their fertility status at any time they want, not only when they want to look for a child and that they are informed about the options, advantages and disadvantages so that they can decide freely.
If the consultation does not come out as a spontaneous topic, each one can ask their doctor[email protected] to advise her on the matter and ask her for the necessary studies to find out how her fertility is.
Information allows conscious, thoughtful, and planned decisions to be made, and information about the fertility status of each woman and about preservation options should be more expressed and made visible, especially considering that motherhood is increasingly postponed, and Having that information can be of great help.
Lic. Patricia Méndez Torterolo and Lic. Cecilia Lukaszewicz
www.bienestarenfertilidad.com.ar
Ig: @bienestarenfertilidad
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