• The average age at which a woman freezes her eggs in order to focus on demanding careers is 34.

• 85% of women with frozen eggs stored will have them thawed years later for childbearing.

• Spain is also a receiving country from foreign patients seeking to freeze their eggs.

Valencia 06.03.15. As figures from CREA, Medical Center for Assisted Reproduction based in Valencia reveals, the overall number of women who choose to freeze their eggs in order to postpone motherhood has increased over 20% in the last year.

In many cases women have demanding careers and choose to prioritize them over childbearing to achieve their career goals, while maintaining the option of having children later in life.

The average age of women opting to freeze their eggs is 34 and quite often happens to be the same age when they are at the peak of their careers.

Over 85% of women, who have frozen eggs stored, return to them later in future for childbearing. Spanish Law doesn´t establish an age limit to become pregnant.

Spain is precisely one of the European countries that given its advanced legislation and the highest qualification when it comes to Human Reproduction Techniques, leads in Europe not only with regards to egg freezing by women who wish to postpone motherhood, increasingly aware of the advantages that assisted reproduction techniques have to offer, but has also become receiver of foreign women seeking to freeze their eggs here, given the legal limits in their own countries.

Dr Carmen Calatayud, CREA´s Co-Director, emphasizes the importance of taking into account that as women age their fertility decreases because oocytes get older and makes more difficult not only conceiving but giving birth to a healthy baby, since age alters oocytes maturation process and reproductive failures can happen. For that same reason women are being urged to freeze their eggs by the age of 35, “although this is no something strict but depends on the ovarian reserve of each patient”.

The process of oocyte cryopreservation involves having blood and hormone tests, ultrasound scans and Pap smears done to study the patient’s ovarian reserve and to rule out any reproductive problem.

When the menstrual cycle approaches the patient undergoes a treatment that stimulates the ovaries and it is controlled with ultrasound scans to observe how the ovarian follicles grow and to determine when the right time to retrieve the eggs from the ovary is. 

The egg retrieval process takes about ten minutes and is done under mild anesthesia o sedation. Using an ultrasound the doctor guides a needle through the vagina to the ovarian follicle to remove the eggs that contains. Afterwards they are vitrified and stored until the patient decides to use them in liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees centigrade.