Frozen

Should you put your EGGS and EMBRYOS on ICE because you’re not ready to be a mother right now? It’s UP TO YOU.

- Liesl Robertson

Female fertility is largely a numbers game: you’re born with a finite number of eggs (around one to two million), and by the time you reach puberty, that number has already dropped to about 300 000. From there, approximately 750 eggs are lost each month by a process called atresia – and on top of that, the remaining eggs also start to diminish in quality. Panicking yet? We don’t blame you – it’s a real cause for concern. On average, women are getting married and starting families later in life, with the result that many delay childbearing well into their 30s. Our biology hasn’t quite kept pace with the times, which is why more and more of us are turning to science for a bit of help.

MAKING BABIES WITH SCIENCE

Since the first test tube baby was born in 1978, the technology has improved in leaps and bounds, and in vitro fertilisation (IVF) is becoming increasingly popular. In order to increase conception chances, (IVF is costly – it’s about R40 000 at the Csape Fertility Clinic), doctors try to obtain as many embryos as possible.

“We take out as many eggs as possible in that cycle and we fertilise all the mature ones,” says Dr Merwyn Jacobson, founding partner of the Sand ton-based IVF clinic Vitalab. “Many embryos fail to grow, which is normal biology, so it’s important to grow them all to see which will give the best chance of achieving a pregnancy,” explains Cape Fertility Clinic director, Dr Paul le Roux.