We always love to hear feedback from all our patients and the latest testimonial is from Sue and Stuart Clegg, who welcomed their daughter Louisa Elizabeth into the world just a few short months ago.
All Manchester Fertility babies are special, but what makes little Louisa Elizabeth so special is that she is our first baby to be born using a frozen egg.
You can read more about her parents’ journey and experience here. Using frozen eggs is a fairly new treatment, the first ever baby to be born from a thawed egg was less than 10 years ago. But only last year researchers from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine concluded that egg-freezing should no longer be considered ‘experimental’ and does have real, tangible success.
Many women are now opting for egg-freezing to help preserve their fertility, but it’s vital to remember that the younger you are when you freeze your eggs, the higher the chances of success due to better egg quality. It’s also important to remember that the chances of pregnancy and birth from a frozen egg are affected by a number of factors – including whether all your eggs survive the freeze/thaw process, egg quality and factors affecting implantation.
Egg-freezing isn’t just a way to help preserve your eggs. We would also freeze your eggs if on the day of egg retrieval and fertilisation during your IVF cycle, there was a problem getting a sperm sample from your partner. This means that your eggs are ready to be used as soon as the sperm is ready, ensuring you don’t have to start from the beginning of your cycle. Our team will thaw and analyse your eggs, and fertilise them with your partner’s – or a donor’s – sperm using Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). This is where our team selects a single healthy sperm and injects it directly into the egg to fertilise it.
Your eggs are monitored in our state-of-the-art laboratory for signs of fertilisation and then the best quality embryo(s) are selected for transfer. Usually we transfer one embryo as part of our Single Embryo Transfer policy, but dependent upon your age and circumstances it may be appropriate to transfer two. We will discuss this with you fully during your treatment and make any decisions in consultation with you.
We hope you enjoy reading Louisa’s birth story, if you have any questions at all about egg-freezing and how it’s done, please contact our team on 0161 300 2737 or email [email protected]. You can also read more about egg-freezing treatment here.
Last updated: 20th January 2020