With 15 eggs stored, Ms. Thanh is no longer worried about her growing age and plans to return home in a few years to give birth.
At the end of April, Ms. Thanh, 39 years old, a Vietnamese living in Australia, went to the Center for Reproductive Support, Tam Anh General Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City (IVFTA-HCMC) to freeze her eggs.
Originally from Ba Ria - Vung Tau province, Ms. Thanh came to Australia 9 years ago to live and work as a secretary at a university. She fell in love with a colleague but the marriage broke down after 5 years of living together without having children. For many years now, she has not remarried, focusing only on work.
With the intention of having a child and becoming a single mother, Ms. Thanh learned about in vitro fertilization (IVF), but the cost of this method in Australia is quite expensive, about 500 million VND/treatment cycle. Seeing a colleague who had IVF treatment and only had a child after the 3rd cycle, she was "disillusioned" because it was beyond her financial means.
"I am worried because I am almost 40 years old, if I continue to delay having children, my ovaries will be exhausted. I have researched many places and found that the cost of egg storage and IVF in Vietnam is only 1/5 of that in Australia while the level of experts and technology is similar. I decided to return home to store eggs," said Ms. Thanh.
Doctor Le Xuan Nguyen examines and consults patients about egg freezing to preserve their ability to become mothers at IVFTA-HCMC. Photo: Hoai Thuong
Doctors were able to extract 15 mature eggs and freeze them for the woman. With "savings", Ms. Thanh was confident to return to Australia to continue working, preparing her finances to return home 3 years later for IVF to give birth and raise a child.
Doctor Le Xuan Nguyen said that the best age for women to get pregnant and give birth is 20-30 years old. This is the stage when the number of eggs is abundant and the quality of eggs is best, helping pregnancy and giving birth go smoothly. Over time, women's ovaries will gradually age, decreasing in quantity and quality.
After the age of 40, women have difficulty conceiving naturally due to ovarian failure, increasing the risk of chromosomal abnormalities that can cause birth defects. During perimenopause and menopause, the ovaries are completely depleted, making women almost infertile.
Before ovarian failure, egg freezing helps women preserve their fertility in time. Eggs are extracted from the ovaries, frozen and stored at -196 degrees Celsius in liquid nitrogen, helping to preserve the best quality until they are used. When women want to have children, the eggs are thawed, fertilized in vitro with sperm to create embryos and implanted into the uterus to help them successfully get pregnant and give birth to healthy children, reducing the risk of chromosomal abnormalities.
According to Dr. Nguyen, this method is increasingly being interested in and practiced by many women, especially older women who do not have children, and those who are focusing on work and have not yet determined a specific time to have children. According to IVFTA-HCMC, in the past two months, the rate of women storing eggs has increased by about 20% compared to before.
The center is currently applying two methods of egg freezing: slow freezing and vitrification. The Cryotop egg vitrification technique helps increase the success rate of egg freezing compared to the previous conventional slow freezing method.
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