All workplaces all over the world are seeing
more and more women as part of the workforce...there is no area of work, right
from small cottage industries to space missions, where women are not seen in
leadership roles. It's a sea change compared to the mid or even late 20th
century.This, however, puts working
women in a dilemma about prioritising their life goals. Completing a long
academic journey, finding the right career and acquiring all the other skills
to gel in a corporate set-up itself takes a young female job aspirant into her
late twenties. So, typically, a girl who steps into any workforce finds
stability in her career only by the mid- thirties, and, unfortunately, in the
meantime,her biological clock, has already gone past its prime. This means, in
short, that while she was chasing her career, a girl's best time to have a baby
is over!!
So, in our cities now, we not only see very late marriages, but
also a later start to parenting. It's not uncommon to see women wanting to
start a family only after 35, or so.The western world has seen this trend much earlier, from the
early part of this century itself. If a lady tries to delay
her motherhood too much, there is a possibility of difficulty in conceiving due
to failing ovaries. The maximum impact of AGE in a woman's case is on her
ability to produce healthy eggs.
The IVF industry ( assisted reproduction industry) has been
successfully freezing sperm as well as human embryos right from 1983 when the
first test tube baby from a frozen embryo was born. But freezing of eggs
was a very challenging task. Human eggs have a very large size compared to the
human sperm, are in fewer numbers and they hold all the genetic material in the
form of a very sensitive spindle which got easily damaged while freezing. Hence
freezing of human eggs was done only experimentally until 2013. After a lot of fine
tuning, the technique was finally perfected and the American Society of
Reproductive Medicine, from 2013 onwards, allowed egg freezing to be done for
humans.It was allowed after it
was made sure that babies born from frozen eggs were as normal as those born
naturally, and they had no developmental problems later. Since then, organizations like Facebook have offered funding to
women employees who want to freeze their eggs and focus on their careers till
such a time when they want to start a family. The Indian IVF industry,
of course, offers all the options for reproduction as in the western world. So
egg freezing is definitely available here too. Eggs, once frozen can stay in the frozen state for a period of 5
to 10 years and utilised later to start a family,....which is good news for a
career focused indian girl!! But, there are a few things you need to be aware of, before
opting for egg preservation:
1) You need to take hormonal injections to make your ovaries
produce 8 to 10 eggs, which is a minimum number for having one attempt of IVF.
This is an expensive procedure.
2) The procedure to remove eggs from the body involves surgery,
which is done under general anaesthesia. There is a risk of infection, or
bleeding or injury, which can
happen, as it does,during any other surgical procedure. However,
this risk is very small for egg collection done using vaginal sonography.
3) The frozen eggs have
to be injected with the husbands sperm ( using ICSI) to fertilise them. This ,
also, is an expensive procedure, with a success rate , of not more than 30 to
40 percent in one attempt of embryo transfer.
4) with increasing age ,
there are high risks to the pregnancy due to other conditions that a woman may
develop, like diabetes, or hypertension.
Likelihood of growth retardation in the baby or a caesarean
delivery, also are high.
5) compared to other techniques, like IVF or Embryo freezing,
this is a much newer technique, so long term effects on any resulting children
is not clearly known.
However, inspite of all this,the option of egg freezing becomes
mandatory for some women. This is in case of women who have cancer. During
cancer treatment, use of special medicines or radiation can do irreparable harm
to the ovaries.So, before administering the cancer treatment, egg storage by
freezing is offered to these women to give them a chance at motherhood later
on.For a healthy woman, who wants to postpone pregnancy in order to
advance in her career, however, all the above listed points need to be
considered. And, remember that there is always a chance that, the frozen
eggs, which cost so much to the patient! ....... inspite of the best efforts by
the IVF centre, may not result in a pregnancy!
All working girls in a good place as far as work is concerned,
need to make informed choices, so as not to be in a situation, where motherhood
becomes a distant dream!
No comments:
Post a Comment