Can Freezing Your Eggs Help Your Sex Life?

If you caught The Today Show this week, you may have witness coverage of the new campaign sweeping across Britain to promote fertility awareness in women as they age.

Basically, the thought goes a little something like this: in the quest for women to have it all, they often settle into their careers before "settling down" and starting families. Which is all well and good, until many of them are surprised to find out…

Getting pregnant isn't as easy as they thought it would be.

The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists states that a woman's fertility "declines gradually but significantly beginning approximately at age 32 years." Babble blogger Devan McGuiness shared her difficulty getting pregnant at the age of only 30.

And while I consider myself incredibly lucky (although that's not the way I initially felt about it) to have found my life partner and become unexpectedly pregnant during my senior year of college, taking a huge and life-altering decision somewhat "off my shoulders," I can't help but wonder what I would have done as a single woman trying to plan out my future family.

Thanks to reality TV and awareness like the British campaign, I do think that women are becoming more and more aware of their fertility as they age. But the question becomes-what should they do with that information?

Related: 10 reasons why he wants sex when you're pregnant

Should single women in the dating game take charge in their fertility and freeze their eggs while looking for Mr. Right?

Writer Sarah Elizabeth Richards says they should.

Furthermore, she thinks that egg-freezing can actually help them succeed in the dating scene.

After making the decision to freeze her own eggs while in her 30's and still single, she interviewed other women who made the same decision and found that many women discovered that egg-freezing helped them to enjoy the dating process more, without the worry of their fertility hanging over their heads.

"The women I've talked to didn't use their frozen fertility as an excuse to date their DVRs," she writes. "In fact, they said that egg freezing motivated them to take charge of their lives. They relaxed. They dated, married and thawed. They became ready to be mothers."

She talks about the stereotypes of the single, dating woman approaching her 30's and beyond, sitting desperate in a dimly-lit bar, latching on to every available man and blurting out, "How do you feel about kids?"

So instead of making her feel desperate or like a ticking biological time-bomb, Richards says her decision to freeze her eggs actually was a boost to her love live. She said,

"In my case, egg freezing gave me the confidence to go back on Match.com at nearly 40 and proudly tell men "I can have kids whenever I want. It feels so nice not to have to rush relationships."

It definitely makes sense how the thought that for single women (who want a family in the future, of course) approaching that magical line of diminished fertility, freezing their eggs could take some of the intense pressure off of their dating and love life. Instead of focusing on dating as a way to make babies as soon as possible, they can relax and enjoy the process of finding a life partner.

What do you think? Do you think freezing your eggs help your love life? Or is it putting all of your eggs in one basket too soon?

-By Chaunie Brusie

For 25 powerful photos of women giving birth, visit Babble!

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