Mother to freeze eggs for her infertile daughter with Turner Syndrome

A mother plans to freeze her eggs so that her infertile daughter may someday be able to use them to give birth to her own brother or sister.
Toddler Mackenzie Stephens was born with Turner Syndrome, a hereditary condition which means she is missing an X-chromosome. The condition, which only affects girls, means two-year-old Mackenzie was born without ovaries, preventing her from ever having a child of her own naturally.

When Penny Jarvis, herself a mother of five, learnt that her daughter might never be able to have children of her own, she was devastated. So Ms Jarvis, 25, has decided to freeze her own eggs so someday Mackenzie can use them for IVF and start a family. However, technically, this means Mackenzie's future child would be both her offspring and her sibling.

Ms Jarvis described how she and partner Karl Stephens, 42, were distraught when the doctor broke the news about their daughter's condition. The full-time mother from Sheffield, said: 'The doctor was talking about chromosomes and things and it was all a bit of a blur.

'The only word I heard at the time was 'infertility' and I just burst into tears. It's what most people want to be; a mum. 'She has three sisters and I couldn't imagine her growing up and watching them all have children while she couldn't have any of her own. 'Obviously, every mother wants to be a grandmother someday - that's what they dream of.

'As I was leaving the hospital, the consultant told me not to look up Turner Syndrome on the internet as it was full of worst-case scenarios. 'But, of course, I did it anyway. As soon as we were over the shock, Karl and I looked it up together as we had never even heard of it before and neither had any of our friends.

'While some of the stuff I was reading was scary - talk of congenital heart defects and diabetes - I discovered that egg donation was a possibility.' Enlarge Mackenzie has Turner Syndrome, which means she doesn't have ovaries Turner Syndrome affects one in every 2,500 girls. It causes a number of mental and physical health issues, but most can be corrected or treated with surgery, drugs and psychological therapy.

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More Healthy Women Freeze Eggs to Delay Childbearing

As more women delay childbearing until their 30s and 40s, a growing number are freezing their eggs in a process known as oocyte cryopreservation, the Chicago Tribune reports. The process is most commonly used by women undergoing medical treatments that could affect fertility. However, the procedure is now being marketed as an option for healthy women who want to delay having children.
Nicole Noyes, co-director of the Oocyte Cryopreservation Program at the New York University Fertility Center, said that women lose much of their natural fertility between ages 35 and 40 and that the quality of their eggs decreases with age, which can increase their chances of miscarrying.

The two- to three-week oocytpe cryopreservation process involves taking fertility medications that mature multiple eggs in the ovaries. Those eggs are then extracted, gently dehydrated and stored in liquid nitrogen. When the woman wants to become pregnant, the eggs are thawed, fertilized and transferred to the uterus as embryos.

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