Egg freezing is an excellent way for women to preserve their fertility
The process for egg freezing is similar to an in vitro fertilization cycle. To begin the process of egg freezing, you will take fertility medications to stimulate your ovaries to produce multiple eggs. During this step, your physician will monitor you via ultrasound to determine when to retrieve your eggs. Once your ovarian follicles mature, you will come to our fertility center for egg retrieval. After the egg retrieval procedure, our laboratory will culture and freeze your eggs.
Your eggs can remain frozen for years. When you decide that you’re ready to get pregnant, our laboratory will thaw your eggs and combine them with your partner’s sperm or donor sperm to allow for fertilization. Then, the resulting embryo will be transferred to your uterus, and your physician will monitor you for signs of pregnancy.
5 Egg Freezing Facts:
- Egg freezing is an excellent way to preserve the fertility of women in their 20’s and early 30’s who are not yet ready to begin their families.
- Consider egg freezing in your 20s or early 30s as the younger the eggs, the better. An egg from a 30-year-old and frozen for 7 years is better than a fresh egg from a 37-year-old.
- Egg freezing takes about 2 weeks, with most of that devoted to hormone injections and morning visits to our fertility center for monitoring. About 1-2 days before egg retrieval, you will administer a trigger shot to prompt ovulation. The actual egg retrieval takes about 15 minutes and is performed in our office while you are under sedation.
- If you will be undergoing cancer treatment and are still of reproductive age, you should discuss freezing your eggs prior to treatment with your oncology team as chemotherapy and radiation have been known to cause infertility. We routinely “fast-track” cancer patients into our schedules as we know treatment can be time-sensitive.
- Egg freezing is no guarantee of a pregnancy. A 30-year-old woman who freezes 15 mature eggs has a 35-45% chance of a live birth provided all other fertility factors are normal. This is why some women choose to go through more than one cycle to preserve the maximum number of eggs.
Have more questions about egg freezing? Visit our Egg Freezing FAQs page for more information. Ready to get started? Contact us to schedule a consultation to learn more about if egg freezing is right for you.
