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Egg Freezing

Egg Freezing Overview

Egg freezing is a process by which eggs are retrieved from a patient, and then frozen and safely stored away for future use. The chance of getting pregnant decreases as a woman ages, but when using frozen eggs, the likelihood of pregnancy is preserved. For example, if someone freezes their eggs at age 30 and then does IVF at age 40, their success rate will be that of a 30 year old!

Egg freezing gives you the freedom and peace of mind to pursue other goals, while making it possible to start a family when the time is right for you!

Why Should I Consider Egg Freezing?

Egg freezing is an exciting option for women who want to preserve their fertility until they are ready to start a family. Fertility naturally declines with age, and age is the single-most important factor to achieving pregnancy. By their late 30’s, a person’s egg count and egg quality declines rapidly, making the chance of pregnancy much lower. 

  • A woman in her early 30s has about a 60% chance of pregnancy with IVF.

  • A 43 year old woman has about a 5% chance of pregnancy with IVF.

    • If this woman had frozen her eggs in her early 30’s, her chance of pregnancy would have remained about 60%

The ideal time for someone to freeze their eggs is before age 35.
Preimplantation genetic testing

How Does Egg Freezing Work?

The overall process will take about 4 weeks from consultation to egg retrieval. There are 4 stages to the process:

Consultation

Your physician will review your overall health and fertility. Blood work will be done to assess your overall egg count.

Stimulation & Monitoring

For about 10 days, you will take an injectable medication to help you produce many high quality eggs. If the idea of self-injectables makes you nervous – you are not alone! However, after receiving guidance and support from their team, all of our patients have been able to complete this process, and find it quite easy!

During this time, you will also come in for ultrasounds and bloodwork so we can make sure the medication is doing its job, and so the trigger date can be determined.

Trigger & Retrieval 

A trigger shot will initiate ovulation, and make you ready for your egg retrieval procedure soon after. Egg retrieval is a quick outpatient procedure where eggs are extracted from your ovaries. This is done under light anesthesia (like the kind you get during wisdom tooth removal or a colonoscopy), and takes about 10 minutes!

You’ll need to take the day off of work/school, but patients are almost always able to return to their regular activities the following day, reporting only mild cramping and soreness.

Egg freezing process

From Eggs to Embryos

We usually expect to retrieve between 5-20 eggs during a single cycle and procedure. The amount varies from person to person based on age and health. Generally, it will take 5-10 eggs to successfully produce 1-2 good-quality embryos. You and your doctor will determine what your egg retrieval goals are based on how many children you’d like the option of having in the future. You may opt to complete more than one cycle to increase the amount of eggs preserved.

 

Egg Freezing Bundle

We offer patients an Egg Freezing Bundle to reduce the cost of preserving their fertility. This bundle allows patients to complete three cycles within one year of their first baseline ultrasound at a significantly discounted rate.  

You and your doctor can discuss if our Egg Freezing Bundle offer is a good option for you. If it is, your doctor will let our finance team know, and request that the discount be applied to your quote. 

Egg Freeze Patient FAQs​

Yes. The Practice Committees of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) have released new practice guidelines that remove the “experimental” label from oocyte preservation (egg freezing). “Although data are limited, no increase in chromosomal abnormalities, birth defects, and developmental deficits have been reported in the offspring born from cryopreserved oocytes when compared to pregnancies from conventional IVF/ICSI and the general population. Evidence indicates that oocyte vitrification and warming should no longer be considered experimental.” October, 2012

Though no longer needed, Carolina Conceptions Fertility has had Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval since 2010 to perform egg freezing on a trial basis. Carolina Conceptions Fertility has ongoing pregnancies and deliveries with patients who conceived with the use of frozen eggs.

At Carolina Conceptions Fertility, we complete a blood test to determine a patient’s approximate egg reserve after an egg freeze consult. If the results are extremely low, we will recommend the patient not complete the egg freeze process because there are too few eggs to harvest. A low or borderline egg reserve may not produce many eggs at a time, and might require multiple cycles of treatment to accumulate a good number of eggs to freeze.
The average age range of women coming to Carolina Conceptions Fertility for egg freezing is typically in their 30’s. If you are considering freezing your eggs, we recommend you don’t wait. Fertility success is most dependent on maternal age. Therefore, the younger you are starting this process, the more likely you will have success later in life when you are ready to start a family. Success rates are best when women freeze eggs before the age of 35.
  1. Young women who have either not found the right partner, or are currently career focused
  2. Couples who are ethically or religiously opposed to the freezing of human embryos during their IVF cycle
  3. Women with a cancer diagnosis who want to preserve their eggs and fertility prior to undergoing chemotherapy

At Carolina Conceptions Fertility, we use the vitrification (ultra-rapid freezing process) method because human eggs contain nutritional reserves: water, lipids, proteins, polysaccharides. When eggs are frozen without vitrification, ice crystals can be formed that damage their structure. Vitrification allows successful egg freezing without ice crystallization during the freezing process. Once frozen, eggs can remain in liquid nitrogen for many years until they are needed.

Most women will produce between 5-20, depending on age and personal health circumstances.

Egg quality varies widely from person to person, but also declines with increasing age. In general, 5-10 eggs are needed to produce 1-2 embryos that are good enough to attempt pregnancy.

After your consultation, you will receive an estimate with information regarding medication assistance.

  1. Physician Consult to discuss the process
  2. Blood Tests
  3. Nursing Class to learn how to give yourself injections of hormones
  4. Ovarian Stimulation begins once the ovaries are ready. You will give yourself injections of hormones to stimulate a group of eggs to develop in the ovaries. On average, 9 days of injections are required. During that time, about 4 visits are required in the office for ultrasounds and blood work to follow the response by the ovaries and adjust medication doses as needed.
  5. Egg Retrieval is performed under anesthesia because an ultrasound-guided needle is inserted into the ovaries to collect the eggs. The procedure only takes 10 minutes to complete. The eggs are frozen on that day.

Approximately 4 weeks. 

If someone doesn’t produce many eggs, it would be best to do more than one cycle of ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval. The chance of a successful pregnancy in the future is better if there are more eggs frozen. In general, it is good to have about 15 eggs frozen.

When the time is right for you, call our office to schedule a physician consult with your partner or spouse. Eggs will be thawed and fertilized, then cultured into embryos during the following 5 days. Usually 1 or 2 embryos are transferred into the uterus and any additional embryos of good quality will be frozen for future use.

Most eggs survive the warming process, but only a minority will develop into good embryos (which is normal).

We typically use 5-10 eggs to get 1-2 good-quality embryos to transfer. This roughly amounts to having the option for one IVF cycle for every 10 eggs frozen. 

Though many clinics now offer egg freezing, Carolina Conceptions Fertility has decades of experience, along with success rates we are proud of. In fact, many of our own staff members put their trust in us for their own egg freezing treatments! 

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