Elective Egg Freezing
The ideal time to freeze eggs is before the age of 35. Egg freezing stops the “biological clock” from ticking. With this treatment, your future chance of pregnancy is related to the age you were when the eggs were frozen, not the age you are when you attempt conception with your frozen eggs.
Carolina Conceptions understands many women today are having children at a later age for various career or lifestyle choices, or due to circumstances that are beyond their control. We would like to educate you on the process of egg freezing and help you understand it as an option to preserve or extend your fertility. While freezing your eggs does not guarantee a future pregnancy, it can provide peace of mind by removing some of the pressure women feel from the ticking “biological clock” as fertility declines with age.
Age is the single-most important factor to achieving pregnancy. Once women reach their late 30s, egg number and egg quality start to rapidly decrease, which in turn lowers your chance for successful pregnancy. To put this in perspective, a woman in her early 30s has about a 60% chance of pregnancy with in vitro fertilization (IVF), but this chance falls dramatically to 5% by age 43.
The process of egg freezing starts with your consult visit, where your physician at Carolina Conceptions will run blood work to assess your overall egg count. On average, it takes 4 weeks from your first consult to the egg retrieval procedure. For about 10 days, you will give yourself injectable hormones. You will come into our clinic for ultrasounds and bloodwork to make sure you have the best response to the medications. Only one day off of work is needed during the process, and this is for the day of the egg retrieval as it requires anesthesia.
Typically, we can expect to retrieve 5- 20 eggs at the time of the procedure, although this varies based on age and health. In general, 5-10 eggs are needed to produce 1-2 embryos that are good enough to attempt pregnancy. Some women opt to undergo back-to-back egg freeze cycles to reach a goal number of eggs that makes sense for the number of children they’d like to have in the future.
Though many clinics now offer egg freezing, Carolina Conceptions has the most experience and success with freezing and thawing techniques and has been validated by Donor Egg Bank USA.
Learn more about this process in a recording of Dr. Bowling’s GET THE FACTS on Egg Freezing & Female Fertility webinar and in Dr. Meyer’s blog article, which includes live birth rate probability percentages based on the age a patient is at the time of her egg retrieval (ages 25 – 38).
Watch a video of former Bachelorette, Kaitlyn Bristowe, on her egg freezing decision and experience.