How Egg Freezing Works

Then you and your doctor will decide how many eggs you want to freeze. Some experts recommend freezing 10 or more eggs for each pregnancy you want. The older you are, the more eggs your doctor may recommend freezing. Not every egg will result in a pregnancy. The more eggs you use, the better your odds of success.

Being in good health will increase your odds of getting pregnant when you're ready. Try to stop any habits that lower egg quality:

• Quit smoking.
• Get to a healthy weight.
• Limit alcohol.
• Exercise regularly.
• Eat a nutritious diet.

How Egg Freezing Works

The whole process takes about two weeks. It starts with ovarian stimulation, which is the same method used for in vitro fertilization (IVF). You give yourself injections of fertility hormones to help more eggs mature in your ovaries. Your doctor does blood tests and vaginal ultrasounds to see whether your eggs are ready.

Once the eggs are ready, you get a trigger shot — a different medicine to make them fully mature. About a day later, your doctor does a procedure in the office to retrieve the eggs. 

You'll get medicine to make you sleepy and prevent pain. Using an ultrasound for guidance, your doctor places a needle through your vagina into your ovary and gently suctions out mature eggs. The procedure takes less than 10 minutes. You may stay in the doctor's office for an hour afterward to recover before going home.

Your eggs then go to a lab, where a specialist checks them under a microscope to see which ones are ready to be fertilized. The most mature eggs go into an incubator.

Your doctor may recommend doing more than one retrieval cycle if you are older or you don't have a lot of ovarian reserve.

Egg Storage

Next, the eggs go through a process called vitrification. A lab places the eggs into a special liquid to protect them from the cold temperature and then quickly freezes them in liquid nitrogen. 

Then your eggs go into a tank for storage. The lab will monitor them until you need them. 

Risks of Egg Freezing

The medicines you take to make your eggs mature can cause side effects like these:

• Headache
• Nausea
• Mood changes
• Weight gain
• Pain in the pelvis
• Bloating
• Tiredness

Rarely, fertility medicine stimulates the ovaries too much. Ovarian hyperstimulation can cause serious side effects like blood clots.

After the retrieval procedure, some people have:

• Belly cramps
• Mild pain
• Bloating
• Bleeding
• Infection

When You're Ready: Egg Thawing

Once you're ready to get pregnant, the lab will take some of your eggs out of storage. They'll place the eggs in a warming solution and see how healthy they are.

Once thawed, the eggs are ready to be fertilized with sperm. Often this involves a procedure called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). ICSI injects sperm into an egg in a lab to create an embryo. 

Will Egg Freezing Work?

There’s no guarantee that freezing your eggs will result in a future pregnancy and birth. Each frozen egg only has about a 2%-12% chance of becoming a baby. Your odds of success may depend on: 

• Your age when you freeze your eggs
• The quality of the frozen eggs
• The number of eggs that are frozen

In a large study published in 2022, researchers reported that 70% of women who froze eggs when they were younger than 38 – and thawed at least 20 eggs – had a baby.  

Embryo freezing has slightly higher success rates. But you must have a partner or sperm donor to make and freeze embryos. 

How Much Does Egg Freezing Cost?

One cycle of egg freezing costs an average of $10,000 to $15,000, depending on the clinic you use and your location. Add $500 to $1,000 a year for storage, and another $10,000 for thawing and fertilization later. Some insurance plans cover at least part of the treatment.

Common Myths About Egg Freezing

There are a lot of false claims about egg freezing circulating online. These are the truthful answers to some common myths. 

Eggs get damaged when frozen

In the past during egg freezing, ice crystals often formed on the eggs and damaged their DNA. But today's freezing methods are safer. Vitrification protects the eggs from damage from the formation of ice crystals. 

You have to use your eggs within a few years

There's no time limit on frozen eggs. The very low temperature (-321 degrees Fahrenheit) they're stored in keeps eggs healthy for a long time. 

No research has shown that the longer you store your eggs, the harder it is to get pregnant. You can keep them frozen for as long as you want. In 2017, a 25-year-old woman in Tennessee gave birth to a baby that was conceived with an egg frozen in 1992 — only a year after she was born.

Only freeze the number of eggs you plan to use

You are not obligated to use every egg that you freeze. If you decide not to use some, or all of them, the lab can donate the unused eggs or dispose of them.

Egg freezing can guarantee a pregnancy in the future

There are no guarantees with this process. The odds of one frozen egg producing a baby is between 2% and 12%, depending on your age during freezing and the number of eggs retrieved. Even if egg retrieval is successful, it won't always lead to a pregnancy.