Egg Freezing Process: What to Expect from Retrieval
Egg freezing preserves your fertility, giving you the time and flexibility to defer family-building until you are ready. People freeze their eggs for many reasons, including prioritizing career goals and financial stability, finding the right partner, and for travel and other life experiences they wish to have before starting a family. Individuals may also choose to freeze eggs prior to starting chemotherapy or radiation treatments, or gender-affirming hormone therapy as a way to ensure the possibility of having biological children in the future.
The Best Time to Freeze Your Eggs
The question of “when should I freeze my eggs?” is a common one, and it’s a very individualized answer. We know that egg quality begins to decline at age 35, making the 30s a common time for many to choose fertility preservation; however, when you should freeze your eggs is highly dependent on your future family-building goals, and what you intend for those frozen eggs to one day turn into. Are you freezing eggs as a “back-up plan” should you run into fertility issues in the future when trying to conceive, or do you already know you want 3 kids and all of them will be IVF babies? Additionally, it’s helpful to think about age-related infertility rates, and the age at which you intend to have your last child. Thinking through all of these scenarios and possibilities will help you understand how many eggs you need to reach your goals, and when you should freeze your eggs for the best outcome possible.
At the end of the day, the more high-quality eggs retrieved, the better the odds of a successful pregnancy. Spring Fertility’s egg calculator is designed to help you determine your chances of pregnancy based on your age and the number of eggs retrieved. The fertility clinic you choose and the success of its embryology lab also have a meaningful impact on your potential outcomes when you come back to use your frozen eggs to grow your family.
The Egg Freezing Process
The entire egg freezing process from consultation to retrieval typically takes between two to three weeks. This timeline can lengthen depending on scheduling, testing, and your menstrual cycle. For individuals who have been on oral birth control for a long period of time, your doctor might suggest taking a few months off the birth control prior to starting an egg freezing cycle, if there are signs of follicle suppression in your ovaries.
Start With a Consultation
You will begin by meeting with a physician for a consultation to discuss your medical history, goals, and questions, the retrieval process, and to run some basic tests usually involving bloodwork and a pelvic ultrasound. The purpose of the ultrasound is to count your antral follicles. These follicles in the ovaries contain immature eggs that have the potential to mature and ovulate. By counting these follicles your doctor can often predict how many mature eggs you’ll be able to get from a retrieval. The more eggs, the better odds of a pregnancy down the line if you come back to use those frozen eggs through IVF.
Ovarian Stimulation & Monitoring
The next step of the egg freezing process will involve choosing the right plan for your body. Typically, this involves stimulating the growth of those antral follicles containing the immature eggs. This is done by injecting 2 to 3 doses of hormone medications over 10 to 14 days. These hormones are self-injected at home using tiny needles that are usually very painless. The final injection will be done about 36 hours before your egg retrieval procedure. This is known as a trigger shot which prompts the eggs to mature more rapidly in preparation for retrieval. Throughout the injection period, you can expect to come into the clinic every 2-3 days for monitoring so your doctor can track your progress and adjust medication levels as necessary.
The Egg Retrieval
The final phase of the egg freezing process for you will be the retrieval procedure. This is scheduled 36 hours after you are told by your team to administer the trigger shot. The procedure itself is very simple and takes about 20 minutes under general anesthesia. Your doctor will use a long, hollow needle to go through the vaginal wall and into the ovaries to retrieve the mature eggs from their follicles. After you wake, you will stay in the clinic for about an hour for observation and recovery and can then head home. Most patients take the day off to rest after the procedure and resume their normal activities the next day. Most side effects from the procedure are mild and may include cramping, bloating, abdominal pain, fatigue, and potentially some light vaginal bleeding. All should subside quickly, usually within a few days.
Egg Retrieval and Your Experience
Egg retrieval is considered a mildly invasive procedure involving a relatively brief window of treatment time, but that doesn’t mean that it feels small. It’s a big decision involving time, emotions, life goals, your physical health, and your finances. It's important to have a strong support team around you to empower you in the egg freezing process. There are no stupid questions, and you should always speak up if you don’t understand something your doctor is telling you, you feel confused about the plan, or you’re experiencing pain or discomfort of any kind - your Spring care team is there with you throughout the entire process to keep you as informed and empowered as possible.
Being in touch with your regular OB- GYN or general practitioner is also important for providing extra support and a second opinion. Working with a therapist can also give you that extra boost to feel confident in the egg retrieval process and to address any emotional changes that could potentially arise with the fluctuating hormones. When working with a quality fertility care team you should never, ever feel alone. If you do, it's not the right team for you.
Freezing the Eggs
After the egg retrieval, your provider will take care of rest. Your eggs will be cryopreserved which means they will be stored frozen at an extremely low temperature in a cryotank filled with liquid nitrogen until you are ready to use them. If you move after your retrieval, it is common for providers to ship eggs to other facilities closer to you. Each year you will pay a storage fee for the eggs and there is no limit to how long they can be stored. Eggs that have been frozen for more than 10 years have resulted in successful pregnancies! When you are ready to use the eggs, you will begin IVF (in vitro fertilization). The eggs will be thawed, fertilized with sperm, and the embryo will be placed in your uterus.
Egg freezing is not a 100% guarantee of a successful pregnancy down the line. A lot of factors come into play such as the quantity and quality of the frozen eggs that were able to be retrieved, and the success of the freezing and thawing process. This is why where you choose to freeze your eggs matters. You want a clinic who is not only good at freezing eggs, but is exceptional at turning frozen eggs into healthy pregnancies.
The First Step
If you’re not sure whether egg freezing is right for you or you simply want to learn more, the best thing to do is reach out and schedule a consultation with a specialist who can guide you based on your unique needs and goals.