freezing your eggs, tell me more

[Anonymous]

i’m nearing mid 30s, no steady relationship and starting to think through freezing my eggs.

anyone that BTDT help my understand the process, and costs?

[Anonymous]

you go in for initial bloodwork, then they give you medicine that you inject yourself-- there are a bunch of different protocols depending on your needs, but all involve hormones that stimulate lots of eggs, and frequent monitoring (e.g. you go to the office between 7:30-9:30 a.m.) multiple times per week to figure out timing of next medicine/dosing, and then when it gets close you do a different injection to "trigger" the eggs to ovulate-- and 36 hours you go in for the procedure and they take them out and freeze them.

I did at 33 and am very grateful- currently 37 and married and struggling with infertility and glad those eggs are there (currently just doing IUI which doesn't have as many injections but had horrible mood side effects i didn't have with the injections)

[Anonymous]

I know someone who did this in her late 30s, but has not been successful with IVF using the thawed eggs now in her early 40s.

[Anonymous]

If you are in your mid-30s, you ideally want to do this now and not wait.

They generally recommend aiming for at least twenty eggs for 1-2 live births. This will likely take you two cycles of egg freezing, but some women are lucky and do it in one.

You can go do a consult with an RE and it should be covered by insurance. They will do testing to check your FSH, your AMH and your AFC. The first two are blood tests. The latter is a vaginal ultrasound. Together, these tests will tell them a lot about your fertility and how likely you are to have success with egg freezing (or IVF if you opt to fertilize some with donor sperm). I'd encourage you to do this testing regardless of whether or not you are certain you will freeze your eggs. I found it very informative in terms of understanding my fertility.

It's a lot with the injections and appointments, but the really intense part is only about two weeks.

I froze my eggs in my mid-30s and had a child with them at 41. 21 eggs led to one successful pregnancy. I will forever be grateful the technology was available and I consider it the best decision I ever made. My eggs were done by 40 (I tried an IVF cycle before using the frozen eggs and had no viable embryos from it.) I wouldn't have become a mom without the frozen eggs.

[Anonymous]

Here is my pro tip: you want 20 eggs for 1 baby, 30 for 2. Expect more than one cycle.

https://www.mdcalc.com/bwh-egg-freezing-counseling-tool-efct#use-cases

[Anonymous]

I know someone who did this in her 30s, and thawed them at 43 after she got married. None of the eggs survived thawing. She had no good eggs left at 43. It's no guarantee. Maybe freeze some as embryos, since they freeze better, if you really want to keep options open.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who did this in her 30s, and thawed them at 43 after she got married. None of the eggs survived thawing. She had no good eggs left at 43. It's no guarantee. Maybe freeze some as embryos, since they freeze better, if you really want to keep options open.

Part of it depends on what technique they used to freeze the eggs. They used to use more of a slow freeze technique, which was less effective than the current fast freeze technique (vitrification), which reduces ice crystals. Nowadays, I think that everyone uses vitrification, but if your friend froze her eggs more than a decade ago, it might still have been under the slow freezing methodology.

But either way, no guarantee.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who did this in her 30s, and thawed them at 43 after she got married. None of the eggs survived thawing. She had no good eggs left at 43. It's no guarantee. Maybe freeze some as embryos, since they freeze better, if you really want to keep options open.

This

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who did this in her 30s, and thawed them at 43 after she got married. None of the eggs survived thawing. She had no good eggs left at 43. It's no guarantee. Maybe freeze some as embryos, since they freeze better, if you really want to keep options open.

Yes! I know someone in this same position. She is heartbroken.

[Anonymous]

I’d probably plan on two cycles and freeze some as eggs and others as embryos with donor sperm. Only do the embryos if having biological kids are important to you. It could be your plan b if your eggs don’t fertilize. I’ve never know anyone who regretted not freezing their eggs but meet a lot who regret not doing it. For context, at 34 with unexplained infertility and great AMH for my age (4.1), I got 17 eggs, only 9 were mature (they triggered me too soon) and 5 of those fertilized. 4 of the 5 made it to blast stage and the 4th transfer worked. I switched to semi-medicated for the last one since the estrogen pills were messing with my natural levels and possibly impacting implantation. We didn’t test the embryos so at your age, probably 1/3 to 1/2 are abnormal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who did this in her 30s, and thawed them at 43 after she got married. None of the eggs survived thawing. She had no good eggs left at 43. It's no guarantee. Maybe freeze some as embryos, since they freeze better, if you really want to keep options open.

Part of it depends on what technique they used to freeze the eggs. They used to use more of a slow freeze technique, which was less effective than the current fast freeze technique (vitrification), which reduces ice crystals. Nowadays, I think that everyone uses vitrification, but if your friend froze her eggs more than a decade ago, it might still have been under the slow freezing methodology.

But either way, no guarantee.

They were vitrified. It still didn't help.

I had a vitrified *embryo* not survive thawing. It's an imperfect process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who did this in her 30s, and thawed them at 43 after she got married. None of the eggs survived thawing. She had no good eggs left at 43. It's no guarantee. Maybe freeze some as embryos, since they freeze better, if you really want to keep options open.

Part of it depends on what technique they used to freeze the eggs. They used to use more of a slow freeze technique, which was less effective than the current fast freeze technique (vitrification), which reduces ice crystals. Nowadays, I think that everyone uses vitrification, but if your friend froze her eggs more than a decade ago, it might still have been under the slow freezing methodology.

But either way, no guarantee.

They were vitrified. It still didn't help.

I had a vitrified *embryo* not survive thawing. It's an imperfect process.

Could have been a lab F up. And all your eggs are in one basket (pun intended).

[Anonymous]

I froze my eggs at 35-36 and did two cycles. In Cycle 1, I believe they extracted 19, but only 11 were successfully frozen, so I opted to do a second cycle. In Cycle 2, I got overstimulated and had A LOT of eggs extracted. I haven't tried to use any yet, and, admittedly, am disappointed to read of the failures of frozen eggs in these other posts. Mentally/emotionally, it has been really helpful to have eggs "on ice" and it helped to reduce some of the pressure related to the feeling of my biological clock ticking. I got pregnant naturally at 38 with no issues, but do want to have another kid and am happy to not feel rushed because I have my plan B. It would, however, be fairly devastating if I wrongly relied on my plan B and none of the eggs were viable. Regardless, I am a huge proponent of freezing your eggs! It's a fairly shitty two weeks - lots of injections, frequent trips to the doctor, and I looked like I was about 5 months pregnant (could not wear my normal pants) - but it's only two weeks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who did this in her late 30s, but has not been successful with IVF using the thawed eggs now in her early 40s.

I had heard of situations like this. You really dont know the quality of the eggs until you make embryos. I did two rounds of egg freezing and made embryos with donor sperm with 1/2 of them. This gives me more info and if the eggs dont work with a future partner's sperm, then I have some embryos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who did this in her late 30s, but has not been successful with IVF using the thawed eggs now in her early 40s.

I had heard of situations like this. You really dont know the quality of the eggs until you make embryos. I did two rounds of egg freezing and made embryos with donor sperm with 1/2 of them. This gives me more info and if the eggs dont work with a future partner's sperm, then I have some embryos.

This.

Even though egg freezing technology has advanced you really don’t know about the quality of the eggs until you make embryos. With a normal uterus 3 PGS tested euploid embryos gives one a 95% chance of successful live birth. With eggs you just don’t know…

I ended up using ten 22y.o frozen donor eggs and got one euploid embryo. Fortunately I was on the successful side of the ~50% success rate. The number of euploid embryos was low for her age. You just can’t know.