Freezing your eggs is a good idea if you want to delay having children, probably due to work, waiting for the right partner, or simply preserving eggs at a younger age for use in the future.

The motivation behind egg freezing is that fertility declines with age, so retrieving the eggs at a younger age and storing them increases your chances of a successful embryo later. 

Once you decide to have kids, you can either conceive naturally if you are still young or use frozen eggs to conceive using the in-vitro fertilization method. Here are some facts to navigate before visiting an egg-freezing fertility clinic for freezing your eggs.

It is ideal if you have some health concerns:

Freezing your eggs is an ideal option if you have some health concerns that may negatively impact your fertility in the future. For instance, cancer that requires chemotherapy or radiation could impact your fertility.

It is also a viable option if you need to undergo surgery that could damage your ovaries or have a certain health condition that could cause the same impact. 

Other women consider freezing their eggs if they find out they have a family history of early menopause or a genetic mutation such as BRCA that predisposes them to breast cancer.

Freezing your eggs may be advisable when you have a certain health condition or are under some medications that may affect your fertility.

It can be expensive:

Egg freezing can be expensive, and navigating it with insurance can be challenging. Therefore it is best to know its costs beforehand and find out what your insurance can cover or may not cover.

The cost of freezing eggs is likely to be $15,000 or more, and there are additional costs involved like the hormone medications and annual eggs storage fee.

Even if your insurance covers fertility treatments like egg freezing, you still must consider other costs like copays.

Again many private insurance policies cover infertility treatments only if you have been diagnosed with infertility, so navigating insurance can be tricky for egg freezing.

Freezing your eggs vs. embryos:

You may wonder, should you freeze your eggs or embryos? When you freeze eggs, it means that the eggs are as they came out in your body, not fertilized, and you can fertilize them in the future.

An embryo is an egg that has been fertilized with sperm. Embryo freezing is a viable option if you have a sperm donor or a male partner and intend to get pregnant via IVF later on. 

However, the possibility of ending up with more embryos is high, and you might find yourself confused about what to do with them. Again, what happens when you end the relationship with the male partner who donated to them and doesn’t want their kids anymore?

Whether dealing with embryos or eggs, you also don’t know how many will survive. Therefore the answer to whether you should freeze eggs or embryos lies with you and your partner if any.

Last words

Being informed prior to freezing your eggs helps. A fertility specialist can help you make an informed decision depending on your health, age, and needs.

Stay Healthy!