Egg Freezing – What’s it really like

On the CNN website there is an article titled Freezing your eggs — the costs and other realities by Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.

If you are a woman, and you don’t want to have children yet, but are concerned that by the time you are ready, your eggs might already be too old, then this is an option. You can visit a fertility center that offers egg freezing and have your eggs securely stored in an egg bank there, until the time when you want to get pregnant. Then you can have them fertilized with your husbands sperm and implanted into your uterus.

In the USA there are around 5000 women who have their eggs frozen.

However, the costs associated with it are also pretty high. The costs per circle are around $6000-$15000 – and sometimes a woman needs more than one circle to produce viable eggs.

Also, there are plenty of risks:

• the eggs might not survive the freezing process
• the eggs might not create viable embryos
• the eggs might not attach to the uterus when doctors implant them.

Experts estimate that women who freeze their eggs between the ages of 32 – 35 have about a 50% chance of achieving pregnancy, whereas those between 35 – 38 have a chance of 35%, and those between 39 – 40 years have a chance of around 20%-25%, and above that it goes down even further.

Before you decide to have your eggs frozen you should have let your anti-Mullerian hormone levels checked, as this can be an indicator how good your chances are.

Tagged as: egg freezing, Female Infertility, infertility