HOUSTON, Texas – Are you considering freezing your eggs? Did you even know that was an option?
Fertility preservation is becoming more common as the world continues to change and women choose to start families at a later age.
KPRC 2 Reporter Candace Burns spoke with Dr. Laura Detti, the Director of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Baylor University, and Chief of Reproductive Services at Texas Children’s. We asked her some of the most common questions regarding the process of freezing your eggs.
Watch the full video in the playlist above.
What is the best age to freeze eggs?
Dr. Detti said getting pregnant and having a child becomes difficult after age 37 for most women.
“Women would have to reset their biological clock, actually to before that age of 37, to possibly have a conception,” Dr. Detti said. “I mean, they would need to take some steps to possibly... I don’t know how to say this. We have to take some steps to ensure that possibly even after age 37 they will have no difficulties in conceiving.
She said that women who want to freeze their eggs should start the process before the age of 30 by doing a check-up of their ovarian reserve.
“Once we identify whether their ovarian reserve is normal or not, we can counsel them on the next steps,” Dr. Detti said.
What’s the first step?
Dr. Detti said a woman’s first step should be finding a reproduction specialist through your general doctor or doing a simple Google search.
At what age is it considered too late to freeze your eggs?
“There are some instances when it becomes possibly futile. So if a woman is over 45 it becomes futile because the number of eggs that would need to be frozen is so high, that is unrealistic to think that we could actually retrieve all those eggs out of that woman,” Dr. Detti said.
How many eggs are being preserved when going through the process?
“So that one depends also on the ovarian reserve. Typically, to identify a dose that we will use for the stimulation, we will take into consideration the age of the woman, and her BMI in her ovarian reserve. The ovarian reserve is typically assessed with the AMH or Anti-Müllerian Hormone, which will tell us the approximate number of eggs that we can identify. An ultrasound on cycle day three will also identify the antral follicles that we will stimulate with the stimulation for egg retrieval. And so that number of eggs that we eventually retrieve depends on the number of antral follicles that are in the ovaries,” Dr. Detti said.
What happens once the eggs are retrieved?
“So once they come out, the eggs that come out in the follicular fluid, and they’re surrounded by a couple of layers of cells that are called the granulosa cells or also cumulus. And those cells are very gently stripped off the egg, and then the egg is frozen by plunging it into liquid nitrogen,” Dr. Detti said.
How long can you store your frozen eggs?
Dr. Detti said she likes to say indefinitely “as long as the environmental factors in that specific laboratory are correct.”
Does freezing my eggs guarantee a live birth?
“It’s more successful when a woman is younger. Typically, before age 34. That’s where the efficiency of the ovary is at its highest point. However, even women, even if they’re older than 34, can still see what their ovarian reserve is. The quality of the eggs, unfortunately, also decreases with age. So that is another factor that we need to keep into consideration,” Dr. Detti said.
What is the cost of freezing eggs?
“The cost of this is related to the stimulation, the medications that we use, the number of ultrasounds that we perform, and, of course, then the retrieval and the freezing of the eggs. The cost may vary greatly from practice to practice. However, it typically is less than $10,000 for one cycle,” Dr. Detti said.
She said it’s less expensive than IVF.
How many cycles does a woman need?
“Depending on their age and their ovarian reserve and the number of follicles that they have in the ovaries. It might vary, sometimes we need two or even three cycles of egg freezing before they reach the ideal number,” Dr. Detti said.