What is Egg Freezing?

Egg freezing is the process of extracting and preserving a woman’s eggs for use at a later date. You know those super healthy, viable eggs you have when you’re younger that you have no intention of turning into a baby just yet because you’d like to spend a few years spending money on concert tickets and trips to Thailand before you have to spend all of it on diapers and childcare?  Think of those eggs like some chicken drumsticks that were on sale today but that you would like to eat in two weeks.   Because eggs are healthier the younger the woman is, frozen eggs may more readily lead to pregnancy than trying to conceive naturally at an older age.  Remember the rumors about how Walt Disney wanted to cryogenically freeze and preserve his whole body?  This is like that, but just with the parts of you that can grow into tiny, additional people.

Why Women Choose to Freeze Their Eggs

Women may freeze their eggs because they are not ready to get pregnant but realize that their chances of getting pregnant naturally diminish with age. It’s most common for women in their 30s to decide to freeze their eggs if they’re going, “I’d like to have kids someday, but maybe not in the months right after I got a huge promotion at the job I have been working toward my entire life?” or “I’d like to have kids eventually but every person I have met on Tindr or Match.com has been a literal car wreck wearing a human skin costume and I’m too nervous to have kids alone.”

Women with cancer or an ovarian-related disease may also choose to freeze their eggs in case treatment damages their ability to get pregnant at a later time. A family history of early menopause is another reason some women may choose to freeze their eggs.  Egg freezing is basically for anyone thinking, “I might want to take one of these things for a spin one day but NOT NOW.”

How do you freeze your eggs

The process is a lot like IVF. The ovaries are stimulated to create multiple eggs using injectable hormone medications (or by giving them teeny tiny little erotic novels to read, which is more fun). IVF is a 2-week process of medications and monitoring, and then the eggs are collected with a procedure that takes 10 to 30 minutes.

Once the eggs are collected, they are prepared for freezing. Because eggs contain so much water, and freezing the water would damage the egg, first, the water is removed. That water is replaced by a substance that will not freeze, and then the eggs are frozen to preserve them for future use.

What Happens Next?

Studies have shown that frozen eggs can be stored for up to 10+ years, which is, if we’re being frank,  about how long some of the stuff in the back of our freezer has probably been there. (How long ago did we buy these meatballs??)   When a women is ready to use the eggs, the process to thaw the egg is very quick. Once thawed, the process is again like IVF and success is enhanced with ICSI―the sperm will be injected into the egg and the fertilized eggs will grow into embryos before being placed directly into the woman’s uterus for implantation.  So that after a bunch of years storing your eggs in the freezer eventually results in a bun in the oven. (See what we did there?)