Like anything preserved, there may be some question about the side effects of freezing human eggs that are meant to be maintained in their original state. Human eggs require being frozen for a long period of time to preserve them, and they require being dried and injected with a non-freezable solution (no, not Vodka) to be frozen.

That’s a lot for a little egg to go through!  But how things are frozen is important.  Even a container of Ben & Jerry’s that stays in the icebox long enough is going to wind up with some terrible freezer burn, and odds are your reproductive future is more important to you than a pint of Cherry Garcia.

First freeze

Once the eggs are collected through a process involving hormone medications and IVF, 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.

Then thaw and implant

While the procedure of freezing eggs has numerous examples of success, there are also failures. In order for the egg to survive, it needs to be carefully thawed (vitrification, the currently favored method of thawing, has a success rate of 90-95%). If that is successful, the egg then needs to undergo ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection), because the freezing process hardens the egg’s shell making it necessary for the sperm to be injected directly into the egg.

(Unless your partner has hypodermic needles protruding from his reproductive organ, the egg would never get fertilized, and if he did the rest of your sex life would be pretty traumatic.)   From there, the egg has to go through the same process as IVF, and the success rate of IVF depends a lot on numerous factors, including age and health, but the national average of IVF success is 50% according to the CDC.

Success rates

For women over the age of 38 to 40 years, the rate of successful birth from a frozen egg is higher than using fresh eggs.  GO TEAM FROZEN EGGS!

Is freezing eggs worth the possible side effects? That depends on a number of factors: a woman’s age, financial ability to preserve her eggs, and her personal opinions on the subject.  If you know you want kids, egg freezing can increase your chances of having them.  None of us can predict the future, but having the option of egg freezing makes whatever future’s in store a little easier to digest.