Egg Freezing Process- Step by Step | Medicover Fertility

Step by Step Egg Freezing Process

The egg freezing technique allows women to extract and preserve their eggs when they are at their healthiest and most abundant. Fertility testing before egg freezing gives you and your fertility doctor the clear information required to customise your treatment plan to succeed. If you’re thinking of choosing egg freezing and intrusive about how much time you actually have before you need to take action, fertility testing will help you determine your optimal reproductive window.

1. Consultation & Testing

You will meet our Fertility Physician to review your medical history and learn about the process. It will take 4-6 weeks and start with ovarian reserve testing on the 3rd day of your menstrual cycle. Ultrasound and Blood investigations will help determine the ideal protocol and medication dose to optimise the number of eggs.

2. Cycle Preparation & Monitoring

Here, you would be initiated on contraceptive pills for 2-3 weeks before commencing on hormones to synchronise follicle development and reduce cyst formation risk. Our expert would be with you at every step to watch for any side effects.

3. Injections & Trigger shot

Daily administration of hormone injections would be required for Egg retrieval and stimulating the follicles to grow. Our experts would assist you in administering the shots as the final injection occurs 36 hours before Egg retrieval.

4. Egg Retrieval

This process involves the ultrasound-guided collection of the fluid in follicles from both ovaries. Though this procedure would be conducted under light sedation and will long till half an hour, it would be a painless daycare procedure.

5. Vitrificatio

Here, in this phase, self-administration of injections and triggers shots would be required to lead to egg retrieval and stimulate the follicles to grow. This whole process would be demonstrated to the patient by our Fertility centre Nursing staff to avoid any discomfort.

6. Results & Next steps

Results and Next steps will be shared on the next business day after the procedure, and our experts will let you know the final number of mature eggs frozen. After this, your cryopreserved eggs will be stored carefully in the storage tank and will be viable for years.

Egg Freezing Faq's

What is Egg Freezing?

Egg Freezing has become the new talk of the town after getting a make-over by many fertility start-ups and has emerged out as a form of Self-care. To embark on, Egg Freezing offers women an opportunity to use their own eggs that has been frozen and preserved when they were young as well as healthy, in order to help them achieve pregnancy when their biological age ticks in or due to any other medical issues creating difficulties in getting pregnant. 

Social Egg Freezing empowers women?

Own the Future

Feel the freedom of deciding when you want to enter Motherhood!!

In today's era, to keep themselves focused to reach new horizons in their career or to have a promising life ahead before entering Motherhood, Many women have to delay their pregnancies which, however, is not always supported biologically. Unfortunately, it imposes a big question mark on what a woman should choose?. Well! Thankfully, now the good news is that a woman can justify both gracefully, Family as well as a career just by opting for Oocyte Cryopreservation or Egg Freezing.

Who should consider Egg Freezing?

  1. Personal goals vs Fertility goals

It is certainly an undeniable fact that at some or the other age every woman wants to have children. But what if life gives you a roller coaster ride where you feel that you need some more time to focus on your career or to build your business empire or you still have not find your perfect life partner. Let's sort this mess out with Egg Freezing through which you can certainly accomplish all of your dreams including the most important one that's to be a Mother.

The silver lining to the cloud is that unlike ovary and oocytes(eggs), the uterus does not get impacted and can effectively carry pregnancy upto the age of 50s.

  1. Female Fertility Preservation for Medical Reasons

Where it comes like a shock for many women who are combating serious health conditions such as cancer, it is a sigh of relief that by entering Egg Freezing, they too now stands a chance to achieve pregnancy successfully however, the eggs needs to be preserved prior to chemotherapy, surgery or radiation therapy

When should I freeze my eggs?

Yes! It's possible with Egg Freezing

We all know that women are born with a finite number of eggs or follicles which starts decreasing every year in quality as well quality.

An average woman, at the age of 25 might have only 3,00,000 egg cells. As per a survey, it has been noticed that only 300-400 eggs are released through ovulation during the entire reproductive years of a woman. Hence, it becomes needless to say that the decline in the quantity and quality of the eggs accelerates in her late 30s.

Considering the increasing age, the risk of miscarriages, difficulty in conceiving or birth defects can be seen. In view of the same, experts suggest the optimal age for a woman to enter Egg Freezing as 38 and under. To add on, as per the recent studies freezing the eggs between ages 25-30 is found to be more beneficial.

Step by Step Egg Freezing Process

  1. Consultation & Testing
  2. Cycle Preparation & Monitoring
  3. Injections & Trigger Shot
  4. Egg Retrieval
  5. Vitrification
  6. Results & Next Step

How many eggs should I freeze?

There is no stereotype answer to this question, as it varies with the age of a woman as well as on one's future family goals also.

Let's get it clear, age sets a bar for women to decide that how efficiently your eggs can work. For example, any woman who is under 35 has around 85 percent chance of having a baby with 15 frozen eggs whereas if a woman who is 38-year-old freezes the same 15 eggs, she stands only 60 percent of chance to be pregnant. So, to be on a safer side any woman who exceeds 38 years of age needs to freeze 30 or more eggs.

The other key factor that needs to be considered is one's family goals. How many kids do you want? One? Three? Or even if you are right now not sure about having kids but still want to reserve that option for future.

It all depends on your decision that what size of family are you planning for. If your plans are to have bigger family then accordingly our Fertility Expert would be advising you that you will need a bigger bank of eggs to be frozen.

Does the Egg Retrieval process hurt?

Thankfully, with the technological advancement the process involves imaging and anaesthesia, as the egg retrieval process is performed under sedation hence it would be completely painless.

Some blood works and ultrasound would be required though the entire process is simple and comfortable.

Though, few patients during this process sometimes can have feeling of fullness or bloating in the pelvic area, as we try to grow a number of Egg follicles to a mature size, but it's quite rare.

Most women are able to get back to their work, the very next day of Egg Retrieval. However, discomfort can be easily managed by applying the heating pad.

What happens to the eggs when I am ready to conceive?

When you are ready to take a call of being a mother, the eggs that you have harvested, they are being retrieved from the storage bank and enters the final stage where they are thawed in order to ensure the high success rate for achieving pregnancy.

Here, the role of your partner comes in.

At this stage, our expert team of embryologists will inject, the Frozen eggs you stored previously with the sperm cell of your partner.

Post which, the embryo would be transferred after which monitoring would be done to ensure successful pregnancy.

So, to talk with an expert on this.

How many eggs would I will be able to freeze in one cycle?

As every individual is different similarly, the number of predicted egg yield also differs for everyone.

As per an analysis, it has been discovered that a woman under 35 freezes 15 eggs per cycle whereas a woman over age 40 will freeze half that, or less.

In addition, to rule out how many eggs will be produced in a cycle. Our Fertility clinic offers a Fertility Assessment where a blood investigation would be conducted to measure patient's Anti - Mullerian hormone. This hormone produces the follicles, which contains immature egg cells, as we all know that hormones in your blood are a good indicator of ovarian reserve.

This blood investigation would be followed with Antral Follicle Count Scan, in which a trans vaginal scan is taken of woman's ovary to determine the number of follicles and immature cells in each ovary.

Both the tests would be performed under the Specialist's supervision and consultation post which the Specialist will discuss your results with you and would use them to visualise how many cycles are required to obtain the recommended number of eggs.

So, Get in touch with our Fertility Clinic, today

How long the Frozen Eggs can be stored?

Good question.

Let's hear the fact, scientifically speaking, frozen eggs have no ' expiration date' for a reason that cryopreservation involves rapidly cooling the eggs down to 196'C, a temperature at which all biological activity including aging stops. As per the studies, there have been many healthy babies born from eggs frozen for ten years with the successful thaw coming after 14 years. It is evident, once frozen, the health and viability of those eggs does not gets compromised by any means.

What if I am over 30 years of age?

In our Fertility centres, our Experts often come across such patients who have turned or have crossed their 30s and seems worried to consider Egg Freezing as with an increasing age the egg quality and quantity starts declining. Well, to authenticate this our Experts advice the patients to undergo relevant imaging and blood work, such as anti - Mullerian hormone test to identify the clear picture regarding the quantity and quality of the eggs as well as how well the ovaries are functioning.