What Happens After You Freeze Your Eggs—The Next Steps Explained

Egg freezing can be a tough decision to make. It’s an investment of time and money to secure your reproductive potential for the future. But what happens after you freeze your eggs? What’s next? You might have questions about how your eggs are frozen and how they will be used to conceive in the future. In this blog, we explain exactly what happens after you freeze your eggs.

How Does Egg Freezing Work?

After undergoing ovarian stimulation to increase the number of mature eggs, you undergo egg retrieval to collect them. You are sedated for this procedure. Side effects after egg retrieval include cramps, bruising, fatigue, bloating, and mood swings.

Egg Freezing and Preservation

The egg freezing process should take place soon after, as human eggs can perish quickly at room temperature. Vitrification is the most popular method used. It involves flash freezing the eggs rapidly by using liquid nitrogen. When compared with slow freezing, vitrification prevents the formation of ice crystals and increases the survival rate of eggs after thawing.

Long-Term Storage And Monitoring

After the eggs are frozen, they are stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen. Your clinic may store the eggs in a storage facility on-site or send them to a larger facility for long-term storage.

What Happens After You Freeze Your Eggs?

After you freeze your eggs, they are kept in storage until you feel ready to have a baby. The only way you can use your frozen eggs to become pregnant is to undergo the second half of the in vitro fertilization process.

The eggs are then thawed and used to create embryos. The best embryos are transferred to your uterus. If your eggs are at another clinic or egg bank, they will be transported to your current clinic first. Here is what happens after you freeze your eggs and decide to use them:

Step 1: Thawing

Once you’ve decided that you want to use your frozen eggs, the first step is thawing them using a warming solution. You can decide whether you want to freeze all your eggs or only some of them. The eggs need to be thawed very carefully to ensure that they do not perish.

Despite this, not all eggs survive the thawing process. Whether they survive or not depends on how old you were when you froze them, the quality and quantity of your eggs, the method of cryopreservation, and the skill of the clinic’s technicians.

Step 2: Fertilisation

After thawing, the eggs are placed in a dish with sperm to start the IVF fertilization process. Alternatively, the clinic may use ICSI to fertilize the eggs. In this process, the embryologist takes a healthy sperm cell and injects it into a healthy egg. They repeat this process for each healthy egg and sperm.

Step 3: Embryo Development

After fertilization, the eggs will soon develop into embryos. Their growth is carefully monitored for 3-5 days to ensure that everything is proceeding smoothly. An embryologist then analyzes them closely and selects the highest-quality ones.

Step 4: Embryo Transfer

First, your doctor will insert a thin tube called a catheter into your uterus through your cervix. The embryologist then carefully transfers the best embryo(s) to your uterus through it. The transfer takes about 15-20 minutes.

Step 5: Pregnancy Test

Approximately two weeks after embryo transfer, your clinic will perform a pregnancy test on you to check whether the embryo has implanted successfully.

What If I Don’t Want To Use My Eggs?

In the future, you may decide that you don’t want to use your frozen eggs for one reason or another. Maybe you have already conceived naturally, or you have decided that you don’t want to have children. Or maybe some eggs were left over after your embryo transfer.

Whatever the case, you have a few options. You can choose to keep them in long-term storage in case you might need them later.  You can donate them to someone else or to research. You can also choose to dispose of them instead.

Egg freezing and the next steps can be challenging, both financially and emotionally. At Corion Fertility Clinic, we ensure that your journey of egg freezing and beyond is comfortable, safe, and affordable. Book a fertility consultation today to determine whether egg freezing is the right choice for you.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q. What are the risks of thawing frozen eggs?
A. Not all frozen eggs may survive the thawing process. They may also not fertilize or develop into healthy embryos, which is why freezing multiple eggs is considered ideal.

Q. For how long can I freeze my eggs in India?
A. In India, you can freeze your eggs for a maximum of 10 years. If your frozen eggs have been in storage for 10 years, you cannot keep them frozen any longer and need to either dispose of or donate them.

Q. What are the chances of pregnancy with frozen eggs?
A. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, there is a 2 to 12 percent chance that a single frozen egg will result in a live birth. The actual rate of success will depend on factors like egg quality, the age at which the eggs were frozen, etc.

Q. Can one cycle of egg freezing help you have multiple babies?
A. If enough eggs were frozen in a single cycle, they can be used to support multiple pregnancies.

Q. Do eggs degrade in quality the longer they are frozen?
A. No, freezing eggs for longer does not affect their quality in any way. Your eggs will remain the same quality whether you freeze them for 2 years or 10.

Disclaimer:

The information shared in this blog is for educational purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice.