The egg freezing process allows women to delay motherhood until they’re ready

More women are putting motherhood on hold to pursue their educational, professional and personal goals. Thanks to advances in reproductive medicine, the egg freezing process can help women preserve their young, healthy eggs for use later in life. Our Dallas-Fort Worth fertility center team knows that most people aren’t familiar with the steps of egg freezing. As a result, we take time to explain each one and guide patients every step of the way.

What does this process involve?

The steps of egg freezing are relatively straightforward at our Dallas-Fort Worth fertility center. You will start by having basic female fertility testing in the form of bloodwork and a transvaginal ultrasound. Your test results will help your doctor make sure that you have enough healthy eggs to be a good candidate for the egg freezing process.

If your test results look good, you can get started with the egg freezing steps. First, you will take injectable fertility medications to stimulate your ovaries and encourage them to produce multiple eggs. You will attend regular monitoring appointments during this time. Your doctor will use bloodwork and ultrasounds to determine how your eggs are developing.

Once your eggs have reached an appropriate size, you will take an injection to encourage ovulation, or the release of the eggs. About 36 hours after this injection, you will visit our clinic for an outpatient egg retrieval procedure. You will receive light sedation to keep you comfortable while your doctor retrieves your mature eggs through your vagina.

Your doctor will send your eggs to the IVF laboratory. Embryologists will then freeze your eggs using a flash freezing technique called vitrification. This technique helps prevent the formation of potentially damaging ice crystals during freezing.

The frozen eggs will then go into storage until you are ready to use them to conceive. Research shows that you can store your frozen eggs indefinitely.

What happens when you want to conceive using frozen eggs?

When you’re ready to have a baby with your frozen eggs, our embryologists will thaw your eggs. They will then fertilize them using sperm from your partner or a sperm donor. Your doctor will then transfer one of the resulting embryos into your uterus. You will take a pregnancy test about two weeks later to confirm that the transfer was a success.

If you have more questions about the egg freezing process, we invite you to contact us and schedule an appointment at our Dallas-Fort Worth fertility center. We look forward to helping you take control of your fertility.