Egg Freezing
September 05, 2024Egg freezing allows fertility preservation for social or medical reasons.
EGG FREEZING PROCEDURE
Start ovarian stimulation any day of the cycle: The goal of ovarian stimulation is to get the maximum number of follicles growing. This will not deplete your reserve and will not even touch it as only follicles who are sensitive to FSH and already out of the reserve will grow.This step is the longest and hardest but if you take it easy it will be just peanuts!
First ultrasound between day 5 and day 7 of stimulation: The goal of this ultrasound is to monitor your ovarian response.
Ultrasound between day 8 of and day 12 of stimulation: The goal of this ultrasound is to decide on the day of the trigger depending on the follicles size. Before triggering oocyte maturation, we need to have the maximum number of follicles with a size bigger than 15mm.
Ovulation Trigger: this step leads to eggs maturation making them ready for pick-up. The timing of this injection is very important as it will determine the time of the oocyte pick up.
The eggs pick up will take place 36 hours after trigger. It is a non-painful 2 minutes procedure performed under sedation. Make sure to take a shower before you come and do not wear perfume or anything with a smell (perfume will not affect your result but will harm other people’s embryos in the lab). In the days after retrieval it is normal to have period pain and some spotting, you can take pain killers.
Egg freezing will take place in the IVF lab a few hours after pick-up. Only the good quality mature eggs will be frozen. With new vitrification techniques 90% of the eggs will survive the freezing and thawing processes.
Pregnancy rates using frozen eggs are directly linked to the age where these eggs were frozen.
Frozen eggs will not guarantee a future pregnancy but they will indeed increase its chances.
NB: If you are living abroad, you can start with steps 1 and 2 and come to our clinic for the remaining steps (one week will be completely enough).
