Are There Different Types of Egg Freezing?
Egg freezing, also known as fertility preservation, has risen in popularity within the past five years, but there remain a number of misunderstandings and misconceptions about the process. After companies like Apple and Facebook began to offer their employees help covering the costs associated with the procedure, general interest increased, but many questions remain about the process, including how it works and who is a good candidate.
Are there different types of egg freezing?
No, the process for freezing a woman’s eggs is medically the same whether it’s called egg freezing or fertility preservation. What varies is your motivation or need for the procedure. In egg freezing, women seek to prolong their family planning time frame for social reasons. For example, they are currently prioritizing their career or education goals, they have yet to find the right partner to build a family, or they wish to pursue other interests, like education or travel, during the years when their fertility is ideal for conception.
In fertility preservation, women seek to preserve their fertility because of a medical concern, for example, a recent cancer diagnosis (chemotherapy and radiation treatment can be harmful to fertility), a family history of early menopause, a condition like endometriosis or poor ovarian reserve.
How does egg freezing work?
A fertility specialist will prescribe fertility medications that will stimulate your ovaries to produce a higher level of hormones and more eggs than normal. This is done in order to allow for multiple eggs to achieve maturation within a single egg freezing cycle. Next, under light anesthesia that does not include any type of incision, your fertility specialist will harvest the eggs and prepare them for freezing. This procedure takes about 20 minutes. Generally speaking, a fertility specialist will aim to collect about 15 eggs to be used when you are ready to conceive (begin IVF treatment).
Learn more about egg freezing:
- The Top Egg Freezing Candidates (and Some You Might Not Have Guessed
- Should I Freeze My Eggs?
- Four Types of People Who Should Seriously Consider Fertility Preservation
Are you interested in freezing your eggs to prolong family planning goals? Please contact Washington Fertility Center to learn more and schedule an egg freezing consultation.