Egg freezing for everyone

Egg freezing is here to stay. Why? Because thanks to this treatment, we can continue with our life plans without it interfering with our ability to have children. It’s a hack against the biological clock! The process of egg freezing consists of retrieving a woman's mature eggs, freezing them in liquid nitrogen (for as long as you want!), and thawing them at the right moment (whenever you're ready, want to, are able to, or whatever the case may be).

It may seem like a cutting-edge treatment, but it has been performed for decades and has resulted in many healthy pregnancies. The process follows the same premise as egg donation, which has existed for many more years, with the difference that, in freezing, your self of today is the donor for your self self of the future. 

Freezing is ideal for many women

It doesn't matter what your reason is. You might be at the peak of your career and financial growth, you might not feel ready, or you might want to get ahead of potential illnesses or changes in your body. Any motivation is valid! And that’s what we love about freezing: it opens up the window of possibility for us to get pregnant without having to sacrifice our professional lives or our mental stability. 

It’s not the uterus, it’s the egg

There is an inherent relationship between fertility and age. The older a woman is, the fewer eggs she produces, and they are of increasingly lower quality. This has nothing to do with health habits: that’s just how the female body works. However, what changes with age and determines fertility is the quality and quantity of the egg, while the functioning of the womb remains intact. Although we do it, you could place an embryo from a 27-year-old woman into the postmenopausal body of a 67-year-old woman, and the probability of pregnancy is that of a 27-year-old.

Social and biological timelines are out of sync

Data indicates that we tend to have babies when we are older. It’s understandable: as we grow, we learn more, we have a greater awareness of the emotional challenge, we have greater financial security, and more! There are excellent reasons to have a baby at an older age, but there are no biological ones: the body is at its most fertile when we are quite young, and from that point on, fertility declines. 

However, what is interesting is that a healthy woman can perfectly carry a full and safe pregnancy even at an age when the eggs she produces are not of the best quality. This is because pregnancy rates are directly correlated with the age of the egg, not the age of the uterus! That is why freezing eggs is a door to having more options.

Is egg freezing safe in the long term?

Yes and no. Freezing eggs is not an insurance policy because there is no guarantee it will work; it is just an open possibility. For example, doctors today don't know if the eggs will fertilize quickly, nor do they know the quality of your partner's or donor's sperm at that time. The only thing we do know is that today's eggs are of better quality than tomorrow's eggs. The more eggs you freeze, the higher your probability of pregnancy.

How to know how many eggs to freeze

There are no exact numbers, but there is information that can bring us closer to the answer. The most important thing is not to forget that the age at which you freeze is a determining factor. For example, a woman between 25 and 30 years old has a high chance of achieving a pregnancy in the future by freezing only 8 eggs, while a 40-year-old woman would need to freeze 20 eggs to approach that same probability. 

By the numbers

• If a 44-year-old woman is trying to get pregnant naturally (with the eggs she has), her probability of getting pregnant is less than 5%. 
• If that same woman uses donated eggs, or her own eggs that she froze 10 years earlier, her probability of getting pregnant reaches 60%.

There is no perfect fertility test!

Although tests like AMH and FSH are still performed to show ovarian reserve and the ability to produce follicles, and are used to predict a woman's fertility, they do not necessarily reflect a woman's reproductive capacity with certainty. This is because these tests only measure the quantity of eggs, not their quality. In fact, many women have had poor results on these tests and have become pregnant on their first attempt. All this to say: the best fertility test is trying.