- Fertility preservation
- Female cycle & fertility
- Blogs
- Support
Egg freezing involves 4 main steps:
You’ll have a consultation with a doctor about what you’re hoping to achieve with egg freezing, and they’ll take a medical history and run a number of tests. These will measure hormone levels and give an indication of your ovarian reserve and all-round suitability for egg freezing. If the tests show that you are suitable for egg freezing and ready to start, you’ll be prescribed a set of medications – often injections but may be pills, gels or patches.
A healthcare professional should show you how to inject yourself before you go home.
Normally, the ovaries take turns to develop and release one egg at a time. Occasionally more than one egg is released in a cycle – this is how fraternal twins come about! In egg freezing, though, we want to bypass this process and develop multiple eggs at the same time.
The treatments prescribed to prepare for egg freezing each have a different role:
You will usually inject yourself with these hormones at home, but your clinician or nurse will show you how to do it. You will then need to go into your clinic to be monitored by ultrasound, which provides images of the ovaries and growing follicles to check the hormones are working as they should.
About 1 in 4 women can get side effects from the hormonal injections, such as:
In rare cases (around 1-5% of IVF cycles) the medications used to stimulate the ovaries can work too hard, causing ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS). In OHSS your ovaries may become swollen and/or sore leading to pain in the abdomen, bloating, nausea and vomiting. OHSS often clears up on its own but if you are struggling with the symptoms get in touch with your clinic urgently.
You’ll need to go to your clinic for this procedure. The process itself takes around 15 minutes, although you may be in the clinic for a lot longer than that as the medical team may want to run some last-minute tests, and you’ll need to rest afterwards while the anaesthetic wears off.
Sometimes egg collection is done:
Every clinic is different, so you should talk to your doctor about the standard procedures where they are.
The surgeons will go in through the vagina to collect the eggs individually, picking them up one by one with a fine syringe.
As soon as your eggs are collected they will be quickly frozen in a technique called vitrification, then stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen.
Afterwards
You may be a bit uncomfortable immediately after the egg collection procedure, and it may take a while to recover from the sedation. You should be able to go home the same day and back to work the next day, but it’s not advisable to drive, drink alcohol, use heavy machinery or make important decisions for 24 hours after sedation.
You might also experience some cramp-like pain for the next day or two.
Dealing with nerves
There aren’t many people who enjoy medical procedures, so if you’re feeling a little apprehensive about the process, you’re not alone. It might help to focus on what you could do after the procedure – having a little treat to look forward to like a takeaway or a bubble bath can help take your mind off the present.
You’ll have a consultation with a doctor about what you’re hoping to achieve with egg freezing, and they’ll take a medical history and run a number of tests. These will measure hormone levels and give an indication of your ovarian reserve and all-round suitability for egg freezing. If the tests show that you are suitable for egg freezing and ready to start, you’ll be prescribed a set of medications – often injections but may be pills, gels or patches.
A healthcare professional should show you how to inject yourself before you go home.
Normally, the ovaries take turns to develop and release one egg at a time. Occasionally more than one egg is released in a cycle – this is how fraternal twins come about! In egg freezing, though, we want to bypass this process and develop multiple eggs at the same time.
The treatments prescribed to prepare for egg freezing each have a different role:
You will usually inject yourself with these hormones at home, but your clinician or nurse will show you how to do it. You will then need to go into your clinic to be monitored by ultrasound, which provides images of the ovaries and growing follicles to check the hormones are working as they should.
You’ll need to go to your clinic for this procedure. The process itself takes around 15 minutes, although you may be in the clinic for a lot longer than that as the medical team may want to run some last-minute tests, and you’ll need to rest afterwards while the anaesthetic wears off.
Sometimes egg collection is done:
Every clinic is different, so you should talk to your doctor about the standard procedures where they are.
The surgeons will go in through the vagina to collect the eggs individually, picking them up one by one with a fine syringe.
As soon as your eggs are collected they will be quickly frozen in a technique called vitrification, then stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen.
Afterwards
You may be a bit uncomfortable immediately after the egg collection procedure, and it may take a while to recover from the sedation. You should be able to go home the same day and back to work the next day, but it’s not advisable to drive, drink alcohol, use heavy machinery or make important decisions for 24 hours after sedation.
You might also experience some cramp-like pain for the next day or two.
Dealing with nerves
There aren’t many people who enjoy medical procedures, so if you’re feeling a little apprehensive about the process, you’re not alone. It might help to focus on what you could do after the procedure – having a little treat to look forward to like a takeaway or a bubble bath can help take your mind off the present.
Optimized by Seraphinite Accelerator
