Egg Freezing

Written by Rachel Reiff Ellis, Marijke Vroomen Durning, RN
Medically Reviewed by Nivin Todd, MD on March 04, 2025
14 min read

Egg freezing, also known as oocyte cryopreservation or vitrification, is the process of taking one or more eggs out of your ovaries and storing them at very low temperatures for use in the future.

Freezing eggs doesn’t guarantee a future pregnancy. Some eggs may not survive, fertilize, or go on to become a viable pregnancy. But by stopping your egg’s aging process with freezing, you extend and increase your chances of achieving a pregnancy when you’re older. 

There are many reasons someone may choose this process – some medical, some professional, some personal.

"Egg freezing is a powerful tool for fertility preservation," says Iris Insogna, MD, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist at Columbia University Fertility Center in New York City. "It’s a great option for many people, including single women, women who are planning to delay childbearing, trans men who are interested in fertility preservation, women with endometriosis, or women with a diagnosis of cancer prior to chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery."

Freezing eggs vs. embryos

Freezing eggs is different from freezing embryos. An embryo is an egg that a lab has successfully fertilized with a sperm. Egg freezing stores unfertilized eggs only. 

Freezing embryos is a process that’s been around longer and has higher success rates than freezing eggs. Embryos have a higher survival rate after thawing compared to eggs, which increases your chances of a successful pregnancy. But egg freezing is a more flexible option if you don’t currently have plans for who will fertilize your egg. 

Egg freezing age limit 

There isn’t a strict age limit for egg freezing, but a younger age when you freeze your eggs increases your chances of them resulting in a baby. Doctors generally recommend you freeze eggs before you’re 35. After age 35, egg health declines, and your fertility goes down significantly. 

Some clinics have a maximum age, which varies by clinic.

Egg freezing has made tremendous strides in the past 13 years, says Insogna, adding that success rates are largely driven by the age you are when you extract and freeze your eggs, which is also true for the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process.

"Age dictates egg quality and therefore success rates," she says. "We have good data to support that success rates with frozen eggs are similar to success rates with fresh eggs, again driven by the biological age of the egg."

Egg freezing benefits include saving your fertility in the face of an upcoming medical treatment, surgery, or progressive disease that will affect the health of your reproductive system or ability to carry a pregnancy. It also lets you choose pregnancy and parenthood at a time that works best in your life professionally, financially, or emotionally. 

The choice to freeze eggs is personal and unique to each person who chooses to do it. Some of the more common reasons people do it include: 

  • Risk of damage from medical treatments such as chemotherapy or pelvic radiation 
  • Upcoming surgery that may damage your ovaries
  • Ovarian disease that may damage your ovaries
  • Endometriosis or ovarian cysts that decrease your chance of getting pregnant
  • Chromosomal abnormalities from conditions such as Turner syndrome or fragile X syndrome that increase the risk of early ovarian failure
  • Family history of early menopause
  • Health conditions such as autoimmune disorders, obesity, or eating disorders such as anorexia 
  • Testing positive for a BRCA mutation or other genetic mutation that prompts the removal of your ovaries
  • Having a progressive disease such as lupus, renal disease, or sickle cell disease
  • Social, personal, or professional reasons for delaying childbearing and parenthood

Fertility specialists are a type of doctor called reproductive endocrinologists, and they’re who you’ll see for the egg freezing process. Your insurance may require you to have a referral from an OB/GYN or primary care doctor in order to provide coverage, but you typically don’t need a referral just to make an appointment. 

Many clinics have an orientation process for people considering egg freezing or IVF. These information sessions tell you how the process happens from start to finish in their clinic, how to give yourself medication, and how and where the eggs are stored. 

The process for egg retrieval is the same whether you’re going through IVF (going on to fertilize your eggs after retrieval) or egg freezing. The only difference is what happens to the eggs after the doctor takes them out. In egg freezing, your eggs are frozen and sent to storage. 

Your doctor will assess your overall health and give you some tests to look at the health and number of your available eggs. You’ll have a blood test so your doctor can review your hormone levels and an ultrasound so your doctor can look at your ovaries. 

Next, your doctor gives you medication to help stimulate your ovaries. This prompts them to release multiple eggs at once instead of one. 

How to prepare to freeze your eggs

The preparation time before egg retrieval takes about eight to 12 days. During that time, you’ll take the medications your doctor prescribes to help prepare your eggs and your body for egg retrieval.

Your health is important, especially when preparing for egg collection. Taking care of yourself increases the chances of successful egg retrieval.

  • Eat a healthy diet.
  • Speak to your doctor about taking prenatal vitamins, especially folic acid.
  • Sleep. Try to have a good sleep schedule so you get enough quality rest.
  • Exercise, but don’t overdo it. High-intensity workouts could affect fertility.
  • Manage your stress. You may want to do yoga or meditate, or find something else that helps you manage stress levels.

When you schedule your appointment, your doctor or the office should give you information on how to prepare. Those instructions are what you should follow, but here are some general tips that are often given for the 24 hours before the egg extraction.

  • Don’t eat anything after midnight.
  • After midnight but before a specific cutoff time, you usually can drink certain fluids so you’re hydrated. These could be sports drinks, juice, soda, or other drinks. If you’re not sure about a drink you enjoy, ask your doctor first.
  • After the cutoff time, stop drinking fluids and fast until your appointment. 

During the procedure

Egg retrieval is an outpatient procedure. You don’t have to stay overnight in a hospital or clinic. 

When you have your eggs taken out, your doctor will put you under general anesthesia so that you’re completely asleep and comfortable. Typically, the procedure only takes 10 minutes. During it, your doctor uses a transvaginal ultrasound (an ultrasound wand they insert into your vagina to capture pictures of your reproductive system). 

Using the images from the ultrasound, your doctor will guide a needle through your vaginal wall into your ovary. They’ll gently suction out the fluid in the follicles to capture the eggs.

After the procedure is over, you’ll recover for about an hour while the clinic makes sure you’re not in pain and everything has gone smoothly. 

"I usually recommend having ibuprofen, Tylenol, and a heating pad at home since you may have some cramping afterward," says Insogna. "But typically, recovery is pretty quick, and you may feel ready to return to work the next day." 

Is egg freezing safe?

Egg freezing is a safe procedure with very few risks. Studies show your risk of pregnancy complications and birth defects don’t go up if you achieve pregnancy from a frozen egg. 

Egg freezing side effects

It’s common to have mild side effects from the fertility medications you take before egg retrieval. These may include:

  • Mood swings
  • Hot flashes
  • Headaches
  • Nausea

There are very few risks to the egg retrieval process itself. Right after the procedure, you may have bloating, cramping, and some mild discomfort. Rarely, complications such as bleeding requiring a blood transfusion, injury to surrounding organs, swelling and fluid buildup in your ovaries, and infection can happen, but Insogna says this risk is less than 1%.

Less than 5% of people who go through ovarian stimulation for egg retrieval have a condition called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), in which your ovaries swell and leak fluid into your abdomen (belly area).

Your doctor will prescribe medications for you to take in the eight to 12 days leading up to your egg retrieval. These fertility medications are lab-made versions of hormones your body naturally makes to tell your ovaries to release an egg. When you take these medications, your body releases multiple eggs at once.

By getting your body to release more eggs, you're more likely to raise the chance you’ll achieve fertilization, and eventually pregnancy. Clinics aim to get between eight and 25 eggs per retrieval.

Some medications come in the form of shots you give yourself (or have someone give you) at home. Others may be pills. They include:

Birth control pills. These help regulate your cycle so it’s more predictable. They also help prevent ovarian cysts and increase your odds of getting higher-quality eggs.

GnRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone) agonist. This shot you give yourself in your skin controls your pituitary gland, stopping it from releasing eggs before they’re mature so your doctor can time the extraction well.

Gonadotropins. This shot tells your ovaries to produce eggs. You typically take it in the evening in a specific window of time.

HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin). This medication matures your eggs to their final stage, and loosens them so they're easier to pull out with a needle. 

Antibiotics. Your doctor may give you these during your egg retrieval procedure to help prevent infection.

What’s the process for freezing your eggs? There are several steps, starting with preparing yourself for the procedure.

Ovarian stimulation

In order for your doctor to retrieve eggs, your body will have to produce more than usual, which is typically one per month. This process is called ovarian stimulation. This step lasts about nine to 12 days.

As your period starts, you will start giving yourself two medications, two or three injections a day: follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH). These will stimulate your ovaries to produce eggs that will grow and mature. During this period, you’ll need some ultrasounds and blood tests to check the ovaries’ progress.

Trigger shot

Once your ultrasounds and blood tests show that this stage is complete, the next step is called the trigger shot. This is a shot (usually of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)) that you give yourself that tells your body to ovulate, releasing the now mature eggs. Usually, this is done about a day and a half before your appointment to have your eggs retrieved.

Egg vitrification

Once the eggs are removed, they’re sent to a lab where they can be examined under a microscope to see if they’re mature enough for freezing. Around three-quarters of eggs qualify in most retrievals. Eggs that are approved go on to the freezing step the same day.

First, the eggs are dehydrated – most of the water is removed. This water is replaced with a preservative (a cryopreservative). The freezing process then flash-freezes the eggs to a subzero temperature in less than a minute. Then technicians store your eggs in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 C. This process has improved over the years to help reduce damage to eggs. Freezing them quickly reduces the chances of ice crystals forming on them and damaging their DNA.

Egg storage

Your frozen eggs are kept in liquid nitrogen tanks in embryology labs. Typically, these labs have round-the-clock monitoring with alarms to make sure the equipment works and they stay at the correct temperature. Technicians will also manually check the temperature at regular periods. 

You may want to check if the lab that will be storing your eggs is certified by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, a government agency that sets the standards and regulates all lab testing.

What happens after egg freezing?

When you decide you want to use your eggs to try to get pregnant, the eggs will have to be thawed. Medically, this step is called oocyte warming. Once the eggs are thawed, they can be fertilized using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a form of in vitro fertilization where the sperm is injected directly into the center of the eggs.

Once the sperm is in the eggs, they will be monitored for about five or six days to see if they were fertilized. If they were, they are ready to be transferred to you. Using an ultrasound for guidance, your doctor will insert a catheter into your vagina and inject an embryo into your uterus. Then it’s time to wait to see if the embryo implants in your uterus. 

The best age to freeze your eggs depends on several things, and age is one of the biggest. Experts typically recommend you freeze eggs before you’re 35. But cost also plays a part in when it’s "ideal" to freeze your eggs. 

According to the National Institutes of Health, age 37 tends to be the age where people get the greatest cost-effective benefit. This means they’re more likely to be able to afford the process and their eggs are still young enough for the process to have a chance of success. People under 30 have the lowest cost-effective benefit.

The cost of your egg freezing process will depend on your insurance coverage and the fertility center you use. Be sure to check with your insurance company to find out what they’ll cover and what you’ll need to pay for out-of-pocket. Often, insurance does not cover egg freezing not related to a medical diagnosis. 

One session, or "cycle," of retrieval may cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 or more. 

As you’re planning for paying for egg freezing, you’ll need to consider the costs of:

  • Medication
  • Ultrasounds
  • Bloodwork
  • Egg retrieval procedure
  • Egg freezing process
  • Annual frozen egg storage fees

You’ll also need to consider the eventual cost of the fertilization and implantation process.

When you’re ready to try to fertilize your eggs and create a pregnancy, a lab places your eggs in a warming solution to slowly thaw them. They’ll look at the thawed eggs under a microscope to see how they fared during freezing.

To fertilize the egg, a technician injects a single sperm directly inside it, and the fertilized egg grows in a culture for three to five days. The lab looks at the fertilized egg to see if it’s viable. Once it passes this point, a doctor implants the fertilized egg (embryo) into the uterus.

How long can eggs be frozen?

Experts say longer storage time doesn’t seem to harm eggs and cause negative effects. But most information about this is based on four years of storage or less. 

As you age, your risk of pregnancy complications goes up, no matter how healthy your eggs are. Your clinic may have a maximum age at which they’ll allow you to use your eggs to try to achieve a pregnancy.

Egg freezing success rates

The first successful birth from a frozen egg happened in 1986. In the world of medicine, it’s a fairly new process, and there’s not much data on success rates. The studies that researchers have done on egg freezing show that for every egg, there’s a 4% to 12% chance of pregnancy. These rates can vary widely based on your age, health, and other things. 

"Although age helps us predict how these eggs will perform if and when we thaw them, we also cannot predict with certainty how that process will unfold until that time comes," says Insogna. "Not every egg will survive the thaw, not every egg will fertilize, not every fertilized egg will develop to the blastocyst stage of embryo development, and not every blastocyst will result in a successful pregnancy. So it is important to accept that we do not know everything when we freeze eggs. But it is a powerful technology that can help protect your fertility and your future family-building goals." 

Egg freezing is a process that involves retrieving and storing unfertilized eggs at subzero temperatures for use in a potential future pregnancy. People choose it for many reasons, such as delaying parenthood, having treatments like chemotherapy, or managing conditions like endometriosis. While egg freezing doesn’t guarantee pregnancy, freezing eggs at a younger age improves the chances of success. The process involves several steps, including hormone shots to stimulate egg production, egg retrieval under anesthesia, and flash-freezing mature eggs for storage. Though costly and not always covered by insurance, egg freezing offers a safe and flexible option for those wishing to plan parenthood on their own timeline.

What’s the best age to freeze your eggs?

Fertility declines sharply after age 35 because the quality and number of your eggs goes down. Many doctors recommend freezing eggs between 30 and 34. But when you factor in cost, some sources point to 37 as the ideal age for a cost-effective benefit when freezing eggs, and below 30 as the least cost-effective benefit. 

Does insurance cover freezing eggs?

Insurance coverage for egg freezing depends on your specific health insurance plan. Some insurance plans won’t cover egg freezing unless there is a medically diagnosed reason for it, such as cancer that requires chemotherapy or endometriosis. 

Who’s not a good candidate for egg freezing?

If you have certain types of cancer, you may not qualify for egg freezing, or you may not have time to do the procedure before you need to start treatment. After age 43, 90% of eggs in your ovaries are abnormal and can’t become a viable pregnancy. If you no longer have ovaries, you don’t have eggs to retrieve. 

How painful is egg retrieval?

You’ll be under general anesthesia during your egg retrieval procedure, and you shouldn’t feel anything as it’s happening. 

What should you avoid during egg freezing?

As you’re preparing for egg retrieval, adopt healthy habits. Don’t smoke or use drugs. Limit your alcohol intake, get regular exercise, and eat a variety of nutritious foods. A prenatal vitamin can also help you get nutrients your diet may be missing. 

How many frozen eggs does it take for one baby?

Everyone is different, and the things that affect your process will be unique, but experts recommend freezing 20 to 30 eggs for the chance of one baby. 

Can you freeze and sell your eggs?

Yes, if you qualify, you can go through the egg freezing process and choose to donate your eggs. Egg donors receive money in exchange for their eggs. 

Do you still get periods after freezing eggs?

Yes. It takes about two weeks to recover from egg retrieval, but your cycle should continue as it did before your procedure. 

Can you pick the gender if you freeze eggs?

If you choose to do genetic testing called preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) after a lab fertilizes your egg, in addition to other information, it will tell you the sex of the embryo. 

What are the long-term effects of egg freezing?

Experts haven’t yet seen evidence that storing eggs for a long time has any negative effects on the eggs. Using frozen eggs also doesn’t increase your risk of pregnancy complications or birth defects.