Exploring the most common egg freezing questions

In the past, a woman often let her biological clock decide when to start a family. Thanks to advances in reproductive medicine, you can freeze your eggs until you are ready to become a mom. Mark Rispler MD at our Los Angeles fertility center is here to answer the most common egg freezing questions.

Understanding fertility and egg freezing basics

Unlike men, who make sperm throughout their lives, women are born with all their eggs. As women age, their egg quality and quantity decline, which can make conceiving more difficult.

Although embryo freezing has been available for years, the fragility of eggs made egg freezing more difficult. Vitrification, a flash-freezing process, now allows us to freeze eggs until women are ready for a baby. Our Los Angeles fertility center offers egg freezing to give you power over your fertility.

A review of common egg freezing questions

To help you decide if you should freeze your eggs, our Los Angeles fertility center has answered some common egg freezing questions.

• What are the benefits of egg freezing? Your egg supply decreases with age. Egg freezing lets you freeze your young and healthy eggs. You can then use those younger eggs to conceive later in life.
• How can I tell if I am a candidate for egg freezing? Generally, healthy women under 40 are good candidates for egg freezing. Our team will perform a complete fertility evaluation to assess your specific situation before beginning the egg freezing process.
• Will you remove all my eggs? After puberty, a woman ovulates one mature egg each month. Most of the immature eggs are lost over time through the body’s natural processes. With egg freezing, Dr. Rispler collects some of these eggs, which would otherwise be lost. He then preserves them for future use.
• Can you explain the egg freezing process? To begin, we will prescribe fertility medications to regulate your cycle and stimulate egg maturation. During this time, we will monitor you with regular sonograms and bloodwork. Dr. Rispler will then retrieve the mature eggs during an outpatient procedure.
• What happens to my eggs until I am ready to use them? Once the eggs are frozen, we store them in a cryopreservation facility until you want to begin your family. At that point, we will thaw and fertilize your eggs before transferring one to your uterus.

At Innovative Fertility Center, we use egg freezing to help you achieve your family-building goals at the right time. Our Los Angeles fertility center can answer your egg freezing questions and help you make an informed decision. Contact us to schedule an appointment.