When Felicia (who asked that her last name be withheld) turned 35, she started to consider the possibility of freezing her eggs. She was unmarried, but knew that she wanted to have children with a partner someday. Was now the time to take action?
The company she worked for had just started covering the costs of the procedure for its employees, and when Felicia floated the idea to her OB/GYN and primary care physician, they were supportive. In fact, her doctor had frozen her own eggs years earlier, enabling her to have a child in her early 40s.
“Everyone said it’s better to have them in case you need them,” Felicia told HuffPost. She was inspired to act “before that window has closed.”
Thirty-five is frequently cited as the point at which a woman’s fertility begins to decline, but there is no precise way to predict when someone’s fertility will end, and there is great variation from person to person. Some women are able to get pregnant without assistance in their early or mid-40s, while others start trying years earlier but are never able to conceive. The fact that men don’t have to face an end date to their fertility (their bodies make new sperm all the time, while a woman is born with all of the eggs she will ever have) casts a shadow of unfairness over the whole situation.
It’s not difficult to understand the lure of a type of insurance policy against heartbreak, or a way to buy time. While Felicia’s employee benefit is unusual, her situation is quite common, and she joined a growing number of women who have undergone a cycle of ovarian stimulation to cryopreserve their eggs (or oocytes) for later use.
Egg freezing was originally used as a means to preserve fertility before a woman underwent chemotherapy or another treatment that could hinder her future ability to conceive. But after the American Society for Reproductive Medicine dropped the designation “experimental” from the treatment in 2012, it opened the door for more women to seek the procedure.
In the years following, the number of egg freezing cycles has soared, reaching close to 30,000 in the year 2022 alone.
In 2023, Felicia attempted her first cycle. At first, she said, it seemed that her body was responding to the follicle-stimulating medications, which she injected into herself, but ultimately the cycle was canceled because too few follicles grew large enough for retrieval.
In January of 2024, she had a fibroid removed, and that August she tried a second round of egg retrieval. This time, her ovaries showed more response to the medication, and ultimately four eggs were retrieved and cryopreserved.
Felicia is currently debating whether or not to pursue another cycle. She is now 37. With the financial assistance from her employer, her costs were limited to the $2,400 she paid for the medications.
If you have ovaries and hope to carry a biological child someday, but aren’t sure when that day will be, you may wonder about the possibility of freezing your eggs — or even have had family, friends or medical providers recommend it. Here’s what to know before you begin the process.
Results vary significantly.
