Cryopreservation, Otherwise Known As Egg Freezing

Women who know they want to have a family, but realize it is not a short-term goal.  Unfortunately for women, biologically their fertility does not last forever.  In fact, it begins to decline after the age of 35.  Therefore, if you know that your childbearing years are going to be later in life, then you might want to consider freezing your eggs.

We like to say the sooner the better.  However, we do not have an age cut off at Dominion Fertility and will evaluate each potential patients’ ovarian reserve before recommending cryopreservation. Every woman is different, however based on the general population we would recommend freezing their eggs before age 40.

The process begins with an initial consultation with a Dominion Fertility Physician. The Physician will look at your medical history; perform an ultrasound to look at your antral follicle count along with blood work for AMH, Prolactin and TSH levels to determine your ovarian reserve. We will then schedule a follow up visit to review the results and develop a treatment plan. We prefer patients to be off birth control pills one month prior to the exam to avoid false results.

Once you decide to start the egg freezing treatment you will meet with one of our IVF coordinators who will explain the steps as well as educate on the necessary fertility medicine required to stimulate the ovaries. During this time, you will also receive injection training for the required medicine.

We schedule you for about three visits to come into one of our conveniently located offices in the morning between 6:30AM – 9AM for monitoring. The appointments are quick, about 30 minutes and then you can go straight to work.

– We schedule you for about 4 visits to continue monitoring your egg growth.  At some point during this week we will tell you within 24-48 hours when your body is ready for egg retrieval.  We will schedule your egg retrieval, which requires basic IV anesthesia for a 10-minute procedure to retrieve all your eggs.

We want to ideally collect between 10-20 eggs to be vitrified for a successful pregnancy on your own time.

As mention earlier, egg vitrification is FDA approved and research has shown that there is no deprivation of egg quality when frozen. In addition there has been research on live births from vitrified oocytes (eggs), which reveals no increased risk of congenital anomalies compared to the general population. Dominion Fertility has numerous protocols in place that require constant monitoring of our cryopreservation tanks that assures the safety of all our eggs and embryos. Please visit our video from our Lab Directory for more details on safety.

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