Egg Freezing
Common Questions
- How much does egg freezing cost?
Cost will differ depending on your health insurance plan. You will need to contact your provider to ask about your egg freezing coverage.
For self pay patients, a single cycle of egg freezing often costs $8,000 - $15,000. There are also long-term costs — most importantly, storage costs of $500 - $1,000 per year can add up. And if you use the eggs you’ll be paying for the fertilization process later.
Just remember, with egg freezing, “cheap” cycles up front can become very expensive in the long run if the lab is lower quality and those eggs don’t work when you need them.
For more information, check out lesson 7 of our Egg Freezing Course.
- What are the steps in the egg freezing process?
- 2 - 6 months: Scheduling a first consult with a doctor can take a few months
- 2 months: Diagnostics and planning with your doctor takes 1 - 2 months. You’ll do diagnostic testing to get a better sense of what you should personally expect, to decide which medications to use, and to get your cycle on the calendar.
- 2 weeks: You will undergo the “stimulation process,” injecting hormones to help you produce a large number of eggs. You’ll be spending a lot of mornings at your clinic, monitoring your ovaries’ progress. When your doctor says you’re ready, you’ll have an egg retrieval surgery — you won’t be conscious for the procedure, and you can go home quickly after it’s finished. Then your eggs go to the lab to be frozen & stored.
For more information on the process, see lesson 1 of our Egg Freezing Course.
- Can I work while I’m doing egg freezing?
Yes, but you’ll need to stay a bit flexible. The process of taking hormones through an egg retrieval is typically 2 weeks. During those weeks you’ll have frequent doctors visits, which can often be scheduled in the morning before work. The tricky part is that you’ll need to be off work for the egg retrieval day, and potentially the day after too — and it’s difficult to know in advance exactly what day the retrieval will take place.
- Do I have to give myself shots?
Shots usually can’t be avoided. That means you’ll either be giving them to yourself, asking someone you trust to help you, or hiring someone to help.
- Does egg freezing always work?
Freezing eggs doesn't guarantee you’ll have a baby. But egg freezing does work in the sense that you’ll be saving your reproductive odds at the age when you freeze — meaning if you freeze at age 33, and use them at age 39, you will be improving your chances by winding back the clock to your 33-year-old odds of success. The quality of the clinic’s lab, along with your age, is a huge factor in success.
For more information on this, check out lesson 2 of our Egg Freezing Course.
- Should I do egg or embryo freezing?
A major weakness of egg freezing is that there’s no way to test the quality of eggs on their own — so you won’t really understand the potential of what you’ve frozen until you decide to use them. So, in some circumstances, people choose to fertilize their eggs with sperm and freeze embryos instead of, or in addition to, eggs. Read more about this choice in lesson 8 of our Egg Freezing Course.
- How should I choose a clinic and doctor?
Arguably the most important decision of all. Focus on track record — not in terms of how much egg freezing a clinic does, but how much experience they’ve had thawing eggs & having live births in the lab you’ll be using.
For more information, check out lesson 4 of our Egg Freezing Course.
- Should I take one of those “fertility predictor test” kits?
Your doctor will likely require you to do some diagnostic testing, like AMH or FSH hormone testing, to understand what dose of hormones to prescribe, and roughly how many eggs to expect. These tests are confusingly named ‘ovarian reserve tests,’ but, PSA: fertility test results have no correlation to your ability to conceive naturally. They’re just a way to gauge likely responses in an egg freezing or IVF cycle.
For more information on this, check out lesson 3 of our Egg Freezing Course.
- What are the risks of egg freezing?
This is a complex subject. One misconception — people think there might be a risk that by harvesting several eggs to freeze that you’ll make it less likely that you’ll have eggs to conceive naturally later. This isn’t true.
For more information, check out lesson 5 of our Egg Freezing Course.
The risks around cancer & risks to offspring are more complicated, so head here to learn more.
- What should I do next if I’m interested in egg freezing?
If you’re interested, it’s definitely worth your time to check out our full egg freezing course. And if you’re short on time, at least be sure to check out the section on the importance of the lab & the section about the likelihood of having a baby with frozen eggs depending on your age and the number of eggs you freeze.