Trying To Conceive? Don’t Rely On Freezing Your Eggs, Say Experts

The concept of egg freezing sounds like a pretty amazing option for women who want to hit pause on their family plans, and revisit the idea later in life. But new expert opinion could throw a spanner in the works.

Just after Facebook and Apple revealed they would pay for employees to freeze their eggs, experts have admitted that the fertility method isn’t actually all it’s cracked up to be.

Despite egg freezing soaring in popularity (according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, 580 women froze their eggs in 2012 – more than double the number of 2009), it’s nowhere near a surefire way for older women to have children.

Leading doctors have warned that the success rates of the procedure aren’t actually all that high as there’s no guarantee that a frozen egg will work as well as a ‘fresh’ one.

“Egg freezing is being sold like an insurance policy,” said Dimitrios Nikolaou, a consultant in reproductive medicine and surgery, to Vogue magazine. “It’s a very good business.

“That's what prompted the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) to look into this issue; we felt a responsibility to assess the facts.”

The RCOG recommends that egg freezing is not offered to women as an insurance of her future fertility.

“At least 20,000 eggs have been frozen in the UK,” says Nikolaou.

“There have been around 600 to 700 embryos created from thawed eggs [this is where frozen eggs are fertilised with either a partner's sperm or that of a sperm donor], and so far there have been around 150 to 200 embryo transfers – which is when a clinic puts a fertilised embryo back inside the womb.”

But despite this, stats show that between 1991 and 2012, just 21 babies were born in the UK from 253 fertility cycles using frozen eggs.

And there’s a cut off age to keep in mind. Women pinning their hopes on starting a when they’re in their mid 30s and 40s by using the fertility method could be shelling out for no reason.

Once a woman is around 35 years old, her chances of having a baby begin to decrease quickly.

“To give you an idea, at a good fertility unit, for a 35-year-old woman, the chance of a live birth after IVF is, on average, around 50 per cent,” says Nikolaou.

“In the same unit at age 42, it's around a 10 per cent chance of success. If you draw a line between the two statistics, that's how quickly a woman's fertility decreases.”

How Does Egg Freezing Work?

Freezing eggs isn’t cheap and isn’t available on the NHS at the moment, with the exception of women with illnesses, such as cancer, whose treatment could damage their fertility.

The initial procedure of harvesting costs between £3,000 and £5,000 for each round of treatment – and you expect to add an extra £200 a year to that for storage.

The eggs are extracted, using a tiny needle, and then stored in frozen liquid. The maximum amount of time they can be stored is 10 years – a limit put in place by the HFEA.

When a woman decides it’s time to have a baby, her frozen eggs are slowly thawed out before attempting to be fertilised with sperm from a donor or her partner.

The fertilisation process itself will set you back between £5,000 and £8,000, bringing the total cost to somewhere around the £12,000 mark.

And with success rates so low, it's hardly surprising experts are urging women to seriously consider all their options before deciding to put all their eggs in one freezer.

[Apple And Facebook To Pay For Female Employees Egg Freezing: A Perk Too Far?]

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Would you consider freezing your eggs? Let us know in the comments.