Myths About Freezing Your Eggs You Have To Stop Believing
The decision to freeze your eggs is a personal one, and there could be many reasons why you are considering taking this step to preserve your eggs for future use. However, before you decide that it is the right option for you or swear it off completely, there is a lot to know about freezing your eggs.
There is also a lot of information — and misinformation — about egg freezing available online, and some of this might have affected how you view the process. It can be easy to feel as though freezing your eggs is too complicated, or it's something that you know you want to do without having assessed the potential downsides.
To make it easier for you to gather all the facts when it comes to your reproductive health, we've found five of the most common myths related to freezing your eggs on the internet and debunked them.
Freezing your eggs is dangerous or painful
First, one of the myths that puts many people off the idea of freezing their eggs is that the process is dangerous, painful, or some combination of the two. Luckily, this is just a myth. As reproductive endocrinologist, Dr. Sharon Jaffe told Insider, "It is not dangerous. It does involve a surgical procedure using conscious sedation. But as all surgeries go, there are always risks associated, but the risks are very low for this procedure."
Likewise, Carl Herbert, MD, explained to Self that the pain involved with egg retrieval should be minimal, saying, "Fitted clothing may be uncomfortable for a day or two before you take out the eggs and a week after. Your ovaries may be bigger as a result, and your tummy is going to bloat out."
If you have underlying medical conditions that might affect your ability to undergo surgery or have faced issues due to anesthesia in the past, this is something that you should discuss with your doctor.
You can freeze your eggs at any age
Unfortunately, it is also a myth that you can freeze your eggs successfully at any age. Per NYU Langone Fertility Center, if you have ovaries, your fertility actually begins to decline at around age 30.
Similarly, fertility consultant Dr. Larisa Corda told Refinery29, "The benefits of freezing your eggs at a young age – ideally by the time you're 36 – is that the eggs are still of good enough quality and that their number is adequate enough to provide the best chance possible of having a child later in life if a woman struggles to fall pregnant naturally."
While you can freeze your eggs at an older age, this is a conversation that you need to have with your doctor. Healthline notes that a "geriatric pregnancy," also known as "advanced maternal age," begins at age 35, so this is also something to consider if you would fall into this category.
Your future children may not be healthy if they resulted from a frozen egg
It is also a myth that your future children will be born with health problems if they were born from an egg that was previously frozen. As with any child, they may or may not develop health problems, but those have not been found to be any more likely because of the egg-freezing process.
According to a journal article published by Reproductive Biomedicine Online, researchers found that children born from eggs frozen using vitrification — a common egg-freezing procedure — were not mentally or physically different from their peers who were conceived naturally. Extend Fertility reported on related follow-up studies that show that this continues to be the case even as these children age.
However, a separate journal article published by PLOS in 2022 does suggest that children born from frozen-thawed embryo transfer (FET) have slightly higher rates of cancer than those who were not, so there may be additional health considerations that have not yet been studied.
You should freeze your eggs abroad if it's less expensive
While freezing your eggs in another country because it's cheaper for you might sound ideal, the reality is that it might not be the best option. Although some articles online have touted the benefits of going abroad to freeze your eggs — and it may be your only option if it is not legal for you to freeze your eggs where you live — it may result in greater costs for you in the long run.
As Ippokratis Sarris, the director of King's Fertility in London, told the The Guardian, "When it comes to repatriating eggs, sperm and embryos, it is possible, but it's not always that straightforward. You need to follow a process, you don't just send them with DHL." In other words, knowing the procedures to import and export your eggs is extremely important.
You also cannot predict how legislation may change over time, which could result in more issues in retrieving your frozen eggs if you are not a citizen or resident of the country in which your eggs are frozen.
You won't be able to conceive naturally afterward
This last one isn't totally a myth, but it is more complicated.
If there is a medical reason why you are considering freezing your eggs in the first place, it may or may not be true that you will be able to become pregnant afterward, and you should discuss the specifics of your situation with your doctor. Generally speaking, though, you should be able to conceive naturally even after you have frozen your eggs. Freezing your eggs will not mean removing all of them, per Insider, nor will having retrieved some of your eggs affect the quality of the eggs that have remained inside your body.
As Dr. Sharon Jaffe commented to Insider about egg retrieval, "It should not [affect your fertility] unless you have a rare complication from the procedure. Freezing your eggs will not take away eggs from the future." If you are trying to conceive naturally and are concerned that having frozen your eggs has affected your fertility, be sure to bring these concerns to your doctor.