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Motherhood on your terms

Egg Freezing Services in Indiana

Egg freezing is a form of fertility preservation that allows women and families to take control of their family-building journey by having a baby on their own timeline. Whether you wish to delay having a child until you’re ready, have a health issue that can potentially impact your fertility in the future, or are planning on going through in vitro fertilization (IVF), egg freezing offers an opportunity to be the master of your path to parenthood.

Egg Freezing Preserves Your Options

There are many reasons why women choose to freeze their eggs. Some women wish to accomplish other goals first before having a child, while others seek out fertility preservation due to medical necessity. Whatever your reason is, egg freezing is a great option that preserves your options. At Indiana Fertility Institute, we welcome anyone who wants to plan their family on their own terms.

  • The Benefits of Egg Freezing

    The primary benefit of egg freezing is that it allows you to essentially extend your fertility past its optimal window. Eggs that are cryopreserved are perfectly suitable for use later in life. Some other advantages offered by egg freezing include: 

    Nurse Looking into Microscope
  • What is Egg Freezing?

    Egg freezing is the process of using cryogenic technologies to preserve a woman’s genetic materials so that they can be used later on in the future. Women are born with a set number of eggs, which declines significantly by the time puberty occurs. By the time a woman reaches the age of 30, only about 100,000 to 150,000 eggs are left. As women reach their mid-30s, their fertility declines at a faster rate. Not only do they have fewer eggs, but the eggs that remain are also lower in quality.

    Egg freezing changes that narrative by retrieving multiple healthy eggs during a woman’s prime reproductive years and freezing them so that they retain their quality. Even though you’re getting older, your frozen eggs stay the same age that they were when they were retrieved. These frozen eggs are stored in liquid nitrogen at subzero temperatures until you’re ready to use them – whenever that is.

    Once the time is right, the eggs can be thawed out and fertilized through IVF. The resulting embryos can also be screened for genetic issues before being transferred into the uterus.

    Egg Freezing

The Egg Freezing Process, Step-By-Step

The egg freezing process typically involves four steps, although different individuals can have different timelines depending on their specific treatment needs and situations. The vast majority of egg freezing cycles take approximately six weeks to complete.

Patients with Doctor
  • 1

    Initial Consultation and Testing

    During your egg freezing consultation at Indiana Fertility Institute, your doctor will discuss with you the advantages of egg donation to see if it’s the right decision for you. During this appointment, you will also learn more about the procedure itself, as well as side effects and what to expect from the entire process. This is a great time to ask your doctor any questions you have or to bring up any concerns.

    Once you’ve decided to go through with egg freezing, your doctor will order tests to assess your fertility. This test will help your fertility doctor make an estimate of how many eggs they will be able to retrieve.

  • 2

    Hormone Injections and Medication

    The goal of egg freezing is to freeze multiple eggs at once. During ovulation, several egg follicles are activated, but only one develops into a fully mature egg. Using fertility medications, your doctor can stimulate your ovaries into developing multiple eggs at once, which will give you a greater supply of eggs during retrieval. These fertility medications are typically self-administered in the form of injections. While taking the fertility medications, you will visit your fertility doctor frequently so that they can monitor your egg development, which is measured through blood tests and transvaginal ultrasound.

    Once the egg follicles have reached the desired size, you will be instructed to take the final injection, which is known as a trigger shot. This is an exciting moment because it signifies that you are close to the end of the process.

  • 3

    Egg Retrieval

    The trigger shot is an injection of human chorionic gonadotropin hormone (hCG), which signals to the ovaries that it’s time to release the mature eggs. In most cases, you will be scheduled for your egg retrieval procedure about 36 hours after you have injected yourself with the trigger shot. Egg retrieval is considered to be a minor surgery and is performed as an outpatient procedure. In the vast majority of cases, our doctors only need to use a local anesthetic. The procedure generally takes less than an hour. After it’s done, you will be monitored for a short while and then cleared to go home.

    It’s recommended that, once home, to give yourself a few days of rest so that your body can fully recover. You may experience some cramping during this time, but this should go away after a few days. Once you’ve had time to rest and recover, you can return to your normal routine and activities.

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    Freeze Your Eggs

    The egg freezing process takes place in a special lab dedicated to cryogenic procedures. Once the eggs have been extracted, an embryologist looks at them under a microscope to identify and select mature eggs. These mature eggs are then flash frozen through vitrification, which is a cryopreservation technique that uses liquid nitrogen to rapidly cool the eggs. This method helps to protect the eggs’ structural integrity by reducing the chance of ice crystals forming. The frozen eggs are then stored until they are ready to be used.

    It’s important to note that egg freezing does not guarantee that your eggs will be viable. This is the main reason why your fertility doctor will try and retrieve as many eggs as possible. The more eggs that are retrieved, the more likely it will be for you to have a healthy egg that results in a successful pregnancy.

Egg Donor

Schedule an Egg Freezing Consultation With Indiana Fertility Institute

Plan your family-building journey on your own timeline. Learn more about your fertility preservation options from the experts at Indiana Fertility Institute by scheduling an egg freezing consultation today.

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