Egg freezing keeps the option open. It is not insurance.

The main benefit of egg freezing is that your eggs stay the age they were when frozen, while you decide when, or whether, to try for a baby.

It separates the decision to have a child from the timing of your ovaries. It is used before treatment that can damage the ovaries, such as chemotherapy. It helps when endometriosis or ovarian surgery may reduce egg numbers. And it is used by women who are not ready yet, for personal, work or relationship reasons.

The younger you are when you freeze, the better your eggs are likely to be; age at freezing matters more than anything else.

Egg quality falls with age, and it falls faster from the mid-thirties. Eggs frozen younger are more likely to be chromosomally normal. Younger women also usually get more eggs per cycle. So freezing at 32 and using the eggs at 40 is very different from freezing at 40. An AMH test tells you about egg numbers; only age tells you about quality.

Egg freezing does not guarantee a baby: not every frozen egg survives thawing, fertilises, or grows into an embryo that implants.

Each step loses some eggs. That is why the number of eggs frozen and your age at freezing both matter, and why some women need more than one cycle. Frozen eggs do not stop your own fertility from declining, and they do not remove the risks of pregnancy at an older age.

Egg freezing takes about two weeks of hormone injections to grow several eggs, then a short egg collection under sedation.

Injections start early in your period and usually run 8 to 12 days, with scans and blood tests to adjust the dose. A trigger injection matures the eggs. About 36 hours later, eggs are collected through the vagina with a fine needle, under sedation, in about 20 to 30 minutes. You go home the same day [CONFIRM: day-care].

Eggs are frozen by vitrification, a very fast freezing method, and stored in liquid nitrogen at minus 196°C.

Vitrification freezes the egg so fast that ice crystals do not form, which is why it replaced older slow freezing. Only mature eggs are frozen. When you are ready, eggs are thawed, fertilised by ICSI and grown to embryos. If you have a partner now, freezing embryos instead of eggs is sometimes worth discussing.

Under the ART (Regulation) Act 2021, stored gametes and embryos are kept for up to 10 years [CONFIRM: legal read on own-egg storage].

At the end of the storage period, and with your consent, they are allowed to perish or are donated for research. The Act allows treatment for women above 21 and below 50, which matters for when you plan to use them. Your consent form records what happens to your eggs in every case. We remind you before the storage period ends [CONFIRM].

Legal reference: ART Act 2021 s.28(2) storage not more than 10 years

Legal reference: s.21(g) woman above 21 and below 50

Legal reference: s.22 written consent