The ins and outs of egg freezing, from how the process works to how much it costs

While birth rates in the United States are near historic lows, more and more American women are freezing their eggs to preserve their fertility. 

The number of procedures has increased more than six times over, from 6,000 in 2014, to more than 39,000 in 2023. The process, which only became an accepted practice 12 years ago, has allowed women to freeze both their eggs and, some say, their biological clocks. Women who want children, but aren’t ready yet, see it as a way to preserve their options for later. 

There used to be a stigma around the process, as though freezing eggs meant something hadn’t worked out in a patient’s life, but that’s not the case anymore, says Dr. Tomer Singer, system chief of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Northwell Health.

“It became a common thing. It’s almost empowering. You come in. ‘I’m in my 30s. I’m not ready for a baby,'” Singer said. “‘I want to freeze my eggs. I’m not gonna compromise on the wrong guy.'”

How does egg freezing work

Women spend nearly two weeks giving themselves daily hormone injections — sometimes several in a single day — before their eggs are retrieved. The shots induce the ovaries to ripen multiple follicles, the sacs that contain eggs. 

A surgeon will then go in with a tiny needle and drain the fluid in those follicles. That fluid is taken to an embryology lab where embryologists do the delicate work of searching for the eggs.They maneuver tiny pipettes under a microscope to find and isolate egg cells. 

Once found, the eggs are put onto tiny special straws, then plunged into liquid nitrogen and stored in tanks kept at -320 degrees Fahrenheit. The eggs stay there, possibly for years, until their owner is ready to thaw them, add sperm and turn them into embryos, which is effectively the second half of in vitro fertilization. 

According to the data thus far, as with IVF, there are no differences in the health of babies born from frozen eggs.

How much does freezing your eggs cost?

Freezing eggs is expensive. A single cycle, including medication, costs an average of $12,000 to $15,000, plus another $500 to $1,000 each year for storage. Thawing and fertilizing the eggs later on costs an additional $10,000.  

Back in 2014, Apple and Facebook made headlines when they started offering egg freezing as a covered benefit for their employees. Today more than a third of the largest corporations in the U.S. — those with 20,000 or more employees — cover egg freezing, 60 Minutes’ parent company Paramount among them. 

Why more women are turning to egg freezing 

While more companies are covering egg freezing, many women, like Tina Rampino, pay out of pocket. Rampino’s doctor suggested the procedure during a routine visit at age 35, telling her she was running out of time.

“‘You can get married whenever you want to get married, but you can’t have kids forever,'” Rampino recalled her gynecologist saying. 

It was worth it for Rampino, despite the cost. 

Yasmine Higbee, 29, works in consulting and has a serious boyfriend. She’s certain she’d love to have children, but she’s not ready yet. Higbee said she wants to enjoy herself with her partner instead of rushing to have kids, so she turned to egg freezing. 

Nameetha Jacob, a 38-year-old health care administrator, said she isn’t ready for kids yet because she hasn’t found the right partner. She knows she’s going to be an older mother, so Jacob views having frozen eggs as akin to insurance. Jacob froze her eggs twice, once when she was 34 and again when she was 36.

“You’re not pressured to find someone and settle down and get married,” Jacob said. “You don’t hear the ticking in your mind constantly.”

The biological clock and egg freezing

The biological clock is a reality every woman faces. Women are born with all the eggs they’ll ever have, Dr. Lucky Sekhon, a fertility specialist at RMA of New York, said. New ones are never made, and eggs can’t be fixed or repaired. The number is always decreasing. 

“It pretty much starts decreasing even before you’re born,” Sekhon said. “You’re a fetus in your mother’s womb at 20 weeks, and that’s when you have the peak number of eggs, 6 to 7 million.” 

The numbers go down from there.

When an egg is frozen, it stops aging, which is important because egg quality also decreases as women age, Sekhon said. Even at peak fertility, in women’s 20s, some 25% of eggs, when combined with sperm, will create embryos that are chromosomally abnormal and will likely lead to miscarriages. The percentages rise from there. 

Sekhon says the late 30s are a turning point, a time in a woman’s life when about half of her eggs, when fertilized, will become abnormal embryos. Some women incorrectly think if they lead a healthy lifestyle, doing yoga and refraining from smoking, for example, then their eggs will be in good health, too.

“And I have to explain to them that we have no data to suggest that you can influence your egg quality in that way, unfortunately,” Sekhon said.

She said the optimal time to freeze eggs is when a woman is in her 20s. 

“Because that’s when you’re at your lowest possible rate of genetic errors in the embryos that result from those eggs,” Sekhon said. “And you also have a lot more eggs at that age.”