Preserving Future Fertility

Egg Freezing

Freezing your eggs during your peak fertility years preserves their quality for over 10 years.

Egg freezing (officially known as “oocyte cryopreservation”) works by bathing your harvested eggs in a solution that prevents ice crystals from damaging them. We then place your eggs in plastic vials and freeze them in liquid nitrogen in a process called “vitrification.” Frozen eggs can be stored for weeks, months or even years, and then transferred to your uterus or that of a surrogate mother.

Embryo Freezing

Regardless if your transfer is soon or you want to wait until you’re ready for number two or three, your embryos are kept safe with our in house technology (that has backups for our backups) until you decide to use them.

There are many reasons why we suggest cryopreserving or banking your embryos rather than separating eggs and sperm:

• It is ideal for patients with partners or sperm donors available.
• It is also ideal for patients that want more children in the future, but want to preserve the quality now.
• Embryo freezing will give you more information upfront versus freezing eggs – we already know which eggs were mature (healthy enough to fertilize) and develop into blastocysts (develop embryologically).
• You also have the option of genetically testing the embryos through preimplantation genetic testing (PGT). We do this by taking a biopsy or small tissue sample of what will become the placenta (called the trophectoderm). This sample will tell us the chromosomal health of your embryos. This can also help you decide if you need to do more IVF cycles in the future.
  
  

Sperm Freezing

There are many reasons to consider freezing your sperm:

Fertility preservation

• If you have just received a cancer diagnosis, for example. We can freeze sperm prior to surgery/chemotherapy/radiation treatments.
• If you are a transgender patient and would like to preserve fertility prior to transition.
• Consideration prior to vasectomy.
• Lifestyle Factors
• Modern, hectic lifestyles, partners who frequently travel and make it difficult to time with your cycle.
• Simply to have as a backup if doing IVF and are unable to produce a sample on the day of retrieval.