Egg Freezing

[KKWins]

Hi, I am a 36 y/o professional in a relationship whose husband has just been sent to prison for 5 years for being involved in a fatal car accident which was completly an accident (no opinions needed please).

We are both working professionals and were due to begin our pregnancy journey shortly. This is now on a stand still.

I wanted to find out any pro's/con's, any experiences from anyone who has been on this journey before. I am currently looking at various clinics. This all seems to be a mindfield for me at the minute.

Any words of encouragement, advice would be greatly appreciated.

@KKWins I’ve done ivf with two different clinics that offer egg freezing. Not sure where you are in the country but TFP fertility are good and offer egg freezing. As well as lots of other clinics.

i would imagine it’s the same as what I’ve had to do for ivf. Stimulate the ovaries to harvest as many mature eggs as possible. Personally, I’ve not found it to be that bad. I’ve had two egg collections and I’ve managed to get 8 eggs with the first round and 10 with the second. I wonder if you could get a package deal where by you have 3 egg collections (the more eggs you have the more embryos you could create in the future) and it works out a bit cheaper?
just to put it into perspective, out of two egg collects we got 18 eggs, this made 5 embryos. 1 ended in miscarriage, 2 didn’t implant, I’m 7 weeks pregnant with the 4th transfer and 1 still frozen.

there’s lots of good clinics in London, evewell is lovely and fully private. Southampton & Salisbury hospital is also meant to be ok.

I hope you’re ok. I think it’s really good to have a plan, something to focus on. Sending you positivity xxx

I froze eggs with ARGC, none of then survived defrosting, so don't treat this as any kind of guarantee. Is there any possibility of freezing embryos as this is a much safer route (not sure how this would work with prison - maybe it would be possible?). I would recommend Aria or Evewell as London clinics.

The process isn't too bad itself, just takes a few weeks.

I would recommend doing your own research into the success rate of pregnancy from frozen eggs, especially when the eggs are only retrieved at an older age. Frozen embryos have a higher success rate, is that an option at all? Do consider neither are guaranteed.

I considered egg freezing between ivf cycles as I was just tired of it, but my clinic wouldn't freeze above the age of 35. A lot of clinics use this age cut off as egg quality declines so rapidly at that point.

It is so far from a given, I think a lot of info out there can be very misleading. Anyone who has gone through ivf will tell you that number of eggs means very little. Frozen eggs do not survive anywhere near as well as frozen embryos either. If I was in your situation and this was definitely the route I wanted to go down, I would proceed asap and use donor sperm to hopefully create and freeze embryos instead so you at least have options. Five years is a long time to wait. I have no idea if he would be allowed to use his own sperm from prison.

Agree with PPs that creating frozen embryos rather than frozen eggs would be the better route but perhaps not available to you.

You mention a 5 year sentence - is that the total sentence, meaning he's likely to be released from prison after 2.5 years? In that case you'd still be in your 30s with a decent chance of conceiving naturally. (Although you may of course not want to conceive immediately given it may take a while for him to re-establish his life/your relationship).

I don't think I would bother unless they are fertilised

Ask them for their actual success rate i.e. what percentage end up as a live baby. It will be low.

Recommend a three cycle package with a mix of frozen eggs and embryos. The former as insurance in case it doesn't work out with your current partner/ so you have options down the line. The latter so there's higher chance of success.

Good luck!

If you want children with your husband 💯 freeze embryos not eggs.

if you aren’t sure about staying with your DH obviously go for eggs

eggs have a much lower success rate I think it’s the defrosting…the actual live baby % was shockingly low when i researched it about 10 years ago.

He's just gone to prison. Getting the necessary 'ingredients' to make the embryos might be tricky......and also then if they divorce she can't use them without his consent.

I'm currently pregnant using frozen eggs. I froze my eggs 5 years ago when I was 36. I only froze 10. I was well aware that the chances of them working were low. I had done my research but decided to give it a go anyway.
I'm very early days pregnant so there is no guarantee this will end in a live birth.
Out of the 10 I froze, 9 survived defrosting, 7 fertilized and 3 made it to blast. The clinic were pretty surprised at how well they did. (As was i).
So my first transfer has worked (at least in getting pregnant terms) and I have frozen the 2 other embryos.
However even though I have had early days success, I would still say egg freezing is a last resort and as others have said, has low chances of success.
If it was in any way possible in your situation I would advise embryo freezing. I'm not sure how it would work but might be worth asking if there's a way to do it.
But as someone else pointed out the issue is if you were to break up/ your husband changed his mind then you couldn't use them.
You could ask clinics if you could do a combination? If they do a 2/3 cycle package (this obviously depends on your finances) and maybe do a split. Freeze half just eggs and fertilise half to freeze embryos.

Thank you all for your advice. I will look into all of the recommendations you have suggested. Thanks again.