Women considering fertility preservation need to understand everything about the process, including the answer to one commonly asked question: How many eggs should I freeze?
If you’re thinking “I want to freeze my eggs in California,” you’ll be glad to know that the West Coast is home to some of the best fertility preservation professionals in the world, and none are better equipped to preserve your fertility than the egg freezing experts at our Los Angeles fertility center, USC Fertility.
How many eggs should I freeze? Answers vary
When you choose to freeze your eggs, you will go through a process similar to IVF, in which ovarian stimulation medications are used to maximize the number of eggs that are retrieved and frozen for later use. If you’re wondering “How many eggs should I freeze?” the answer depends on three primary factors.
- How many children you’d like to have
- How old you are when you are freezing your eggs.
- How many eggs you able to retrieve from one cycle.
To ensure that you have enough frozen eggs available when the time comes to use them, we encourage you to freeze at least 10-15 eggs per planned pregnancy attempt. But these are very general numbers, and the recommendation will change with increasing age. As you get older you will need more eggs frozen as the chance that each egg could become a pregnancy will go down with advancing age. You need to speak with one of our physicians to discuss what they think is the best goal for you in terms of total number of eggs to freeze.
Some women respond very well to IVF medications and can freeze enough eggs to accomplish their family-building goals with just one cycle. For women who wish to have multiple children, or whose ovaries don’t produce as many eggs, it may take two or more cycles to retrieve enough.
If you don’t have any fertility issues and are younger than 38, you could be able to freeze between 10 and 20 eggs with each round of IVF. Of those, about 75% will likely survive the thaw, and 75% of those are likely to fertilize. Additionally, the quality of some of the resulting embryos may make them unsuitable for transfer.
Women with a reduced egg supply or other fertility concerns may retrieve fewer eggs and require additional cycles of IVF to achieve their family-building goals. A woman’s egg supply and egg quality, or ovarian reserve, naturally decline over time. The closer you are to menopause, the more likely it is that multiple egg retrieval cycles will be needed to ensure that you have enough eggs stored.
Fertility issues are not always age-related, so some younger women may also find that they need repeat egg freezing cycles to effectively preserve their fertility. For women who want a large family, several egg retrievals may also be recommended.
For many women, multiple egg freezing cycles is not an option, and that is perfectly fine. For those women, the eggs that they get from one cycle, even if that number does not reach their ideal number, still represent an opportunity to get pregnant and have a baby in the future. An opportunity that may not be there at all if they don’t undergo even one egg freezing cycle.
Get answers about egg freezing
To help you answer the question, “How many eggs should I freeze?” your fertility specialist will order several fertility tests to measure your ovarian reserve and predict your response to IVF medications. Based on this information, your fertility specialist can carefully calibrate your treatment plan to maximize the number of eggs you can produce now, to help you build your family later.
If you’re thinking, “I’m ready to freeze my eggs in California,” contact us to schedule a consultation at our Los Angeles egg freezing center.
FAQs
Deciding how many eggs to freeze
How many eggs is a good number to freeze? ›
To ensure that you have enough frozen eggs available when the time comes to use them, we encourage you to freeze at least 10-15 eggs per planned pregnancy attempt. But these are very general numbers, and the recommendation will change with increasing age.
How many eggs do you need to freeze to have 2 kids? ›
For example: a 30-year-old woman with 15 frozen eggs has an 83% chance of one birth, a 50% chance of two, and only a 22% of three. If she'd always dreamt of a big family, she should consider freezing 25 eggs, for over a 1 in 2 chance of having three children.
Are 10 eggs enough for egg freezing? ›
While there isn't a specific “magic number” to guarantee a pregnancy later on, women 35 or younger can feel confident that freezing 10 eggs will give them a good chance of creating at least one child.
Is freezing 15 eggs enough? ›
Some female patients may freeze their eggs in one cycle, and embryos in another. For female patients less than 35 years of age, it is ideal to freeze at least 12-15 eggs for a high chance of one child; this number increases over time.
Is freezing 5 eggs enough? ›
Therefore approximately 30-40 eggs need to be stored to give a woman a reasonable chance of a live birth.
What is the best age to freeze your eggs? ›
"Studies suggest that women who freeze their eggs before age 35 have a better chance of a successful pregnancy than those who freeze their eggs after age 35." This is because the more eggs retrieved and frozen, the better the chance of a successful pregnancy.
Does insurance cover egg freezing? ›
How are people paying for egg freezing? For insurance purposes, egg freezing is usually considered elective unless you have a medical problem or are undergoing a treatment that could impact your fertility, such as certain cancer treatments. That's why in most cases, insurance plans don't cover it.
What are the odds of getting pregnant if they freeze eggs? ›
But fertility researchers anticipate that a woman less than 35 years old with a normal ovarian reserve may have an 80-90% chance of a life birth in the future if she banks 20 frozen eggs; a 50-60% chance of having two babies and a 10-20% chance of three babies.
How many eggs do you need for 2 babies? ›
For simplicity's sake, if 12 mature eggs are usually enough for one normal embryo, which has a good chance (65 percent) of leading to a pregnancy, 24 mature eggs would be a good number for a woman who wants two children.
In general, an average of 8 to 14 eggs are typically retrieved from a woman's ovaries with IVF; however, its ultimately not the number of eggs that matter but the quality. 1 high quality egg is better than 20 poor quality eggs when it comes to success rates.
How do you increase egg freezing success? ›
For the ones you can control, there are a few things you can do. Optimizing your fertility health before the egg freezing process, freezing your eggs at a younger age, doing more than one cycle, and using a safer freezing option are all ways that you can improve your chances of a successful freezing cycle.
Is freezing 7 eggs enough? ›
Deciding how many eggs to freeze
Women under 35 should freeze 20 mature eggs for an 85% chance of having at least one child. Women 38 to 40 should freeze 30 mature eggs for a 75% chance of having at least one child. Women 40 to 42 should freeze 30 mature eggs for a 50% chance of having at least one child.
How many eggs for IVF is good? ›
This is why IVF centers stimulate women in order to get sufficient eggs. Women under 38 in our IVF program have acceptable live birth rates even with only 3 – 6 eggs, do better with more than 6 eggs, and do best with more than 10 eggs. Women 38-40 and 41-42 years old have low live birth rates with low egg numbers.
Is 15 eggs a good retrieval? ›
A study of more than 400,000 IVF cycles has found that doctors should aim to retrieve around 15 eggs from a woman's ovaries in a single cycle for the best chance of achieving a live birth.
Is 13 eggs good for IVF? ›
The more eggs produced from each IVF cycle, the better the chances of a live birth, but only up to about 13 eggs; after that, over stimulation may result in lower-quality eggs that are less likely to become fertilized and result in healthy embryos.
What is a good number for egg retrieval? ›
For women with 1–4 eggs at retrieval it was 30.8% and for 5–9 eggs it was 36.2%. In women age 35–39 (n=543), optimal pregnancy rates (34.8%) were achieved with 5–9 eggs at retrieval. Less than 5 eggs significantly reduced the pregnancy rate (15.6%) whereas more than 10 eggs yielded pregnancy rates between 28 and 29%.
Is 17 eggs retrieved good? ›
You would think more eggs is always better, but that's not the case. Researchers who analyzed thousands of IVF cycles found that the magic number of eggs retrieved from IVF treatment that lead to a live birth is 15. That is because women who produce too many eggs may have more immature or lower-quality eggs.
Is IVF with 4 eggs retrieved successful? ›
Women under 38 in our IVF program have acceptable live birth rates even with only 3 – 6 eggs, do better with more than 6 eggs, and do best with more than 10 eggs. Women 38-40 and 41-42 years old have low live birth rates with low egg numbers. Success rates are much better when relatively high egg numbers are obtained.
What is a good number of eggs for IVF? ›
As a rule of thumb, however, having about ten to 12 mature eggs after egg retrieval (not all eggs retrieved will be developed or mature enough to fertilize) is a good number of eggs and will give a woman a good chance of having at least one normal embryo, which gives a woman a 65 percent chance of pregnancy.
