Fertility Preservation: Egg versus Embryo Freezing

We frequently receive requests from women who would like to plan a pregnancy because their ovarian reserves have declined and they are afraid waiting will further impair their chances of parenting their own biological children if pregnancy is further delayed. As North Cyprus IVF Clinic, we wanted to write this blog post and let you know that if you are a single woman who is not ready to have a child just yet, you do have a number of options and we are ready to assist you with these options.

1- Getting pregnant using donor sperm– You could undergo an IVF treatment using donor sperm and plan a pregnancy accordingly. However, this would be a rushed decision. With today’s technological advancements in assisted reproduction, we are able to preserve your fertility for a future date in a number of ways. Therefore, we would not recommend rushing to get pregnant only because your biological clock is ticking. You should be a mother when you are ready.

2- Freezing embryos using donor sperm- In this option, you would prepare very much like in an IVF cycle, we would collect the eggs, use donor sperm to fertilize your eggs and create embryos. Instead of transferring these embryos into the uterus for an immediate pregnancy, we would freeze them so that your embryos would be ready for transfer at a future date. This is a good option considering that freezing embryos gives you a higher chance of success compared to freezing eggs when the egg quality is not optimal. An egg is just a single cell, so it is more likely to be affected by the freeze/thaw procedures. However, an embryo is incubated into a certain stage of development before it is frozen so that it has a higher number of cells and a higher success with the freeze/thaw process.

3- Freezing eggs as eggs without using any sperm- This is the best method for a young woman who is not yet ready to start a family. It helps preserve your fertility, allowing you to have your own biological children in the future. This option is also good in the sense that there is no sperm donor involvement, therefore, if you do meet someone in the future who would be a good candidate to co-parent, then you can use his sperm instead of a donor, or you can still use a donor but it would give you more options when the time comes. However, if your ovarian reserves have declined, then it is likely that egg quality has also started going down. When the egg quality is poor, eggs are less likely to survive the freeze/thaw procedures. Therefore, if you are freezing eggs, it will make sense to freeze a certain number of eggs so that you can have multiple attempts at IVF treatment with them in the future. Our recommendation would be undergoing a couple of cycles of ovarian stimulation so that we can get a certain number of eggs on each attempt and freeze as many eggs as we can so that we can offer you a good chance of success in the future considering that some of the eggs will not survive the freeze/thaw process when their quality is not optimal.

​We just wanted you to know that you have options and we are here to assist with these options…