How egg freezing works?

Egg freezing stores unfertilized eggs for future use. The idea is simple: collect eggs while they are more likely to be healthy, preserve them safely, and use them later when timing, partnership, or life circumstances are a better fit. The process mirrors the first part of IVF and takes a few weeks start to finish.

The process in plain English

Planning and baseline testing

Ovarian stimulation with injectable hormones

A timed trigger to mature the eggs

Egg retrieval under light anesthesia

Vitrification and storage of mature eggs

After a short planning consult, your clinic will review your age, hormone results, and an antral follicle count ultrasound to estimate how many eggs you might retrieve in a cycle and how many you may want to bank for your goals. Stimulation usually lasts 8 to 12 days. You will give yourself small daily injections and come in for several monitoring visits so the team can track follicle growth and adjust doses if needed. When the follicles reach the right size, you take a precisely timed trigger shot. About 34 to 36 hours later, eggs are retrieved in a brief outpatient procedure through the vaginal wall while you are comfortably sedated. Most people go home the same day and feel crampy or bloated for a day or two. Mature eggs are flash frozen using vitrification and moved to secure storage.

What to expect day to day

The cycle is intensive but short. Expect a handful of early morning monitoring appointments, a retrieval day, and a few quiet days to recover. Side effects are usually mild, like bloating, mood shifts, and injection site bruising. Clinics now use protocols that keep ovarian hyperstimulation uncommon, and your team will tailor medication to your history and response. Some people reach their target number of eggs with one cycle. Others plan two or more cycles based on age and ovarian reserve. Freezing eggs is an options tool, not a guarantee, but it can meaningfully improve your chances of having usable eggs when you are ready.

Using frozen eggs later

When the time is right, eggs are thawed, fertilized with partner or donor sperm, and grown into embryos in the lab. A single embryo is then transferred to the uterus in a prepared cycle. Any remaining embryos can be stored for future attempts. Your clinic will help you decide between a fresh transfer in a later IVF cycle or a frozen embryo transfer after the thaw and fertilization.

Where Strawberry helps

Before you decide when to freeze or how many cycles to plan, it helps to understand your starting point. Strawberry’s at-home panels give you lab-grade context without the clinic runaround, and every member receives a Personalized Fertility Timeline that turns results into next steps. Day 3 testing is especially easy because you collect at home, not at a lab when you are tired and menstruating.

Quick pick

Fast check on egg quantity: Ovarian Reserve Blood Test (AMH).

Planning timing and targets: Fertility Blood Test (AMH, FSH, estradiol).

Wider hormone picture: Women’s Health Panel.

Bottom line

Egg freezing breaks a big decision into clear steps. With a short window of medications, a brief retrieval, and modern freezing methods, you can bank younger eggs now and keep more options on the table for later.